


Adaptations

by emwebb17



Series: Four Stories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:14:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 899,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emwebb17/pseuds/emwebb17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of four best friends coping with love, loss, and life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The initial set up for one of the boys' stories was borrowed (read: blatantly stolen) from the manga Love Mode. However, all characters and events following are original.

Scott

 

Friday, April 29, 2005

 

Scott Ramsey dropped his pre-calculus textbook and smiled as it hit the bottom ledge of his locker and incurred a dent.  The demonic math book got exactly what it deserved.  His elation was short-lived as he sighed and bent over to cram it into his locker.  After he straightened he grabbed his lunch from the top shelf.  One of the brown bag’s corners was dark; something had leaked.  He paused as he shut his locker and looked at the one photo he had hanging on the door.  It was from a little under a year ago during the last day of school.  He and his closest seven friends were in it, crowded around each other in order to all fit in the frame.  The four guys were making faces and the four girls were posing like “fierce” models.  How boring was his life?  Three best guy friends and four girls to balance it all out.  Of course, it wasn’t like they were all dating; in fact, none of them were dating each other.  But still, his life was so vanilla.  And not even vanilla in a good way.  He wasn’t getting any vanilla sex...he wasn’t getting any period.

The bell rang indicating he was late for lunch.  He slammed his locker shut and took off down the hall in a swift jog.  The hall monitors in this school were like Nazis.  He ran into his friend Anna on the way.  For some reason, they were always late—to everything.  Maybe that was why they were such good friends: they were always left behind together.

“What’s up, Annabelle?”

“Nothing, Scott-belle.”

Scott grinned.  Anna hated her full name.  So, if anybody insisted on calling her by it, she added “belle” to their name.  She’d almost gotten in trouble for it once when she did it to Mrs. Grober-belle.  What was it with math teachers having no sense of humor?  Just like Mr. Lockhart who actually gave them homework over the weekend.  It was too mean.  Anna ran ahead of him and her frizzy blondish/brownish hair bounced in a big puffball behind her.  He knew better than to comment on it.  It was the one feature of her genetic heritage that she didn’t like.  But, that’s what you got when a blonde haired, blue-eyed supermodel mates with a six and half foot tall black basketball star.  Of course, her parents were actually just a nutritionist at the local hospital and a CPA, but they looked like a supermodel and basketball star.  The result of their union had been three very pretty girls, but all of them had that frizzy, slightly untamable hair that exploded whenever the humidity was too high.  Like today.  A storm was building up, but ever so slowly.  It might be a day or two before the storm actually broke.

They arrived in the crowded, noisy cafeteria and made a beeline around tables, students, and spilt lunches to the table where they always sat.  Their other friends were already there, of course.  And something else to add to his perfect life, even though they were in different classes and in one case a different grade, they all had the same lunch period.  How convenient.  Scott wondered why he was so upset with his perfect, normal life.  He knew there were a lot of people who would love to have a more normal life just among his own friends.  Will’s parents were never home and he essentially lived alone; Chris’ dad had been missing for years; Anna sometimes got looks because she was a part of a mixed-race family; Laney’s parents went through a divorce not even a year ago.  He should stop griping.

Scott glanced at Julian’s lunch as he sat down.  It was packed neatly in a three-layered box and looked more like dinner than lunch.  He wondered if Julian ever wanted to get away from his weird parents.  Then again, Julian was a little weird himself.  It was almost cliché: he wore all black and eyeliner and constantly pondered his existence in the plane of their current reality.  Strangely though, he didn’t participate exclusively in art and was actually athletic.  He played soccer with Will.  And surprise, surprise, they were talking about people he’d never heard of before but were apparently famous in Europe.  Why couldn’t they like a more American sport?  It was always so boring going to their games, and he had to go to one tomorrow.  He had no excuse to get out of it; it was on a Saturday.  Why couldn’t he have a job?  Then again, Chris had a job, but he was going.  Of course, it was probably just a way for him to get away from his bitch of a girlfriend for once.  See how perfect his life was?  She didn’t have the same lunch period as them so they didn’t have to put up with her.  Well, that part of the perfection he could deal with.  The girl was a real witch.

The lunch half-hour passed around Scott uneventfully.  Anna was busy talking about girl stuff with Laney and Liz.  The cliché tomboy of the group, Riley, was trying to get Chris to talk about the baseball season, but he seemed more interested in Will and Julian’s conversation, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Chris didn’t like soccer either.  The one time Will talked to him was to flip out about the date he was setting him up on.  Scott’s cousin was in town and he thought they would really hit it off.  Or at least, Will was his cousin’s type.  He had the appearance of being small, but he really wasn’t.  He was at least 5’8” which while wasn’t exactly tall, wasn’t short either.  Maybe it was because he was so toned from soccer that he had virtually no fat on his body and thus appeared slimmer.  He also had…Scott wasn’t quite sure how to put it.  Well, he did, but like hell if he was going to admit that he thought one of his male friends was pretty.  So, he decided to go with his cousin liked “pretty-boys” and would probably think he was cute.  And Will was a nice guy.  Scott wondered why even though he knew Will pretty well—he’d known him since second grade—he didn’t really know what kind of girl he liked.  He’d dated so many different kinds of girls in the past: cheerleaders, bookworms, student council members, angsty Goth girls.  And he’d never dated one for very long.  It was like he was trying everything out before he decided on what he wanted.

Scott sighed and squished his finger in his half-eaten sandwich.  He and Chris weren’t ugly, but compared to Will and Julian, they were second rate boys-next-door.  And Will and Julian always had something going on, and Chris at least had a girlfriend, hell spawn that she may be, she was still a girlfriend.  Okay, so here it was.  The one part of his life that wasn’t perfect.  Couldn’t it be that he didn’t have good grades?  He could deal with that.  The bell rang and Scott sighed again.  He still had half a day of school left.

“What’s your problem?!  Stop sighing!” Will shouted, tossing a cheese ball at him.

“Yeah, for real, are you a girl or something?” Chris asked, picking the cheese ball off Scott’s sleeve and popping it into his mouth.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley demanded.  Her short orangey hair was sticking up and she looked like an offended tabby cat.

The eight of them cleared off their table and Scott just made a face and wouldn’t answer.

“He’s upset because his life is so perfect,” Anna betrayed him.

He shot her a look and Julian hooked an arm around his shoulder, drawing his attention.  “If you want, I know a guy who could un-perfect your life for you.”

Scott gulped.  Julian probably wasn’t exaggerating.  “That’s okay, buddy.  I’ll get over it.”

“Well, if you change your mind…”  Julian made a business card appear in his hand.  Scott took it.  All it had was a name and a phone number.  Scott was quite certain he would never need Master Rhinehead Klingon, Sr. Esquire’s help.  At least Julian was always there to break up the monotony.

“So, Scott, you’re sure about the time and the place?” Will asked for the umpteenth time.

“Yes!  I already arranged everything.  All you have to do is show up!”

Scott headed for his class ignoring Will’s plea for more information.  He was glad all his science and math classes were over in the morning, but that just made it hard to stay awake for English and history and Spanish.  His brain tended to shut down in those classes.  It worried him that he had no academic interests.  What was he going to do with his life?  No subject interested him enough.  What did he do with his time?  He liked to talk and listen to other people’s stories and gossip.  Maybe he could be a psychologist.  Or a talk show host.  Maybe he could be the next Ryan Seacrest, only taller, less irritating, and not nearly as gay.

He doodled through most of his classes, which his teachers let him get away with since he got good grades and didn’t distract other people in the class.  After school he dragged his feet.  He didn’t really want to fight with the rush hour mob at the metro station, but if he wanted to beat it he was going to have to virtually run the entire way there.  There was a reason he didn’t do any sports.  And if he lingered around it might seem like he had all the time in the world because he had his own car, which he didn’t.  It was sad being one of the few juniors who still had to ride on public transportation.  Even if they didn’t have their own car, most juniors and seniors had friends who did.  The only one among the eight of them who had a car was Chris, and nobody wanted to ride with the she-devil.

Scott trudged to the back of the school and down the long vocational class hallway.  It came out by the student parking lot and was the shortest way to get to the metro.  As soon as he stepped outside, he wanted to step back in.  It wasn’t exactly hot out, but it was muggy.  The humidity was getting worse.  He wished it would just rain already.  The parking lot was still about half full since many students attended after school clubs or were just being slow like him, which was kinda strange since it was a Friday.  He passed through a myriad of decade old Hondas and Toyotas.  They seemed to be popular brands for teenaged drivers.  Then he saw Anna’s frizzy hair.  José Lopez was holding her by the arm, and not in a particularly friendly manner.  Scott immediately adjusted his course to head for them.

“José, I told you, I didn’t stand you up.  My mom said I couldn’t go at the last minute.  I tried to call your cell, but you didn’t answer.  So, I left a message with your little brother.  It’s not my fault if he didn’t give it to you.  And why weren’t you answering your cell phone anyway?  Was I interrupting the date you had before me?”

“Dios mio, Anna.”

Scott hated the way José said her name, with a pseudo-sexy Spanish accent.

“Why do you think I’m always cheating on you?”

“I don’t.  I just—”

“Is everything okay here?” Scott asked, leaning on the roof of a car and keeping his distance.

“Scott!”  Scott flinched at her tone.  “Why are you here?”

José looked irked.  “It’s more like you’re cheating on me, you know?  He’s always around you.”

“What?  Me and Scott?  No way.  I mean, ew.”

Scott would have been offended, but he knew what she meant.  He felt the same way about her.

“I’m just a little concerned is all.  You know, when a larger guy has a girl by the arm.  I just wanted to make sure things weren’t getting out of hand.”

José released Anna and took a step toward Scott.  “Why are you worried so much?  Because all Mexicans are in gangs and beat their girlfriends?”

“That’s a radical interpretation of my sentence.”

“José, calm down.  He didn’t mean that.”

“Sure, take his side.”

“Whoa!  I’m not taking a side.  In fact, I’m pissed at him for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”  She gave him a look.

“Whatever, okay?  I gotta go.  I’ll talk to you later.”

José stomped off and jumped into his pick-up truck.  Scott could have made a comment about that particular stereotype, but kept it to himself.  Anna watched José drive off and then turned on Scott.

“What were you thinking?”

“Anna, I swear it was nothing but concern for your well-being.  I would rather have you angry with me for interfering over nothing than to show up at school tomorrow and listen to you explain away some bruises.”

“He would never hurt me.  He never has.”

“Okay.  And I believe you.  I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but I don’t know him that well.  And he had a pretty strong grip on your arm.  Or at least, that’s what it looked like.”

Anna put her hands on her hips and shook her head, but she didn’t contradict him, so José must have had a pretty strong hold.  Scott walked around the car and rubbed the back of his head.  He looked at her with apologetic eyes.

“He wasn’t your ride home, was he?”

Anna glared at him.  “Yes.  So, now you’re going to have to escort me home.”

“Okay.”

They started off together toward the main road.  They weren’t talking, but Scott wasn’t worried.  They always found something to fill the silence.  Usually to the point where others around them would demand that they put a cork in it.

“So, how boring is this game going to be tomorrow?” Anna asked.

“I know.  I bet they won’t even let Julian play that much.”

“I know it sucks.  There really isn’t a rule that says no make-up on the players.”

“I know.  It’s really uncool.”

“We really need to stop saying ‘I know.’”

“I know.”

Scott put up a hand to ward off her attack.  “I didn’t mean it!”

She laughed and wrapped an arm around his waist.  He did the same to her and they walked slowly side by side.  There was no sense in hurrying now.  By the time they got to the metro rush hour would be in full swing.  Scott wondered if there had ever been a point in time when rush hour had really only been an hour.  He doubted it.

“Um, are you worried that José might come driving back and see us like this?” Scott asked, secretly hoping he would come and dump Anna so that she could find a better boyfriend.

“Ah, fuck ‘im.”

“Anna, you know I would do anything for you, and even if that is a command, it’s a bit much to ask of me seeing as how you wouldn’t even pee on my foot that time I got stung by a jellyfish.”

“Uh!  Scott!  You are so—”  She couldn’t seem to figure out what she wanted to yell at him for first.  “I don’t think it was the right kind of jellyfish for that to work on.  And secondly, ew!  You and José?  That’s almost as gross as you and me.”

“Oh, I’d say more.”

Anna giggled.  “You are so strange.”

“Am not.  I think strange is José believing that someone would think it would be feasible that a common gang member attended our school.  Maybe the son of a mafia boss, but not a street gang.”

“He’s just sensitive, you know?  He gets stereotyped a lot and it’s not fair.”

“Yeah, yeah, poor baby.”

“Well, anyway, that’s between him and me.  Don’t worry about it.”

“I am going to worry about it, but I’ll try to keep my nose out of it.”

Anna sighed dramatically.  “I guess that’s the best I can get out of you.”

They chatted all the way on the hour long metro ride, and then the twenty minute bus ride to Anna’s stop.  Once they waved goodbye, Scott realized he didn’t really know what they had talked about.  Why is it they could just talk for hours on end about nothing?  They were so compatible.  So, why didn’t they feel anything for each other but friendship?  It was a mystery.  In another few minutes Scott got off at his stop and walked a couple blocks to his house.  Every light in the house must be on the way it was lit up.  He guessed it was a positive sign that his parents didn’t worry much about the cost of the electricity bill.

When he walked in the door he was greeted by the cackling of about thirty middle-aged women.  He froze, horrified they were laughing at him, but they couldn’t see him.  They were in the living room.  He’d forgotten his mother was hosting some sort of meeting for the society of such and such tonight.  He carefully bypassed the room full of women who would want nothing more than to see who could make him blush first and made it into the kitchen.  There were leftovers from the buffet the ladies had gorged themselves on.  It wasn’t picked over too bad; his father must not be home from work yet.  Scott piled up a plate full of food and tucked a soda under his chin.  He tiptoed quietly up the stairs and breathed a sigh of relief once he was in his room.  He sat down in front of his TV and proceeded to enjoy his smorgasbord.

After he was done he considered getting his math homework out of the way tonight.  He grabbed his backpack and held it in his lap.  Should he do it now?  He opened a side pocket and found his cell phone.  It was flashing at him.  He connected to the voicemail and listened to the message from his cousin.  Scott glanced at his watch: 7:13.  It was probably too late to call Will.  He was going to be angry with him tomorrow.  Scott shrugged and dropped the cell phone and backpack onto the floor.  The homework could wait.  Seinfeld was coming on and it was the marble rye episode.

 

Saturday, March 30, 2005

 

                “Scotty!”

Scott instinctively curled into a ball under his covers at the shout of his name not a moment too soon.  His twin brothers jumped on top of him and began to bounce on the bed.

“Wake-up Scotty!  It’s breakfast time!”

“Mommy made pancakes!”

“Pancakes!”

“Pancakes!”

The twins bounced and squealed and Scott carefully pulled back the covers.  His painfully adorable brothers were holding hands and twirling around in a circle around his head and skipping over his body.  They were going to step on him in a minute.  They had just turned eight and still had their baby blond hair and bright blue eyes.  Scott put the back of his hand to his eyes.  They were too cute.  He roared out from the covers and tackled them onto the bed.  They squealed and shouted and then shrieked when he started to tickle them.

“Oh, good grief, do you have to get them so riled up?”

Scott looked up from pinning his brothers to the bed and saw his thirteen year old sister pushing her glasses up her nose with a finger.  He was her older brother, he should dote on her, but she was so un-cute.  All she ever did was scowl and try to blame all her problems on the twins.  Classic middle child syndrome.  Scott hopped off the bed and pretended like he was heading for his dresser to change out of his sleep wear.  At the last moment he lunged for his sister and threw her yelling and protesting over his shoulder.  He slapped her butt and she got so upset she couldn’t get out any noise.  The twins laughed and skipped after him down the hall.  He hauled her downstairs and finally put her down once they reached the kitchen.

“Mom!  The twins made Scott be mean to me!”

Scott laughed as his mother gave him a knowing look and turned to placate her daughter.  Joanna never blamed him for anything; she had such a big brother complex.  Scott took his place at the table and was excited to have a nice big breakfast.  They didn’t sell food at all at the soccer games and it was going to last ninety minutes.  At least that was one good thing about soccer: it took ninety minutes to play ninety minutes unlike some other sports.  His father was still on the couch ignoring the CNN reporter on the TV and reading the paper.

“Okay, everyone come to the table.  Breakfast is ready.  Drake, Ferris, calm down and come sit at the table.  Honey, are you coming?  Or shall I give your bacon to Scott?”

“Yeah, stay there, Dad,” Scott said munching on a crunchy piece of pig intestine.  “I need it; I’m a growing boy after all.”

“All that fat will probably stunt your growth,” Joanna said gloomily.

“Well, then maybe I should give it to you,” Scott said, waving the bacon under the vegetarian’s nose.  “It might help you…fill out.”

Joanna blushed and covered her chest in a huff.  Scott’s father smacked him on the back of the head with the rolled up newspaper.

“Stop teasing your sister,” he said as he took his place at the head of the table.

Scott looked around the table at their very happy and stable family.  God his life was so perfect.  After breakfast—he hadn’t even had to do the dishes—he was lying in his boxers on his bed talking to Anna on the phone.

“I don’t get it.  Why are you so anti-perfection?” she asked over the sound of running water.

“It’s not that I really have anything against it, it’s just that it’s really boring.  Are you in the bathroom?”

“Yeah, I had to pee.”

“Gross.”

“Hey, you’re probably naked you pervert.”

“Not naked.  I’m in my boxers.”

“So, that’s still gross.  Talking to a girl in nothing but your underwear.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, honey, but hearing your titillating voice purring softly over the airwaves isn’t even giving my dick a decent twitch.”

“Woe is me, my heart is breaking,” she said dryly.

“Yeah.  But, wouldn’t that at least be something?  The whole best friend sexual tension thing?  We could get into a horrible fight and divide our friends right down the middle.  Boys versus girls.”

“Why do you think all the boys would be on your side?”

“Which one do you think wouldn’t be?”

Anna was silent a moment.  “Good point.  You might also get Riley.  It wouldn’t be a very fair fight.  So, why don’t you find some other drama to entertain you?”

“Like, Will gets into an accident and hurts his legs.  And we have to help him overcome his despair and learn to walk again so he can go on to play in the World Cup.  A real movie of the week spectacular.”

“Yeah, that might be interesting, but wouldn’t you feel terrible if he really did get into an accident?”

“Yeah, but saying it out loud, it’s not gonna happen.”

“I guess so.  But, you did wish for a drama, so that means anything can happen now unless you say them all out loud.”

“No way.  My life is perfect.”

“Yeah, _your_ life is perfect.”

“Anyway, is Chris picking you up first, or me?”

“Uh—I think you.”

“Crap.  I gotta go.”

Scott hung up without saying goodbye and the doorbell rang just after he got off the bed.  Scott made a face.  Chris hated having to get out of the car, which meant he had been there for five or ten minutes already.  Scott threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.  He knew jeans would be a bad idea in the muggy weather, but he didn’t have time to find anything that wasn’t on the floor.  He ran down the stairs and called out to his parents that he was leaving.  He opened the door, fully expecting to find a scowling Chris on his doorstep.  Instead, Chris was scuffing his toe against the welcome mat.  He didn’t even seem to notice the door had opened.

“Chris?”

Chris looked up, his eyes a little unfocused.  Then his vision appeared to clear and he smiled at Scott.

“Ready?”

“Ye-ah.”

Scott was a little suspicious of Chris’ behavior.  What did he have planned in the way of revenge?  As he walked toward Chris’ car he noticed his girlfriend was in the passenger seat.

“God, what’s she doing here?” he muttered.  Then he glanced over at Chris.  He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.  They were all tolerant of the girl, but surely Chris knew they didn’t like her.  Would he be upset?

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Chris sighed.  “Yesterday she said she wanted to go.  I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted she wanted to come.  So, I just gave in.  Sorry.”

“Well, you’re the one that has to sit next to her.”

Chris laughed.  “Yeah, I know.”

They stopped the conversation once they opened the car doors.  Riley was already in the backseat.  As he slid in Riley gave him a look of agonizing pain and then mimed choking Chris’ girlfriend.  Scott grinned and wondered what Anna would have to say about this development.  Especially since because of the irritating girl four of them were going to be squeezed into the backseat.  As expected, Anna was not pleased.  Riley didn’t seem to mind that Laney sat in her lap, but they were all thankful Liz hadn’t been able to make it today.  Scott and Anna tuned out the girl up front and discussed their summer plans.  There was still about a month and a half of school left, but it was never too early to plan a vacation.  Laney and Riley were getting in on the plans as well when the car suddenly screeched to a halt.  Those in the backseat screamed like a bunch of girls.  Scott was glad there were three girls to cover up his own squeal.  The car had slid forward several feet as the old Honda’s brakes had locked up.  Scott waited for an impact, but none came.

“Get out!” Chris yelled.

The backseat was surprised.  Who was he talking to?  It looked like he was looking at his girlfriend, but would he really talk to her like that?  They had all hoped that would be the case one day, but had that day finally come?

“I’m dead serious, Karen.  Get out of the car.  I’m not putting up with it today.”

Scott believed him.  He hoped the witch knew what was best for her.  She stared at Chris for several seconds, her jaw on the floor, eyes bugged out.  Then she made some disbelieving and offended noises as she gathered her oversized purse from the floor and opened the car door.  She got out and slammed the door shut.  She looked like she was about to say something through the glass, but Chris took off.  He drove up to the next block, made a right, and kept going.  They were almost to the two-lane highway that took them out to the soccer field.  Scott didn’t think Chris was going to go back for her.  He covered his smile with a hand and looked at Anna.  She had the same look on her face.  They couldn’t believe he had just ditched his girlfriend on the side of the road.  It wasn’t like it was the middle of nowhere, and she had a cell phone, but she certainly couldn’t walk home from there.  The four in the backseat wanted to gossip about what had just happened, but correctly assumed that Chris would be able to hear them, so they remained quiet for the rest of the ten minutes it took to get out to the soccer field.

When they arrived they had to park on the grass off to the side of the gravel parking lot; they must be a little late.  Laney and Riley ran ahead to find some seats and Scott and Anna hung back with Chris.  Scott kind of wished Anna would leave them alone, but he still asked, “Are you okay, Chris?”

“Yeah.  I’m fine.  I just, had a rough night last night.  At work.  And I stayed up late so I’m really tired this morning.  I just don’t have my usual patience.  I just couldn’t take her ragging on me like that.”

“Your usual patience?” Scott asked.  “You mean that of a saint?  Don’t worry.  We’ll forgive you if you come down to the level of us mere mortals every once and a while.”

Chris gave a small smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.  “Thanks.”

“There they are,” Anna pointed to the stands where Riley and Laney were waving.  They were in the middle of the field and about half way up; pretty good seats.  They must have bullied some people out of the way.  On the field the players were lining up to the start the game.  “Hurry up!” Anna said and took off for the other two girls.

Scott and Chris took their time.  It was highly unlikely anything exciting would happen within the first five minutes of the game.  Quite possibly, the first half hour.  Scott wanted to tell Chris that if something was wrong, he could talk to him.  He always thought that Julian and Will went together and he and Chris did.  But maybe he preferred one of the other ones?  Or was he just not close enough to any of them to open up?  Was it strange that Scott thought it was okay for boys to be up front and honest about their emotions?  Just hearing the thought in his head told him that that was indeed the case.  His perfect family had made him a sensitive, tree-hugging, non-practicing homosexual.  Yeah, he liked girls, but he sure was queer in a lot of other ways.

“Check out that guy,” Chris said as they shuffled their way through the stands, irritating people as they went.

At first Scott thought he was talking about the crazy father with the painted face, but then he saw the guy in a suit.  A very expensive and well-made looking suit.  “Who would wear a suit in this weather?” Scott asked.

“Who would wear a suit to a soccer game period?  I mean, unless you’re the coach for a professional team, it’s really weird.”

“Yeah, totally.”

They found the girls and sat down on the hard bench next to them.  Now Scott was wishing he’d listened to his mother and taken the portable seats his parents used when they went to football games.

“So, what didn’t we miss?” Scott asked, scanning the field to look for Will.  He was surprised when he saw Julian.  “Hey, they’re letting Julian play the first half.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s wearing any make-up,” Laney said, eyeing the boys stretching by the team bench.

“That’s weird,” Chris said.

“You think that’s weird?” Anna looked at them.  “You guys did miss something.  Will already got a yellow card.”

“What?!” Chris and Scott shouted together.  They couldn’t believe it.  They didn’t think they’d ever been to a game where Will had received a yellow card.  He didn’t play dirty and he didn’t pick fights or respond to taunts.

“But, the game just started,” Scott sputtered, searching for Will on the field.

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened.  The kick off happened and Will kicked the ball right into some guy’s face by accident, so of course he’s gets upset and shoves Will.”

“Yeah, and instead of shrugging it off,” Riley continued, “Will pushed him back.”

“No way,” said Chris.

“Way,” said Laney, eyes still on the lean players stretching for her benefit.  “Both players got yellow cards.”

“Dude, everyone is weird today,” Scott said.  “Something’s awry with the universe.”

“Well, you’re the one who wanted to un-perfect his life,” Anna reminded him.

“Yeah, un-perfect it.  Not send it spiraling into the twilight zone.”

The rest of the game was very interesting.  Julian was actually playing, and he was known for his footwork.  He could mislead the other players all day and run them up and down the field.  No one ever stole a ball from him.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at taking shots and both of the ones he managed to get off missed.  Will on the other hand, was known for his precision; the soccer ball always went exactly where he wanted it to go.  Today, though, he was playing very hard and a little recklessly.  It was very out of character.  He did manage to score their team’s one goal.  The over all bad news was that aside from a few exceptions, Will and Julian being two of them, their high school’s team was actually pretty bad.  They lost 5-1.  After the game the coach announced there would be a consolation party at the Pizza Dome; friends and parents were welcome to attend.  Their group made its way down to the field—wait, Scott corrected himself, the pitch—and found Julian and Will.  They looked dead tired.  They had played the entire game and tried to carry the team, but as usual, they failed to be able to make up for the lack of talent of their teammates.

“Hey,” Scott said and draped an arm around Will’s shoulders.  He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before Will reacted almost violently and stepped away from him.  Scott stood stock still, his arm still in the air.  “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Will snapped.

“What do you think?” Anna asked.  “They lost.  Again.  It must be getting irritating.”

“I know, but still.”

He looked at Will with hurt eyes, but the irate pretty boy wasn’t going for it today.  He was abnormally unhappy.  Will wasn’t one of those bright, chipper people or anything, but he didn’t really get upset over anything.  He had a very “big picture” view of the world and tended to believe that within a reasonable amount of time anything wouldn’t really be all that important and so he just shrugged stuff off.  It was a good quality in a lot of ways, but in some ways it was irritating.  At times it was almost as if he was apathetic toward the world, which Scott blamed on Will’s parents.  Then Scott had a thought.  Maybe he was upset about the whole date thing yesterday.  He could understand that.  It would probably be wiser not to mention that incident at all.

“Maybe next time,” Scott said lamely and gave a half-hearted smile to Will and Julian.

They sighed in unison.  “Maybe,” Julian said.  “I just wish I could learn to aim better.”

“I thought you were super cool,” Laney said hugging his arm.  “I was totally, like, ‘Oh, my God, who is that guy?  He’s so hot!  Oh, my God!  That’s totally Julian!’  You see?  There are other ways of looking good.”

Julian laughed and ruffled her hair.  “You’re funny.  Funny ha-ha and funny weird.”

“That’s nice coming from the likes of you,” Riley said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Julian asked.

Laney and Riley laughed, but Laney looked a little hurt.  She had a huge crush on Julian and everyone knew it, except Julian.  He seemed genuinely clueless to the fact that the tenth grader worshipped him.  Scott wasn’t sure where exactly Julian’s sexuality was oriented, but he was pretty sure he liked girls.  And Laney was a hottie.  Cute, petite, and perky boobs.  He wasn’t proud of it, but he’d masturbated thinking about her a couple times in the past.  He wondered if Julian would ever notice her or if Laney was going to snap one day and jump him in the lockers after soccer practice.

“So, are we going to the consolation party?” Anna asked.

Scott looked at Chris.  “Do you not feel up to it?”

Chris looked around the group, clearly realizing that he was the only way they could get there.  Scott could tell he didn’t want to disappoint them, but he really didn’t want to go.

“Coach will let you guys on the team bus,” said Julian.  “Just come with us and we’ll go that way.  My parents are here and can drive us all home.  So, if you want to head out, Chris…”

Chris looked relieved.  “Yeah, I think I will.  Sorry guys.”

“It’s okay,” Scott said.  “We’ll see you later.”

Chris turned and left and Will was edging away.

“I left my bag…I need to go get it.”

Will ran off and the group headed for the bus.  Julian was right and the coach had no problem with them riding with the team.  In fact, several other friends were on the bus as well, making it very crowded; there were nearly three people to a seat.  Just as the bus was getting ready to pull out, Julian jumped up to get off.

“Will’s not here yet and if the bus leaves he won’t have a way home.  His parents aren’t here.  I’ll make sure my parents find him.  I’ll see you guys at the Pizza Dome.”

“O-kay,” Scott said watching Julian hop off the bus.  This was kind of weird.  They were on the team bus heading for the consolation party and the two people they knew on the team weren’t even with them.  But the bus rumbled down the gravel exit to the main road and pulled out in front of an eighteen wheeler.  Everyone on the bus screamed as they were slung into the aisles and the bus driver yelled at them all to stop exaggerating.

The thirty minute ride to the Pizza Dome was an experience.  The bus driver must have been from a country where they drove on the other side of the road.  Riley was arguing with some of the soccer players over whether or not girls’ sports were pointless and Laney was flirting shamelessly with them.  She may be in love with Julian, but flirting was one of her specialized skills.  Anna kept trying to get Scott to talk about what he thought was wrong with Will—which he did have some idea about but wasn’t going to admit—and he tried to get her to talk about what was wrong with Chris.  They couldn’t really come up with realistic reasons for either, so they settled on the fact that Will had been abducted by aliens and replaced with a pod person and Chris had been a government experiment that had accidentally been reset.

At the Pizza Dome there was a seven-year-old’s birthday party going on.  Thirty little kids were running around the place playing games, screaming wildly, and throwing food.  The soccer team and their friends weren’t much better.  The coaches and parents hid in the little private party nook with the birthday party parents.  Riley and one of the soccer players had gotten into a fierce foosball tournament with two nine year olds.  Anna was cheering them on and Laney was reveling in two soccer players trying to out do each other in skeeball so that they could get enough tickets to get her something cute at the Counter of Worthless Crap.

Scott really wished that Julian and Will would hurry up and get there.  Without Chris to keep him company he was feeling a little bored.  He didn’t really like arcade games, except for the car racing ones, but Anna wouldn’t play with him.  Besides he didn’t really have a lot of money to waste.  After the screaming and clanging had pushed him to the edge of a headache, Scott left the restaurant to stand outside in the cooling air.  It wasn’t just that it was hot inside, the temperature was dropping.  And the white fluffy clouds from earlier had turned ominously black.  Scott looked at his watch; it was only 5:30, but it had gotten really dark outside.  He could feel the electricity in the air dancing along his skin causing the hairs to stand on end.  The weather was about to break and it was going to be one heck of a storm.  Scott thought it would be smart to go back inside, but it felt too nice outside.

A bolt of lightning flashed to his right and the following thunder was a few seconds behind, which was why he heard the yelp.  Scott started walking toward the noise, a little confused because he couldn’t see anybody else.  He rounded the corner and saw Antoinette Bixby rubbing her bare arms and looking apprehensively at the sky.  She hadn’t seen him yet, so maybe if he just backed up slowly he could get away without being noticed.  It wasn’t that he was trying to get away from _her_ specifically; he didn’t have much of an opinion of her because he didn’t really know her.  All he knew about her was that she was tall, beautiful, and leggy.  And the soccer team captain’s girlfriend.  Even though he was friends with Will and Julian who were “footballers,” he and Antoinette ran in very different circles and he just wanted to avoid the awkward acknowledging that they both existed greeting followed by his quick retreat.  Hence, the slow, stealthy retreat.  But it didn’t quite work.  She turned her head and saw him as another bolt of lightning filled the sky.  She jumped and closed her eyes.  They remained squeezed tightly shut until the thunder passed a few seconds later.  Scott could have left while her eyes were shut, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t think he was a figment of her imagination and then she would think he was weird or rude.

“It’s pretty scary, huh?” he said, then felt like a dork.

Antoinette looked at him.  She laughed a little embarrassedly.  “Yeah, it is.  I know it’s nothing, but it still scares me.  You too?”

“Huh?  Oh, no.  I don’t mind storms.  I was just…making conversation for some reason.”

She laughed.

“Maybe we should go back inside?” Scott suggested.  “It looks like it’s going to be pouring soon and the wind is picking up.  We could get drenched even under the awning.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, but made no movement to go back inside.  “It’s just so loud in there.”

“And hot.  I know.  That’s why I came out.  I mean, I got nothing against little kids, but little kids and teenagers are just too much to handle.”

She smiled.  She had such a pretty smile.  “Well, I do have something against little kids.  I’m the oldest of six.  And sometimes my siblings just drive me crazy.”

“I kinda know what you mean.  I’m the oldest of four, but I love my siblings to death.  My sister has such a complex it’s so funny.  In another couple years it’ll be disturbing if she hasn’t gotten over it, but for now I like being the one she compares every other guy to.  And my brothers are twins and they’re just too cute to comprehend.”

“Aww, you sound like you have such a nice family,” Antoinette said, stepping closer and leaning against the brick wall.

Scott tried to ignore that he could see down her tank top.  He forced his eyes to meet hers.  They were blue.  “Yeah, a really nice family.  Such a boring, normal, nice life.”

“I know what you mean.  Everything follows the definition of what normal is.  But shouldn’t that in itself be abnormal?”

“Unfortunately it’s not.  There are a million kids out there afflicted with the same problem: normalcy.”

“I don’t think it’s all that bad though.”

The lightning flashed again and this time the thunder was right on its heels with a sharp clap.  Antoinette jumped again and fairly jumped into Scott’s arms.  She had her face pressed to the side of his neck.  She must have been 5’8” or 5’9” if she was only a couple inches shorter than him.  Scott had his arms around her waist.  It had just been instinctual to grab the pretty girl who was throwing herself into his arms.

“Gosh, that was a loud one,” she mumbled into his skin.

Scott closed his eyes.  Her warm breath was doing things to him.  Things he should be very careful not to let get out of control.  Her arms were around his neck and she was holding him pretty tightly.  He didn’t really think the lightning warranted this much fear.  And he didn’t think she actually was that afraid, but how much sense did it make that Antoinette Bixby had used it as an excuse to cling to him?  None.  That’s how much.  The electricity was crackling around them now and Scott could hear the rain hitting the pavement not far off.  Soon it crashed against the side of the building.  They were mostly protected under the awning, only a few drops splashing in.  And still, Antoinette held onto him.  He was going to have to let her go soon or he was going to embarrass himself.  The lightning flashed again and the thunder was even louder.

Antoinette didn’t jump or react in fear.  She just pulled back so that she could look him in the eyes.  As she stared at him, Scott was certain she was going to kiss him.  But _why_ would she do that?  And then she did.  Their lips met and there was another flash of lightning.  Scott could feel his skin tingling everywhere she touched him as she pressed herself down the length of his body.  The electric feeling was exacerbated by the storm.  His hands slid a little on her back, feeling her shape through her thin, pink shirt.  He was losing his control.  And her mouth wasn’t helping him regain it.  Or her tongue.  Scott had only kissed a couple girls before, and one he didn’t count because it had been closed mouth, so he didn’t think of himself as especially experienced or skilled.  But Antoinette worked him over and guided him through the process.  So much so that he knew he was doing well at it this time.  His belief was confirmed when Antoinette let out a small moan that hummed through his lips.  Scott pushed her up against the brick wall and no longer needed her guidance.  He knew exactly what to do now.

He had one leg in between hers and moved just ever so slightly to generate a little friction between their bodies.  He put one hand in her long blonde hair and tilted her head back so that he could get inside her better.  He thought she tasted a little like pizza, which could have been a turn off, but her breasts were rubbing against his chest and through their thin shirts he could feel her nipples.  And then he thought that if she tasted like pizza, he must too.  Which was kind of gross, right?  Then he thought that maybe he was thinking too much right now and he shouldn’t worry about that stuff and just kiss the soccer team captain’s girlfriend.

Scott pushed away from Antoinette suddenly and stepped out in the rain.  He jumped back under the awning in a hurry, and moved to the side to keep some distance between them.  Antoinette’s lips were red from their kissing and she looked a little dazed.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, bewildered.

“Your boyfriend.”

Antoinette was startled out of her stupor and looked around.  “Is he out here?”

Scott panicked and looked around too.  No one seemed to be outside except for them.  “No, no I didn’t see him or anything.  I just thought of him.”

Antoinette smiled and raised an eyebrow.

“Not like that!  I just mean, it occurred to me what I was doing.  I was kissing some other guy’s girlfriend.”

“Isn’t the girl normally the one who thinks of that and pushes the guy away?”

“Well, I mean…”  Scott rubbed the back of his head and then let his hand fall back to his side.  “I can’t really do that.  I’m not that kind of guy.”

Antoinette smiled.  “That’s sweet.”

“Yeah, sweet and retarded.  But, why were you kissing me anyway?  You don’t even know me.”

“No, but…oh, God.”  Antoinette looked away from him and covered her smile with a hand.  “This is so embarrassing.  It’s just that, I was waiting for Jake once by the boys’ locker room and you were there too, waiting on your friends.  And I was kind of mad at Jake at the time, so I wondered what he would do if I cheated on him.  And I kind of fantasized about doing things with you while I waited.”

Scott felt his jaw drop.  Was a girl actually saying this to him?  And he remembered that day.

“So, I mean, that was it.  It was nothing.  He came out, we left, and I didn’t even think about it.  But, ever since that day, every now and then I’ll have a dream or even in the middle of class my mind wanders…and I’d think about you.  Just completely out of no where.  And it’d be really sexy too.  And I couldn’t understand it.  I mean, I didn’t even know your name.  I had to ask Will what your name was.  And that just made it even worse.  I had this fantasy in my head and I couldn’t get it out.  And then here you were; right there and we were alone.  And I guess I thought that if I kissed you it would get it out of my system.  But I can tell you right now, it’s not out.”

Scott forced his mouth closed.  What did someone say to that?  What _could_ he say to that?  Then he knew.  He had to be the good guy.  “Well, that’s extremely flattering.  Seriously, you have no idea.  But, I can’t be the guy you play around with.  Not because I wouldn’t enjoy it, but because I don’t think people should cheat.  And Will is friends with Jake.  I wouldn’t want what we do to cause them problems.”

 _Although,_ Scott mused to himself, _this would be a perfect opportunity to un-borify my life_.  He’d be sneaking around with some other guy’s girlfriend.  They could have secret rendezvous and the idea of getting caught would probably just make it hotter.

“Although what?” Antoinette asked.

“Huh?” Scott asked, pulled out of his dirty fantasy.

“You said ‘although’ and then you trailed off.”

“Oh.”  Scott laughed.  “I was just thinking how that would ironically be the perfect way to make my life not so boring.  Sneaking around with some guy’s girlfriend, but I was just kidding myself—”

“Well, why not?”

Scott blinked.  “Huh?”

“It’s weird, but I think I’m certain I want to marry Jake.  But, I don’t want to marry my high school sweetheart and never date another guy.”

“I think you have a lot of time before you need to worry about that.  If you go to different colleges you’re both bound to meet other people.”

“Maybe.  But, I’ve met one right now.  I don’t want to break up with Jake, so I wouldn’t mind seeing you on the side.  It might make me appreciate him more, you know?”

“That’s some twisted logic, honey.”

“No more so than your idea that ‘being the other man’ will make your life less normal.  In fact, that makes it sound typical to me.”

“Well then, all the more reason for me to say ‘thanks, but no thanks.’”

Scott hadn’t moved to leave yet, but Antoinette grabbed his arm and pulled them together.  “But, I can promise you it will _not_ be normal.”

She smiled and Scott realized he was being seduced.  Absolutely played by this girl.  But so what?  Why couldn’t he fool around with her?  It wasn’t like he had a girlfriend.  She was the one who was in the wrong.  It wasn’t his responsibility to keep her in check.  Besides, the whole fantasy story sounded a little bogus anyway.  She was bound and determined to cheat on her boyfriend, so it might as well be with him.  Right?

Scott pulled her close again and hovered over her lips for a moment, enjoying the heat of her body and her frustrated whining.  She stood on her tiptoes and their lips were just barely touching, having contact one moment and gone the next.

“Scott, please,” she begged.

Well, what could he do?  She had asked so nicely.  Scott let his tongue slide into her mouth before he put their lips together.  She moaned into his mouth again and Scott was glad they were in public; otherwise he might not be able to stop himself from taking her against the wall.  As it was, it was fifteen minutes of kissing and licking and rubbing and a little biting before they slowed down to catch their breath.  Scott was painfully hard and knew he couldn’t go back inside like he was now.  He leaned against the wall and panted heavily, trying to breathe like a normal human being again.

“When can I see you again?” Antoinette asked, sidling up against him and making his problem worse.

“Whenever you want.  I don’t have a girlfriend, so we’re working on your schedule.”

“Okay.  I’ll give you my phone number in school on Monday so we can plan some time to hook up.”

“Sounds good.”

“And, sorry to leave you in the lurch like this,” she placed a hand over his erection.  “Next time I promise I’ll take care of this.”

Scott gulped back a whimper and watched Antoinette saunter off around the corner of the building back toward the restaurant entrance.  He wasn’t quite sure what he had gotten himself into.  He was taking huge leaps and bounds forward in his sexual education and it all was happening much faster than he ever anticipated.  Scott jumped in the air and let out a “Whoo-hoo!”  Then he grimaced and bent over, realizing he shouldn’t be doing much walking or moving at the moment.  Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to go down.  His penis was used to being disappointed.  Maybe he should think of gross things: Thanksgiving with his extended family, jock straps, grapes.  Scott shuddered.  Grapes never failed to do the trick.  He attributed his extreme aversion to the fruit from the whole Halloween haunted house gag to use peeled grapes to simulate human eyes.  He could never get over that image.  Even when the skin was still on them, he knew what was underneath.

“Well, where the hell is he?”

Scott recognized Riley’s voice.  He walked toward the corner and peeked around to see who all was there.  Then he realized none of his male friends were there and the girls wouldn’t recognize the signs that he had just gotten some.  So, he walked over to them.

“Where’ve you been?” Anna asked.

“It was too loud in there.  I just decided to come out here for a while.”

“It’s been, like, half an hour.”

Scott just shrugged.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Laney whined.  “Julian never showed up.  We don’t have a ride home.”

“Oh.  That sucks.”

“You could try to sound a little more worried,” Anna said.

Scott just smiled.  “Sorry.”

“Are you guys stuck here?” a voice that had very recently become familiar to him asked.

They all turned to see Antoinette Bixby and Jake Patterson coming out the front door.  Scott was fairly certain he kept his outward appearance neutral, but his heart had sped up.

“Yeah,” said Laney.  “Neither Will nor Julian is here and our ride went home early.”

“Oh, well—” Antoinette looked at Jake and batted her eyelashes.  Jake looked stunned a moment and then got the hint.

“Would you guys like a ride home?” he asked.

“Yes!” Laney cried in happiness.  She really thought that she might be stuck at the Pizza Dome forever.

“Okay, well, Jeff is driving us, so we’ve got to sit in the back of his truck.”

Laney’s eyes went wide.  “But it’s pouring!”

“He’s got a cover on it,” Jake said, seemingly perplexed by the strange little pixy that was Laney.

Just then a dark blue truck rumbled up to the entrance and Jake opened the passenger door and jumped inside to explain the situation.  There was an exclamation from inside the truck, and then a grumbling of acceptance.  Jake hopped back out and opened the back of the truck.  He and Scott helped the girls scramble inside and they got drenched in the short time they were standing unsheltered from the rain.

“Antoinette, do you want to sit up front?” Jake asked.  “The cab’ll hold three.”

“No, I don’t want to be squished.”

“It’ll be less bumpy up there.”

“That’s okay.  Hurry up and get inside you two!  It’s pouring.”

Jake shrugged and ran back to the cab.  “You want to sit up front and give directions to your friends’ houses?” he shouted to Scott over the roar of the rain.

“We can talk through the window, right?  I’m bigger than Antoinette so it would be even less comfortable with me up there.”

Jake shrugged.  “Suit yourself.”

He got inside and slammed the door shut and Scott hopped in the back and made sure the back window was securely closed.  Then he sat on the uneven bed of the truck and slung the water off his hands.

“Geez.  I can’t believe how wet you got,” Anna commented.

“Yeah, all so you cute girls wouldn’t get your hair all messed up.  Though in Annabelle’s case—”

He winced as she punched him hard in the arm.  That had really hurt.  The truck lurched forward and Antoinette “fell” toward the back of the truck.  Scott steadied her with a hand and she smiled a thank you.  She stayed toward the back by him and the other girls gossiped about the rain or something.  Scott took his shirt off and wrung it out.  It was completely saturated with water.  There was a whistle and Laney said, “Ow-ow!  Who’s the hottie?”

The other girls laughed and smiled at him.  He realized they were all staring at him.  He held his wet shirt to his chest and gave them all an offended look.  “I’m not just a piece of meat you know.”

They laughed raucously and Scott couldn’t help but feel a little pleased.  He managed to get his clingy shirt back on and settled down against the back of the truck.  He glanced over at Antoinette; she was biting her lower lip and looking him over.  She was being a little obvious about it, but the rest of the girls weren’t paying them any attention.  This whole sneaking around thing was going to be so much fun.  Especially since he had a hot girl totally ready to jump his bones.  He orchestrated it so that the girls got dropped off first, and then he and Antoinette made out in the back of the truck until they arrived at his house.  They barely got apart before the front cab window slid open to tell them of their arrival.  His heart was in his throat.  It was ridiculous.  He shouldn’t be so excited by something like this, but it was a change of pace.

Scott thanked the driver for the ride and then ran to his house.  He’d left in such a hurry that morning he’d forgotten his keys.  He rang the doorbell several times in a row and at last an annoyed Joanna opened the door.  He patted her scowling head and headed into the kitchen.  He was starving.  Hopefully his mom had saved some dinner for him.  He found the plate neatly plastic wrapped and waiting for him by the microwave.  He was removing the plastic when his mother came into the kitchen.  Her face looked pinched and worried.  Scott stopped what he was doing and looked at her.

“Mom, is something wrong?”

She nodded tightly.  “There’s been an accident, Scotty.”

 

Chris

 

Friday, April 29, 2005

 

Chris Pelletier slapped Melanie Newberry’s hand away from his cookies.  His mother had made those for him and no way was he giving them to little Miss Priss over here.  She was probably just going to declare herself on a diet and give them to Julian anyway.

“Laney, I thought you were on a diet,” Riley said ignoring the look the tenth grader gave her.  “So, Chris, do you _still_ think that the Red Sox are going to go another 86 years before winning another pennant?”

“Absolutely,” Chris said, noticing Scott and Anna running into the lunch room.  Late, as usual.  “I mean, the Babe’s curse is still mysterious.  It could be on an 86 year cycle.”

“No, the curse was that they would never win.  The curse has been broken.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter.  They’ll never catch up to the Yankees anyway.”

“I just don’t trust him,” Chris heard Will say to Julian.

“Trust who?” Chris asked, trying to get involved in their conversation.  He hated arguing Red Sox versus Yankees with Riley.  Obviously the Yankees were a better team.  What was there to argue about?

“Scott,” Will said plaintively.  “He’s setting me up on a date with his cousin.  But, I know something’s wrong.”

Chris laughed.  Will was so cute when he was stressing.  Chris was as heterosexual and slightly homophobic as your average American teenaged male, but he’d accepted a long time ago that he could admit Will was attractive.  He was pretty and cute as any girl.  Though he valued his balls enough never to voice any of this to his friend.  He and Scott had discussed it once.  Scott wouldn’t say it out loud, but Chris was pretty certain he thought Will was pretty too.  Julian, of course, had no problem stating his opinion on Will’s beauty and made it a habit to dote on Will whenever given the opportunity.  Will put up with it from Julian, but only because Julian was a little weird and did stuff like that to everybody.  After all, Julian had often told Chris that he resembled the “fresh, unmolested dew on a newly opened rosebud.”  Chris put a hand to his chin.  Now that he thought about it, Julian hadn’t said that to him since six months ago.  After the first time he’d slept with Karen.

Chris mentally groaned thinking about his girlfriend.  It was difficult having a girlfriend none of his friends liked.  None of them had ever said they didn’t like her, but he wasn’t stupid.  After all, sometimes, he didn’t like her all that much.  She was pushy and needy and demanding.  But she sure was a good kisser.  That wasn’t really a good reason to date somebody.  Especially if it was the only reason he could manage to come up with at the moment.

“Chris, you can’t seriously believe that the Yankees are going to win the AL East this year.”

Riley was at it again.  “Of course I believe it.  I believe it every year.  I believe it right up until it is mathematically impossible for it to be so.  Which, by the way, almost never happens.”

“I don’t get why you two argue about that stuff anyway.  I mean, isn’t the argument played out?  Isn’t a hundred years of argument enough?”

Chris and Riley looked at Scott.  Anna must be talking about girly things if he was desperate enough to join their conversation.  Scott had his hand on his cheek and was resting his elbow on the table.  His thin, brown hair swung loose to one side.  His hair was almost so long it touched his shoulders.  And he never did anything with it.  It just hung there, looking limp and a little greasy most of the time.  Which really was a shame because Scott was a good-looking guy.  He had a cute face and brilliant blue eyes, but the reason he didn’t have a girlfriend was because of that stringy hair.  Even as a fellow guy Chris found it a little repulsive.  Maybe if he got a girlfriend, she’d make him cut it.

“People have been arguing about religion for thousands of years,” Chris responded to Scott’s question.  “I’m sure the Yankees/Red Sox debate will rage on for just as long.”

“Even after the dissolution of the MLB,” Riley agreed.

Scott seemed a little mopey today, but Chris couldn’t figure out why.  At the end of lunch Anna declared it to be because he was tired of his perfect life.  Chris never understood why it was so hard to appreciate what you had until you lost it.  It wasn’t fair that the universe had programmed them to take everything for granted.  For instance, he had taken for granted his two parent situation right up until he was eight years old.  Then his dad was gone and he and his mom had to learn to be a single parent, single income home.  It hadn’t worked out very well.  They’d had to sell the house and move into a townhouse.  They’d had to sell the two new cars they’d recently acquired and downgrade to decade old clunkers that every few years had to be traded in for a newer clunker.  Chris had to start working an after school job as soon as he turned sixteen so that he could save up for college.  His nice college savings account had been confiscated by the police.

It was drug money.  His dad had been a lieutenant in a drug cartel.  It was almost funny to think something like that let alone tell people about it.  He and his mom had been forced to move when the news broke.  His mother couldn’t stand the looks from the neighbors.  Everyone thought she knew about it and was in on it.  Chris knew that wasn’t the case.  She’d been heartbroken.  She still cried about it sometimes.  Not nearly as often as when he was younger, but every once in a while Chris would sit outside her bedroom door and listen to her sobbing alone.  Why she would never come to him for support was beyond his comprehension.  If she needed help, why didn’t she think her son needed help?  Maybe because after the move he’d found Scott, Will, and Julian.  They all met in the second grade and had been inseparable ever since.  They had given him everything he needed to forget about his old life.  So why was he thinking about it now?

Chris tried to forget about it the rest of the day, but it kept nagging him.  Why was he thinking about his father?  After school Karen had started whining and complaining about how he wasn’t spending any time with her.  Today he was working and tomorrow he was going to his friends’ stupid soccer game.  She actually used the word stupid.  He wondered why she was so stupid as to insult his friends like that.  Didn’t she know that coming between a guy and his friends was never a good idea?  Even if he ended up choosing her, he would probably resent her just a little bit for the rest of their lives.  Ah, who was he kidding?  They’d be lucky if they lasted the rest of high school.  Hell, the rest of junior year.

“Chris, baby,” Karen said in her sex kitten voice.  What did she want?  It had better be something important because he was going to be late for work after dropping her off at home.  Couldn’t she take the metro one frickin’ day a week?  “I was thinking, maybe I should go to the soccer game tomorrow.”

Chris nearly ran a red light.  “What?”

“Well, I know how much it means to you to support your friends, and I just think that if I want to spend time with you then I need to take an interest in some of your interests.”  She smiled prettily.

Chris smiled at her.  It was nice that she was trying to be open for him.  He didn’t think she actually cared about him that much.  But his friends would be pissed if she came along.  “Thanks, sugar, but—”

“Brown sugar,” she almost snapped.

“Huh?”

“I’ve told you, if you’re going to call me sugar make sure it’s brown sugar.  I’m not a country club white girl.”

Chris bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.  No, she wasn’t a country club white girl; she was a country club white-washed black girl.  No self-respecting black American would acknowledge Karen as one of their own, but she certainly liked to play the race card with his friends.  Which made no sense because every time she accused them of pandering to “The Man” and using their white biases to push her down, she was technically referring to her boyfriend too.  And if she hated white people so much, why was she dating a white guy?  An extremely white guy.  He didn’t play sports and he couldn’t dance.  He hated rap and spent most of his free time messing around with an old computer he was trying to rebuild.  Chris assumed that the one thing she hated more than white people was her parents.  And dating a white guy certainly pissed them off.  Well, it pissed her dad off.  Her mom was back and forth with him.  She absolutely loved _him_ , but hated that he was white.

“Okay, my Nubian princess, I appreciate that you care enough to suffer through a soccer game with me, but it’s really not necessary.  It’ll be over by 3:30 at the latest and then we can get together.”

“But I have a hair appointment at 4:00.  So, I’ll need you to drop me off.  So, I might as well just stay with you.”

“If it’s at 4:00, why can’t your mom take you?”

“Because she’s got to get ready for the Cotillion Ball.  She’ll already be there and I don’t want to spend all day with those stuffy women if I have to spend all night with them.”

Ah.  It was all starting to become clearer now.  “So, you want me to rush away right after the soccer game to drive you to your hair appointment where your mom and all her friends will be waiting for you.  So that way you can rub in their faces that you have a white boyfriend?  Were you planning on making out with me in front of the salon window so they could have a show?”

“Chris!  That is not it at all!  How can you say that?  And even if I do want them to see my white boyfriend it’s because my parents wouldn’t let you escort me.”

“And I’m sure you fought them really hard on that point.”

“I did!  I want you there tomorrow night, but they thought it would be uncomfortable for you.  And I was all like, ‘don’t you mean uncomfortable for _you_?’  I don’t want to try to hide you.”

“Oh, I know that, sweetheart.  You don’t date me in spite of the fact I’m white; you date me _because_ I’m white and it pisses off your parents.  You want to rub it in their faces and all their high society friends’ faces.”

“How can you say that?  I date you against my better judgment.  Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Chris shook his head and held his tongue.  Was he supposed to take that as a compliment?  He swung up to the front entrance of her gated community.  Rather than pulling up next to the intercom, he pulled a quick circle so she could hop out.

“You’re going to make me walk?” she asked, sheer disbelief radiating from every pore.

“I’m already late for work and frankly, I don’t want to be around you right now.”

“Fine.  Pick me up tomorrow at 12:30.”

She got out of the car and slammed the door shut before he could protest.  He didn’t have time to argue with her now.  Maybe he could talk her out of it after work.  For now, he’d better speed if he didn’t want to get fired.  His boss was tired of him coming in late on Fridays.  Honestly, she should be grateful there was someone willing to work Friday nights.  At a completely thankless job.  He ran a cash register at the Abercrombie & Fitch in the mall.  He’d wanted to work at Circuit City or Radio Shack so then he could use the discount for computer parts and games and the like.  But Karen had wanted him to work at a “good” store so that she could use his discount.  She always wanted him to buy clothes from there as well, but even with his discount, he couldn’t afford to dress from there.  He had to dress from Target and Wal-Mart mostly.  It wasn’t too bad; those stores had actual designers making their ready to wear clothes.  Most people wouldn’t recognize that he was clothed from head to foot for under $50.  Especially since every now and then he did get to wear a name brand shirt.  Last Christmas Karen had bought him a lot of shirts and pants.  She’d spent a lot of money on him, but he hadn’t felt guilty about accepting it.  It wasn’t really a present for him; it was accessories for her accessory.

As expected, his older female manager gave him a nasty look when he showed up.  She was 24 and was putting her English degree to good use climbing up the ladder at the local Abercrombie & Fitch.  She sure did enjoy being in power even if it was over a bunch of high schoolers.  During the summer there would be an influx of college students, but he was one of the few high school kids they would keep on since he worked through the school year as well.  He assumed the reason he had only gotten a look instead of a scolding was because the store was pretty dead.  He had to spend most of the night folding and re-folding shirts.  He should look for a secretary type job.  It might be embarrassing to tell anyone about, but at least then in his downtime he could do homework or something.

In order to get tomorrow off to go to the soccer game, he’d had to work to closing tonight.  So, even though the store was “closed,” he still had about a half hour of clean-up work to do.  While he was straightening and re-ordering some jeans, his big boss, Mr. Coleman, came over to talk with him.

“Hi, Chris, how are you doing?”

The man was in his late 40’s and was probably gay, but Chris certainly liked him better than Becca the Bitch.

“I’m fine, sir.  But, please don’t ask me to work tomorrow.  I worked extra this week to get off.”

“Oh!  Got a hot date?”

Chris almost rolled his eyes.  His girlfriend had that effect on him.  “No, I’m going to a friend’s soccer match.”

“Well, that sounds…nice.”

“You can say boring.  It is.  I don’t like soccer.  I like my friends.”

“Well, you are a very good friend indeed.  And actually, since you have some friends who play sports that might work out too.”

“Work out for what?”

“Well, we’re starting the promotion for some of the summer wear and all the stores are having male models stand outside of the store and model some of the clothes.  Unfortunately there was a snafu and the booking has gone all awry.  Any stores that can find substitutes are encouraged to do so.  And I thought that you were quite attractive.  And it would be nice to get paid to stand around and talk to cute girls.  And if you could bring one or two friends with you, that would be great.”

Chris could feel his face set on fire.  “Are you asking me to model?”

Mr. Coleman put a hand to his chest and looked flabbergasted.  “Oh, please don’t take this the wrong way.  I’m not trying to get you to model for me privately or anything.”

“Oh!  No!  No, I didn’t think that.  It’s just, I’m hardly a model.”

“Well, I’ll agree with you there, you could work on your figure a little bit, but I’ve heard customers talk about you before.  And when you wear our clothes they fit you so well.  So, would you be able to do it?  I could pay you extra!”

“I—I don’t know,” Chris dodged the question.  Of course he couldn’t model!  How embarrassing.

“Well, could you at least ask your friends?  Do you have any attractive ones?  Not that I’m suggesting you think your male friends are attractive!”

Mr. Coleman was backpedaling hard tonight.

“No, I get it.  Don’t worry.  I’ve a couple who could probably do the job for you.”

“Oh, fantastic.  It’s for next weekend, so please ask them soon and get back to me.”

“Sure thing.”

Chris still felt mortified driving home.  Modeling.  What a joke.  All those people staring at him?  No way.  His mom would probably get a kick out of that.  And when he asked Will and Julian to do it, he certainly wasn’t going to tell them that his boss had included him in the proposition.  Chris wondered if eyeliner fit in with Abercrombie & Fitch’s look or not.  He wasn’t sure if Julian would go without his make-up for a job.

He was starving by the time he got home.  He hadn’t eaten since lunch and he was pretty sure his mom hadn’t cooked on Friday.  He was going to have to scrounge up something frozen from the freezer.  He’d just dropped his bookbag off on the stairs and entered the kitchen when he saw his mother sitting at the kitchen table, holding the phone in her hands, and looking like she was about to throw up.  He forgot his hunger immediately and went to her side.

“Mom?  Mom, what’s wrong?  Did something happen?”

He knelt on the floor beside her and took one of her hands.  She looked surprised to see him, as if she hadn’t heard him come in the door.  She shook her head and put her free hand to her head as if to ward off a headache.

“Do you know what today is?”

Chris wracked his brains for an answer.  “April 29th?”

“Yes, April 29th, nine years later.”

Chris still didn’t get it.  “Nine years past what?”

“Your father got paroled today.”

“Oh.”  Chris settled back on the floor, a little relieved.  He must have known that subconsciously.  That’s why he kept thinking about his father all day.  But, it wasn’t really that big of a deal was it?  They hadn’t kept in contact with him while he’d been in prison, and he hadn’t seemed like he much cared to keep in contact with his ex-wife and child.  “Is there a problem?” Chris asked, trying to figure out why his mother was so upset.  Was she worried he was going to come after them?  Why would he?  They hadn’t turned him in so he couldn’t want revenge and they hadn’t gotten any money from him.  They were basically broke.

“He’s already skipped town.  Just, ‘poof.’  Up and vanished.  He’s a wanted man.  As soon as they find him they’re going to send him back to prison.”  She let out a shuddering breath.  “I just wanted you to be able to have a father who wasn’t in prison.”

“Mom,” Chris smiled, not quite believing his mother was that upset about something like that.  “It’s not a big deal.  He’s been in jail most of my life.  My friends just think he’s a deadbeat that ran off.  No one even knows about it.  Nobody looks down on me because of it.”

“I know, but this might make the news.  And then everyone will know.”

“We don’t have the same last name anymore.  And that happened back in Illinois, why would the news here broadcast a small time crook breaking his parole?  I mean, it’s not like he escaped jail.”

“I know, I know.  But, he wasn’t that small time.  They’re worried he might have had ties to the mafia or something.  In fact, I just got off the phone with the police.  They asked us if we could please inform them if he tries to contact us.  Oh, God.”  She started cry.  “What if he does come here?”

“Why would he, Mom?  We can’t give him any money.  And we’re not responsible for turning him in.  You didn’t testify against him in court.  He has no reason to want to hurt us.  He’s probably already halfway to Mexico by now.”

His mother sniffed back some tears.  “You’re probably right.  Besides, I can’t imagine how he would even be able to find us.  I doubt he even remembers my maiden name.  And he never was very good with computers.  Not like you.  I wonder where you got that from.  I certainly don’t have an aptitude for it.”

Chris smiled.  “Maybe I’m the mailman’s son.”

His mother slapped him lightly on the shoulder.  “Really!”

Chris stood up to make himself some dinner.

“Chris, will you be going to that debutante thing after all?”

“Hm?  Oh, no.  One of Karen’s cousins is going to escort her.  They wanted to get as many family members in for free as they could.”

“I see.  So, it’s just the soccer game tomorrow?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.  Well, have fun.  I’m going to go to bed now.  I’m going to go in to work tomorrow.  Get a little overtime since the first of the month is coming up.”

“Okay.”

Chris felt another weight settle on his chest.  She had to worry about making the house payment and all their other bills not because her salary couldn’t cover it, but because his tuition on top of all those expenses was too much.  He didn’t understand why she insisted he go to a private school.  He could just as easily get into a good college going to a public school as a private one.  But she had been adamant that he go to this particular school and ever since he had felt the pressure to perform well academically.  Fortunately, with enough studying there wasn’t any subject that wasn’t within his grasp, but sometimes “enough studying” meant sealing himself in his room for a weekend to study for a test.

Why couldn’t he be like Will?  The boy never paid attention in class, never studied, and yet he whipped out A’s like he was tossing away garbage.  It just wasn’t fair.  Will was beautiful, ridiculously smart, good at sports, popular among his peers—he was one of those people that you wanted to hate but couldn’t because he was such a nice guy.  Well, maybe other people in the school envied and hated him, but being as close to him as Chris was, he wouldn’t begrudge Will anything.

Chris busied himself with the frozen dinner until he heard his mother upstairs in her own room.  But who cared about inhuman friends and bills and colleges right now?  His felon of a father was somewhere on the loose.  Chris slumped down onto the counter.  This was bad.

 

Saturday, April 30, 2005

 

Despite what he’d told his mother and even what he’d initially felt, Chris was now worried about the situation.  Why would his father suddenly break parole after being in prison for nine years?  He’d tossed and turned all night, unable to fall asleep for more than five minutes before his brain jumped awake with some new weird possibility.  Had his father hidden money at their old house?  Had he believed they’d turned him in?  Had nine years in prison turned him a little crazy?

Now he was glued to the TV, flipping back and forth between all the news shows.  This wouldn’t make the news, right?  People broke their parole all the time and he never heard about it.  His father hadn’t been a drug lord, just a little peon who ran things on the street.  Well, he hadn’t been one of the guys pushing drugs on the junkies, he’d been the one who collected from all those guys and supplied them with their drugs.  Or maybe he had been more involved than that.  They had lived a pretty cushy life and his mother hadn’t been making that much money.  It must have all come from his father’s “job.”  If that was the case, he had been making six figures a year.  That wasn’t too small time.

Why hadn’t he paid attention to what had happened in the court room?  Well, he’d been seven years old for most of the six month long trial.  And he’d never bothered to go back and read all the old documents once he’d gotten older.  He really had no idea what his father had been into.  Last night had been the first that he’d ever heard the mafia mentioned.  How much had his mother protected him?  She seemed really worried that his father made parole.  How much did he not know about his father?  What did he remember?

Honestly, he didn’t have any bad memories of his father.  He’d been a good dad.  He played ball with him, took him fishing a couple times, and went looking for bugs and frogs in their backyard in the summer.  He’d taught him how to swim and even splurged and bought his young son his first computer.  The arrest had happened not long after that.  Chris had been old enough to understand that his father had done something wrong, and that was why he was in trouble, but he’d never once thought of his father as a bad person.  Had his mother and the attorneys kept information from him?  Was he involved in something much more sinister?  Certainly he’d never have been paroled if he’d ever killed or seriously hurt someone, right?

“Ugh!”  Chris buried his face in his hands and his nose smashed awkwardly against the remote.  He couldn’t stand all these questions.  Why hadn’t people just been honest with him?  Well, maybe they had.  Maybe he was freaking out over nothing.

“Jesus.”

Chris turned off the TV and threw the remote onto the couch.  He checked his watch.  It was still only 9:30.  Maybe he should try to take a nap now that he was worn out.  He trudged upstairs to his bedroom and flopped onto his bed.  He was afraid it was just going to be a repeat of last night.  He opened his eyes and looked at his nightstand clock.  It glowed 12:17 back at him.  He sat up startled and rubbed his eyes.  Had it really been two and a half hours?  Almost three.  At least he’d gotten some sleep, but he better hurry unless he wanted to hear Karen bitch at him for being late.  He groaned as he put his shoes on.  Karen was the last person he wanted to deal with today.  At least he didn’t have to go to that stupid debutante ball.

As he ran outside to his car, he thought maybe it wasn’t fair to berate Karen so much when she called his interests stupid since he clearly felt the same way about hers.  The difference though was that he never _said_ to her that he thought her interests were stupid.  No, she definitely deserved every nasty thought he gave her.  But that was so stupid.  Why was he dating a girl he couldn’t even stand?

Chris was a couple minutes late picking her up, but she didn’t comment on it.  She started talking about the upcoming ball.  She talked like she thought it was silly and antiquated, but she was clearly excited about going.  Chris barely heard her voice let alone her words.  He just kept imagining what Karen’s parents would do if they found out he had an ex-convict/wanted man for a father.  What would Karen think?  She’d probably drop him in a second.  Or would she continue to date him because he was “dangerous” now?

When he’d picked up Riley, she’d nearly gone back into the house and refused to go when she saw Karen.  He’d pleaded with her to come.  He didn’t want all his friends to bail on him and leave him alone with Karen.  Riley had consented and gotten into the backseat.  She and Karen didn’t even greet each other, they just ignored each other.  Riley was too much of a tomboy and Karen was too much of a girly-girl.  They were natural enemies.

Karen had deliberately changed her debutante talk from negatives to positives and even tried to involve Riley in the conversation.  Probably just to irritate her and laugh at how little she knew about the process.  But seriously, who in this day and age really knew a lot about it?  Only those people who participated in it.  At least Riley got the focus off him.  He felt sorry for Riley, but not enough to rescue her.  Besides, she was doing fine on her own, pointing out at every chance she got how stupid something about the ball was.  When they got to Scott’s house he was thankful for the opportunity to get out of the car.  He would probably be able to stand on his front porch for a good five minutes.  There was no way Scott was ready.

“Chris?”

Chris looked up.  Scott was closing the door behind him.  When had he opened it?

“Ready?” Chris asked.

He didn’t even hear Scott’s response.  He was aware that he explained Karen’s presence to Scott, but he was too worried that now that Riley had someone to talk to, Karen was going to focus on him again.  Why hadn’t he called everyone and told them he was sick and couldn’t go?  Because then they would have no way of getting there.  Maybe this was a good thing.  He could go to the game and just forget about the whole father thing.  He’d watch Will and Julian play and actually try to understand the offside rule.  That should keep his mind preoccupied.

“Chris.  Are you even listening to me?”

Chris glanced over at Karen.  She didn’t look happy.  “Yes.  The ball, high society, a white dress.  I get it.”

Karen made a scoffing noise.  “I’m not talking about that at all.  I’m talking about how your friends are excluding me from their conversation and you don’t even seem to care.”

“Well, they’re in the backseat.  Maybe they think it would be hard to carry on a conversation if you have to keep turning around.”

“I seriously don’t think that’s it.”

“Well, Karen, what do you want me to do?  I can’t make them like you if they don’t.”

“Uh!”  She crossed her arms over chest, clearly offended by the notion that someone wouldn’t like her.  “Well, then maybe you should get some new friends,” she muttered.

Chris wanted to hit something.  So he did the only thing he could.  He slammed his foot down on the brake as hard as he could.  Everyone went slinging forward and the brakes locked up on him.  The car slid forward several feet before stopping.  It was a good thing there was nobody in front of or behind him.

“Get out!” Chris yelled.

Karen’s mouth fell open in shock.  She just stared at him and didn’t move.

“I’m dead serious, Karen.  Get out of the car.  I’m not putting up with it today.”

He was so angry that after she got out he just drove off.  He didn’t even feel bad about it.  And he wasn’t turning around to get her.  It was broad daylight and she had a cell phone; she’d be able to get home.  And they were out in the suburbs.  No one was going to try to kill her.  He didn’t think anyone could kill her.  She’d kill them first.

Surprisingly, nobody said anything afterwards.  In fact, nobody said anything at all.  Were they secretly rejoicing that he had thrown her out of the car?  Probably.  It wasn’t until they arrived at the match that Scott finally asked him if he was okay.  He almost considered dragging him aside and telling him everything, just to have somebody he could talk to about all this.  But Anna was with them and he didn’t want to get all emotional in front her.  So, he just shrugged it off and said he had a long night at work.  Scott didn’t quite look like he was buying it, but he didn’t press the issue.

As they made their way through the crowded stands, Chris couldn’t help but be amused by all the crazy parents.  They were wearing their team’s colors and some had their faces painted.  He spotted a couple that looked vaguely like Gomez and Morticia Adams.  Those would be Julian’s parents.  He thought Mrs. March would be hot in all that velvet, especially with how muggy it was outside.  But, she probably wasn’t any hotter than the random guy sitting by himself in a three piece suit.  He thought it was so strange that someone not only wore a suit to a high school soccer game, but he was still wearing the jacket buttoned up.  It was too hot out for that.  He pointed the guy out to Scott.  But that bizarre individual wasn’t the only thing weird that day.  They hadn’t even gotten to their seats yet before Will had gotten a yellow card.  Scott was right, today was turning into an episode of the _Twilight Zone_.

Chris concentrated on the game as hard as he could.  It even worked to a point.  He would forget all about his dad until he realized that he had forgotten about his dad.  So, did that really count as not thinking about it?  Though Will certainly gave him enough to think about on the field.  He wasn’t playing like he usually did; he was playing like it was the last game he’d ever play.  He seemed on edge.  He kept turning toward the stands, like he was looking for someone.  The way he was acting Chris could have sworn it was Will who was worried about his recently paroled father.

Their school lost, as was expected, and he knew that wasn’t going to put Will into any better of a mood.  And he’d heard the coach say something about a consolation party at the Pizza Dome.  He prayed the others didn’t want to go.  There was no way he’d be able to survive that.  He needed to get away from people and think.  But, isn’t that what he’d done all last night?  And it hadn’t helped one bit.  Maybe he should go with them, but he was too tired.  He felt drained.  Scott and Julian must have noticed because they both gave him outs for not driving the group.  He was glad he’d gotten a free pass and headed out before anyone could ask him too many questions.  He couldn’t even remember if he’d said anything to Will and Julian about the game.  Did he really need to be that self-absorbed?  But was a soccer game more important than his problems right now?  Did he even have a problem?  So his father was missing.  Big deal.  It really wasn’t any better or worse than knowing exactly which prison he was in.

Chris drove to a deserted stretch of highway just outside their town.  He pulled over by a cornfield and climbed onto the hood of the car.  He leaned back against the windshield and stared at the darkening sky.  The storm was getting closer.  He contemplated telling his friends about his father.  It wasn’t like he would be in trouble because of it.  And wouldn’t it feel better to not have to hide it anymore?  It would be one weight off his chest at least.  But did he really want them to know about it?  They were all rich, upper class yuppies.  They were nice enough to him even though he was poor, but would they still be nice if they found out about this?  Chris slapped a hand to his forehead.  What was he thinking?  Did he really think his friends were that shallow?  Even if they were rich, they were well grounded.  None of their parents had bought them a new car for their sixteenth birthdays.  They’d all been told they had to buy one for themselves.  But, they didn’t want to work, so they lived off their allowances.  Which were pretty high, so they were spoiled, but still.  They were good guys.  He knew that about his friends.  And he trusted them implicitly.  If he told them not to tell anyone else, they wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone.  It probably would make him feel better.  He should tell them.

Now that he had that sorted out, he just had to deal with Karen.  He couldn’t even imagine the world of pain he’d be in once her grating voice got a hold of his ears again.  And it would be compounded if she had told her parents.  He was certain both of them would have something to say about him leaving their precious daughter stranded alone on the side of the road.  Maybe he should just make all four of them happy and break up with her.  Even when they were alone and didn’t have the pressures of her friends and family, or his friends and family for that matter, they still really didn’t enjoy each other’s company.  That was a very good sign that maybe it was time for the relationship to end.

Chris jumped as a bolt of lightning flashed right in front of him and was quickly followed by a loud clap of thunder.  He should start to head home.  He hopped off the car and got inside just as the rain hit.  He knew the storm had been gathering for the last two days, but it almost seemed to have come from out of no where.  The rain was coming down hard enough that he had to drive scrunched up close to the wheel so that he could see out the windows.  As it was he crawled along at 25 miles hour all the way from the highway till he got to his neighborhood.  Fortunately there weren’t a lot of people out running around.  He made it home without incident and pulled into one of the two spaces designated for their townhouse in the parking lot.  His mother wasn’t home yet.  He glanced at his watch.  It was almost 6:30.

Chris got out of his car and sprinted for his front steps.  He came to a complete halt in the driving rain when he finally looked up and saw something large and white on his front stoop.  It was a debutante gown.  Karen was in it.  And they were both drenched.  Chris shook himself and ran up the stairs.  She stood up when she saw him and they squished under the meager protection of the small awning.

“Karen!  What are you doing here?  You’re soaked!”

He started to shuffle through his keys to find the one to the front door but Karen threw herself into his arms and he had to stop.  She had her hands around the back of his neck and was crying into his chest.  She was a good half foot shorter than him, so her arms were really reaching.  He put his hands on her waist, but didn’t exactly hug her back.

“Karen?  What’s wrong?  Let’s go inside.  It’s gotten cold.  You’ll get sick if you stay wet.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  The words were barely audible due to her crying and being muffled against his chest.  “I’m so sorry.  I’m terrible.  I’m horrible.  I’m not just a bad girlfriend, I’m a bad person!”

“What?  Karen—”

Chris pushed her gently away so that he could look at her face.  Her make-up was running not only from the rain, but from her tears.  Why on earth was she apologizing?  He’d left her on the side of the road.  No way had that been the wake up call that brought this on.  He cupped her face in his hands and hoped that she would calm down a little.

“Come on, Karen.  Let’s go inside.  You can’t stay out here.”

She shook her head.  “I ran away from the ball.  My friends and cousins were saying all these things.  It made me so mad.  I told them about you.  And they said horrible things.  They hadn’t even met you.  And I just told them how caring you are and how thoughtful.  And how you put up with how horrible and stuck-up and selfish I am.  And I realized that you really _do_ do all that for me and I never ever tell you that I appreciate it or you.  Or that I love you.”

Chris raised his eyebrows.  Did he want to hear her say that again?

“I realized it while I was there.  I love you.  I’m in love with you.  And I couldn’t believe that I had agreed with my parents that you shouldn’t escort me.  You were right.  I didn’t fight them on it.  I was embarrassed.  And then I felt horrible.  How could I be embarrassed of the one I love?  How could I be so despicable?  And then I had to see you.  I had to apologize to you and tell you how I felt before I lost you.  I was so worried that I couldn’t wait another second.  I ran away.”

Chris stared at her.  Well, he certainly couldn’t break up with her now.  At least not tonight.

“I—Karen, I don’t know what to say right now.  I’m so sorry that I don’t.  But, please come inside.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck again and pulled him close.  “It’s okay.  We don’t have time.  After I ran away my parents called me trying to find me.  I told them I went to the mall, but that’s not exactly close to the country club and I didn’t have my purse or a car.  And Daddy heard the rain.  He figured there was only one place close enough I could make it on foot.  So, he’s coming to get me.  He’ll probably be here any second.”

“Oh, great, Karen.  He’ll probably think I made you cry.”

“I don’t care,” she said, pulling back to look him the eyes.  Her dark brown irises were blurry with tears.  “I don’t care what he thinks anymore.”

She stood on her tiptoes and slid her fingers into his hair.  He used to wear his hair buzzed close to his head because it was so much easier to take care of that way.  Karen had wanted him to grow it out.  It was a couple inches long now and needed actual shampoo and a brush.  But, right now he didn’t mind as she curled her fingers into his hair and used the grip to pull him down.  It was kind of sexy.  And she did it.  She made him forget about her father and his father.  He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet so they were more even.  He kissed her because for the first time she was really kissing _him_ , and not just her white boyfriend.  There was water in the kiss from the rain that was dripping off her still neatly pinned up hair, but it was also salty.  Her tears had gotten into the kiss.  Chris was amazed.  She had cried over him.  But did he really believe she’d turned over a new leaf?

“Karen!”

They both started and Chris set Karen down on her feet and took a step back.  Her mother was still inside the purring BMW sitting outside his shabby townhouse, but her father was standing outside, already soaked through.  He forced himself to meet the man’s eyes.  He didn’t look angry.  Well, not _really_ angry. He just seemed really worried about his daughter.  Karen turned to Chris and smiled shyly.  He’d never seen her do anything in her life that even remotely resembled being shy.

“I think I should go now.  I’ll call you later, okay?”

Then she stepped down off the porch before he could say anything and she hopped in the backseat.  Her father shut the door closed behind her and turned to look at Chris.  He looked like he might say something, but he just got into the car.  The BMW backed up and disappeared into the heavy rain.  Chris stayed outside until he couldn’t see the taillights anymore.  He shook his head.  He wasn’t even in a frame a mind to deal with the person who had taken over Karen’s body.  He needed to sort out his own feelings.  Karen had said she loved him, and he certainly hadn’t felt an immediate mutual response.  That was bad, right?

Chris unlocked the door and took his shoes off in the entrance.  He wasn’t terribly wet, so he might be able to get upstairs to his room without dripping water all over the house.  He decided to take a detour into the kitchen to see if his mother had a left a message on the answering machine.  He reached out a hand to push the button when someone grabbed his wrist.  He jumped and started to pull away but froze when he saw who was standing in his kitchen.  He hadn’t seen him since he had just turned eight.  Not even a picture of him.  His mother had burned them all.  But he wasn’t going to forget his father.  Nobody ever forgot what their father looked like.  Even if he didn’t look like he remembered him.  He was thinner and harder; he had more muscle.  There was a scar on the left side of his face that hadn’t been there before.  His hair was cut close to his head and he had a scruffy beard growing.  He wore old, worn clothes, but they appeared to be clean.  They were also dry, as was his hair.  He’d been inside the house since before it started raining.

“Hi, Chris,” his father said softly.

It was surreal.  Was his father really talking to him?  Should he call the cops?  Chris felt his eyes go wide with apprehension as his father moved closer to him.  Then the man hugged him.  Chris stood stock still in his father’s embrace.  Was he really a criminal?  He’d served his time.  Was it so bad that he left the state so that he could see his son?  But, was that for Chris to decide?

They both turned toward the front door as they heard someone come in.  His father pulled back and started to leave out the backdoor.

“Don’t tell your mother I was here,” he said.

Then he was gone.  Chris stood in the middle of the kitchen, not quite functioning at the level of a two year old yet.  His mother came into the kitchen and then put a hand to her chest when she saw him after flipping on the light.

“Good Lord, Chris.  You scared me.  What are you doing standing in the dark?”

“I just got home,” he said automatically.  What did he do?  Did he tell her?  He couldn’t be an accessory to a crime.  That would look terrible on a college application.

“Chris, honey, I have some bad news.”

Chris turned nervously to his mother.  Had they just caught him outside?  Had the police been lying in wait?

“What?  What is it?” he asked, fear leaking out of his voice.

“Well,” his mother appeared a bit perplexed by her son’s odd reaction.  “There’s been an accident.”

 

Will

 

Friday, April 29, 2005

 

Will Harder ran a hand through his short, jet black hair.  He wondered where that expression came from.  Jets were silver.  He wondered where his hair came from.  His parents were brunettes, but his hair was black.  Like almost ethnically black.  But, it was fine and soft like a Caucasian’s.  His eyes were kind of hazel, but mostly stayed a pale shade of green.  His hair and eyes combined with his fine features made him prime material for being a male model.  It was a shame he was so short.  Well, he wasn’t that short.  But there were girls that were as tall as him.  Some even taller.  But what did he care?  He didn’t want to be a model; he wanted to be a doctor.  It was a good thing he was so smart.

Damn.  Was he vain or what?  He thought he was good looking enough to be a model and smart enough to be a doctor.  Hell, while he was at it, he was also talented enough to play in the World Cup.  He snickered into his juice box.

“What?” Julian asked, pulling out his bento box.  His family was so weird.  “Were you thinking how amazing you are again?”

Will continued to smile and sucked up the cranberry apple flavored chemical water through the pink straw.  Julian smiled back.

“Yeah, I know.  It ain’t bragging if it’s true.”

Will glanced at his watch.  Scott was late.  As usual.  Where was the punk?  He wanted to ask some more questions about his cousin.  He was almost suspicious about the date.  It was a little convenient that he had a hot cousin who just happened to show up in town.  But it didn’t make sense for it to be a joke.  His friends knew better than to play practical jokes on him; he always got even and it was never pretty.

“Will, why are you going on this date anyway?” Liz complained.

She was a cute ash blonde with dark blue eyes and pouty lips.  She had a nice figure and an even better rack.  That was why Will had dated her in the first place.  But, they made better friends than a couple.  The problem was that she didn’t feel that way.  She’d become friends with his friends in ninth grade when they’d dated, so she still hung out with them now, but she never gave up hope that Will would come crawling back to her.  So, she always disapproved whenever he dated someone, no matter how briefly the jaunt may be.  Will didn’t bother to answer her.  She never liked his responses anyway.  What reason was there to go on a date?  At his age, wasn’t it about getting some?  Not that he expected to get anywhere with Scott’s cousin; he was a gentleman.  Sort of.  Well, Scott was a little bigger than him, and if he felt like beating him up, he might actually be able to do it.

“Julian, do you think Coach will make us go overtime in practice tonight?”

Julian shook his head as he broke apart his chopsticks.  “Nah.  It’s the second to last game of the season.  I think he’s given up hope.  You should start concentrating on the summer league.”

Will shrugged.  “I can’t really do that.  It doesn’t seem right to not be one hundred percent there for every game, you know?”

“Well, that’s the one difference between you and me.”

“One?” Will asked with a laugh.

Julian smiled and stuck his pierced tongue out at his friend.  Will shook his head.  Julian was the only teenager he’d ever known who had worn black leather pants to a school sponsored car wash fundraiser.  With a black sleeveless shirt and shaved underarms.  He was also the only male who wore eyeliner and plucked his eyebrows who didn’t get picked on.  Jaymz (he’d picked the spelling himself) Crawford also wore make-up to school, but he got pushed into lockers on a regular basis and had tampons thrown at him once a month.  For some reason, people left Julian alone.  It was probably because he had this whole “other worldly vibe” about him; it was popular belief that he could kill people with his brain.

“Ah, there he is,” Will said as Scott and Anna ran into the cafeteria.  He didn’t understand how those two could even be late for lunch.  Julian shuddered as he caught sight of Scott.  “Don’t worry,” Will said as he patted his friend’s arm.  “I’m sure he’ll cut it soon.”

“That’s what you said last year.”

“Well, you remember Beckham’s hairstyles.  They go through phases.”

“Speaking of which, would you believe Ashley Cole would ever play at Chelsea?”

“I don’t know.  Whatever.  He won’t win there either.”

“Who’s Chelsea?” Scott asked.  “Are they lesbians?”

Will and Julian looked at each other.  They shook their heads.  Will decided to ignore that question and started to attack Scott for information about the date.

“So, why won’t you tell me anything about your cousin?  You won’t even tell me her name.”

“Well, it is a blind date.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t know her name.  It’s very strange, you know.”

“It’s just that my cousin hasn’t decided yet to go through with it or not.”

Will’s jaw dropped.  “It’s today.”

“I know.  So, if it doesn’t happen, then if you’re introduced to my family, you won’t know which one it was.”

“Uh-huh.”  Will narrowed his eyes.  “So, am I just supposed to hang out downtown and wait to see if she shows up or not?”

“You have a cell phone don’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

Scott turned away from him and asked Chris something about the Yankees.  Or the Red Sox.  Whatever.  It was baseball.  A worthless sport.

“Are you worried about the test today?” Liz asked.

“No,” Will groused.

“Well, of course you’re not, I was talking to Julian.”

Julian shrugged.  “I think I’m ready.  And if I’m not, I sit close enough to Will to copy off of him.”

“Humph.  Mr. Straight and Narrow here?  He doesn’t even let me see his homework.”

“He’s let me cheat before.”

“Uh!”  Liz punched Will in the shoulder.

“Ow, woman.  You’re lucky I play a sport where I don’t need my arm.”

“You let him cheat?”

“Well, yeah.  He could melt my brain if I didn’t.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid.”

Will glanced up as Scott sighed again.  What was his problem today?  He was being so…not Scott.  It made Will get a bad feeling about this date.  Ever since he’d suggested it and Will had accepted, Scott had been very evasive.  Had he not really wanted Will to accept?  Did he think it would be weird if he dated his cousin?  It wasn’t like he was going to date his sister.  Will laughed at the thought of dating Joanna.  Not necessarily because she wasn’t desirable, but because that girl had eyes for her brother only.  He hoped she would grow out of that brother complex before too long.  Otherwise it might start to get creepy.

Scott wouldn’t answer anymore of his questions the rest of lunch.  So, he wasn’t terribly sympathetic about his problem being that his life was too perfect.  That was a laugh.  Nobody’s life was perfect.  The mere fact that after school he could go to soccer practice and then on a date and still make it home before his parents was proof of that.  He was as close to perfection as possible and yet because he had absentee parents he had turned out a little warped emotionally.  He had a very hard time getting attached to people.  Hell, he even believed himself to be a near perfect specimen of a human being.  Wasn’t that kind of gross narcissism a personality flaw?  But he had only ever striven for perfection in an effort to make his parents interested in his life.  A couple years ago, he gave up and stopped caring if they cared.  It was too late for them.  And it might be getting too late for him.  He wondered if he would ever find anyone whose opinion really mattered to him.  At the rate he went through women, that wasn’t very likely.  Maybe that was why Scott didn’t want him to date his cousin.  So then why did he make the offer in the first place?

The rest of the day was a bit of a bore.  The test wasn’t challenging and the coach didn’t push them in practice.  In fact, he let them out early.  They had a game tomorrow, why weren’t they working harder?  Coach made up an excuse about not wanting to work them so hard today that they couldn’t play tomorrow, but Will felt that it was just because he didn’t believe they had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.  In fact, the workout had been so light that ordinarily he wouldn’t have even bothered to shower and just gone home.  But today he had a date.  Well, maybe.  What was with that whole she hasn’t decided yet to go through with it?  Trash.

He changed into the black slacks and white button down shirt he’d worn during the day and stuffed his bookbag into his sports bag.  It fit in with all the equipment because it was empty.  He had math homework to do, but he wasn’t going to do it over the weekend.  He’d do it Monday morning.  Four periods would be more than enough time to get it done.

He and Julian parted ways at the metro station.  Their school was in the middle of the city and most of the students who attended didn’t actually live in the city, but in the surrounding suburbs.  So, many of them had hour or longer commutes taking the public buses and metro system.  Didn’t it seem odd that public schools had private transportation and private school students usually had to take public transportation?  Anyway, Julian was heading back to their town and Will was heading downtown to meet this mysterious cousin of Scott’s.  He hoped she would at least show up.  Even if the date sucked, that was so much better than getting stood up.

It was a little before 4:30 when Will arrived at the fountain that was supposed to be their meeting spot.  Scott’s cousin wasn’t going to show up until 5:00.  Will looked up at the sky.  There was a storm brewing, but it probably wouldn’t break today.  He hoped it wouldn’t rain out the game tomorrow.

Will sat on the edge of the fountain and stretched his legs out in front of him.  He tried to look cool in case the cousin came early and wanted to watch him for a while.  But, how was he even going to know which girl she was?  There were people milling all around the square.  And it was rush hour.  There were people getting off work and heading for the metro to go home and students from the university rushing home to get ready for the weekend parties.  There were even a lot of people just hanging out at the fountain like he was.  Maybe if the cousin didn’t show up he’d get lucky and some college girl would spot him and ask him out.

Will sighed and looked at his watch: 4:41.  He glanced around and saw a young man bent over, leaning heavily on one arm on the fountain ledge.  His hand was clutched to his chest.  Will wondered if he should get involved.  He might be choking.  But then again, there might be nothing wrong with him and he shouldn’t stick his nose where it didn’t belong.  Then the man collapsed to the ground.  Will jumped to his feet and ran over to him.  A couple other people had stopped to see what was going on.  Will put a hand to the man’s neck.  He felt a pulse, but he appeared to be out cold.  He looked around for his bag, but he’d left it back where he’d been sitting.

“Someone, call 911,” he said.

Three people followed his order.  Will didn’t want to move the man, and he didn’t really have any first aid training, so he just brushed the hair back from his forehead.  He seemed to have a fever.  Will decided it would probably be okay to turn him to his side.  He hadn’t fallen far, so the chance that he’d injured his neck or back was minimal.  Will was more concerned that if he was sick he might throw-up, and it would be better if he didn’t drown in his own vomit.  Another bystander helped him roll the unconscious man to his side and hold him in place.  The crowd around them had gotten bigger and someone asked if anyone was a doctor.  The crowd remained quiet.  Then the man’s eyelids fluttered and opened.  He groaned and put a hand to his forehead.  Will felt a knot in his stomach loosen that he hadn’t even been aware of.

Not long after two EMT’s arrived on the scene.  They asked the crowd what had happened, but nobody really knew anything.  The young man explained a few things to the paramedics and that seemed to make them happier to have a reason for the man’s collapse, but not any less worried.  They put the man on a stretcher and wheeled him away to the ambulance that had driven up onto the bricks of the pedestrian zone.  Will and the rest of the crowd watched as the ambulance pulled into the congested streets and turned on its siren.  He thought it was kind of sad that the man had no one to go with him, but nobody knew him.

Will glanced at his watch again: 5:17.  He looked around the crowd; it was breaking up slowly.  Was somebody in the group Scott’s cousin?  As he searched the faces to see if any of those faces were searching for him he noticed something blue on the ground by the place where the man had collapsed.  He walked over to it and picked it up.  It was a small blue teddy bear, like a Beanie Baby.  His brow furrowed.  That was a strange thing for a grown man to be carrying around.  Maybe some little girl had dropped it during the commotion.  Will walked back to his bag and sat on the fountain ledge again.  He fidgeted with the bear a little bit and looked at his watch again: 5:20.  She probably wasn’t coming.

“William?”

Will looked up.  His eyes locked with a man standing a few feet away with a confused look on his face.  He was tall, well over six feet, and sported an athletic frame under an expensive, tailored suit.  He had dark brown hair styled in a severe businessman cut and deep blue eyes that appeared to be bottomless.  Will was caught off guard by those eyes; he’d never seen anyone who actually looked like their eyes just might be the window to their soul.  Will dropped his gaze, a little embarrassed by the thought.  Then he looked back up, hadn’t this man called him by name?  He looked to be in his late twenties and had a handsome face, but it wasn’t familiar.  Was he a work colleague of one of his parents?  If he was, he’d never met him before; Will would have remembered those eyes.

The man still looked perplexed.  “You’re William?”

“Yeah, but people call me Will.”

“Um.”  The man rolled his lips in as he thought a moment and then he said, “So, you’re the—you’re um—you’re my—”

Will stared at the man.  “ _You’re_ my date?” he asked, not believing Scott was such a wiseass as to set him up on a date with an older man.  Now it kind of made sense.  Scott had been weird about the whole situation all week and he had never actually used a pronoun when talking about his cousin.  That jerk.  Did he think this was funny?  Was he here watching right now?  It wasn’t funny.  It was mean.  Especially to the cousin.  Oh, payback was going to be such a bitch.

“I—I guess I am,” the man stammered.  “Though I have to admit, you’re not quite what I was expecting.”

Will stood up.  “Yeah, well, you weren’t exactly what I was expecting either.”

This statement just seemed to bewilder the man.  Will wondered if he would run out of synonymous adjectives before they stopped applying to the man’s frame of mind.  This was ridiculous.  Apparently Scott had told his cousin something misleading as well.  Were they just supposed to be embarrassed and awkwardly shake hands and walk away?  Whatever.  If Scott was watching right now, he’d give him something to see.

“So,” Will said, shouldering his bag, “where are we going?”

“Huh?  Um—”

“Or do I need to plan the event?  I actually had thought we might go to a museum or something, but I just remembered they haven’t started switching to summer hours yet so they’ll probably all close at like five or six.”

The man put his hands in his pockets and looked puzzled; there was another adjective.  “So, you want to do something before…”

He trailed off.  Will shrugged.  “Yeah.  Why not?  Might as well make the most of it.”

“I guess.  Um, but before we make any decisions about where to go, I’m kind of parked illegally.  So, maybe we could get my car?”

“Sure.  Lead on.”

The man, still baffled, turned on his heel and led Will toward the rotunda that surrounded the square.  Will always thought it was strange that the “square” was round.  He hoped Scott was getting a good look at this.  That punk.  Then Will thought that maybe Scott had set him up with some random guy and it really wasn’t a cousin so maybe he shouldn’t get into some strange man’s car.  But, Scott wouldn’t be that stupid.  He wouldn’t risk his friend getting sliced up by a serial killer for a joke.  And if the car they were heading for was the man’s it might be worth the risk.

There was only one car parked on the concrete inlet off the main street.  The spot was reserved for police cars and other service vehicles, but what was sitting there now was a red sports car that probably cost more than his parents combined salary for the year.  He wasn’t very familiar with fancy cars, it wasn’t something that really interested him since he couldn’t afford one, but he recognized the make as an Aston Martin from one of the Bond movies.  It was a hot car.  He thought maybe red was a bit ostentatious, but it wasn’t fire engine red, it was a little tamer than that.  The man walked right up to it.

“No way,” Will laughed.  “This is your car?”

The man remotely unlocked the car and smiled.  “Like it?”

“Yeah.  Who wouldn’t?”

“It doesn’t have a backseat, so you’ll have to put your bag in the trunk.”

“Okay.”

The man used the remote to release the trunk and Will slung his bag into the back, and then considered maybe he should have put it in there more gently.

“So, what’s in the bag anyway?” the man asked.

“Just my equipment.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up.  “This should make for an interesting night.”

“Yeah, I guess.”  This man was a little weird.  Will knew better than to put his oily hands on the car, but he couldn’t help but run his fingertips along the top of the car.  It was so hot.

“So, you wanna let me drive?” Will asked, giving the man his most adorable smile.  He usually reserved that smile for girls, but it might help in weaseling a free spin in a cool car from the guy.

The man seemed momentarily affected by Will’s cuteness, and then said, “Hell no.”

Will put his hands in the air and shrugged.  “Well, it was worth a shot.”

“Yeah.  Though, I might be able to give you something almost as good.”

“And what’s that?”

“Hop in and I’ll show you.”

“Okay.”

Will slid into the leather seats and felt ten times cooler just for being in a car like this one.  He ran his hand along the surfaces of the door and his fingers brushed over something metal.  He glanced down at the inscribed plate: V12 Vanquish S Handbuilt in England for Ken J. West.”

“Your name is Ken?”

“Yeah,” the man responded as he started the car.

Will chuckled.  “I almost feel like I should call you Mr. West.”

“Oh, please don’t,” Ken said with trepidation as he started the car.

“So, why do you have such a fancy car anyway?”

Ken pulled carefully into the traffic and made a non-committal gesture with one hand.  “I’m rich and have no one to spend the money on but myself.”

“Well, I’d happily take some of that money off your hands for you if you need someone to spoil.”

Ken gave an amused smile as he shifted gears and ran through a yellow light.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ken drove them a little ways out of the city and down some roads Will wasn’t familiar with.  If he did need to suddenly call for help, he wouldn’t know where to tell 911 to send help.  And he also didn’t have access to his cell phone; it was in the trunk.  But Will didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.  It was kind of odd that he was with a complete stranger being driven to who knows where and yet he didn’t feel the least bit uneasy.

They pulled into a parking lot that had other expensive looking cars parked at least two spots away from each other.  It was so funny how worried people were about getting scratches on their precious high class cars.  They’d walk an extra half mile to wherever they were going just to make sure no one else would park near them.  But it was kind of strange.  There was a parking lot and what appeared to be a service counter at the end of it, but the large hill in front of them blocked whatever the counter was providing service for.  Where were they?  As soon as they got out of the car, Will could hear the roar of engines not too far off.  They walked over to the service desk where a young man was reading a car magazine.  He looked up when they approached and smiled.

“Hello, Mr. West.  It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, I’ve been busy.  But I decided to take a break today.”

The man looked at Will and then raised an eyebrow.  He looked him over once and then turned his attention back to Ken.

“So, one car or…”

“Two today.”

“Okay.  Can I see your ID?” he asked Will.

Will dug in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.  He handed the man his driver’s license.  The man punched a few things into the laptop set up on the counter and then looked at Ken again.

“You want extra insurance today?”

Will scowled and Ken laughed.  “No, that’s okay.  We’ll be fine.”

The man gave Will his license back and punched some more keys on the computer.

“What would you like?”

“Oh, just the lower course.  It’s been a while since I’ve been here, so I probably need to get the hang of it again.”  Ken turned to Will.  “Can you drive a manual?”

Will bit his lip and shook his head.

“That’s okay.  They have automatics.”

Ken nodded to the clerk and he used a key to unlock a cabinet behind him.  There were several sets of keys; the man grabbed two and handed them both to Ken.

“Have fun, gentlemen.”

Ken started to lead Will down a path behind the service counter and as they came up on the hill Will saw where all the noise was coming from.  On the hectares hidden behind the large hill were at least two race courses with cars zipping along them at unhealthy speeds.  Will’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, cool!  What is this place?”

“It’s a place where rich people with fast cars who are too cognizant of the law can get out their speeding desires.”

“Sweet.”  Then Will had a sudden realization.  “You’re going to let me drive here?” he gasped.

“Well, not on one of the actual car courses.  We’ll be on the one that’s one step above a go-cart track.”

“No, that’s cool.”

Will was excited.  He didn’t have his own car so the only driving he got to do was taking his parents to and from the airport for their many business trips.  They had been so happy when their son had turned sixteen.  Now they wouldn’t have to pay for parking or cab fare anymore; they had their own personal chauffeur.

They walked down to the track and Will was relieved to see that he wasn’t by far the youngest one there.  There appeared to be several father-son sets wandering about.  He and Ken didn’t look like father and son, but maybe brothers.  He certainly hoped it didn’t look like they were on a date.  That thought soured Will’s mood a bit.  Stupid Scott.

The man who was in charge of the track handed Will a helmet and explained a few rules to him.  He couldn’t really hear over the noise of the cars, but he did manage to catch on that there were lights placed around the course that indicated if he needed to slow down or even stop in case he was getting too close to another driver.  Will hopped from one foot to another.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.  His parents never let him speed.  At last he was seated in one of the cars.  It was an elongated racer with an open top.  He was told it maxed out at 90 miles an hour and it would be wiser to go less than that around some of the curves.  Will gave a thumbs up and gripped the wheel.  He watched the starting lights flash from red to yellow to green.  He slammed his foot on the gas and felt (since he couldn’t hear) himself squeal in excitement.  Thankfully no one else would have been able to hear that either.

Will quickly realized that driving sixty miles an hour on a straight stretch of highway was a lot different from sliding around a curving track at ninety miles an hour.  He ended up braking and coming to a complete stop a few times.  His heart was slamming in his chest.  It really would take a few tries at this to get competent at driving around the course.  He felt bad for the people behind him; they must be forced to stop every time he did.  But who cared?  It was unbelievably fun.  He might end up thanking Scott after all.  Best date he’d ever been on.  Will laughed to himself at the thought as he slung around another curve, this time actually staying on the track.

When their time was up, Will felt a little bit high.  That was one of the coolest things he’d ever done.  Ken’s suit wasn’t rumpled and his hair didn’t look like it had been squished in a helmet.  Had he even driven at all?  Or maybe he was of those guys that always looked good.  He was also a good sport and listened to Will gush about how awesome that had been.  He wished he could come up with another adjective, but that’s the only one that made it out of his mouth.  When they got back to Ken’s car, the older man looked at his watch.

“Are you hungry?” Ken asked.

Will hadn’t been able to think about anything but the adrenaline rush, but once being reminded he had a stomach he realized he was famished.

“Absolutely starving,” Will said.

“I know a good place,” Ken said, “if you have the time.  Are you on a clock?”

Will shook his head, a little confused by the wording of the question.  “I’ve never had a curfew.”

Ken nodded and then stopped mid motion.  He seemed confused by Will’s wording as well.  Maybe it was the generation gap.  But the gap couldn’t be that big, could it?  Surely not more than ten years or so.  Will considered asking him his age, but thought that might be a little rude.  But why?  He was a young man.  A young man who had needed his high school cousin to set him up on a date.  And it had turned out to be a joke.  How sad.

They drove back into the city and this time Will recognized their destination.  It was the most expensive five star hotel in the city.  Ken dropped his car off at the valet parking station and they headed inside the lavish and somewhat gaudily decorated front lobby.

“You trust those valet guys with your car?” Will asked.

“Well, I know the owner of the hotel, so I’m sure he’d compensate me if something happened.”

“Wow.  You must really be a big shot, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess.  Though I’m not that well known because I actually work instead of just letting the cash roll in.”

“Ah, some integrity in the greedy corporate world; how refreshing.”

Ken smiled uneasily.  “Just because I’m a hard worker doesn’t necessarily mean I have integrity.”

The restaurant was up a few floors on the side wing of the building away from the rooms.  The walls were mostly glass and gave a very nice view of the city.  Will knew the meal was going to be expensive, but the guy seemed to be loaded, so there wasn’t really any harm in letting him pay for everything.  At worst Scott would tell him that he shouldn’t have taken advantage of his cousin.  But then, Will wondered why he’d never heard of his wealthy cousin.  Most of the kids in their private school were well off, but they weren’t Richie Rich rich.

“Will?”

Will realized the hostess and Ken had already started into the crowded room.  They didn’t have to wait on a table?  Just how VIP was Ken West anyway?  Will hurried after them and they were seated at a table by the windows so that they had an unobstructed view of the city.  The sun was nearing setting so it was that weird period of time when the city was getting dark but all the lights weren’t on yet.  Will wasn’t quite sure what to do, there weren’t any menus.  Then a waiter appeared.

“Hello, Mr. West.  Oh.  You have guest.  Should I bring a menu?”

Ken looked at him.  “Is there anything you’re picky about or allergic to?”

“Not really.”

“Would you mind if I ordered for us?”

“Go ahead.”

Will already felt severely underdressed even though he was in dress slacks and a button down shirt.  Maybe he should put his tie back on, but it was in the car.  And since he looked so scruffy, it might be better if he didn’t embarrass himself by ordering something weird.  What Ken ordered sounded mostly in French.  Will hoped he’d be able to keep it down whatever it was.  Ken also ordered wine.  The waiter looked like he was about to ask Will for his ID, but couldn’t decide if he should or not.  Then a fat man with a balding head appeared and shooed away the waiter, telling him to bring a bottle of their finest wine.

“Ken, welcome!  It’s been a while since you’ve been here.  I was beginning to worry that you had found a restaurant you liked better.”

“Not possible, Mr. Hirschberg.  Everything is always impeccable.  That’s hard to beat.”

“Well, thank you, Ken.  I always appreciate seeing you here.  Your father is such a great man, and I’m always so proud to see his son doing as well.  It’s almost like watching one of my own sons succeed.”

Will bit his lip to keep from laughing.  What a suck up.  Ken seemed similarly amused by and aware of the situation.  He thanked the owner again and after an awkward pause the man excused himself.  Will finally let himself laugh.

“Does he even have a son?”

“Six daughters,” Ken said.

They both laughed and Will felt a little relief.  Maybe Ken wouldn’t be too offended if he didn’t like the food.  As expected, it was very pretentious with tiny portions and more artistic expression than he’d ever put into anything in his life.  It did taste okay though.  Will had only had a few sips of wine before in his life and he hadn’t thought much of the stuff, but what they were drinking tonight was actually very good.  Maybe that was because it was a four hundred dollar bottle of wine.  Even Ken had seemed surprised when he saw what the waiter had brought them and informed Will of the price.  He said they were going to have to drink the whole thing so that Mr. Hirschberg wouldn’t be insulted.  Splitting a bottle of wine between two people wasn’t as difficult as Will thought it might be.  He wondered if he would start to feel buzzed, but by the end of the meal he didn’t feel very different.  At least, he didn’t think so.

Dinner passed by pleasantly as they never ran out of conversation.  Will found that he was complaining a good deal about his parents.  And he was talking about them in the past tense.  How sad was it that he didn’t even feel like his parents were a part of his current life?  Any part of his life.  He never remembered them being around.  He hoped he wasn’t boring Ken.  As they waited for the bill, they finally fell silent.  Will felt the evening was coming to an end, but he was having a good time.  Ken was a nice, fun guy.  It served Scott right.  He’d be able to tell him he enjoyed his “date” a great deal.  But now, it was almost over.  He didn’t quite feel like going home to an empty house yet.  It was nice to have company of some kind.

“So,” Ken started hesitantly, “are you ready to—”

“Not yet,” Will said quickly.  He hoped that didn’t come off as weird because Ken seemed a little depressed by his quick refusal to go home.  Maybe Ken was humoring him.  Was he tired of him?

“Well, maybe I should—” Will started, but Ken cut him off.

“We can sit at the bar for a while.”

Will smiled.  “That sounds good.”

Ken smiled too, seemingly relieved about something.  He paid the bill and led Will out of the restaurant and down to the hotel bar.  It was a dark, intimate setting and there were several couples pressed together in the corners of their booths.  He and Ken ended up sitting at the actual bar and the bartender seemed to know Ken pretty well.  It seemed like everyone knew who he was except for Will.  Ken ordered a Scotch and Will decided to have one too.  As long as he was able to get free alcohol and no one was going to arrest him for it, he might as well go for it.  The bartender didn’t seem as concerned about his age as the waiter had been and brought him whatever he asked for.  He tried a couple things he’d heard ordered on TV before and felt that maybe he was drinking them too fast.  He’d had three drinks to Ken’s one.  Plus the wine from earlier.  Ken looked worried.

“Are you sure you want to do this?  I mean, if you need this much alcohol to go through with it…”

Will didn’t understand the context of the question, so he just gave what he thought was the right answer.  “I don’t _need_ it; it’s just kind of fun.”  Then Will had a weird sense of vertigo.  Had he said something?  He was aware of two people having a conversation about him, but he couldn’t understand them.

“Are you okay?” someone asked him.

“Maybe I should lay down,” Will said, feeling a little unstable.

The person agreed and helped him walk.  He thought he was going to help him lay down, but it seemed to take forever and miles of walking before the person finally let him collapse onto something soft.  Will moved against the soft surface, it felt so nice.  And after a few minutes of lying still in the darkness he felt the sick feeling he hadn’t been aware of pass on.  In fact, he felt hot, but in a good way.  He didn’t want the feeling to stop, so he encouraged it.  He didn’t know what “it” was, but it sure did feel nice.

 

Saturday, April 30, 2005

 

Will groaned and turned over in bed.  His head hurt.  Like a lot.  And so did his body.  He felt sore, like he’d played a hard game of soccer the day before.  But that didn’t make sense, the game was today, right?  He hoped he hadn’t slept through his alarm.  What time was it?  Will peeked his head out from under the covers and then ducked back under as the light pierced his skull.  He groaned again and a voice asked, “Do you want some aspirin?”

Will made a noise to the affirmative and was in too much agony to care who was making the offer.  He heard the clink of a glass set on his nightstand and the softer clack of pills being set beside it.  He reached out one hand and grabbed the pills.  He popped them into his mouth and spilled water on the sheets as he attempted to drink from the glass sideways.  He put the glass back on the nightstand and managed to get the pills down.  He flopped down into the softness of the bed in weariness.   That one action had exhausted him.

“I’ll leave the money here,” the voice said.  “Check out isn’t until noon, so you have a little bit of time to stick around.  I’ve already taken care of the room of course, so you can just leave whenever you’re ready.”

Will’s brain tried to process those instructions.  “What?” he asked.  He sat up and rubbed his eyes with a hand and felt the sheet fall to his lap.  It made him aware that he was naked.  Like, completely naked.  Which was strange because he always slept in boxers and a T-shirt.  He glanced at his nightstand, but it wasn’t his nightstand; it was some ornate heavy looking piece made of dark wood.  There was a stack of twenties sitting on it underneath the half-empty glass of water.  Will looked up to find the owner of the voice.  It was the man he’d met yesterday, dressed in a suit again.  Or maybe it was the same one, but either way it was neat and looked fresh.  The situation was too bizarre for his brain to accept the truth right away, so he just watched Ken head for the hotel room door, because a hotel room was what they were in.  Ken hesitated with his hand on the knob and looked back at Will.

“Can I—I mean, would you mind if I asked for you again?”

Then it dawned on him.  The money, the room, the nakedness.  “Oh, my God,” he said, his voice cracking.  His reaction seemed to bother Ken and he took a step away from the door.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, my God,” Will said again.  “What did I do?”

“Um,” Ken looked very worried now.  “Did you blackout?”

Will looked up and met Ken’s expressive eyes.  It hit him like a metric ton of bricks.  He hadn’t blacked out at all.  He vividly remembered last night.  That hot feeling had been skin on skin and lips and tongue and teeth on parts of his body that had never been touched that way before.  At least, not by anyone other than himself.  And in some places, never touched at all.  He remembered digging his nails into Ken’s back and pulling the man closer to him as he…as he…Will shifted and felt where he was the sorest.  And how he had shamelessly encouraged that soreness by spreading his legs and gripping the sheets beneath him.

Will screamed and Ken started.

“What?” Ken asked, his voice shaking.  “What’s wrong?  Do you not remember where you are?”

“I know exactly where I am,” Will said, his voice still raised.  “I remember everything _very_ well.  How could you?  What’s wrong with you?  And what is this?!” Will cried grabbing the bills from the table and tipping over the glass.  He threw them in the air toward Ken.  “Hush money?  So I won’t go to the cops?”

Ken stared at him like he was crazy for a minute.  Then he put a hand to his temple.  “What are you talking about?  It’s your payment.  For the night.”

“I get that!  What do I look like?  Some cheap whore?”

“No, you were actually very expensive.  That two hundred dollars there is just your tip.”

“Two hundred dollars?  You own an Aston Martin.  You think this is enough to keep me quiet?”

“What are you talking about?  Keep quiet about what?  You can’t go to the police.  They’d arrest you too.”

“What?  I’m the victim!”

“Victim?!  You’re an escort!”

Now it was Will’s turn to be silent in confusion.  “I’m a what?”

“An escort.  That’s what your job is.  My friend runs the company and he promised me someone pretty, but he failed to mention you’d be psychotic.”

“What company?”

“Blue Boy.”

Will shook his head.  “Never heard of it.”

“But—” Ken walked over toward the bed and clenched the suit jacket he still held in his hands.  “You were at the fountain yesterday.  At the right time.  You were holding a blue bear.”

“I—oh no,” Will said looking at the sheets.

“‘Oh no’ what?” Ken asked starting to sound a little ill.

“There was this guy there yesterday.  He fainted and got taken away in an ambulance.  I think he dropped the bear.  I just picked it up after the fact.”

Ken shook his head.  “No, no way.  I’m not buying this.  I mean, you acknowledged that we had a date.”

“My friend was setting me up on a date with his cousin.  His _female_ cousin.  When you showed up I thought he was playing a joke on me.”

“But, I asked for you by name.  You said it was your name.”

“Well, William _is_ my name.”

“No, I asked if you were Williams.  Wil-yum- _szuh_.”

“Oh.  No, my first name is William.”

The color drained from Ken’s face and he backed up toward a chair.  “Oh, my God.  What have I done?  I _thought_ it was weird all day, and you did look so young.  Oh, Jesus.  You’re probably not even old enough to drink, are you?” Ken asked as he started to sit down.

Will looked out from under the hand he was using to try to hide from the shame.  “I’m not even old enough to vote.”

Ken missed the seat and fell on the floor.  “Oh God.  Oh God.  I’m going to jail.  Oh Jesus.”  He tried to take in a few breaths and the man’s panic was irritating Will.

“Oh, shut-up.  I’m not going to turn you in.  Like hell I’m going to admit to what happened.”

“What happened?  It’s statutory rape.  No, worse than that.  You were drunk out of your mind.  You couldn’t make an informed decision about anything.  Oh, God.  You _are_ the victim.”

“Yes, I’m the victim.  But I’m not going to the police.  That would be way too embarrassing.”

Ken was breathing unevenly.  “Well,” he said, a little breathless, “I’m not going to try to argue that point with you.  But, you are at least old enough to drive, right?”

“Obviously,” Will snapped.  “They let me drive yesterday.”

“So, that’s a plus.  And you’re like, what, a week away from your eighteenth birthday?”

“Try two months past my seventeenth.”  Will looked up and met Ken’s eyes again.  He had a sudden flash of staring up into those eyes as Ken moved above him and he arched his back, fisting his hand in Ken’s hair as they…

Will stopped the memory and flopped back onto the bed and covered his head with the covers.  He was so embarrassed.  He couldn’t believe he’d lost his virginity to a guy.  Or that he had apparently enjoyed it so much.  That must have been the alcohol.  No way did he enjoy having sex with a man.  No, not having sex.  He got raped.  That’s what happened.

“Will,” Ken started hesitantly, “is there anything—anything I can do?”

“Yeah, you can leave and make sure that I never, ever see you again.”

“I can do that.”

Will heard the rustle of his suit as he stood.  He turned his head to let one eye look out from under the covers to watch him leave.  Then he noticed the clock on the nightstand: 11:39.  He sat up straight in bed and grabbed the clock.  Ken started at his movement.

“Is this right?” Will asked, showing the clock to Ken.

Ken checked his wristwatch.  “Yes.”

“No!  No, no, no!”

“What, what is it?”

“I have a game at 1:30!”

“Well, it’s not even noon.”

“The game isn’t in the city!  It’s about twenty minutes from my town, which is almost an hour away by the metro.  And I’m not dressed and I have to be there half an hour early for warm up!  Shit!”

Will dropped the clock on the bed and covered his face with his hands.  He felt himself losing control of his emotions.  Everything from last night and this morning and now he was going to miss his game.  He kept telling himself not to start crying.  He choked back a sob; he was losing that fight.

“Do—do you want me to drive you to your game?”

Will looked up and felt a tear fall down his cheek.  Ken appeared distraught as he looked at him.  He almost considered yelling at him to shut up and go away.  But, he did have a car.  A fast car.  He might be able to make it.  Ken saw his hesitation.

“Why don’t you take a shower?  And I’ll go down to the car and get your bag.  Is your uniform in there?”

“Kit,” Will muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.  Yes, go get it.”  He considered adding ‘please’ to the command, but didn’t.  He started to move to get out of the bed and then stopped because Ken was still present and he was naked, but also because his lower back and bottom hurt quite a bit.  His expression made Ken look even more distressed.

“Are you okay?  I’m sorry.  I wasn’t exactly…gentle.”

“I remember,” Will said, well aware that he was blushing furiously.  “Just go get my bag.”

Ken put a hand to his head and left the room.  Will couldn’t muster any sympathy for the man.  So what if he felt bad about what had happened?  And what if it was all an act?  All of his explanations were a little convenient.  He could have twisted any of them around to fit his story.  A blue bear was a strange object for someone to have, so working that as a way of identifying his “escort” would be easy.  And the name.  It seemed like he had just now said that he’d said Williams and not William.  Maybe he was some psycho pervert who had watched him and then picked him up off the street knowing full well what he was doing.  But, if that was the case, why would he take him places where people clearly knew him and could identify them?  They’d called him by name at both the race track and the restaurant and Will doubted the name plate in the expensive Aston Martin was a fake.  And the man had been the first one to say his name last night; Will hadn’t given it to him.  And would Ken J. West have stalked him to find all this out?  It seemed ridiculous.  But so did mistaking a high schooler for a high class escort.

Will punched the mattress and stifled a shout.  How was he going to survive this?  How could he have done something so remarkably stupid?  At a time like this why was he worried about a stupid soccer match?  Upon reminding himself of his soccer match he immediately hopped out of bed and headed for the bathroom.  It didn’t really hurt all that much to walk after all.  It was like that good kind of soreness that came from a rigorous exercise.  Will stopped and looked at the ceiling with his hands on his hips.  Why was he comparing last night to anything positive?  He dropped his head and his eyes caught a glimpse of something in the wastebasket.  He leaned over slightly to get a better look.  The bad news was that he didn’t have an overactive imagination and what had happened last night had really happened.  The good news was that Ken had used a condom.  Three of them.

“Jesus,” Will muttered, feeling even more embarrassed with that revelation.  He slammed the bathroom door shut and turned on the shower.  He really didn’t have time to loiter.  He _was_ going to make it to his game on time.  If the rest of his life continued on as planned, then maybe this could just be brushed under the rug and buried in his subconscious until he was fifty and undergoing psychoanalysis for his fear of intimacy and “unreasonable” homophobia.

The water in the shower was hot, but Will didn’t turn it down.  It felt good on his muscles.  He leaned his head against one of the glass walls of the shower stall.  Upon doing that he realized that the bathroom was huge and nothing like any hotel bathroom he’d ever been in before.  He hadn’t even looked at the main room, but this must be a suite.  A suite in a five star hotel even for one night wasn’t cheap.  Ken had spent a lot of money on him.  The race track, the dinner, the alcohol, the room, plus two hundred dollars for his “services.”  Will felt an inane sense of pride in that someone thought he was worth that much.

He punched the glass wall.  He needed to get his mind focused.  He couldn’t think about last night.  He couldn’t think about why his body was aching or how the hot water was running down places where fingers and a tongue had been.  Will closed his eyes, but that was a mistake; it just made the memories more vibrant.  A feeling washed though his body, but it wasn’t nausea in his stomach; it was a bit lower and not entirely unpleasant.

“Soccer!” Will said defiantly and used the hotel provided shampoo to clean his hair.  Then he conditioned it, which he didn’t normally do, but he was trying to avoid washing his body.  He felt ashamed to do it.  He was going to have to wash the sex of another man off his body.  Finally he felt the pressure of time again and soaped up a washcloth and washed himself vigorously all over.  When he got out the mirrors were fogged up.  He was wasting too much time.  He started to towel off and realized he didn’t have any clothes in the bathroom.  Maybe Ken wasn’t back yet and he could go out and put on…what?  He didn’t even remember seeing the clothes he’d worn yesterday.  Had they been torn off and ripped up?  He actually couldn’t remember that part.

Will wrapped a towel around his waist and cracked the door open to peek outside.  He shivered as the relatively cold exterior air hit his skin.  Ken was slumped in the chair he’d missed when he’d heard the news of Will’s age.  He had a hand over his eyes.  Will hesitated.  Why did he care if Ken saw him in a towel?  He’d obviously seen him in much less.  But, that wasn’t the point at all.  Then Will caught sight of the clock he’d left on the bed: 12:09.  He only had fifty minutes to get to the field.  Well, the match wasn’t until 1:30, but he had never been late to a game in his life.  So, he walked swiftly into the room and grabbed his bag which Ken had left on the end of the bed.  He rifled through it and pulled out the underwear he’d worn at practice yesterday.  It was a little gross, but he didn’t have many options.  He couldn’t wear boxers because that didn’t hold a cup in place very well.  He decided to go ahead and put on all of his equipment.

Once he was fully dressed he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his socks up over his shin guards.  He glanced at Ken; the man still had a hand over his eyes, but his fingers were parted so he could see through them.  He had watched Will get dressed.  For the first time Will wasn’t happy that he had such an attractive body.  It drew out the crazies.  He ignored the man and put on his boots as well.  It might be inappropriate to walk across the hotel’s marble floors in cleats, but Ken would be the one who would have to do the apologizing.  Will jumped up and looked around the room.

“Where’s my uniform?”

“Aren’t you wearing it?” Ken asked, sitting up straight.

“No, my school—”

Will stopped as he saw a pant leg sticking out from underneath the bedspread that had been knocked to the floor.  He pulled the cover back and found his clothes.  He stuffed them into his bag and glanced around the room.  He was suited up and everything was packed.  At least he thought he had everything.  He looked at Ken.

“Okay, let’s go!”

Ken scrambled to his feet and picked up his suit coat.  Will noticed he’d loosened his necktie.  Will opened the door and turned back when he saw that Ken was hesitating.  He was looking at the money strewn across the bed and floor.  Will thought it probably would look weird to the cleaners if there was money everywhere and condom wrappers in the bathroom.  Will growled and marched back into the room.  He snatched up all the twenties, counting as he went to make sure he got them all, and slapped them into Ken’s hand.

“Keep it for the speeding ticket you might get taking me to the game.  Now move.”

The hotel lobby was pretty full as they left in the middle of the day, and it must have seemed odd to the other patrons and employees to see him tromping around in full uniform.  Will was too focused on being late to worry about the looks they were receiving.  He shifted his weight back and forth on his feet as he waited for the valet to bring the car around.  He stared straight ahead at the sign on the opposite side of the driveway that said, “Valet Parking Traffic Only.”  He couldn’t look at Ken.  It was too much that they were standing this close together.  It was too awkward.  How would he survive being trapped in a car with him for forty-five minutes?

“Where are they?” Will whined.  “I mean, how did you get my bag in the first place?”

“I had the valet bring the car up and rather than parking it somewhere, I let them take it back so that I could get your bag to you.”

Will made a noise of disapproval but couldn’t think of better alternative he could have done.  Finally the red Aston Martin appeared and Will gave Ken a little shove toward the driver’s side.

“Let’s go!” he commanded.

Ken looked like he was about to say something, but kept his mouth shut.  They both got in the car and Will squeezed in the front seat with his bag.  Ken gave the valet attendant a twenty for a tip since he had a whole pocketful of them.  The attendant seemed pleasantly surprised and then started as the car peeled out of the driveway.  Will grabbed onto the door as Ken barreled into traffic and a couple horns honked.

“Okay, look, I want to get there on time, but I want to get there alive.”

“Don’t worry.  I went to the driving school for this car.”

“Driving school?”

“Yeah.  The manufacturer offers a training course on how to properly drive and manage the car.”

“Huh.  How ‘bout that.”

“Yeah, how about that.”

They ran through a yellow light and Will winced.  “You know, it will take us longer to get there if we get pulled over.”

“Not once we reach the highway.  I can outrun a police cruiser.”

Will looked at Ken in shock.  “You wouldn’t.”  He also felt a little excited.  How cool would it be to go two hundred miles an hour down the highway?  Ken didn’t answer.  He just stared intently at the road in front of him.  A few minutes passed and Will was getting antsy.  The silence was driving him nuts.  Before he could say anything, Ken spoke.

“Um, where are we going?”

“If you get on the main highway heading south, we’ll get off at exit 97.  I’ll give directions from there.”

“Okay.”

Exit 97, even if they hit all the lights to the highway entrance and sped the entire way, was about half an hour away.  Half an hour was a long time to sit in silence this close to the man who had violated him the night before.  He concentrated on his strategy for the game.  But nothing was sticking in his head.  He was just too aware of Ken’s proximity.  So, if he was going to be distracted by the man, maybe he could make him distract him from his distraction.  The sensibleness of that statement distracted him for a moment.  But, it wasn’t long enough.

“Say something,” Will ordered.  “Just talk.  About anything.  Fill the silence.”

Ken glanced sidelong at Will and then ran his tongue along the corner of his mouth.  He closed his mouth, opened it, and then closed it again.  Then he drew a breath and said, “My company, uh, this quarter’s earnings have actually shown a sharp increase not just from last year, but from last quarter.  I don’t really think that’s an actual reflection of profit, however.  I think that—”

“Not that,” Will said.  “Something interesting.”

“Well, I think it’s interesting.”

“Something interesting to me.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know.  How about why a rich, attractive, young man has to go to an escort service to find someone to have sex with.”

Ken smiled and almost said something.  Then he cleared his throat and looked out the windshield with a straight face.  Will made a face and looked at him.

“What?  What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.  I was just—”

“ _What_?”

“Well, you think I’m attractive?” he asked, smiling at Will.

“Ugh!  No way.  I’m totally straight.  You know what I meant.”

Ken made a dubious face and looked out front again.

“What?” Will demanded, his voice getting shrill.

“Are you sure you’re _totally_ straight?”

“Yes!”

“Okay.”

“Just shut-up, okay?  Answer my question.”

“Well, which is it?  Shut-up or answer your question?”

“Both!”

“Okay, well, I think the answer to your question is obvious.  I _am_ an attractive, wealthy, young man who at times, quite literally, has women crawling all over me.  So, why would I need to go to an escort service called Blue _Boy_?”

“Ahh.  You’re queer.”

Ken cleared his throat.  “I thought that much was evident as well.”

“But you’re so successful, what are you hiding it for?”

“Well, I’m not really successful.  I just run one of the branches of my father’s company.”

“Would he disown you?”

Ken shrugged and maneuvered the car onto the highway.  They really picked up speed now.  “I don’t know.  But, he wouldn’t be happy.  And my mother certainly wouldn’t approve.”  He glanced over at Will.  “Catholics.”

“Oh.  But, don’t they think it’s strange that their son is still living on his own, never dating women?”

“But I do date women.  And they just think I haven’t settled down yet because I’m a workaholic.  My mother wasn’t even concerned about it until I turned thirty.  That’s kind of a double standard, don’t you think?  They started pestering my older sister when she was 24.”

“Whoa, wait.  30?  How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I thought you were in your late twenties.”

“Oh.”  Ken seemed pleased with that answer.

“So, how old are you?”

“32.”

“Oh, wow,” Will said, looking at his lap.  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing his first time had been with someone who had some experience.  Will shook his head.  Gross.

“And your ‘roommate’ that you’ve had for ten years hasn’t been a clue to your parents?”

“I live alone.  I don’t have a boyfriend.  I have a girlfriend.”

“What?”

“Well, I’ll date women from time to time.  But, they get fed up with my lack of attention.”

“Do you—do you have sex with them?”

“If I can’t get out of it.”

“Well, if you date women and sleep with them, why don’t you just get together with one permanently?”

“Because I don’t like it.  I’m not attracted to them.  Having sex with them, which I don’t do often, is the longest ten minutes of my life just to get them done.”

“Ten minutes?  You certainly didn’t do anything that quickly last night,” Will mumbled to the window.

“Well, I was enjoying myself a bit more last night.”

Will blushed.  “Shut-up!”

“You brought it up!”

“So?!”

Maybe silence was better after all.  Remembering last night made him feel squicky because it didn’t make him feel squicky.  Every time he had a flashback to lying in that bed with the man currently beside him, his body grew warm.  It was so wrong.  It was just because he was a teenager and associating things with sexual arousal didn’t take much.  But why that?  Why didn’t the thought of what they had done last night completely gross him out?

It was 1:10 when they made it to the field.  They had made good time.  Mostly because Ken had been speeding down the highway so fast he might have been arrested if they had been pulled over.  Will put his hand on the door handle, but didn’t get out.  He kind of felt like he should say thank you.  For driving so fast or taking him out last night.  But, that was stupid, right?  He turned to open the door and froze when he felt a hand on his back.  He shivered as the hand caressed his name on the jersey.

“Is that really your name?” Ken asked, trying to hide his amusement.

“Yes,” Will said.

“Oh.  I didn’t know you were just trying to tell me your name last night.”

Will turned around and let out an infuriated yell.  It just seemed to amuse Ken more, though he did try to hide it.  He failed miserably.

“You are not funny.  I do not like you.”

Ken just smiled.  “Would you mind if I stayed and watched your match?”

Will opened his mouth to shout “yes” at him, but didn’t.  “I don’t care what you do,” he said evasively.  Will got out of the car and sprinted for the field.  The coach didn’t even yell at him for being late, he just told him to start warm-ups with the rest of the team.  Julian, however, seemed mad that he was late.

“Where were you?  I didn’t even want to come today but I thought, ‘No, Will would never forgive me.  Mr. Always-One-Hundred-Percent-There.’  But, you’re late today.  What’s up?”

Will stared at Julian.  “So that’s what you look like.”

“Oh, shut-up,” Julian snapped.  “I hate being without make-up on.  I look so normal.”

“Like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.  It’s just not me.  It makes me feel unlike myself.  Like something is off with the world.”

“Sorry,” Will said as he stretched out his quad muscles.  He wasn’t really sorry.  He’d avoided the “where were you?” question.

Will started to move into a lunge to stretch out his calves and pulled up short.  That hurt a little bit.  Julian noticed him wince.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.  I just, slept in an awkward position, so I’m a little stiff.”

“Oh.”

Coach came around and gave them their positions.  Will accompanied Jake onto the field for the coin toss.  The other team’s captain scoffed when they showed up.  Will hated that every team thought it was a waste of time to play them.  Why couldn’t their team be good?  It was so hard to get scouted when your team sucked so hard.  Will put a hand to his head and missed the coin toss.  He should take words like “suck” and “hard” out of his vocabulary for the next couple weeks.

Evidently they had won the coin toss and Jake had elected to start off with the ball.  The rest of the team members lined up on the field and Will couldn’t help but look at the stands.  Was Ken there?  Or had he left?

“Okay, you fairy fucks.  Let’s get this embarrassment started.”

Will focused his attention on the large winger who had just collectively called the team fairy fucks.  It had been directed at the team in general, but Will had understandably taken it a little personally.  Jake kicked the ball to him and he reached back with his dominant leg.  He swung forward with all his might and the ball nailed the winger right in the face.  He grunted and grabbed his nose with both hands.  Play stopped and the referee started jogging over.  The kid looked up and Will shrugged, completely unapologetic.  The kid stomped forward and shoved Will.

“What the hell you little bitch?”

Will pushed him back.  “Hey!  It’s not my fault your head is so big!”

Before they could get into it for real the referee came in between them.  “What is going on here?  Get yourselves under control.  I should red card both of you.  Am I at the right game?  The five year olds’ match was this morning.”  Will and the other kid looked away from each other and the referee gave them both yellow cards.  “Let’s play some football.  No more cat fights on my pitch.”

After that Will deliberately avoided that particular winger, but he attacked everyone else who got a toe on the ball.  Every time he felt soreness from the previous night he felt embarrassed and mad and felt the need to take it out on something.  And even more so when he caught himself searching the stands for Ken.  And for all that effort, he only scored one goal and the team lost, 5-1.  That was almost as embarrassing as last night.  Possibly more.

Afterwards his friends made a lame attempt to cheer him up.  And seeing Scott made him suddenly nervous.  Ken wasn’t his cousin.  So, had his cousin told him that he hadn’t shown up for his date?  Would Scott ask him what had happened?  He didn’t bring it up, but maybe he should leave before he thought about it.  But they all seemed to want to go to the consolation party.  He just wanted to go home and go to sleep.  Maybe if he slept his mind would finally stop thinking about it.  But, he didn’t have a way home.  His parents, of course, hadn’t shown up.  They hadn’t even called to find out where he was.  Well, maybe they had; his cell phone had been in Ken’s car all night.  He wondered if he was in trouble.  Probably not.  They might not have even noticed he hadn’t come home.  So, how was he going to get out of this party?  Then he remembered he had left his bag in Ken’s car.  Shit.  What if he hadn’t stayed, or left early?  Will turned his head and his gaze was drawn instantly to Ken.  He was about fifty yards away, but he was still here.

“I left my bag…” Will started, but didn’t want to say where.  “I need to go get it.”

He ran away from his friends and used the dispersing crowd to conceal where he was heading.  He ran right up to Ken and stared up at him.  He was half a foot taller.  Ken stared back at him.

“Tough loss,” he said.

“I left my bag in your car.”

“Yeah.  I can get it for you.”

“I’ll go with you.”

They walked silently to the Aston Martin.  It was very out of place amongst all the minivans and SUVs.  Ken remotely unlocked the door and Will opened it.  He reached in to get his bag and then sat on the leather seat with his legs outside the car.  He bent over and put his face on his crossed arms.

“They’re all going to a party,” he mumbled.  “I don’t really want to go.  And I certainly don’t want to get on that bus.”

“Do you have another way home?”

Will shook his head.

“How about I drive you to the party?  And if on the way you decide not to go, I can take you home.”

Did he really want to spend more time with him?  Was he insane?  “That sounds good.”

Will turned and put his feet in the car.  Mud fell off his cleats into the clean car.  Too bad.  Mr. Rapist could deal with a little mud.  Will flinched at the word “rapist.”  It was such a harsh word.  He felt bad about using it, though it did apply.

Ken got in the car and drove them out of the parking lot.  “Where’s the party?”

“At the Pizza Dome.”

“Geez.  Back in the city?”

“Yep.”

“Hmm.  Hopefully if any cops were out this afternoon they won’t remember me on the way back.”

Ken drove much slower this time and Will stared out the window at the darkening sky.  He kind of wished the storm had arrived earlier and rained out the game.  Though if they were going to lose it was better to just get the humiliation over with.

The Pizza Dome was actually on the outskirts of the city and it only took about twenty minutes to reach the exit.  Ken signaled and started to get over but Will said, “Keep going.”

Ken glanced at him but stayed on the highway.  “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care.”

They drove on into the city and Ken wound through the streets with perfect familiarity.  It was strange to ride on the streets.  Will traveled across the city almost everyday, but he never saw anything of it because he was almost always underground.  The silence didn’t bother him this car ride.  He found it comforting to sit quietly and watch the city pass around him.  It seemed like they were in the car for a very long time.  Then Ken pulled into a parking garage.  Will sat up, pulled out of his trance-like state.  Ken fished a card out of his wallet and waved it front of a box with a keypad.  The grey metal door barring their entry slowly retracted and Ken drove inside.  Will felt his heartbeat quicken.  Had Ken brought him to another hotel?

“Where are we?” he asked.

“My office building.”

Will relaxed.  He had said he didn’t care where they went.  And it might be interesting to see where he worked.  Ken pulled into a space right by the garage elevators that was marked “Reserved 24 hours for CEO.”  Will raised his eyebrows.  That was more than simply running one of the branches of his father’s business.  He had a pretty powerful position.  Ken turned off the car and got out.  Will decided to follow him in.  There were probably cameras inside the building, so nothing fishy could happen.  Probably.  When he got out Ken pointed at his boots.

“Um, could you…”

He trailed off and Will unlaced his boots.  He stood up and banged them together to get most of the mud off, and then he put them back in the car.  The car beeped as it locked and Will followed Ken into the elevator.  They rode up a few floors and came out in the front entrance.  It was a huge open lobby with a ceiling that extended up several floors.  There were glass windows everywhere and expensive decorations on the walls and couches to sit on.  It looked more like a hotel lobby.  Even with all the windows, it was very dark.  The sun must have set.  Either that or the storm had taken over the sky.  He didn’t think it was raining yet though.

“This way,” Ken said, his voice echoing dully in the cavernous room.

Will followed Ken to one of the elevators and his sock feet padded softly on the tile floor.  Once on the elevator, Ken inserted a key into the control panel and pushed the button for the 21st floor.  The doors closed and the elevator began to rise.  Will wondered what special floor required a key to have access to it.  When the doors opened Will let out a soft “wow.”  The top floor of the building was one large office.  The entire back wall was nothing but windows and a large desk sat in front of it.  There were shapes resembling chairs and a table at one end and strange looking objects scattered throughout the room that must have been plants.

“So, is this…” Will trailed off.

“My office,” Ken said.

“Damn.”

Will stepped into the dark room.  There was some visibility from the lights of the city shining in through the windows.  The glass was running.  It must have started raining sometime when they were on the elevator.  Will walked over to the window and put his hand on the glass.  He looked down and saw tiny cars running around on a tiny street.

“I guess you’re not afraid of heights.”

“No.  Are you?”

“No.”

Will turned to look at Ken.  He was standing beside him.  A bolt of lightning lit up the entire office and the thunder that followed was deafening.  Neither of them really noticed it.  Will could feel electricity crackling in the air, but he didn’t think it was from the storm.  His mind felt like it was working overtime, but all he was getting was a blank white wall of nothing.  He couldn’t really see Ken’s eyes in the darkness, but he could feel them on him.

“I think I should go home,” he whispered.

“Okay,” Ken said.

Will was only vaguely aware of leaving Ken’s office, getting back into his car, and being driven home.  By the time Will directed him into his driveway, the worst of the storm had passed and the rain had slacked off a little.  The Aston Martin sat purring in his driveway and Will stared at the porch light.  His parents must be home.  He should quickly go inside so that whatever story he made up for not being home last night wouldn’t have to include Ken.

“So,” Ken said after Will hadn’t moved.  “This is your house?”

“Yeah.”

Ken waited.  Will didn’t move.  “Do you want me to come in and explain things to your parents?”

“What?  No!”

Will turned to him and gave him a scowl.  Ken just laughed softly and Will realized he was being teased.  He looked away from the man and fidgeted with his fingers.  Why was he still in his car?  He reasoned that it was still raining out and he didn’t want to get wet.  But, it could rain all night.  Did he want to spend another night with Ken?  The thought made him hot with embarrassment and anger all at once.  He hurriedly put his boots back on and grabbed his bag.  He opened the car door and stopped to look back at Ken.

“Here’s to never seeing you again,” he snapped.

His ire faded away when he saw Ken resting his head on the back of the seat and staring at him.  No, not staring—gazing.  Will swallowed nervously.

“What?  Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Well, it’s the last time I’m ever going to see you, right?  I thought I might take a moment.”

Ken raised an arm and brushed his thumb along Will’s cheekbone.  Then cupped him behind the neck.  Will felt the pressure on his neck, pulling him forward, and he did nothing to fight it.  Ken pulled him close and paused just before their lips touched.  He searched Will’s eyes for any sort of protest or fear or anger.  Will was aware he wasn’t sending out any such signal.  Ken brought them together and their lips met.  Will felt his eyes close and tilted his head slightly so Ken could give him a real kiss.  Then he pulled away.  Ken smiled smugly at him.

“Do you love me for me or because of my money?”

“Ugh!”  Will shouted and climbed out the car.  Ken just laughed as Will slammed the door shut.  He waved a hand dismissively at the man, shooing him away.  He ran for his front door and watched the car back out of the driveway.  Will wasn’t sure what that niggling feeling was in the back of his mind as he realized this probably was the last time he’d ever see Ken West.  He shook his head to get rid of the feeling and started to dig around in his bag for his keys.  He found his cell phone and saw that he had voicemail.  He wondered how many messages his parents had left him.  Then the door opened.  Will jumped as his mother put a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, Will, here you are.  Hurry.  We need to go to the hospital.  There’s been an accident.”

 

Julian

 

Friday, April 29, 2005

 

Julian March leaned forward and inspected his eyes in the mirror.  He used his ring finger to smooth out the eyeliner on the bottom of his left eye.  He pulled back a bit and examined his face: it was all angles and pronounced features.  He had that arching Roman nose that at the wrong angle gave the appearance of a beak.  But the strange angles of his jaw and cheekbones and wide, round eyes worked together well with his nose to create a face that was atypical and yet universally accepted as handsome.  He’d gotten lucky.  His parents weren’t terribly attractive people, but piecing together their odd features had produced a face that people had been oo-ing and ah-ing over since he was a baby.  And now that he was seventeen, he found that not only girls his own age would give him a few looks, but older women as well.  And he was finally okay with that.

For a couple years after he’d turned fourteen he’d longed to be gay so that he could be something socially unacceptable for his parents to be proud of.  But try as he might, he couldn’t find guys attractive.  And it was painfully obvious that girls were things he got flustered over.  He especially liked the breasts, which gave him hope that maybe he had an oedipal complex, so he thought about trying to develop that.  That plan was thwarted, however, when the mere thought of even trying to think about his mother in a sexual way turned his stomach and made his brain scream in protest.  So, maybe he could be a transsexual.  Female-turned males usually liked women and often times they ended up becoming “lesbians.”  But, Julian liked being a guy.  He especially liked being able to pee standing up.  It was very convenient.  And there was always a huge risk when you let some “doctor” mess around downstairs.  He could wind up like Hedwig.  So, his last ditch effort was to be a transvestite.  But women’s clothes weren’t really designed for men’s bodies that had a very masculine physique, so women’s clothes never looked good on him.  Besides, Julian didn’t like wearing skirts and tight, girly tops.  Eventually he gave up.  Maybe that was it: he was so normal that to his abnormal parents he _was_ abnormal.  He could deal with that.  Though he did get used to shaving under his arms and wearing eyeliner.  He kept both of those.  People always thought he wore more make-up than that, but his lips were naturally reddish.

Now he stared at his whole reflection in the mirror.  The private school he attended had uniforms: black dress slacks, a white button down shirt, a red tie, and a short, tailored-fit grey coat with two buttons.  Well, that was the version he liked the most.  During early fall and in the spring they had to replace the jackets with sweater vests.  They were grey with a black and red argyle pattern striped across the middle.  The girls wore the same thing only they had skirts and knee socks instead of pants.  And of course the jackets and sweater vests were tailored to be more feminine.  Thus, the girls’ version of the uniform, though virtually identical, hadn’t looked good on him.  Not that he could have gotten away with it anyway; there was a clause in the handbook that girls must wear girls’ uniforms and boys must wear boys’ uniforms.  Julian always wondered if that clause was there from the beginning or if some student had actually tried it before.  Probably a girl protesting having to wear a skirt.  Only one girl in the school was allowed to wear pants, and that was for religious reasons.

So, here he was, wearing a typical school uniform with normal short brown hair and ordinary dark brown eyes and nothing to show any personality except for a little eyeliner.  It would be depressing if he didn’t look so good in his uniform.  It really was flattering to the male physique.  Unless, of course, the male it was on didn’t have a physique to speak of.  He certainly had proof of that considering some of the boys who attended Calverton Preparatory Academy.  But the one person it looked the best on was his best friend, Will Harder.

Ah, Will.  He had been the one who had given him a smidge of hope that he might be able to be gay.  That boy was hot.  But, maybe it was because he was so pretty and delicate.  Of course, that was only his face.  His body was very hard and masculine and it was difficult to miss even if you stared at his face.  And even if you focused only on his face, no one would ever mistake Will for a girl; he was clearly a boy.  Just, a very pretty one.  And Julian had always had something like a crush on him.  From when they first met when they were five years old and had entered Calverton together in kindergarten.  Will had always been smart and daring, climbing to the very tip-top of the jungle gym that even only the bravest of sixth graders would attempt.

The crush had always been more akin to admiration and veneration when he was a child, but as soon as he learned what sex was, the thought of tying Will up and doing dirty things to him had become a favorite daydream.  That was why at fourteen he had actually thought he _was_ gay.  But, he never found any other guys attractive, and unbidden fantasies almost always included Ginger Fugger.  It was a terrible name, but she was a gorgeous woman.  And she was a woman at fifteen.  Hell, she’d been a woman at twelve; she had been an early bloomer.  His heart—along with the hearts of the rest of the male population at school—had broken when she’d moved in tenth grade.  By which time Julian had accepted his fate of being an average heterosexual male, who occasionally fantasized about his pretty male friend.  And while he would tease and half-jokingly flirt with Will in private and in public, he didn’t dare mention what he did to his friend in his head when he was alone in the shower.

Will didn’t give a damn about too much in life, but even he might take offense to that.  Certainly Scott and Chris would get upset if they ever learned that he’d tried—and failed—to do the same with them.  Quite possibly Scott would be upset because he’d want to know why he wasn’t good enough to fantasize about.  He was really insecure about his looks around Will and Julian.  Maybe that was why he wore his hair all long and stringy; so that he had a fixable reason for being unattractive, which he wasn’t of course.  Both he and Chris were cute enough; he knew two girls apiece who had a crush on them.  For some reason girls always came to him to confess their feelings for his friends.  Maybe they thought he was gay?  And the number that swooned over Will was ridiculous.  He thought girls liked more manly men, but Will was athletic and smart on top of being pretty.  But Julian always felt that a girl should be prettier than the guy she dated.  And there were only about two girls in the entire school that were prettier than Will, and they were dating each other.

“Hey!  Are you done yet?”

Will was leaning inside the entrance to the boys’ bathroom and looked like he’d been waiting a while.

“Oh.  Right.  What are we doing?”

“Umm…we’re going to lunch.”

“Right.  Coming.”

Julian looked at his hands.  They were still a little damp.  He must have zoned out while he’d been washing them.  He grabbed a paper towel, dried them off, and followed Will into the busy hallway.  Will gave him a goading smile.

“You looked totally gone.  What were you think about?”

“You,” he replied truthfully.

“Aw stop,” Will said in a faux southern belle accent and waving a hand, “you’ll make me blush.”

Julian grinned.  “You just might if you knew what my thoughts were concerning you.”

“Oh, please,” Will said, rolling eyes.

Julian was pretty certain that Will had no idea that all his teasing and flirting was done only about half jokingly.  But that was okay.  Will was happily secure in his heterosexual, girl-filled world and Julian got to play with fire without getting burned.  It seemed fair.  And speaking of playing with fire, he wondered what his mother had prepared for him today.  Nine times out of ten it was something good, but every now then she got a little too adventurous for her husband and son’s good.  Today it seemed that he was getting Japanese food.  That was a positive sign; his mother rarely messed with Asian food.  She liked it the way it was.

The girls, minus Anna, were already at the table.  Laney and Riley were sitting, but Liz was circling the table, waiting for Will to sit so that she could sit next to him.  He always wondered why it didn’t work out between those two.  Not that he’d minded when it hadn’t; she was competition after all.  But she really was perfect for him.  It was just that Will hated the idea of something permanent.  And not because he was a player and wanted to try every girl he could before he died.  No, Julian suspected that his parents had something to do with it.

Poor Will.  Everyone always thought that Julian had the weird parents, but at least his parents paid attention to him.  Will had grown up mostly alone.  Julian remembered going over to his house when they were little and being confused that there were no adults around.  After he’d told his parents they had always made Will play at their house until they were old enough to watch over themselves.  Of course, Will had been old enough to watch over himself since he was five.

Chris had come in while he’d been lost in his thoughts and was talking to Riley.  Then Scott and Anna came in.  He’d known Anna since the second grade, and recently he’d started to notice that she had turned out to be quite pretty.  He hoped he didn’t start liking her in that way.  Scott would rip his head off.  Not that they had anything between them, but Julian suspected he would be as protective of her as he would his little sister.  And Scott; ugh, that hair.  It haunted his dreams.  It stalked him and tried to jump on his head.  Kind of like Riley’s hair.  After the first couple weeks of knowing her he’d woken up screaming, afraid that his hair had turned orange.

Lunch wasn’t too entertaining today.  Just the usual baseball argument between Chris and Riley, Liz trying her hardest to get Will to notice her again, and Will trying to get information about his blind date with Scott’s cousin.  Julian couldn’t really imagine Will was that desperate and had already exhausted the school’s resources of females.  He’d yet to start on the ninth graders.  Not that Julian thought Scott’s cousin would be a bad person, but if she looked anything like Scott’s mom or sister, she wasn’t going to be terribly attractive.  Maybe it was a cousin from the dad’s side.  Scott and his twin brothers had taken after him.  Julian couldn’t wait for those two to get older; they were going to be nothing but trouble and heartbreakers.

The rest of the day was similarly uninteresting.  He could understand why Scott was so upset about his normal life.  Even Julian thought it was a little too nice.  That’s why he’d offered his help, but it didn’t look like Scott was going to accept Master Klingon’s assistance.  He’d done wonders for his godfather’s stepson.  Hopefully Scott could find some way to introduce some fun into his own life without doing something stupid.  Without doing something stupid was the key part of that sentence.  Julian had no doubt that Scott could very easily make his perfect life very unhappy.  Just like the chemistry test that was making him very unhappy.  He considered cheating off of Will.  He was leaning back in his chair and writing his answers so that Julian could clearly see his paper.  It was probably intentional.  But, it wasn’t that it was so hard, it was just that it was a lot of work.  And whether he copied the answers or came up with them himself, it was going to take some thinking and writing of his own.  So, he just sucked it up and resisted the urge to cheat.  Of course when he received his C+ or B- next Monday, he’d be enviously eyeing Will’s A+ for sure.

Once school was over Julian was looking forward to the hour long metro ride home when he could listen to a reading of Gardner’s original _Book of Shadows_.  His parents prescribed to a slightly different branch of the Wicca religion, but he thought it would be interesting to find out what its origins were.  He was almost out the door too when a hand grabbed his sleeve and jerked him back inside the building.  He was faced with a best friend with a very unpleasant expression.  Will didn’t even have to say anything.  Julian knew he’d be in trouble if he skipped soccer practice, especially the practice before a game.  Though he wouldn’t be in trouble with the coach, it was Will who would be mad at him.  And he couldn’t stand to make Will upset.

“All right, all right, I’m coming.  Get your nuts out of a twist.”

Will smiled prettily at him and Julian thought about various ways he’d get back at his friend later that night.  Though, did it really count as vengeance if the one you were taking revenge upon didn’t know you were doing it?  Of course, he shouldn’t be thinking about revenge at all.  His religion told him that whatever he sent out into the universe, it came back to him three fold.  Vengeance wasn’t something he wanted back.  And Will Harder never let go of a grudge until it was repaid.

While they were changing in the locker room, several of their other teammates would talk to Will and laugh and joke with him, but they avoided Julian as much as the rest of the school did.  He thought they knew him pretty well; well enough anyway that they wouldn’t think he could really kill people with his brain or sacrificed virgins in pagan rituals.  Apparently they didn’t.  He found that he was only socially acceptable because he was Will’s best friend.  A couple of the other players weren’t afraid of him, but were still uncomfortable around him.  Was it the eyeliner?  The shaved underarms?  Or maybe it was the time when after being fouled in a soccer game he’d turned an evil glare on the kid and he’d fainted dead away.  It had been heat stroke, but the rumor started that he’d fried the kid’s brain.  He had to admit, it was quite a coincidence that he’d fainted just as he’d looked at him.  But, weirder stuff had happened, right?  Probably.

During the warm-up Will was talking about his upcoming date.  He must be nervous.  He didn’t ordinarily discuss girls that much; they often weren’t worth his time.  But this afternoon he seemed a little uneasy.  Maybe because it was a blind date.  Or a friend’s relative.  If he treated her like crap, Scott would get mad.

“Don’t treat her like crap,” Julian said.

Will looked at him from where he sat on the ground stretching out his legs.  “Huh?”

Julian sat down opposite him and put his feet against Will’s.  They held hands and started pulling each other forward in increments, stretching their leg and back muscles.

“Scott’s cousin?  Of course I’m not going to treat her like crap.”

“Oh, well, you look nervous.”

“Well, it’s one thing when it’s a girl I know.  But I don’t like meeting strangers.”

“So, why did you agree to it?”

“Because Scott kept asking and asking.  Makes me suspicious.”

“Or maybe you feel guilty.”

“About what?”

“About Liz.”

Will pulled on Julian a bit harder than was necessary and he winced as his legs went wider than he wanted them to.  Will was a lot more flexible than he was, so he was still sitting pretty.

“Why would I feel guilty about Liz?”

“Because the reason why you dumped her and started dating all these other girls is because you started to get real feelings for her.”

“Exactly the opposite.  I realized that she was developing very real feelings toward me and I was acutely aware that I did not feel the same about her.  It would have been wrong of me to lead her on.  Besides, ninth grade is too young to fall in love.”

“Ah-ha!” Julian said, but didn’t get to say what his discovery was because Will let his hands go and he fell back onto the ground.  He sat partially up and watched Will get to his feet.  He didn’t look very happy with the direction the conversation was going, so Julian must have hit a nerve.  Like, the truth.

“You were falling in love with her.”

“I was not,” Will snapped.  “I was getting tired of her.”

Julian stood up and started to stretch out his arms, not that he would need to use them much.  “Will, I’m not trying to attack you or blame you for anything.  I’m just worried about you.  You don’t care about anything.  You don’t let yourself.”

“That is a bit of an exaggeration.  You think I don’t care about you and Scott and Chris?”

“No, I think you do.  But I also think that you keep enough distance between us that if something goes wrong you can let us slip away like we were never apart of you to begin with.”

“Oh what the hell does that even mean?”

Julian shrugged.  “Sounded deep though, didn’t it?”

Will glanced around and seemed satisfied that the rest of the team was far enough away.  He stepped close to Julian and glared up at him where he stood at six feet tall.

“You need to hear it?  Okay.  There is nothing in the world I value more than you three.  My parents are never around, my girlfriends are too transitory.  You three are the only ones who have ever been a constant in my life.  That means a lot to me.”

Will turned away from him and bent over to pick at his perfectly tied shoelace.  Julian sighed.

“Will, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.  I believe I’m important to you.  In fact, I even believe that the three of us _are_ the most important thing in your life.  It’s just the degree, Will.  We’re more important to you than your parents?  Well, that’s not saying much, is it?  We’re important, but not irreplaceable.”

“Jesus, Julian.”  Will stood up.  “I’m not _that_ warped.”

“Yes, I think you are.”

Will didn’t get upset or storm off or yell at him.  Which only proved his point more.  He just nodded and stared at Julian’s number on his jersey for a few moments.  Then he met his eyes.

“Well, maybe this date tonight will change my life.  The one who can save me could be waiting for me.”

“I hope so, Will.  I’m sad it’s not me, or us, but I hope there is someone out there who can fix you.”

Will raised an eyebrow and gave him a semi-scowl.  “Yeah, we’ll see who’s broken after tonight’s practice.”

Julian groaned and followed Will toward the field with the rest of the team.  “Come on, man, I was saying it out of love.  Don’t beat us all up.”

“Love, huh?” Jake Patterson asked as he jogged beside them.  “Is there something you two need to share with the team?”

The others chuckled, albeit nervously because they thought it was dangerous to tease Julian.  Or maybe they thought it was dangerous to tease Will.  Julian just wrapped an arm around Will’s neck and put him in a headlock.

“I guess we can’t hide it any longer,” he said giving Will a noogie.  “Fellow teammates, I have a confession to make.”

Will grumbled something against his arm.

“The truth is…I’m Will’s father.  I couldn’t help it.  At negative five months old, I was a player.  And his mom was the first victim.”

The team cracked up laughing and Will struggled against his grip, but couldn’t quite get loose.

“That’s why I’m so protective of him.  I just want to see my boy do well.  And not make the same mistakes I’ve made.”

The team aww-ed and gave them a round of applause.  Julian was happy to see them being relaxed around him.  Then the coach walked up.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Will’s having Julian’s love child,” Nick Tripp explained.

“Oh, well, as long as it doesn’t take him out of any games this season, I guess that’s all right.  Okay!  Foot drills.  Go!”

 

After parting with Will at the metro station Julian was too tired to listen to his tape.  He was probably just going to fall asleep and hopefully some nice passenger would let him know when they reached the end of the line.  They hadn’t even worked all that hard tonight and the coach had let them go early, but Julian had been feeling down all week.  Maybe he was getting a cold or something.  It was dark before he got home and the windows in his house were dark.  He sighed.  Hopefully his parents hadn’t started some ritual in the backyard and forgotten to make dinner.  Or that the neighbors were totally on edge and bound to call the cops on them any day now.  He wasn’t really worried if that day did come; they weren’t doing anything illegal, but it would be a pain to have to deal with.

Julian opened the front door and petted the large dog’s head that rubbed against his leg.  He was a weird dog.  He never barked or growled, but the family had heard him whimper on occasion, so he wasn’t incapable of making sound.  He had been a stray that they’d rescued from a shelter, a complete mutt with no recognizable breed to speak of.  But, he was sweet and friendly and loved being around people.

“So, where’s Mom and Pop?  Huh, Cornelius?  Are they in the backyard?”

Then he heard a low moan followed by a couple of high pitched yelps.  Julian closed his eyes.  It was worse than Wiccan rituals in the backyard.  He backed up a few steps and opened the door again.  This time he slammed it as hard as he could.  He could hear his parents stumbling around as they rushed to put their clothes back on.  Sometimes he really wished Cornelius would bark when people came home.  The foyer light switched on and his mother came into the hallway, looking more or less put together if a little out of breath.  There was only one place she could have come from.

“The kitchen?” Julian groaned.  “Please tell me we’re eating out tonight?”

“Now, Yaholo, sex is a very natural expression of love and affection and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Even if it’s two old people doing it.”

“I get it, Mom, but that doesn’t mean I want to eat off the table that you guys…dripped on.”

His mother looked like she was about to complain about his choice of words but his father said, “He does have a point.  We might want to wipe down the table before we use it again.”

“Gross, Dad.”

“So, do we want to eat out?”

“I don’t know,” Julian said, letting his bag slip from his shoulder.  “I’m really tired.  I haven’t been feeling too well lately.  I’m just hungry and want to go to bed.  I’ve got a game tomorrow.”

“We remember,” his father said.  “We’re coming.”

His mother put a hand to his head and then his cheeks, checking for a fever.  “Have you been thinking ill thoughts about other people?”

“No, Mom.  I think it’s a virus or a bacterium who’s the culprit here.”

“Maybe.  But, you know that illnesses can be compounded by negative energy.  I’ll give you a crystal massage later tonight, okay?”

“That sounds good.”

Both his parents hugged and kissed him and sent him off to relax in the den.  Cornelius sat beside him on the couch with his head on Julian’s knee.  His parents didn’t have cable because they felt that all fictional depictions of the Wicca religion were deliberate exaggerations and falsehoods.  So, no TV or movies in the house.  Julian thought that that made sense when he was a child, but he was old enough now to know the difference between what was Hollywood and what was really his religion.  Though technically he hadn’t been initiated yet.  He’d dedicated himself to the craft when he was fourteen, but his parents’ coven felt that he was too young to yet make that decision, so he was told to wait a few years.  He wondered if he’d be initiated when he graduated high school.  But, initiated or not, sometimes it would be nice to sit down and watch a stupid situational comedy on TV and let his brain jellify.  He had to depend on his visitations to his friends’ houses for any sort of television contact.  He was lucky his parents allowed him Internet access in the house.  He’d convinced them of that when he insisted it was necessary for his school work.  Not really a lie, but “necessary” may have been a strong word.  Surely the Goddess and God could understand a boy’s basic human need of being able to check his e-mail, right?

Dinner ended up being vegetarian in nature.  It was okay, Julian didn’t mind it from time to time, but his mother was slowly making more and more of their meals vegetarian, like she was.  He and his dad loved and respected nature, it was everything the Goddess had provided for them, but that didn’t mean that nature didn’t taste good in the form of a hamburger.  He wondered if he and his dad should form an alliance and fight back against the vegetables.  Nothing but vegetables wasn’t good for a growing boy, especially one who expended a lot of energy playing sports.  And he wasn’t going to be able to survive with peanuts as his only source of protein.

After dinner Julian crashed on his bed and dug his cell phone out of his backpack.  He called Will to see what he’d had for dinner.  He must have eaten out on his date.  He might have had steak.  Ooo.  Steak.  Will didn’t answer his phone.  He tried again in a few minutes, but he still didn’t pick up.  And it kept ringing, so it wasn’t like he had turned the phone off or was somewhere without service.  He glanced at the clock on his nightstand: 8:01.  What was that boy doing?  He’d try him again later.

There was a soft knock on the door and his father came in.  He sat on the edge of his son’s bed and ran his fingers through Julian’s hair.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.  Tired, but okay.  I’ll be fine for tomorrow.”

“Does Will need a ride to the game?”

“I don’t know.  I forgot to ask today and I haven’t been able to get a hold of him yet.  You know he assumes nothing.  I’m sure he’ll call if his parents aren’t around.”

His father smiled sadly.  “I almost want to take him in.  He seems like an orphan.”

“Yeah.  Maybe.  But, he doesn’t feel like an orphan.  And if anyone started acting like a parent now he’d balk at them trying to take away his independence.”

“That’s true.  He’s strong as well.  He has much of the blessing of the Goddess upon him.”

“Try saying that to him.  He’ll just ask if it’s because she likes being on top.”

They both laughed and his mother tsked at them from the door.  “You shouldn’t laugh at words that are disrespectful of our Goddess.”

They dropped their eyes out of pretend shame, but really did it to hide their humor.  His father leaned forward and kissed his son on the forehead.  “Sleep tight.  And after your game tomorrow we’ll go get a steak, okay?”

“Awesome.  Yes.”

His father stood up and kissed his frowning wife on the cheek.  He left the room and his mother motioned him to get out of his bed.

“You are not sleeping in your clothes.  Go wash your face and change.”

Julian groaned but managed to comply.  As promised his mother gave him that massage.  She heated up some stones and placed special crystals on certain parts of his body.  He relaxed under her hands and nearly fell asleep as she sang softly to him.  When she was done, he was barely conscious.  His mother tucked him into bed, kissed him goodnight, and turned out the light.  Julian fell asleep immediately.  He’d forgotten to call Will again.

 

Saturday, April 30, 2005

 

Julian’s alarm went off at 11:00.  He reached an arm out from under the covers and slapped it around on his nightstand until the alarm went silent.  He hadn’t anticipated actually needing to use it.  He’d slept for about fifteen hours.  That was a little excessive.  Now he was going to feel even more tired than if he’d woken up at a decent hour.  Why hadn’t his parents gotten him up?  They knew that he was just as cranky when he got too much sleep as he was when he got too little.  He groaned and buried himself back under the covers.  He really didn’t want to go anywhere today.  He wanted to stay home and wallow in bed and have his parents wait on him hand and foot.  That sounded really nice.

He could miss one game.  It wasn’t their very last game; they had one more chance to embarrass themselves before school ended.  And it wasn’t a good idea to play sick.  He should stay at home.  Though it was kind strange.  He wasn’t feeling bad, he just had a bad feeling.  He knew he should listen to the Universe.  It was telling him something was wrong and he should stay in bed and be a lazy slug.  Then the image of Will sitting on him and beating him to within an inch of his life flashed before his eyes.  It probably wouldn’t go that far, but it would come close.  Will wouldn’t forgive him for punking out on him.

He remembered one time in ninth grade when they were still on the junior varsity team and Will had the flu.  He’d shown up feverish and puking for the game.  And it hadn’t even been an important one.  On top of all that, he didn’t even pass out during the game.  He fought his way through the full ninety minutes.  He collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital afterwards, but he was there for the game.  “I had a bad feeling” wasn’t going to fly as an excuse.  Will would simply attribute the bad feeling to knowing that they were going to get spanked on the field.  See?  That was another reason not to go.  They were going to lose and the coach almost never let him start because the opposing team usually had to complain about the make-up.  Which was ridiculous.  Some of their players wore dark smudges across their cheeks, big deal if he wore them under his eyes.

“Yaholo!”  He heard the door to his room open and could just imagine his mother standing in the frame with her hands on her hips.  “Are you up yet?  Don’t you have to be at the field by one?”

“It’s only eleven,” Julian grumbled.

“It’s noon, dear.”

Julian poked his head out from under the covers.  The clock said it was 12:02.  Had he fallen asleep again or had he set the alarm incorrectly?  This was another bad sign if he was losing that much time.  He should stay home.  But, Will would miss him.  He’d also need him to cheer him up if they got clobbered too badly.  Julian sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“Has Will called?”

“Nope.  Haven’t heard from him.  Maybe his parents are coming.”

Julian dropped his hands and gave his mother a look.  “Yeah, right.”

“I still have hope that those two will learn to appreciate their son more.”

“They’ll appreciate him when he’s gone and they’ve lost their chauffeur.”

“Now, Yaholo, that’s being unfair.  We don’t know all the details of their situation.  We shouldn’t judge them lest we be judged ourselves.”

Julian flopped back onto his bed.  “You being Christian today, Mom?”

“That is a philosophy that everyone can live by no matter where they learned it from.  Now get up, you slug.”

“Are you insulting one of the Goddess’ noblest creatures?  That seems disrespectful to me.”

“Well, you’re in a mood today.  Get up.  We’re leaving in twenty-five minutes.”

“Twenty—” Julian sat up in a panic.  “I need to shower.”

“ _Before_ your game?”

“Yeah.  I haven’t showered since yesterday morning.  I feel gross.”

“There’s nothing gross about the natural state of our bodies.”

“Yes, there is, Mom,” Julian said as he fell out of bed.  He ran for the bathroom and turned on the shower.  Will had better appreciate what he was going through today just so that he didn’t let him down.  By the time he finished his shower and got into his uniform his mother was giving him the five minute warning.  He looked in the mirror.  He didn’t have any make-up on.  But which was more important?  Eyeliner or breakfast?  His mother gave him the four minute warning.  Breakfast.  Julian hauled ass down the stairs and sat down at the kitchen table.  Had it been wiped down from yesterday?  His father set three hardboiled eggs, two pieces of toast, and a glass of orange juice in front of him.  The man watched over his son to make sure he didn’t eat too fast or choke on something.  And then they were out the door.

A lot of people assumed that since his parents were witches they used candles for all their lighting and still drove a horse and carriage.  Not so.  His parents had an SUV.  A really nice one too.  Julian tried calling Will again on his cell phone, just to make sure he didn’t need to be picked up.  He still didn’t answer.  It was half an hour till warm-up time.  Was the freak already at the field?  Probably.  He couldn’t really think of any event that might keep Will from a soccer game.

They arrived at the field with five minutes to spare.  The only people there were the two teams and the Calverton parents that had driven their sons.  Since the school was in the city, it didn’t make sense to make all the students travel all the way there just to be picked up by the bus that would take them back out here.  Of course, some of the students lived on the other side of the city, so they had a ways to travel, but most of the Calverton population that didn’t already live in the city lived south of it.  The equipment had come on the bus, and that same bus would be used to take them to their victory party, which always turned out to be a consolation party.  Julian thought he might bail out on that.  Well, it depended on what his friends wanted to do.  Since they had a game on a weekend, all of them agreed to come see him and Will play.  Well, except Liz, who had to work.

His parents gave him a quick blessing before sending him off to the field.  Julian watched them make their way into the stands.  He wondered why his mother had chosen a black velvet, long-sleeved dress to wear to the game.  Not only would it stand out, but it was hot and muggy.  With the way he was feeling today the storm would break right in the middle of their game.  But then, that would end the embarrassment early.  So, more than likely, the storm would hold off until after the game and then dump buckets of water on their heads.  Fabulous.  And if that wasn’t enough cheery good fun to look forward to, his entire team was staring at him.  So was the coach.  Was it really that big of a deal?  So he wasn’t wearing eyeliner.  It wasn’t that much of a change.  Well, actually, on game days he usually put on eye shadow too, just to weird out the other team.  So, he must be looking a bit plain today.

Hopefully Will wouldn’t have such a stupid response to it.  But, he wasn’t here.  No one had seen him and he wasn’t here yet.  Had he needed a ride?  Had they stranded him?  Then why didn’t he answer his calls?  He’d called both his cell phone and his house and hadn’t gotten an answer.  Maybe his parents really were bringing him.  But then, why wasn’t he here yet?  They had already started their warm-ups and the game was less than twenty minutes from starting.

“Holy crap,” Kyle Laffee murmured, “look who’s last to the game.”

The entire team turned to see Will arriving on the sidelines.  Julian stared at him.  He looked ill.  Will stared back at him.

“Where were you?” Julian asked, ignoring Will’s pallor for a moment to indulge his own foul mood.  “I didn’t even want to come today but I thought, ‘No, Will would never forgive me.  Mr. Always-One-Hundred-Percent-There.’  But, you’re late today.  What’s up?”

“So that’s what you look like.”

The team sniggered,

“Oh, shut-up,” Julian said.  “I hate being without make-up on.  I look so normal.”

“Like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.  It’s just not me.  It makes me feel unlike myself.  Like something is off with the world.”

And it was more than just the make-up.  Something was wrong.  The Universe kept telling him that, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.  Maybe it was Will.  He seemed a little off.  Will went into a lunge to stretch out his calf and pulled up short.  He grimaced and straightened his legs.  He began to stretch his calves standing almost straight up.  Not a highly effective way of doing that.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.  I just, slept in an awkward position, so I’m a little stiff.”

“Oh.”

Julian nodded but didn’t believe him.  He was injured somehow and trying to hide it.  That stupid little brat.  He was the kind of idiot who would rather play hurt than sit out a game.  And what would he do if he ended up permanently injuring himself and could never play again?  He never looked beyond the current game.  Outside of soccer he had already planned out the next fifteen years of his life, but during a game he could think of nothing else but his next move on the field.  Even if it was a friendly two on two game with him and Chris and Scott.  He had a hard time toning down his intensity, though he did manage not to hurt anyone.  Julian wanted pull him aside to ask him what really was wrong and try to convince him to take it easy if he was hurt, but he left with Jake to participate in the coin toss.

Julian sighed and moved to sit on the bench, where he started every game.  He was halfway to the seat when the coach said, “March, didn’t you hear me?  You’re starting up front.  On the left.”  He paused, butt poised over the bench, ready for a nice relaxing first half.  “Come again, Coach?”

“You’re in.  Now get on the field.  Hustle.”

Julian stood up and ran out onto the field.  So, all he had to do was not wear make-up and he was good enough to start?  He would have protested the discrimination if he hadn’t been too tired.  He better wake-up soon.  Why was he so lackadaisical today anyway?  The referee blew his whistle and Julian turned to watch the opening kick.  Jake passed it to Will.  Julian stood up straight.  Uh-oh.  What was that look on Will’s face?  Will hauled back and kicked the ball with everything he had.  It smacked another player right on the nose.  No way had then been an accident.  Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to prove that.  And even stranger, Will got into a shoving match.  The entire Calverton team stared in shock.  Will Harder didn’t get into fights on the field.  Ever.  They all watched as Will and the other boy were issued yellow cards.  At least he hadn’t been red carded and kicked off the field.  Then the game started again.

Julian did his best to keep the ball away from the other team.  Even if he couldn’t score, at least he could prevent the other team from scoring.  But, his worthless teammates weren’t much help.  When he was forced to pass the ball, they always had it stolen from them.  And their goalie couldn’t have stopped a beach ball.  At half time they were down three nothing and the team was feeling a little depressed.  Everyone except Will who appeared to be pissed.  He usually was more gracious concerning his sucky team, but today he was scowling and attacking the benches with a foot as he ignored the coach’s pep talk.  Julian had no idea what was wrong with him.  He was being unusually rough on the field, almost violent at times.  It wasn’t helping that he was playing hurt.  He didn’t really seem to be in bad shape, but he kept shifting his weight from foot to foot, which wasn’t a symptom of being perfectly fine like he kept claiming every time Julian ran by him looking concerned.

At last the game ended and the team could stop worrying about how badly they were going to get beaten.  5 to 1, that wasn’t too good.  At least Will had managed to score a goal, though he hadn’t seemed particularly happy about it.  He had smiled and high-fived a couple players near him, but he hadn’t run around the field like he usually did with the team pretending to bow down to him.  And as it turned out, it wasn’t just him and Will.  After the game when they met up with their friends, Chris looked sick too.  Had they all come down with something?  But Chris’ sickness didn’t appear to be physical in nature; there was something troubling his mind.  Julian could tell he didn’t want to go to the consolation party, so he offered up the team bus to his friends.  While he was listening to Laney complement some move he’d done on the field, both Chris and Will slipped off.  The rest of them went off to wait on the bus, but after a few minutes Will hadn’t joined them.

“Will’s not here yet and if the bus leaves he won’t have a way home.  His parents aren’t here.  I’ll make sure my parents find him.  I’ll see you guys at the Pizza Dome.”

Julian shouldered his bag and hopped off the bus.  He realized with a flash of guilt that he probably should have gone over to his parents before getting on the bus in the first place.  The crowd was thinning pretty rapidly, everyone seemed concerned about the storm.  He found them waiting by the bottom of the stands and gave them a shrug and a smile as he walked up to them.  His dad smiled and patted the top of his head.

“Maybe next time, kiddo.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“But you looked fantastic out there,” his mom said.

Julian smiled at her and rolled his eyes.  Like she would know if he was doing well or not.  He’d been playing soccer since he was six years old and she still didn’t understand the offside rule.  Though he supposed she could figure out that getting a ball in the net was a good thing, which he hadn’t managed to do.  It was so sweet that a woman who believed there was nothing in the world worth lying over was willing to lie to her son about his silly little soccer match.  Well, maybe she wasn’t lying.  Apparently even though he never scored a goal, he always looked like he was playing really well.  Everyone always said so.

“So, are we going to the consolation party?” his dad asked.

Julian shrugged.  “If you don’t mind.  I don’t know where Will has gone off to and Chris is going home.  So, I wouldn’t even mind going home too.  Though, I did tell the others I would be coming.  I just can’t figure out where Will is.”

Julian turned and looked around the grounds.  The stands were empty and the parking lot was now a line of cars waiting to turn onto the highway.  Calverton’s bus was at the back of the queue.  Had Will gotten on?  Had his parents come to get him?

“Did you see his parents?” Julian asked.

“Nope,” his dad answered.

“Though we did see a man in a business suit.  Imagine, coming to a soccer game in this heat in a business suit.  Strange.”

His mother shook her head and started for the parking lot.  Julian exchanged a look with his father.  Even her husband and son thought she was a little odd; how on earth did the rest of the world see her?  But Julian loved her for that.  He wouldn’t want her to be any other way.  They made their way to the only SUV left in the lot.  Julian got in the backseat headfirst, pushing his bag to the far side across the floor.  His parents got in and buckled their seatbelts.  His mother turned to look at him until he had his fastened as well.  The line had dwindled down to a car and the Calverton bus.  The highway wasn’t very busy, but it could be dangerous pulling out in front of a car going sixty miles an hour.  Usually faster.  No one ever paid attention to the speed limit on this stretch of road because the state police never patrolled it.

Julian leaned against the armrest of his chair and looked out the window at the black clouds building up to the south.  They turned onto the highway and the sky looked bluer.  It was going to be one of those fast moving storms that started out violently and then blew through pretty quickly leaving behind a lot of moisture and rain for the next day or two.  Julian looked over at his bag.  He considered calling Will again.  He was worried about him.  He hadn’t been himself all day long.  No, it went beyond that.  Will hadn’t just been behaving strangely or having a bad day, there was something seriously wrong with him.  And Chris too.  Maybe he should call him as well.

Julian leaned over to grab his bag, but his seatbelt held him back.  He strained against it for a second, but couldn’t reach the pocket that held his phone.  He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward.  Then three things happened at once.  His mother said, “Look out!” his father said, “I see him,” and the car swerved to the right.  Julian fell onto the floor.  He started to comment about his father’s driving but his mother gasped and he was slung forward against the front seats as his father slammed on the brakes.  Julian didn’t even get the chance to brace a single muscle before there was a deafening crash of breaking glass and the high-pitched squealing of metal ripping apart.  The car had come to such an abrupt halt that Julian had barely felt the impact against the front seats before he was slung back against the backseats.  His head had hit the plastic edge of the backseat and his legs didn’t really seem affected by the crash.  What hurt was his torso where there was a gap in the seats and it had continued to travel when the rest of his body had stopped.  He was probably going to have two striped bruises on his stomach and across his abdomen.  He shook his head.  It didn’t hurt too badly.  He seemed to be okay.  But the bouncing in the car had turned him around.  He’d been facing front when his father had slammed on the brakes, and now he was facing the tiny space in between the seat and the door.  He could hear the tinkling of tiny pieces of glass falling outside on the pavement.

Julian started to get up carefully, but he was stopped by something over his back.  He scooted forward and back, but couldn’t find any open space.  That was strange.  He lay back down on his side and slowly inched his body around until he was lying on his back.  It took a moment for his to brain to process what he was seeing.  It wasn’t the roof of the car.  It was something else.  Something large and hard.  He put up a hand and pushed on it.  He didn’t push very hard, but it was enough to figure out that no amount of struggling on his part would lift it.  The strange part was that it was very low, only about a foot above where he lay on the floor.  And it looked to be covering the entire car.  Which didn’t make any sense because if it was really that low, then the seats his parents were in...

Julian turned his head toward the front.  He saw the bottoms of his parents’ seats and the center console.  That still looked like the car he was familiar with.  But the metal thing was passing through the tops of the seats.  Right where his parents would be sitting.  He blinked and looked around in the dark space.  What was going on?  He looked directly up to see if he could see his father looking back at him, but the metal thing was in the way.  The seat cushion on the driver’s seat was damp on the side that he could see.  He looked over at his mother’s seat.  That cushion was damp too.  It was probably blood.  He heard an annoying keening sound.  He realized he was making it.  He was having trouble breathing.  He felt trapped.  _Felt_ trapped, he _was_ trapped.  Where were his parents?  They were in the seats his brain rationalized.  No, he chided himself, if they were there then they would be cut in half.  So, they must be somewhere else.  Maybe they were on top of the metal thing, trying to get him out.  Or what if they were trapped in between the roof of the car and the metal thing?  They needed help.

Julian awkwardly reached a hand back over his shoulder, feeling for his bag.  He kept knocking his elbow against the metal thing.  After a few minutes of not being able to get his phone he started to panic and felt his chest tighten.  He started to cry and had to struggle to breathe.  He forced himself to calm down and closed his eyes.  He took in a few deep breaths and then rolled in increments to his side again.  Now he could see what he was doing and managed to find his phone.  His hands were visibly shaking.  Who should he call?  Should he call his dad’s phone to see if he was okay?  He needed to let them know that he was underneath the metal thing.  But, his dad’s cell phone would be in the cup holder, and that was probably under the metal thing too.  And if they were trapped too, then they all needed outside help.  Who should he call?  _Ghostbusters!_   He closed his eyes.  What was wrong with him?  911.  Call 911.

Julian dialed the numbers and wondered how they would know where the call was coming from since it was a cell phone.  But, cell phones had GPS devices, right?  Is that how they worked?

“911 emergency.”

Julian started at the voice.  It hadn’t even rung.

“Hello?”

“Hi.  I need help.”

“Can I have your address?”

“I’m in a car.”

“One second.”  There was silence and then, “Are you on highway 17 at mile marker 38?”

“I’m on highway 17.”

“Were you in a car accident?”

“Yes.  I’m trapped in the car.”

“Emergency services are on their way now.  Are you injured?  Are you bleeding?”

“No.  I think I’m okay.  But, I can’t get out.”

“Is there anyone else in the car with you?”

Julian swallowed.  “My parents.  They’re up front.”

“Are they conscious?  Are they trapped too?”

“I—” Julian’s voice cracked and he started crying.  “I can’t see them.”

“Did they get out of the car?”

“They wouldn’t have had time,” Julian cried.  “They wouldn’t have had time to get out of the way of it.”  He lost his grip on the phone and screamed as he hit the metal thing with his hands.  He banged against the completely unyielding metal and struggled with his entire body, trying to get out.  But he couldn’t move much and felt like he was in a coffin.  He kept screaming and fighting until he had worn himself out.  Then he collapsed back onto the floor and sobbed.  He sounded like a small child the way he was wailing, and tears and mucous were covering his face.  Then he heard a voice by his ear.

“Sir?  Sir?  Can you hear me?  Are you still there?”

Still crying, Julian picked up the phone.

“I can’t get out,” he whimpered.  “I can’t see anything.  My parents must be really hurt.”

“It’s okay.  The paramedics and the fire department should be there shortly.  They’ll be able to get you out and take care of your parents.  Why don’t you tell me your name?”

“Julian.”  Julian sniffed.  “Julian March.  My mom calls me Yaholo.”

“Yah-holo?  That’s an interesting name.”

Julian leaned his head on the floor and focused on the dispatcher’s voice.  She sounded like a nice lady.  “It’s my middle name.  It’s Native American and means ‘one who yells.’  Or that’s what she says.  She wanted to name me that as a first name.  My dad said no.”

The dispatcher chuckled.  “You sound like you have nice parents.”

Julian stared at the back of the driver’s seat.  It was really dark.  He couldn’t see too much.  He closed his eyes.  “I think they’re dead,” he said.

“Well, why don’t we wait for the paramedics to get there, okay?  I just want to make sure you’re okay.  Does the car feel like it’s moving at all?”

“No.  It’s still.”

“Do you smell anything in the air?”

“Like what?”

“…Like gasoline.”

Julian froze.  He hadn’t noticed anything, but what if the car was on fire and was about to explode?  He shook his head even though she couldn’t see him.  “I don’t smell anything.”

“Okay.  Just hang tight for a few more minutes.  Help will be there shortly.”

Help did arrive shortly, but it was a long time before he got out of the car.  He could hear the sirens and the radios crackling and voices talking.  He could hear more squealing as metal was ripped and then a loud explosion.  There was frenzy of activity, but Julian managed to figure out that a tire had blown.  And then there was an ominous sound of something heavy rocking and the car shifted a little.  Then all activity stopped for what seemed to Julian to be a very long time.  He was almost afraid they had given up and gone home, but the dispatcher had assured him they hadn’t.  Then there was some pounding right by his head and more shrill squealing that nearly split his eardrums.  Then he was aware that a piece of the door behind his head had been pulled off.  He tilted his head back and saw an upside down firefighter.

“You okay, son?”

“No.”

“Get a backboard!” he called over his shoulder.

“No, just pull me out,” Julian said.  He reached his hands over his head and started to pull himself out.  The fireman grabbed onto his hands and helped him slide out.  When he was partway out the firefighter put his arms under Julian’s arms and clasped his hands on the boy’s chest.  He made sure he had a good grip and hauled him out of the demolished car.  It was more than surreal to get out of the dark car and stumble into the dark evening.  The storm was right on top of them, lightning and thunder announcing the impending arrival of a heavy rain.  Two paramedics were there to help him stand and ushered him away from the car asking questions right and left about whether there was anything wrong with him.  Once he was outside the car and a few feet back, all Julian could do was stare.

They had plowed into the back of a tracker-trailer that had been parked on the side of the road.  They had been going fast enough that the force of the impact sent the SUV sliding under the truck, the bed ripping right through the middle of the car.  That had been the metal thing: the bottom of the truck.  The entire car from the bottom of the windshield straight back had been annihilated.  If he hadn’t leaned over to get his bag when he did and fallen to the floor, he’d probably be like his parents.  He couldn’t see them, or any parts of them, but he knew they’d been severed in half.

Julian couldn’t feel his feet anymore and the paramedics grabbed onto to him to keep him from hitting the ground.  He was vaguely aware of being placed into the back of an ambulance and the rig kicking it into high gear.  The sirens were wailing and Julian could tell they were moving fast.  Why bother?  He wasn’t hurt and his parents were dead.  What was the rush?  A wave of nausea passed over Julian and he tried to turn his side.  The EMT closest to him helped him vomit into a plastic container.  He remained partially on his side with his forehead smashed into the stiff mattress of the gurney.  His head hurt.  No, it didn’t hurt, it was pain itself.  The light was hurting his eyes and the sounds were too loud.  He squirmed to get away from the pain, but couldn’t find any place where the lights and the sounds and the pain were any less.  He clutched at his head and started to cry.  He allowed himself to dissolve into hysterics; it was preventing him from thinking about anything.

When they arrived at the hospital a steady roar hit Julian’s ears when they opened the ambulance doors.  It was raining pretty heavily.  It must have started sometime on the way to the hospital.

“Whew, can you believe this?” he heard a voice shout, “It just started out of no where.”

Julian thought he’d walk when they got there, but he was in too much pain to even understand the words people kept saying to him.  He remained on the gurney as they rolled him into the hospital.  It was even brighter and louder in the emergency room.  He curled into a ball and begged anyone to make it stop.  It was a few more minutes of torture before he was rolled into a dark, quiet room and transferred to a new bed.  He tried to turn to his side, but textured hands kept him gently on his back.  Someone kept asking him questions and prodding around his belly.  It hurt where he had hit the two backseats.  Someone said something about drugs, but he didn’t pay attention.  He felt someone roll up one of the sleeves on his jersey and looked over in time to see a needle slide into his arm.  Before he could ask what it was he relaxed back against the bed.  His migraine instantly faded into a dull headache.  He could deal with that.  The textured hand raised one of his eyelids and shone a light into it and then away and then back again.  The same thing happened to the other eye.  That wasn’t helping the migraine to stay away.

“Son, can you tell me your name?”

“Julian March,” he grimaced.  “I’m 17, it’s Saturday April 30, 2005, the president is George W. Bush.  I was in a car accident.”

“Good.  I’m glad you’re lucid.  Can you tell me where anything hurts or feels unusual?”

“Just my stomach and abdomen.  I don’t think I really injured anything else.  I didn’t move very much.  I was on the floor of the car.”

“I don’t feel any hardness in your belly, and you were at the scene for a while so I don’t think you have any internal bleeding, but I may want to do a sonogram later.”

“Whatever.”

The doctor, at least that’s whom Julian assumed the textured hand and voice belonged to, spoke to someone else in the room.

“What is the status of the other passengers?”

The nurse mumbled something softly so Julian couldn’t hear it.  He opened his eyes and looked at the window.  The blinds were drawn but every now and then he could see a flash of lightning through it.

“They’re dead, right?” Julian asked.  “My parents.  They were in the front seat.  The truck went right through them.  There’s no way they’re alive.”

The nurse came forward and held his hand in hers.  Her hand was warm, dry, and little bit rough.  “I’m sorry.  Your parents didn’t survive the accident.”  She paused.  “Is there someone we can contact?  A family member?”

Julian shook his head.  “No family lives within 2000 miles of here.”

The nurse squeezed his hand.  “Is there anyone I can call for you?  I’m afraid I will have to contact social services; you are still a minor.”

Wasn’t Will’s mother a lawyer?  Maybe she could work something out.  “Mrs. Harder,” he said.  He closed his eyes, trying to think.  “Marilyn.  Marilyn Harder.  Her phone number should be in my cell phone under the name ‘Will.’  Call them.”

“I’ll send someone to see if your belongings were brought with you.  I’ll stay here with you.”

“It’s okay,” Julian said, his voice sounding flat and dead even to his own ears.  “You can go check.  I’ll just stay here.  My headache is getting better, but I’d like to just be alone for a little while.”

“Okay.  The nurse patted his hand.  “But if you need something, here’s the call button.  We’ll come immediately.  I’ll try to arrange for a…someone to come talk to you.”

A psychologist.  That’s what she hadn’t said.  She left the room and Julian turned onto his side.  He stared at the window and watched the lightning become less frequent.  Before too long it stopped all together.  It was still raining, but the storm must have blown itself out.  Had anyone let Cornelius out?  He rolled onto his back.  The room wasn’t as dark as it had seemed when he was first brought in.  About half the fluorescent lights on half the room were on.  That made sense.  The doctor wouldn’t put a needle in his arm in the dark.  That would be silly.  There was a knock at the door.  Julian turned to look at the wooden rectangle.  He was amazed when it opened.

He recognized Scott at once.  Who was that woman?  His mother?  No, he was pretty sure that was Chris’ mother.  Behind them came Chris, and Scott’s mother.  They shuffled quietly into the room, trying not to disturb him.  Or maybe they were too nervous to get too close to him.  Did they think he was weird?  Like all the people in school?  Like his teammates?  Will didn’t think he was weird.  Where was Will?  Had Will been in the tractor-trailer?  Was he dead too?  Had that dose of morphine been a little too high?  Julian thought about sitting up, but thought he might throw up if he did, so he remained lying down.  He faced them with what he hoped were alert-looking eyes.

“Where’s Mrs. Harder?” he asked.

It was the only question that made sense to him.  She was the one he had asked for.  Why were they here?

“She’s coming, dear,” Mrs. Ramsey said, stepping forward.  “When she got the call, she couldn’t find Will.  So, she called us looking for the boys and told us what happened.  We came here as soon as we could.”  She put her hand to her mouth and tears welled up in her eyes.  “Oh, Julian, I’m so sorry.”

Julian didn’t know how to respond.  The trained response was, “That’s okay,” but that seemed inappropriate.  It wasn’t okay.  But, it wasn’t her fault.  What should he say?

“Thank you?” he murmured.

Everyone was standing around awkwardly.  No one knew what to say or do.  Why had they come?  They were making this more difficult.  That wasn’t their fault, but he didn’t care.  He wanted them to leave.  The door opened again and Mr. Harder held it open for his wife.  Will pushed past her and looked like he was going to run up to him, but stopped when he saw everybody in the room.  He stood still and awkward like everyone else.  He wanted everyone to leave.  He wanted them all to go away.  They couldn’t do anything for him.  They couldn’t make him feel better.

“Julian.”

Julian looked up at Will’s voice.  It hadn’t sounded like Will.  Well, it had; only Will when they had been children.  He looked like he might need to sit down before he fell down.  In fact, everyone in the room was looking as shell-shocked as he felt.  But had _they_ spent over an hour trapped in a car beside the remnants of their parents this evening?  Probably not.  So, they should all just get out.  The doctor came into the room and looked surprised to see so many people.

“Um, I’m not so sure having this many visitors right now is a good idea.  Perhaps—”

“Is he okay?” Will asked.  “Can we take him home?”

“I’m afraid we can’t release him to your family, sweetie,” said a plump nurse.  Julian was pretty sure she had been the one who had held his hand.

“Why not?” Will demanded.

“Honey,” his mother said, resting her hands on his shoulders, “he’s a minor.  They can’t release him to someone who’s not legally responsible for him.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable if they were willing to do something like that anyway.”

“But where’s he gonna go?  What—what’s going on?  What’s going to happen?”

“Geez, Will,” Julian said dully, “it’s not like it’s happening to you.”

Will turned a look on him that made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut.  Will turned away from him and stared at the floor.

“Well, nothing has to be decided tonight,” the doctor cut in.  “It was a very serious collision and I’m still worried about latent injuries that we maybe haven’t seen yet.  I’m going to keep him overnight for observation.  It’s been a very stressful evening as well and I think it would be best if he could get some rest.  We’ll see to contacting his relatives.  You can—”

“But—” Will started and was silenced by a sharp squeeze on the shoulder from his mother.

“Perhaps you can stop by tomorrow during visiting hours.  We promise we’ll look after him and give him any attention or care he may need during this tragic time.”

“Um, he’s in the room,” Julian muttered.

Everyone kind of shuffled their feet and finally Mrs. Ramsey walked over to the bed and gave him a hug.  “I’m so sorry, Julian.  You know we’re here for you.  Anything you need.”

He nodded tightly.  “Thank you.”

The other two mothers gave him a hug as well and Scott and Chris awkwardly patted his arm.  Was it because there were people in the room?  Or were they really not that close?  Did the rules of heterosexual American teenagers win out over their friendship?  He looked to Will.  Will actually took his hand, and he was the only one who didn’t try to give him a comforting smile.  He looked kind of blank, and that was unsettling.  The doctor and nurse herded them out of the room and Julian was left alone.  He suddenly wished for them to come back, awkward and uncomfortable as it was, it was better than this.

Julian sat up slowly.  He didn’t feel as sick as he thought he would.  He let his legs slide off the bed and dropped his feet to the floor.  He immediately snatched them back up.  The floor was cold.  He looked down.  They’d taken off his cleats, socks, and shin guards.  Or had he kicked them off while he was struggling in the car?  He couldn’t remember.  He eased his feet onto the floor, allowing them to get used to the chilly tiles.  He walked over to the window.  He didn’t open the blinds; he just stared at the slats.  His thoughts echoed Will’s questions.  Where is he going to go?  What’s going on?  What’s going to happen?  He couldn’t quite get his brain to wrap around the fact that his parents were dead.  It had happened too quickly.  You couldn’t just go from having parents one second and literally not having them the next.  He leaned on the window sill and let out a breath that seemed like it was full of foul air.

“Julian?”

He didn’t have to turn around.  Will had snuck back into the room.  Julian dropped to his knees.

“Will, I don’t feel good.”

Will crossed the room and stood beside him.  He felt a hand on his head.  He turned into the touch and found Will’s leg.  He grabbed onto it and hugged it, afraid to let it go.  He was horrified when Will pulled him gently off his leg.  Had he made him so uncomfortable with his teasing that even now he didn’t want to be touched by him?  Then Will dropped to the floor beside him and pulled him close.  He pressed the side of Julian’s face to his shoulder and tucked his head under his chin.  Julian wrapped his arms around his friend and let out a sudden sob.  Will held him tightly, almost painfully, a promise that he wouldn’t let go any time soon.  At least not by choice.  Julian started crying again.  He wasn’t embarrassed to cry in front of his friend.  Not over this.

“God, Will, I’m an orphan.  What the hell?  How can I be an orphan?  Where are my parents?”

“I don’t know,” Will said.  His voice was shaking.  “But you’re not alone.”

“But I’m an orphan!  I’m almost an adult, but I don’t have parents.  How can I not have parents?  What the hell?!”  He screamed and squeezed Will even tighter.  He might be hurting him, but he couldn’t care less.  He couldn’t care less about anyone else’s problems.  Will and Chris had both had bad days today.  And Scott was upset with his perfect life.  He didn’t care.  Screw them all.  His parents were gone.  They were never going to his high school graduation.  They weren’t going to help him move into his college dorm.  They weren’t going to be there for his initiation into the craft or meet his wife or see their grandchildren.  They were just gone.  Already decomposing where they were smudged across a tractor-trailer on highway 17 at mile marker 38.  Had they moved the wreck?  Or was it being investigated?  Who cared?  They were gone.  Forever.  There was no hand holding or tearful goodbyes.  There were just pieces left.  Unrecognizable pieces.

He felt hands on his back.  He opened his eyes.  He was still on the floor in Will’s arms, and Chris and Scott had come back into the room.  Their cheeks were streaked with tear tracks and they each had a hand on his back.  He felt a little comforted.  His friends were here for him.  Even if they couldn’t understand it, they were willing to go through it with him.  His sobs lessened and soon he was calm again.  He felt tired and wanted to go to sleep.  Feeling safe in his friends’ hands, he slept.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunday, May 1, 2005

 

Julian

 

Julian opened his eyes slowly, a little confused by the darkness.  His room was on the east side of the house, so even if it was overcast, it should be a bit brighter than this.  He turned his head and stared at the drop-tile ceiling.  This wasn't his bedroom.  He glanced around.  This was a hospital room.  He closed his eyes.  His parents had died yesterday.

Julian brought one hand to his forehead to ward off the headache.  It came in a rush and hit him like someone had driven a long nail right through his head.  He clenched his teeth together and the enamel made squeaking sounds as it gnashed together.  His brow furrowed and he could feel his lips quiver.  The sob burst out of his throat, raw, harsh, and undignified.  Several more followed and he moved his hand from head to his mouth to stifle the noise he was making.  He continued to cry into his hand and his forehead started to hurt from being scrunched so much.  That at least helped him become aware that the pain in his head had passed.  He forced himself to take in a breath and hold it.  He choked on it as he let it out, but sucked in another and held it longer this time.  In increments he was able to calm himself down.  Finally he was breathing normally again with the tears drying on his face.

A wave of unpleasantness washed over him.  It wasn’t exactly nausea, but it didn't feel good.  The icky feeling had also brought with it a niggling worm of fear.  What was he supposed to do about the hospital bill?  Did his insurance cover it?  Was he still covered under his parents’ insurance even though they technically relinquished it when they died?  Did he have to talk to the police about the accident?  Did he have to make arrangements for their remains?  Was there even anything left to claim?

His parents were the ones who were supposed to take care of stuff like this.  Julian let out a short, harsh laugh.  But that was the point, right?  His parents weren’t here to take care of it.  He had to do it.  Maybe Mrs. Harder would do it.  It was amazing; while he had had parents he’d thought he was so self-sufficient, mature, and responsible, and now that he didn’t have any, he was desperate for an adult to come in and take care of everything for him. Why did he feel so much more like a child now?  So incredibly helpless and naïve?  He wasn’t totally ill-equipped to go out into the world on his own, right?  Maybe not, but he certainly didn’t want to.

Julian wiped off his face as the door to his room opened.  A plump nurse—not the one from last night, but another one—came into the room with a tight smile.  People had been giving him that smile since he’d recovered from his migraine and could see faces again.  They were trying to be friendly, but they also wanted to show that they knew what he was going through, the poor thing.  Why were all the nurses plump?  Didn’t they do a lot of walking in hospitals?  It was a silly thing to get upset over.  Maybe he was in that phase of grief, though he was fairly certain he’d experienced all the phases at some point last night.  Maybe the first few hours didn’t count and reactions were anything goes.  He knew he just had to wait for the psychologist to come in and explain it all to him.  Then he could go about expressing his emotions once the doctor told him what was appropriate.  Fuck that.

He jerked his arm away from the nurse as she messed with his IV.  She gave him a slightly shocked and irritated look.  He wasn’t happy.  The last thing he remembered was being safe with his friends, and now he was alone in some hospital room with a fat nurse trying to rip tubing out of his arm.  When had they put the damn thing in?  While he’d been asleep?  He held still this time as the nurse pulled it out.  It hurt a lot.  She must have been talking since she came into the room, but his ears were ringing.  Was that an effect of the crash?

“I can’t hear you,” he said.

He heard his voice cut through the ringing, and it stopped.  He could hear the hush of the air conditioner and the noises the nurse was making as she pushed the IV stand away.

“You can’t hear me?” she asked.

He shook his head.  “I can now.  Though, if I couldn’t hear you, why did you ask me if I could?”

The nurse gave him a look.  “Son, I know you are going through an extremely difficult time right now, but you need to remember that we’re here to help you.  We’re not trying to make things difficult or painful.”

“I know,” Julian groused.  “But aren’t I allowed to be angry for no reason?  Isn’t that a phase or something?”

“I suppose so.  So, if you want to be angry, I’ll send in the shrink now.”

Julian was surprised to hear the nurse call the psychologist a shrink.  Wasn’t that a tad unprofessional?  She left the room and Julian sat up stiffly.  His body was aching everywhere, not just where he’d injured his torso.  He also became aware that he was in a hospital gown.  What the hell happened last night?  He’d been fully clothed, unattached to medical equipment, and with his friends.  After he’d fallen asleep he’d been undressed, put in bed, and hooked up to an IV.  How had he slept through all that?  Had he lost consciousness?  How many days had passed since the accident?  The door opened again and a young, pretty-ish woman with her hair pulled back in a severe bun and 1940's style glasses came into the room.  She was wearing a doctor’s coat over a conservative grey skirt suit.

“Good morning, Julian,” she said in a calm voice.  “I’m Dr. Gorman.”

She pulled up a chair and sat near his bed.  She crossed her legs and placed her hands on top of a folder.  She looked at him from behind her glasses and then seemed to remember she was dealing with a human being.  She gave him a tight smile.  Julian tried not to make a face.  Weren’t psychologists supposed to be good with people?  He didn’t respond to her salutation.

“I know it seems like a silly question, but how are you feeling today?” she asked.

He took in a breath to say “fine,” but changed his mind.  “Tired.  Scared.  But I don’t feel sad.  Not like I should.”

“There is no ‘should,’ Julian.  Everyone experiences pain differently and grieves differently as well.  Don’t think anything you feel—or don’t feel for that matter—makes you a bad person.  Or like you’re doing it wrong.  You can only feel the way you feel.”

That made sense.  “But, my parents died.  Shouldn’t I be sad that they're gone because I love them and not because I’m worried about what will happen to me?”

Dr. Gorman smiled in a way that was slightly more akin to a human.  “It happened so fast.  Even though you’re 17, your parents took care of a lot more than you ever realized.  So, now that you’re being faced with that, it’s overwhelming.  It’s frightening.  And instinct has taught us to worry about ourselves first, especially superseding matters that are beyond our control.  You can’t do anything to bring your parents back.  Thus, there is no sense in worrying about them.  But you, on the other hand, have a lot of decisions to make now.  And a lot of choices to deal with.  But, you’re not alone in this.  You realize this, right?”

Julian nodded.

“Good.  I didn’t want to have to point out that I found you and your friends piled together like a litter of puppies on the floor last night.  That might be a little embarrassing to your masculine sensibilities.”

She gave him a teasing smile and went from pretty-ish to pretty.  Julian repressed his smile and refused to blush.  She probably managed to figure out that he was attempting both.

“So, this whole instinct thing about worrying about myself, is that part of denial?”

Her smile faded and she went back to serious doctor.  “The well known five stages of grief aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. Yes, people do experience those emotions, but it’s not like there are clearly defined stages that everyone goes through.  You can’t expect to have a list and check off those five things and expect to be done and better at the end of it.  For one thing, not everyone experiences all five stages.  For another, everyone takes different lengths of time to deal with their emotions.  The five stages are a nice generalization, but no psychiatrist worth her salt will tell you to follow this step-by-step program for dealing with your grief.”

“So, I have to deal with it the best I can.  And if it looks like I’m having trouble with that, that’s where you step in.”

“No, that’s where your friends and family step in.  I’m here to be someone to listen.  Someone that you can express yourself to without fear of judgment or misunderstanding.  A really easy way for someone to work through their feelings is to talk out loud with themselves, but most people think that they are strange for doing that.  So, they go to a psychologist instead.”

“Are you a psychologist or a psychiatrist?”

“A psychiatrist.  Why?”

“So, you can give me drugs if I need them?”

“I hope it won’t come to that, but yes.”

“Hmm.”  Julian crossed his arms, and then winced as they settled on his bruised abdomen.  Dr. Gorman wasn’t being very comforting.  Wasn’t she supposed to tell him that he wasn’t going to go off the deep end and need drugs?  That he was going to be fine?  She really could have used a bedside manner course in shrink school.

There was a knock at the door and another person came into the room.  He was getting a lot of traffic this morning.  This was a black woman wearing a bargain store business suit and carrying a file with a lot of paperwork in it.  Julian had never seen a social worker in real life, only on TV, but they looked remarkably similar.

“Hello, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I really need to speak with Julian now.”

Dr. Gorman stood up and pushed her glasses up her nose with a finger.  “I understand.”  She pulled a business card out of her folder and handed it to Julian.  “Hang onto that.  If you need to talk to someone, please give me a call.  I would actually like to meet with you again sometime this week.  You can make an appointment with the hospital before you’re discharged.”

Julian took the card and fiddled with it as he watched her leave.  Then he looked back at the social worker.  She extended her hand and gave him a firm handshake.

“My name is Marsha Blake.  I work for social services.  I’ve been trying to find some contact information for your family, but I’m unable to locate anyone who’s related to you by blood.  I’ve found work colleagues and from their emergency contacts I’ve found members of your parents’…church.  But—”

“Coven,” Julian interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not a church.  It’s a coven.”

The woman cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable.  “Regardless, they don’t know anything about your relatives.  Do your parents have any aliases?”

“They changed their names when their parents disowned them.  They didn’t like my parents’ religion any more than you do.”

The woman pursed her lips.  “Do you know how to contact them?”

“Yeah.  I think my parents kept up with where they are in the country.  Both sets of grandparents are still alive and I have six uncles and five aunts.  Or maybe it’s five uncles and six aunts.  But none of them would be interested in me.  When my parents turned their backs on the religion they were raised in, their families turned their backs on them.  Some of them might not even know that I was born.”

“I see.”  The woman scribbled a few things in her file.  “It really is our duty to contact them since you’re still a minor.  If they do choose not to take responsibility for you, then you’d become a ward of the state.  Would you like to contact them yourself, or would it be easier for you to have a third party involved?”

“Why can’t you just give me to whomever my parents wanted me to go to?”

“Because unfortunately,” Mrs. Harder said as she strode in the room, “your parents hadn’t updated their will in several years.  They still have your godfather listed as the person to become your guardian.”

She stuck her hand out to the social worker and she stood up to shake her hand, somewhat taken aback.  It was clear to see that Mrs. Harder was on a whole other level from Ms. Blake.  Mrs. Harder’s suit was tailored and stylish with hair and make-up to match.  She’d been over thirty when she’d had Will, but you couldn’t tell by looking at her.  Not just from her youthful appearance, but from her strong presence and intimidating confidence.  Julian smiled.  Mrs. Harder would show that stupid social worker what’s what.

Before she did that, however, she walked over to Julian and squeezed him tightly to her bosom.  He felt a little embarrassed, and tried to focus on the maternal sentiment behind the action and not what his seventeen year old body was getting all excited for even under such horrible circumstances as this.  He mentally growled at his body to behave itself; his parents had just died for crying out loud!

“Oh, Julian, how are you this morning?  You were completely exhausted last night.  After one of the doctor’s came out and told us our sons were all back in the room, we went in to get them and you were basically passed out in Will’s arms.  You didn’t even wake up when they moved you to the bed.”

“Yeah, I guess I really did need some rest.  Aside from being sore, physically I’m much better than I was last night.  I’m just, still trying to wrap my head around all this.”

He was trying to wrap his head around his parents’ death for sure, but at the moment he was confused by Mrs. Harder’s behavior.  He knew she was a mother…but he didn’t know she could act like one.  He was certain if Will had been here he would have pulled a scalpel on her and demanded to know where his real mother was.

“That’s understandable.  Do you feel up to talking about some of the legal matters?  I know it’s difficult, but you will be discharged today and I’d like to have it squared away where you’ll be going.”

“Where I’ll be going?”  This sounded a bit more like the no-nonsense Mrs. Harder he was familiar with.

“Excuse me, but aside from Marilyn Harder, who are you?” asked the social worker.

“I’m Mr. March’s legal representation.  I’ve already taken the liberty of pulling the Marches’ wills, but they are quite outdated.  Julian’s godfather, Zo Raimi, died a few years back, so he is, of course, unable to perform his duty of becoming Julian’s legal guardian.  Now, I’ve also looked into the Marches’ financial situation and I already know about his extended family situation, so I believe the best course of action would be for Julian to file a petition for emancipation.  He’ll be 18 in November anyway and that way everything his parents left him won’t need to have an executor look after it, but can pass directly to him.  That is, if emancipation is something you’d like to pursue,” she said, finally drawing a breath and looking at Julian.

He stared blankly and then nodded.  “Uh, yeah.  I didn’t even think about that.  But, if you can help me get my finances in order, I feel that I’d be capable of looking after them.”

“That is something I can do.”

“But,” Ms. Blake broke in, “even if you file for a petition today, which you can’t since it’s Sunday, it could take up to sixty days to even get a hearing.  He needs someone to look after him right now.  Not just for legal reasons, but because of what he’s been through.”

“Yes, I understand that.  Yesterday when I was at his house—”

“Excuse me, you went into his home?”

“Yes, I’m also a family friend.  My son took care of their dog—”

“Oh, good.  Someone remembered Cornelius,” Julian said, mostly to himself.

“And I took the liberty of looking up who was in charge of their legal matters so that I could help Julian make this transition as smoothly as possible.”  She dug around in her briefcase.  “I also picked this up.”  She tossed a flowery address book onto the hospital bed.

Julian recognized it.  It was his mother’s address book.  His grandparents’ contact information was in there.  He gave Mrs. Harder a look.

“And what would you like me to do with this, knowing about my ‘extended family situation?’”

“You need to call them.  They deserve to know what happened to their children.”

“They don’t care!” Julian shouted, surprised at how quickly he’d raised his voice.  “They basically considered them dead when they disowned them!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, Julian March.”

Julian gulped and shrank back.  Mrs. Harder was looking at him with cool, blue eyes.  It was no wonder she rarely lost a case with a stare like that.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“It’s okay.  Now, Ms. Blake and I are going to step into her office and discuss what to do with you.”

“Um…thanks.”

Mrs. Harder leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll take care of you.  You’ve done so much for Will over the years.”

Oh, so she was aware of that?  He just smiled and refrained from wiping the wetness off his forehead.  Ms. Blake seemed a little shell-shocked, but followed Mrs. Harder into the hall.  It really was great to have such a pushy, ballsy, high class lawyer on his side, but she was scary.  He was a little concerned about being under her care for the next…however long it took.  How did Will do it?  How was he not even more messed up than he already was?

And now he was alone with the address book.  Well, it’s not like he had to do anything about it now, right?  He couldn’t make long distant phone calls on the hospital phone.  Unless his cell phone was in the room.  Man, why did he think about that?  He sighed and looked over the side of his bed, wincing with every muscle he moved.  There was a bag stuffed under the bed and he pulled it out.  Sitting up was a bit harder than it should have been, but he managed to do it in three tries.  He dug around in the bag and found his soccer kit and shoes.  His cell phone was at the bottom of the bag.  It must have come with him because he’d been clutching it when they’d pulled him out of the SUV.  He flipped it open with one eye closed.  The battery was still charged.  Damn.  Julian sighed and opened the address book.  He flipped slowly through the pages until he found the name of his mother’s parents written in her neat, flowing handwriting.  They apparently lived in Boise, Idaho.  He didn’t know people actually lived in Idaho.  It took a full five minutes to put the numbers into the phone and then another couple minutes to push the “talk” button.  The outgoing call sound buzzed deafeningly in his ears. What would he do if they actually picked up?  What was he going to say to them?  Why hadn’t he planned this out first?

“Hello.”

“Uh!  Hello!” Julian shouted, his nerves straining out of his body.

“You’ve reached Bob and Christine Lowell.  We’re unable to take your call at this time.  Please leave a message after the beep and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.  Have a great day!”

There was a beeping sound in his ear.  It had been a recording.  But, that meant it was recording silence now.  He should hang up.  But, if he did, there would still be a record of his call, and they might have caller ID.  But, that wouldn’t pick up a cell phone number would it?  The silence was dragging on too long.

“Um, hi.  Sorry about that.  Um…this is bad to leave this as message, I know.  But in a way, it’s easier for me.  My name is Julian March.  I’m your grandson.  Uh, Miranda’s son.  I know we haven’t been in touch lately, and I’m sorry that I’m only calling now with bad news.  Miranda, my mom.  And my dad.  They were in a car accident yesterday.  They didn’t survive.  I just thought, you would want to know.  I’m sorry that’s the reason I’m calling.  Um.  Bye.”

Julian slammed the phone shut and let out a breath.  That had sucked.  He realized he hadn’t even left them contact information for reaching him, which would have been best.  Then they could decide if they wanted to have anything to do with him and call him back if they felt like it.  Now he was more or less obligated to call them again.  He groaned.  Well, he had dodged a bullet with the answering machine, so maybe he should call his father’s parents.  He could deal with one set of grandparents, right?  He flipped further in the book until he found the name Stamatelopoulos running off the page.  His father’s side of the family was Greek.  This time he dialed the number quickly so that he definitely couldn’t chicken out.  It rang and rang and rang.  No one picked up.  After ten rings, Julian was going to hang up, but the machine kicked in.

“ _Yassou_!  This is Nik and Diane!  If the machine picked up we must really be out.  Or at least out in the backyard having a barbeque.  You should stop by and see if we are because the more the merrier.  In fact, why aren’t you over?  Don’t leave a message, stop on by!  _Oompah_!”

The machine beeped.  Julian was caught a little off guard.  Well, at least his father had come by his oddity honestly.  He was recording silence again.  Damn.  What did he say?

“ _Pappous_ , _Yia-Yia_ —”  He was surprised when the Greek nicknames for grandfather and grandmother came out.  It must have been the message they left; it stirred his repressed Greek blood.  “It’s your grandson, Julian.  I’m afraid I have some bad news.  My father, Nikolas, was in a car accident yesterday.  My mother too.  They died.”  Julian winced; that was a little blunt.  “I’m sorry to leave you a message like this.  Um, but I didn’t want to put it off.  Um, I thought you should know.”

He hung up.  Lame.  Another lame call.  Who wanted a message like that?  But what could he do?  They weren’t home.  And why weren’t they home?  It was a Sunday and they were grandparents.  Granted, both sets had had their children young, and Julian’s parents were the oldest in both families.  And they’d had Julian when they were 18, so his grandparents were still relatively young.  They weren’t even official senior citizens yet.  Maybe they were out doing stuff.  With their other grandchildren.

Well, that was fine.  Now he could tell people that he had at least contacted his grandparents and told them about the accident.  So, they wouldn’t be on him for that, and it would just be sad that they didn’t attempt to get a hold of him.  Never mind that he hadn’t told either set _how_ to get a hold of him.  If they really wanted to, they could find a way.  The door to his room opened again.

“Geez, am I Mr. Popular or what?”

The doctor blinked at him like he wasn’t used to patients talking or something.  Then he looked at his clipboard and nodded to himself.  He set it on the bed and pushed gently on Julian’s shoulder.

“Can you lean back please?”

Julian lay down and the doctor poked and prodded around his belly.  He tried not to wince, but he was really sore.  Then the doctor moved down to his abdomen and poked around down there.  When he was done he patted Julian on the arm.

“Well, I’m satisfied that there are no internal injuries.  I just think you got bruised pretty badly.  More than likely those bruises on your stomach are going to go through a wonderful color display over the next couple weeks.  But, if the bruising doesn’t appear to fade after a while or becomes some color that doesn’t look right to you, come back here immediately.  Also, pay attention to your body.  If in a few weeks it still feels a little off or funny, listen to it, okay?  Come get checked out.  Especially if you notice any dizzy spells or persistent headaches.  The bump on your head appeared to be just that, a superficial contusion with a little swelling, which is why I didn’t go ahead with an MRI scan.  But, just in case, be cognizant of how you feel, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So, I think you’re ready to be released today.  I know it doesn’t seem right to say you were lucky, but you are lucky for coming out of that crash with as little injury as you did.”

Julian nodded.  “I know.  It was luck.  I didn’t have my seatbelt on.”

“Hmm,” the doctor frowned.  “Don’t go broadcasting that information around, alright?”

Julian smiled.  “I won’t.”

The doctor gave him another pat on the arm and turned to leave.

“Um, Doctor…?”

He turned back.  “Yes?”

“I know you probably don’t know because it’s not your job to handle the money, but do you know if health insurance covers people on the policy even though the policy holder is dead?”

“I’m not sure, son.  But, I’ll go find someone to answer that question for you right away.  I’ll make sure you’re taken care of before I see to my next patient.”

“Thanks.”

The doctor left and Julian was feeling a little pitied.  Everybody was going out of their way to make sure he was taken care of.  That was nice of them.  He supposed.  He sat up to look through the bag of his belongings again.  He didn’t really want to put on his dirty uniform, but like heck if he was walking out of here in a hospital gown.  Maybe he should wait for Mrs. Harder to come back.  Or he could call Will and see if he could bring him some clothes.  What time was it anyway?  He glanced at the clock on his phone.  It was almost one o’clock.  They must have let him sleep in pretty late.  Or maybe they’d been poking and prodding him all morning and he hadn’t been aware of it.  Either way, Will should be up.  He dialed Will’s cell number from memory.  It rang several times and then Will answered with a bit of urgency to his tone.

“Hello!”

“Ah, Will?”

“Yeah, um…”

“It’s Julian.”

“Oh, Julian.  Hey.  Sorry, I didn’t look at the screen before I answered.”

“So, what, if you had seen it was me you wouldn’t have answered?” he asked lightly.

“Well, naturally.”

Julian sighed quietly to himself.  It was their normal interaction.  Hopefully they would be able to make it through this ordeal without their relationship turning all weird.

“Well, screw you.  Anyway, I was wondering if you could bring me some clothes so I can leave the hospital.  Maybe something of yours so I’ll rip out of the shirt like I’m full of muscles or something.”

Will laughed, but it sounded like there was something caught in his throat.  “You wish.  But, last night we got some of your things and brought them to our house.  My mom was very optimistic that you would be released to us.  I think she brought some clothes with her.  Isn’t she at the hospital?”

“Yeah, she came.  She’s harassing the social worker right now.  Or at least, someone who looks like her came.  I mean, she gave me a kiss on the forehead.  It was very maternal and weird.”

Will laughed again.  “I know, sometimes she surprises you like that.  She can act like a mother from time to time.”

“So, where are you?”

“Um.  I took care of Cornelius.”

“Thanks.  I was afraid no one would remember him.”

“Yeah, he’s fine.  A little lonely.  He misses you.  So, I’ll bring him over later and I’ll see you at the house, okay?”

“Yeah, if your mom can—”

“I’m sure she can.  I’ll see you tonight.  Bye.”

Julian stared at his phone.  Will had hung up.  That was strange.  What was wrong with that boy?  He didn’t have long to ponder it though, Mrs. Harder came back into the room looking very triumphant.  The social worker looked a little pissed and beaten.

“Okay, Julian,” she said, a little snippy.  “We’ve decided that we’ll allow the Harders to gain temporary guardianship over you, but I must insist that we try to contact some of your family.”

“I already called them,” he said holding up his cell phone.  “I got the answering machine.  So, I left a message.”

“You left a message?” Mrs. Harder asked, incredulous.

“What did you say?” the social worker asked, just as appalled.

“Well, I phrased it as carefully as I could.  Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Mrs. Harder said with a wave of her hand.  “They were notified and they should be thankful for that.  Here.”  She dropped a bag onto the bed.  “It’s some clothes for you.  I’ll take you home and make Rich make us something for lunch.  One of his specialties.”

“Not that Hungarian goulash again.”

“Oh, no.  Something good this time.  I promise.  Well, get dressed and I’m going to take care of all your paperwork and the boring stuff.”

The bill, Julian realized.

“And I believe a nurse has to come in here and wheel you out in a wheelchair, so I’ll meet you by the front entrance with the car.  Don’t dawdle now.  Ms. Blake.”

Mrs. Harder held the door open for the social worker and the lady pursed her lips together as she glared at the lawyer and left the room.  Mrs. Harder had that effect on people.  She gave him a wink as she left the room.  Julian pulled on the jeans and T-shirt Will must have picked out for him and was thankful he’d remembered underwear too.  Though it was embarrassing to have someone else handle your underwear, even your best friend.  He shoved everything he’d worn yesterday into the bag and slipped on the flip-flops provided for him.  They had to be Will’s dad’s.  He didn’t own any flip-flops and Will was a size and a half smaller than him.  Either they had forgotten shoes at his house or Will had thought that something easy to put on would be best.

He sat on the edge of the bed for few minutes, picking the fuzzies off the sheet.  Then a candy striper younger than he was came into the room with a wheelchair.  Were they seriously going to wheel him out of here?  Apparently so.  He felt silly being pushed through the halls by a tiny, little candy striper, but policy was policy.  For better or worse.  He knew that much about politics.  True to her word Mrs. Harder was waiting at the entrance in her sporty four door sedan.  He thanked the candy striper for the ride and stepped outside into the chilly air.  The storm had cooled down the temperature quite a bit and it was still drizzling a little.  What a crap day.  Julian slid into the passenger seat.  As much as they had been fine in the hospital room was how awkward the car ride was.  It was fifteen minutes of silence.  For some reason, neither of them could think of anything to say.  And it was rare for Mrs. Harder to be speechless.

Once they arrived at the house, things didn’t get any better.  Instead of being greeted by Will and Cornelius, only Mr. Harder was at home.  He made them all very elaborate Paninis with his new Panini press he’d picked up on a business trip to New York.  Mr. Harder always brought back the weirdest things and they rarely had anything to do with the city or region of the country he’d visited.  At least this time he’d brought back something useful.  It was a good sandwich, but an awkward lunch.  Nobody really talked during the whole meal.  Where the hell was Will?

Afterwards Julian sat in the den and watched TV.  The Harders had satellite TV.  It was amazing: he went from no channels to 883.  How on earth did one decide what to watch?  After two episodes of “Will & Grace” reruns, Will came home with Cornelius.  The dog jumped around and made high-pitched whining sounds when he saw Julian.  Julian scratched the dog’s damp head and pretended not to hear the discussion between Will and his parents concerning whether or not the dog could stay.  Cornelius won.  They took the dog upstairs to Will’s room and shut the door.  They flopped on the queen size bed and relaxed into its softness.  They were silent for a long time too, but it wasn’t uncomfortable like it had been with Will’s parents.  Finally, Will rolled to his side and looked at his friend.

“How are you doing?”

Julian met his pretty green eyes and shook his head.  “I don’t know.  I feel, not numb exactly, but I don’t really feel anything.  Doesn’t that seem weird?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve never lost my parents before.  But you know, whatever you feel is how you feel.  There is no wrong or right.  It’s not a test.”

Julian laughed softly.  “That’s what the psychologist said.”

“Well, it’s good advice.”

“Yeah.  Where’d you hear it?”

Will’s cheeks went a little red.  “It’s just what I think.”

Julian smiled.  It was rare for Will to be embarrassed when someone praised him.  He loved being fawned over.  Julian looked at the ceiling.  A ratty poster they’d hung up there when they were eleven was still in place.  It was a map of the Milky Way.  He didn’t know why they’d both been so into stars at the time, neither of them had wanted to be astronauts.  But maybe it was the vast unexplored regions of space that fed their curiosity and imaginations.

“I think I still haven’t quite accepted that they’ve died.  I haven’t seen their bodies or anything.  And I haven’t had to make funeral arrangements yet.  Though that will be a pain.  Their coven will probably want something to do with it.  And did you know?  I had to call my grandparents.  All four of them.  I don’t really want to have to listen to them tell me that they don’t want anything to do with me and I can do what I please with the bodies.”  Julian gritted his teeth.  “But there aren’t any bodies.  Or maybe only half of one.  No amount of make-up is going to fix it.  I’m never going to see them again.  Not even to say goodbye.  And I want to cry.  I want to run to them and see them, but I’m afraid that there will be nothing to see.  And since I won’t ever be able to really see anything as recognizably my parents’ dead bodies, what if I can never accept that they died?  What if I stay stuck in my own little delusion for the rest of my life?”

He turned to look at Will.  He was just looking back at him.  He opened his mouth, not quite sure what to say.  Julian rolled to his side too and put their foreheads together, but made sure there was still space in between their bodies.  He didn’t want to freak Will out.

“Ah, I’m not that worried.  I’m sure you guys will kick my ass back into reality.”

“Definitely.  That is one thing we’re good at.”

“Yeah.”

They lay together quietly for a few moments.  He was thankful Will was willing to let him be this needy.

“Oh, man.”

“What?” Will asked, sounding worried.

“We have school tomorrow.”

“I don’t think you should go.”

“Why?  I’ll have to deal with it eventually.”

“Yeah, but…”  Will sighed.

“What is it?”

“The accident was all over the news.  And since you were the only family to contact, the police released your names.  Everyone will know about it.  They’ll want to ask you questions or try to talk to you.  At the very least they’ll give you the same annoying look all day.”

“That does sound unpleasant.”

“I’ll go to school and take notes and get your homework for you.  Hell, I’ll even do it for you if you want me to.”

Julian smiled.  “Thanks buddy.”

They started slightly as the house phone rang.  Will didn’t move to get it and after two and a half rings it stopped.

“So, where do you want to sleep tonight?” Will asked.

Julian opened his eyes wider and looked deep into Will’s trusting eyes, which almost made him a little cross-eyed since they were so close.

“You offering to let me sleep with you?” he asked quietly, a little lewdly.

“Sure.  If you don’t want to be alone.”

“What if I take advantage of your kind offer?”

Will smiled.  “Yeah right.”

Julian let his face go serious so Will would know he wasn’t joking.  “Will, you know that when I flirt with you, I’m only half-joking, right?”

“I do.  You’re rather obvious.  But unfortunately for you, I trust you not to do anything that would jeopardize our friendship.”

Julian made a face.  “Damn.”

Will grinned and ruffled his hair.  “Sorry, honey.  Your half-assed bisexual tendencies will have to be carried out with some other pretty boy.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

Someone knocked at Will’s door and they rolled away from each other self-consciously.  As much as they could joke about it in private, they were still heterosexual teenaged boys after all and one of their mothers was walking into the room.  Mrs. Harder was holding the portable handset of a phone and biting her lower lip.  Julian felt his stomach drop.  What on earth could she possibly have to tell him?  His parents were already dead.  They couldn’t die twice.

“Julian, I just received a call from your grandmother.”

Julian felt his jaw drop.  How had she found this number?  He closed his mouth and swallowed.

“Which one?”

“Um, a Mrs. Lowell.  I told her you weren’t available to speak at the moment, so that you wouldn’t be ambushed with the news and then having to talk to her as well.  I took her number down, so it’s up to you if you want to talk to her tonight.”

Julian nodded.  Lowell.  That was his mother’s mother.

“Um, she also said that she and her husband would be on the first flight out here in the morning.”

“What?!”

“Mom!  Why did you let them?” Will demanded.

Mrs. Harder gave her son a bemused look.  “Will, I could hardly tell them what to do with their own time and money.  It’s not like I told them they could come pick Julian up and take him off our hands.  But I do imagine that they will want to see him tomorrow.”

“Maybe I _should_ go to school,” Julian murmured.

Mrs. Harder put a hand on his shoulder.  “I think it would be best to take a little time off.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a recovery time clause in cases like these and you’re going to have to make some decisions about what to do with your parents’ remains.  It might be good to have someone there to help you.  And mourn with you.”

“Mourn?  Why would they?”

“They’re coming, Julian.  That means they care.  And I’m willing to bet that this is going to hit them very hard because they had such an estranged relationship.  They’ll probably feel guilty for not reconciling sooner, and now it’s too late.”

“So, you think he should be nice to them?” Will growled.

Mrs. Harder petted his head.  “Don’t be so defensive.  You look like a fluffed up kitty.”  Will sat back and frowned at his mother.  “And no, you don’t have to be nice to them, Julian.  You don’t have to do anything.  But, it will make things go smoother if you’re at least civil to them.  Rich has to go to work tomorrow and I need to get your petition started right away.  Will it be a problem if they come here and you’re by yourself tomorrow?  Or would you prefer to go with me to the courthouse and we’ll arrange a place to meet?”

Julian thought about that for a long minute.  “No, I think I’ll be okay.”

“I could stay,” Will offered.

“No,” his mother shook her head.  “You’re going to school.”

Julian put a hand to his head.  He was going to meet his grandparents tomorrow.  He had vague memories of his father’s grandparents, they hadn’t shut them out until a few years after his birth, but he’d never been within a thousand miles of his mother’s family.  Tomorrow would be interesting.

 

Will

 

Will woke up, aware that something had woken him up.  He heard the steps pass by his room again.  One of his parents was moving about.  The room was dark; clouds must still be covering the area.  He turned over to look at the clock: 7:39.  His mother would probably be leaving at eight to take care of Julian’s legal matters.  That reminded him that Mr. and Mrs. March had died last night.  Will groaned and buried his face in his pillow.  At least he hadn’t woken up naked in a hotel room.  He needed to get up.  He wanted his mother to take him by Julian’s house so he could let the dog out.  With everything that must be weighing on his mind, he wanted Julian to not have to worry about one thing.

Will rolled out of bed, grateful he’d taken a shower last night.  All he had to do was get dressed and brush his teeth.  He met his mother just as she was walking out the door.  He explained that he wanted a ride to Julian’s house.  His mother had given her opinion that maybe he should ask one of the next door neighbors to take care of the dog, but Will shrugged off the suggestion.  He didn’t want some stranger taking care of Cornelius.  And the next door neighbors _were_ strangers.  They hadn’t been thrilled when they learned their new neighbors were witches.  Of course, to be fair, the Marches had moved in first.

Outside it was miserable.  It wasn’t just a few leftover clouds hanging around; the sky was still darkened over pretty well by menacing clouds.  And there was a fine mist in the air that felt like he was standing next to the bottom of a waterfall when he got out of his mother’s car.  He waved goodbye to her and told her to drive safely.  She promised she would and left him alone on the curb.  He hated watching his mother go, and he wasn’t even that close to her.  How on earth must Julian be feeling?  Will trudged up the walkway to the Marches’ front door.  He felt so heavy, like something was physically attached to him and weighing him down.  He had to fumble with the keys a bit before he managed to unlock the door.  Cornelius greeted him with a wagging tail.  Then he tried to look around Will.

“Sorry, boy, it’s just me.”

Will attached the leash to Cornelius’ collar and stepped back out in the moist atmosphere.  The weather didn’t really warrant an umbrella, but he was probably going to be wet by the time they got back.  Will took the dog for a walk around the neighborhood and through the woods that lined the backs of the houses.  It was a long walk, but when they got back, Will still felt like he needed to keep moving.  Cornelius was of a different opinion.  Will let them into the house and dried Cornelius off with a towel before getting him his breakfast.  He sat in a kitchen chair and watched Cornelius eat.  He didn’t want to look around the room and see the way the Marches had left it.

Will jumped out of the chair and started to pace.  His thoughts were going by in his head too fast to keep up with.  Maybe because his body was just sitting here.  He should run.  But he couldn’t take Cornelius over to his house now.  He had to wait until Julian was brought home so that his parents couldn’t refuse to take the dog in.  He looked at his watch.  It was still early; he had time to take a run.  He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, not the best thing to run in, but not the worst.  Will patted Cornelius on the head, made sure he had the key to the house, and took off down the street.  He was running too fast, and couldn’t settle into a rhythm.  If he kept up his current pace he’d run himself into cardiac arrest.  But even that thought couldn’t slow him down.  And it wasn’t helping him to think one little bit.

His chest was burning and his legs were starting to cramp.  He hadn’t stretched before he took off on this mad sprint and now he was paying for it.  He had spent so long carefully conditioning his body for endurance that a little sprinting was killing him.  He fought against the pain and pushed on.  It was important to be able to sprint in soccer.  What was wrong with him?  Why couldn’t he run a few hundred yards at top speed?  Why was that so hard?  Then he noticed one of the two bus stops he was familiar with.  The other one was back in the opposite direction, toward his house, which meant he was at the bus stop where he and his friends got off to take the metro.  The metro was about four miles from Julian’s house.  How long had he been running?

Since he had slowed down to look at the stop more closely, his legs tightened up on him.  Had he just sprinted for four miles?  He must have broken his own record for running a mile.  He limped and hopped around, trying belatedly to stretch out the abused muscles in his legs.  He didn’t want to sit in the wet grass, so he walked into the station.  A sign was flashing indicating that a train would arrive shortly.  He dug his pass out of his wallet and walked through the turnstiles.  He continued to walk around until the train arrived and got on with one other lone rider.  He hopped to a seat and collapsed into it, gritting his teeth against the burning in his lungs and the weakness in his legs.  The train started to move and he massaged his thighs, hoping he wasn’t looking like some sort of pervert.

Will let out a strained breath and bent forward to put his head between his legs.  That had been stupid.  Sprinting for four miles.  But it was better than thinking about Julian.  Remembering his friend’s heartrending voice as he declared himself an orphan made his chest hurt more than the marathon sprint.  But that wasn’t why he was really so upset.  Yes, Julian was an orphan and Mr. and Mrs. March were dead, but what if his parents died?  He couldn’t muster any sadness over that.  He couldn’t imagine his life changing all that much.  But he should because he knew it would be traumatic and life-altering.  Why was he so cold-hearted?  Maybe Julian was right and he was emotionally warped beyond recognition as a human being.  Will sat back and let his head fall against the wall of the train.  He stared at the flickering fluorescent light as it died in time to the bouncing of the train.  Where was he planning on going?

After about thirty minutes the train arrived at the station where he would transfer trains to go to school.  He got off but decided not to continue on to school.  Maybe he’d just walk around the city a little bit.  Upon exiting the underground station he realized that wasn’t such a smart idea.  The clouds were thicker over the city and the mist was closer to a drizzle.  It would only take ten to fifteen minutes of walking around in this before he got soaking wet.  But did he want to go back down into the metro and ride the trains for the next however many hours he needed to sort all this out in his head?  More than likely it would take more than one day of train riding to come to terms with what he was feeling.  Or not feeling.  Maybe a little cold water on his head would help.

Will left the station and crossed the street because the pedestrian sign was flashing a walking man.  For the next few blocks he walked up the streets and crossed in whichever direction had the walking man.  He probably wasn’t going to get lost, but he certainly didn’t exactly remember the way he had come from.  The water was dripping off his ears and nose and soaking through his thin T-shirt.  His mother wouldn’t be happy if he got himself sick by wandering around in the rain.  Then he caught sight of his reflection.  He stopped in front of the large display window of an old-timey café.  He looked pretty pitiful with a sulking expression and water running down his face.  Then his vision went through his reflection and he saw into the café.  It was pretty busy with most of the tables full of patrons and waitresses in short dresses serving hot coffee and mountainous stacks of pancakes.  He seriously thought one tower was going to spill over onto the floor.  Then a table caught his attention because there was only one person in the booth.  He had a laptop on the table and papers spread around.  He was staring intently at the screen and using his index finger to push a button on the keyboard.

Will sighed and dropped his head.  He’d only seen the man in profile, but he knew that it was Ken West.  How had he managed to stop at the one random café in the city where that man was having breakfast?  And apparently doing work on a Sunday.  He really had no life.  Will decided he better move along before someone noticed him loitering out front.  He raised his head for a last look at the man and found him staring at him through the glass.  Will didn’t react in surprise.  It seemed rather obvious that Ken was going to notice him.  After a few moments, Will decided he should head on, but before he could lift his foot to move, Ken motioned him to come inside.  Yeah, right.  Like he was going to do anything that guy told him to do.  Though it was wet outside and the drizzle was turning into a rain.  He was already emotionally messed up.  Why shouldn’t he go talk to his rapist?

Will walked to the door and some bells jangled as he opened it.  The hostess smiled at him and opened her mouth to ask him something, but he pointed at Ken and walked past her.  He sat down in the booth on the opposite side from Ken, put his hands on the table, and glared at the man as he closed his laptop.  They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.  A waitress came by, a little too bubbly for her own good, and asked if Will wanted anything.

“Do you want some coffee or something?” Ken asked.

“I don’t like coffee.”

“Tea then?  Or hot chocolate?  You look cold.”

“That you do, sweet pea.  And we have the best hot chocolate in the city,” the waitress smiled at him.

Will hadn’t had hot chocolate in a long time.  Maybe it would be nice.  Ken misinterpreted his hesitation.

“I’ll pay for it,” he said.

“Well, of course you will.  That wasn’t the question,” Will snapped.  “I’ll have some,” he told the waitress.  “And it better be as good as you say it is.”

She looked worried for a second, like Will might actually do something nasty to her if he didn’t like it.  She scribbled something down on her pad and fled the scene.  Will glared after her and then faced Ken.  He had his hand over his mouth.  He was probably hiding a smile.

“So, did you come looking for me?”

Will gave him a look.

“Okay.  A coincidence.  I’ll buy that.  But you seem to be in a bit of a funk today.  And granted you went though quite an ordeal the last couple days, but I could have sworn you were handling it better than this.  What changed?”

“It’s not you,” Will said, laying his head down on his arms where they rested on the table.  “My best friend’s parents died in a car accident yesterday.  While I was riding around in the city with you and taking a tour of your office, my friend was trapped in a demolished SUV with his parents’ corpses.”

“Jesus.”

“Exactly.”

They remained quiet and the waitress returned with the hot chocolate.  Will sat up and took a sip.  The waitress hung around fidgeting and smiled nervously at him.  He smiled back, using one of his smiles that he knew made people feel better.  She smiled in relief that he had liked the drink and was not angry at her.  She left them and went about her business.  Ken had his eyebrows raised.

“Have you ever considered using your acting ability for a future career?”

“I don’t want to be in movies.”

“I was thinking about politics.”

Will laughed.  “Yeah.  Maybe I could do that.  But I think I’d flunk the maximum level of intelligence permitted in our leaders.”

“Are you often told that you’re too young to be that cynical?”

“No.  I’m told that I’m cynical, but not too young for it.  I think most people don’t think of me as young.”

“Ah.”

They were silent again.  Will sipped his hot chocolate and avoided eye contact with Ken.  At last the older man felt the need to say something.

“So, what are you doing in the city?”

“Not dealing with my grief very well.”

“Have you been walking around long?”

“I got out at the metro stop a few blocks back.  I walked from there.  It wasn’t raining as hard as it is now.”

“You look wet through,” Ken said reaching out a hand.  He jerked it back at the last second.  “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“To touch me?  It’s a little late for that.”

“Will,” Ken said with a compassionate tone, “death is something that is difficult to deal with because often times we don’t know the appropriate way to react to it.”

“So, you’re saying there is an _appropriate_ way to react to it?”

“No, there’s not.  That’s why it’s always so hard for people to go through.  Especially alone.  I don’t want to overstep my bounds here, but if you do want someone to talk to, someone unrelated to the issue, I will listen.”

Will looked up and found Ken’s eyes.  He had a feeling this man was probably a terrible liar because every emotion he felt shone through his eyes.  Will was confident Ken meant what he was saying.  That there was no ulterior motive, only concern for his well-being.

“It’s just—I don’t—I don’t—ah!”  Will sneezed and then shivered as a chill hit him.  “Uck.”

“Jesus, Will.  How brilliant do you think it is to walk around outside in cold rain without a jacket?  I think you’re a little bit closer to passing the politician intelligence test.”

“Oh, please.  People don’t get sick that quickly.”

“Well, how long were you walking around?  And now you’re just sitting here getting colder.  And on top of that, it’s been scientifically proven that depression lowers our immune systems.”

“What do you know about science?”

“I read it somewhere.”

“Where?”

“The Internet.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Will didn’t fight him too hard on the issue though, he’d heard the same thing before.  Then Ken reached out and took a hold of one of his hands.  Ken’s hand felt very warm against his skin, even where he’d been holding the hot chocolate mug.

“You’re freezing, Will.  You need to get warmed up.”

“What are you suggesting?” Will asked flatly.  “Sharing body heat?”

“Maybe a shower?”

Will felt his heart thud against his ribcage.

“Together?” he squeaked.

Ken stared at him blankly for a second and than burst out laughing.  He tried to say something but the laughter kept getting in the way.  Will looked away from him and blushed.  Why had he said that?

“No, no, certainly not.  But, my condo is right across the street.  You can take a warm shower and I can put your clothes in the dryer.  And I promise, there’s nothing fishy about this.  Well, actually there is, but I promise I won’t do anything to you.  If you can trust me.  Which, I understand, is asking a lot.”

Will looked back at Ken’s eyes.  He could feel Ken’s warm hand on his cool skin.  He really should warm up his body.  Especially after the run he’d taken this morning, the cold was probably making his muscles tighten up even more.  And for some damn reason, he did trust Ken.

“Okay,” he said.

Ken quickly packed up his laptop and papers and left a twenty dollar bill on the table.  Will took a final swig of his drink and followed Ken outside.  It was raining pretty steadily now and Ken led him under the meager protection of the shop awnings to a street corner.  They waited back by the storefronts for the light to change and then they ran across the street.  Will was impressed by the building they ran up to.  He was quite certain that in order to afford a condo in the center of the city in a building this nice that the residents had to be more than just a little well off.

Ken used a keypad to enter a code on the outside door and a little light blinked green to let them know the door was unlocked.  Ken held the door open for Will to go in first and he entered a lobby with the residents’ mailboxes.  But of course, it wasn’t like the average apartment front hall with little dinky boxes to hold the mail; there was carpeting and couches and a front desk where two young security officers were reading magazines.  The guards nodded to Ken and didn’t pay them much attention as they stepped onto the elevator.  Ken lived on the seventeenth out of twenty floors.  He must like to be high up.  But wasn’t that a little dangerous in case of a fire?

There were three doors on either side of the hallway and Ken’s was in the middle on the left.  Will suspected that the residents paid enough money for these condos that noise from the neighbors wasn’t a problem.  Ken unlocked the door and Will couldn’t deny the curiosity he felt to see what the place looked like.  Would it be a mess?  Would it even be furnished?  On the one hand, Ken was a bachelor CEO in his thirties, but on the other hand, he was gay.  So, what did that balance turn out to be?  Ken opened the door and before they got two steps into the apartment, Ken grabbed him by the collar.  Will felt panic rush through his body.  Why had he trusted him?  How could he have come to his apartment alone where nobody would ever know to look for him?

“Shoes,” Ken said.

Will looked up at him.  “Huh?”

“Take your wet shoes off please.”

Ken had removed his own shoes and released Will as he stepped into his condo.  Will let his heart settle back down to his chest and removed his shoes.  He felt a little silly for his panic, but it was true: none of his friends or family would have any idea that he had a connection with Ken J. West.  He could murder him and throw away his body and no one would ever think to come looking for him.  He glanced to his left at the kitchen to locate the knives.  He’d be fine if Ken tried anything.  He shut the door behind him and glanced around the space.

It was one big open room with a large kitchen to the far left and a tiny room adjacent to it that housed the washer and dryer.  The kitchen was so large it even had an island.  In front of him were a couch, a coffee table, and an end table.  They looked modern and expensive.  The couch was facing the wall formed by the utility room and on the wall was a bookshelf.  Full of books.  There was no TV.  Past the couch was a large bay window and perpendicular to it against the back wall was a very large fish tank.  It must have held at least a hundred gallons and had all kinds of critters in it that it had to be a salt water tank.  To his right was a dining room table and chairs.  It was kind of strange to just have a big open space accommodating all the major rooms of a home.  Except, where was the bedroom?

Will swallowed.  Did he want to know?  Then he noticed the back wall had a single doorway in the middle of it.  Ken was standing by the door waiting for him.  Did he want him to go in there with him?  He thought he was supposed to take a shower.  But, right, the bathroom must be in the bedroom.  Will took in a breath and marched for the bedroom.  There was going to be nothing awkward about being in a room with a bed with Ken.

The bedroom was at least half the size of the main room, which meant the condo was enormous.  It was a typical set-up with a king-sized bed and two nightstands.  A walk in closet was at the far end of the room and on the other side was a large bathroom.  There was a dark-wooded dresser that matched the dark wood of the headboard across from the bed.  On top of the dresser was the TV.  At least he wasn’t completely abnormal.

“You can throw your clothes outside the door and I’ll pick them up and throw them in the wash.  I’ve got some clothes here you can wear in the meantime.”

Will watched Ken drop some clothes off in the bathroom, and then he left the bedroom and closed the door.  Will stood still in the room, looking around at the sleek and stylish decorating.  It was in black and greens with artsy pictures to match on the walls and even perfectly trendy knickknacks placed here and there.  It was a very hip, well-styled room.  But it was an illusion.  It was too much like a picture out of a catalogue.  He must have gone to a store and pointed to set-up and said he’d take one of everything.  It probably made him seem like a fashion forward metrosexual, but it was a lie.  Just like the façade he kept up concerning his sexual orientation.  How sad must his life be to have to lie about who he was every single day?  But, Will didn’t really care.  He walked into the bathroom and considered taking the opportunity to snoop around.

He took his clothes off and threw them outside the door and then turned on the shower so that Ken wouldn’t be suspicious.  The bathroom was pretty spacious with a two sink counter and a large bathtub beside the shower.  Will peeked inside the tub: there were Jacuzzi nozzles.  Nice.  And on top of that, there was not only a toilet, but also a small urinal.  How convenient.  The seat would never be left up to annoy the ladies.  Not that Ken would have any ladies over.  No, wait, he did say he dated women.  Will laughed to himself.  Maybe he had the separate urinal so he wouldn’t have to touch the seat the girls did.  Though, a urinal didn’t cover all of a guy’s bathroom needs.  Will moved on to the medicine cabinet hanging on the wall that partially blocked the toilet area.  There wasn’t anything too suspicious.  Just shaving lotion, a razor, and some cologne.  Will picked the cologne up and gave it a sniff.  He was more than a little embarrassed to find that it was very familiar to him.  And he knew that he’d never met anyone other than Ken who wore this particular brand.  It’s just that you tend to pick up someone’s scent when you’re pressed that close—stop!  Will moved on to his cabinets.  Just some deodorant and extra toilet paper and tissues.  Come on, wasn’t this guy on any drugs?

He was getting cold standing around on the tile floor naked, and he didn’t want to take too long.  What if Ken got worried and ran into the bathroom to check on him?  Maybe the sight of his young, nubile flesh would be too much for him and he’d attack him and have his way with him again.  Will checked the water in the shower before stepping in and closing the door behind him.  One wall and the door were glass.  And not the frosted or textured kind; they were completely see-through.  Though they had fogged up a bit in the time he’d been snooping around.  He stared at the inside of the shower.  It was one of those crazy set-ups where water fell from nozzles located at all four corners and from different heights.  He’d seen it in a commercial once, but did people actually own this type of extravagance?  Apparently so.  And it did feel really nice to have the warm water falling on him from all directions.  There was also a tile-covered bench in the stall.  Who had a bench in their shower?  Were people really that lazy?  Maybe girls could use it for shaving.  Or it could make sex in the shower easier.  Will closed his eyes.

“Don’t think about sex!” he shouted quietly to himself.

He looked at the shower caddy and found that it had a salon brand shampoo and conditioner along with bar soap and a loofah.  Was he in a woman’s shower?  Okay, maybe this part of Ken was a little gay.  This part was a little gay?  All of him was really gay.  Will sighed and sat on the bench and let the hot water fall on his tired body.  He was already feeling much better and was able to relax enough to forget about anything except the warm, soothing heat of the water coursing over his skin.  He wasn’t sure exactly how long he stayed in the shower, but he was very pruney by the time he got out.  The towel Ken had left him was one of those giant, fluffy bath sheets and he wrapped himself in it like a homeless man.  It was green.  Ken liked green; he had it in every room.  Will was pretty certain he remembered the couch in the main room was green with dark wood legs.

Will looked into the fogged mirror and rubbed away a spot with his hand.  His eyes jumped out in the clear space, almost bright green.  Was this why Ken liked him so much?  Will shrugged off the towel and felt silly for thinking that Ken liked him.  All he had been was a piece of ass, and then a potential accuser.  Anything he felt for Will stemmed from his nervousness that any day now Will was going to turn him in.

Will looked at the clothes Ken had left for him: a pair of sweatpants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a pair of thick jogging socks.  Nothing to wear in between the sweatpants and…himself.  But of course, he wouldn’t really have wanted anything to wear that wasn’t his own, so he was just going to have to swing free.  He pulled on the pants and even with the elastic waist they were so big they almost slipped off his hips.  Ken wasn’t really that much bigger than him, was he?  Will pulled the drawstring tight and then made a knot instead of a bow.  It would take some real struggling to get these pants off.  Just in case Ken got any ideas.  The shirt was huge on him and the socks made him feel like a little kid wearing big people socks.  Standing next to Ken, he didn’t feel that small, but apparently the man was built pretty solidly, which was something he already knew quite intimately.  Will put a hand to his head.  He really needed to stop thinking about stuff like that.

Will cracked the bathroom door open and peeked out into the bedroom: it was empty.  He turned and looked back at the towel he’d left on the floor.  He stared at the towel for several moments before letting out a noise of disgust and picking it up.  He folded it and placed it on the edge of the sink.  Ken might want to wash it later, but he’d leave it in here for now.  Or maybe the sicko would want to smell it later.  Maybe he had smelled his briefs before he put them in the wash!  Will shook his head.  He knew better.  Ken was gay, but he wasn’t creepy.  Well, at least Will didn’t think he was.

The man whose character was in question was sitting on his couch with his feet propped on the coffee table.  He had a tray table over his legs and his laptop was set up on it.  He was still intently clacking away at the keyboard, so he must not have heard Will come out.  Will smiled as he noticed he was wearing glasses.  A very expensive pair with thin lenses and no frames.  It was kind of rare to find people who were far-sighted as opposed to nearsighted.  But then again, maybe he wore contacts and had to wear reading glasses too because he was so old.  Probably not.  He looked cute in them.

Will stopped walking.  Say what now?

“Your clothes just came out of the wash and I put them into the dryer.  I set it on a low heat so your jeans won’t shrink, but that means it may take awhile before they’re done.”

Will looked sidelong at the man on the couch who was still typing uninterrupted.  It was creepy when people knew someone was in the room but didn’t give out any signs that they did.  Creepy in a different way from sniffing people’s underwear.  Maybe he was both kinds of creepy.  Will walked around the edge of the couch and saw that his wallet, cell phone, and the keys to the Marches’ house were sitting on the edge of the coffee table.  Ken finally stopped typing.  He took off his glasses and looked up at Will.

“Do you feel better now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.  The spike in my water bill will be worth it then.”

“Hey, shut-up!  How long was I in there?”

“About forty-five minutes.”

“That’s not long.  That’s just a tad longer than normal.  A long shower is like, over an hour.”

“If I’m going to be in water that long I tend to get in the bathtub.”

“Hmph.”

Will sat on the end of the couch, leaving the middle cushion as a buffer between them.  Ken twisted one ear rest of his glasses in between his index finger and thumb.  Will felt a little uncomfortable being stared at, so he dropped his gaze to the candy dish on the coffee table and said gloomily, “What?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I—”

Will cut off as his stomach gurgled how hungry it was.  He felt his face go warm with embarrassment.  Ken was fighting back a smile.   He bit his lip before he had himself under control enough to speak without laughing.

“Are you hungry?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“Can I make you something?”

“No, it’s okay.  I’ll get something when I leave.”

Ken dropped his feet from the table and moved the tray table to the side as he stood up.  “It’s not a problem.  In fact, I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet myself at the café.  So, I’ll make us both something.  Do you like omelets?”

“Yeah.”

Will pulled his legs to his chest, thought that was a girly position, and dropped them into Indian-style.  He watched Ken move competently around his kitchen.  He looked too healthy to be one of those bachelors who constantly ate out or ordered in, so he must have developed some skills in the kitchen.  He was kind of amazed to watch the man go all out with this omelet, chopping up some ham, turkey, and cheese.  Then he fried up some frozen hash browns and threw them in the eggs he’d whipped up.  Will raised an eyebrow.  This would be an interesting omelet.  He was even making it the way they did at the fancy restaurant he and his parents always went to for their Mother’s Day brunch.  He watched carefully to see if he managed to flip the omelet all the way over without messing it up.  He did.  Not bad.

“What would you like to drink?  I have one of those single serving coffee machines with a whole bunch of different flavors.  But, you said you don’t like coffee.  I have some Darjeeling tea, which was a present from a friend, but I’m not a big tea drinker, so I don’t know if it’s good or not.  I do have milk.  But no juice or anything.”

“Milk is fine,” Will said, feeling a little discombobulated.  This was only the second time he’d ever met this man and their first meeting had been beyond abnormal, but here he was sitting in his clothes on his couch while he made him breakfast.  There was something not right about this whole situation.  But for the life of him—and even for the sake of his poor lost virginity—he couldn’t think of anything wrong with it either.

Ken took a seat on the far side of the couch, leaving the buffer zone Will had set up between them.  Will cut into his omelet and cheese oozed out of it.  This was going to be so bad for him.  But he did run four miles today.  He could afford one decadent meal.  He raised a bite to his lips and Ken said, “Oh, wait.  You’re not one of those weirdos who likes catsup on your eggs, are you?”

Will smiled.  “No.”  He ate the bite and was impressed with the flavor.  It had just enough salt and the hash browns gave it a nice texture.

“You like it?” Ken asked.

“Yeah, it’s good.  Thanks.”

They ate quietly for a few minutes and then Will asked, “Have you ever lost someone close to you?”

Ken shook his head.  “I’ve been very lucky.  I never really knew my grandparents, so when they died, it wasn’t a big deal.  Both my parents are still alive and so is my older sister.  I’ve never lost a close friend.”

“You’re saying you’ve never met anyone who has died?” Will asked skeptically.

“I didn’t say I’ve never known anyone who died.  I have.  Someone I went to high school with.  Someone I went to college with, but I wasn’t close to them.  So, it didn’t really affect me.”

“Have any of your friends’ parents died?”

“Yes, a couple.  But, I didn’t know their parents.  I was sad for my friends, but they were even older than me.  So their parents’ deaths weren’t wholly unexpected.  I’m afraid I don’t really know what you’re going through.  Tell me.”

Will sighed, a bit frustrated with himself.  “I don’t even know.  Julian is my best friend.  I absolutely love him.  I love him so much I’m not embarrassed to admit that I love another male.  And if he had died, I wouldn’t be functioning right now.  And I knew his parents very well.  They were there for me a lot when my own parents weren’t there.  And it’s shocking to know they’re gone.  But, what I’m really upset about is how much pain Julian is in.  I don’t feel like I’m really all that devastated that his parents are dead.  I just hate that he has to go through this.”

“That makes sense.”

“But, shouldn’t I care about the fact that Mr. and Mrs. March died?  Shouldn’t I be sad that two people I’m close to are gone now?”

“I think you are.  Do you think you should be curled into the fetal position wondering what to do without them?”

“Well, no, but—”

“You spent the entire morning wandering around in the rain.  You _are_ upset and sad.  But, it’s very important to take care of those who are still living, so of course your main concern is your friend’s well-being.  How is he, by the way?”

Will tapped his fork on his empty plate.  “I don’t know.  Last night he was pretty messed up.  He was screaming and crying about how he was an orphan and…I didn’t know how to help him.  My mom is taking care of the legal stuff for him.  She’s a lawyer.”

“I remember.”

That’s right.  He’d already told Ken all about his family on their “date.”  He must have sounded sociopathic the way he had talked about them.  Probably even more so now that Ken knew he still lived with them.

“Yeah, so, I haven’t even talked to him today.  I don’t know how he’s feeling.”

“There’s a good chance he doesn’t know how he’s feeling either.”

“Yeah.”

Will stood up and held out his hand for Ken’s plate.

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

“Just let me do this.”

“Okay.”

Will took their dishes to the kitchen and washed them in the sink.  He noticed there was a dishwasher, but he wanted some time to himself.  He knew what the real issue was that was bothering him, but was it something he wanted to talk about at all?  Maybe it was something he should keep to himself.  People shouldn’t share every single thought they ever had.  If they did, nobody would have friends or people they trusted.

When he was done he wandered back to the couch and sat on the middle cushion, mostly to be closer to the candy dish.  He reached out casually and took a piece of the wrapped chocolate.  He wondered if Ken would yell at him for eating some after he just had breakfast.  Though, it wasn’t morning anymore.  Ken didn’t say anything, he just took a piece too.  Will unwrapped it and held it in his fingers as he sucked on it.  He didn’t like to chew chocolate.  Sometimes it was too chalky.  But this stuff was really rich.  It was good.  He checked the wrapper for the brand.  Maybe he’d buy some for Julian.  Then Will had to wonder if he was being unintentionally flirtatious by running the candy in and out of his mouth.  Well that would be Ken’s problem and he didn’t care.

“Is there something else on your mind?” Ken asked.

Will looked up as he sucked the rest of the candy into his mouth.  He licked his lips and thought that was pretty perceptive of Ken.  Or maybe it was just that obvious.  Will dropped his head and rested it on the back of the couch.

“I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“How so?”

“This has made me think about my own parents.  And what I would do if they died.  I don’t feel upset or sad or anything.  Who isn’t sad to not have any parents?  Even if you had terrible parents, don’t you lament not having the good parent that might have been?”

“So, you’re saying you can’t be sad over your parents’ deaths?”

“Yes.  That’s wrong, right?”

Will knew he was being childish.  He was asking for comfort and for some form of an authority figure, i.e. an adult, to tell him that there was nothing wrong with him.  He could sense Ken’s proximity and almost wished he would cross the line and close the distance between them.  His parents hadn’t even hugged him during this whole mess.  Then he felt a hand on his head.  Ken ran his fingers through his fine hair and Will closed his eyes, relaxing with the sensation.

“How on earth can you even imagine what that would be like?” Ken asked gently.  “You’re probably not feeling anything real because it’s _not_ real.  I mean, I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if my parents suddenly died, but it doesn’t seem feasible.  Your parents will always be there.  It’s something we all take for granted.  There’s nothing wrong with what you’re feeling, Will.  It’s simply what you feel.  There is no right or wrong.

“I don’t feel particularly moved by this news, nor by the fact that your best friend is torn up.  It’s sad, to be certain, but it doesn’t really bother me.  Does that make me a bad person?  For not being completely emotionally involved with every tragedy I hear of?  Certainly not.  I could hear on the news that a school bus ran off a cliff and took thirty little kids with it.  That’s sad.  And it sucks.  But am I going to cry over it?  No.  It wouldn’t make sense to take on everything so personally.  A person would be crushed by that weight.”

“But this _is_ related to me, Ken.  It’s my best friend’s parents.  People I know.  My own parents.”

Will felt Ken lean forward slightly to put their heads closer together.  He spoke softer, but he was close enough that he could still hear him perfectly fine.

“And you are upset by it.  Just because you didn’t react the way some actor did on TV doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.  And just because you can’t imagine your life without your parents doesn’t mean you’re emotionally stunted.  I can tell that you’re not.  The fact that you’re so worried about it proves that.  You can’t force yourself to feel a certain way, and you shouldn’t try to ignore what you do feel.  For instance, do you know why I’m so upset?”

Will raised his head slightly, but stopped because Ken’s hand was still on his head and their faces were so close.  Will couldn’t bring himself closer to Ken.  They were already leaning in toward each other more than enough.

“Why?” he whispered.

“I don’t know those people and I don’t care that they died.  It’s sad that your friend is going through this, but I don’t know him or have much concern for his problems.  I’m upset because _you’re_ in so much pain.  It hurts me to see you grieving and so confused.  I hate that you’re having to go through this, and that for some reason you think you’re doing it wrong.  I’m upset because I don’t know if my words are enough to help you.”

Will looked up.  He had to see Ken’s eyes.  The deep blue of his irises were in earnest, but Will could only stay focused on them for a moment because they were so close.  Will closed his eyes, aware that Ken had leaned even closer to him.  Their noses touched and then they both tilted their heads.  Ken gave him a couple of light kisses, and then pressed their lips together forcefully.  Will didn’t need Ken’s silent request to open his mouth.  Ken entered him and he tasted of chocolate.  The sweet flavor coupled with the massaging of his tongue caused Will to salivate.  Ken was pushing forward, making Will lean his head back.  It was a hard, wet kiss, like ones he’d used to give to whatever girl he was dating at the time.  It was quite different to be on the receiving end of such a kiss.  Will swallowed and knew that a lot of what went down was his own saliva, but some of it was Ken’s.  It sent a thrill running down his body and he twisted his fingers into Ken’s shirt sleeves.  The kiss intensified as their sealed mouths hummed with his moan.  It was too amazing, it was too raw.  It let him forget about everything.  Forget all about…what was it?

He gasped in a breath as Ken pulled away.  He was shaking and could still feel Ken’s lips.  The man was stroking his hair and running the tip of a finger over the shell of his ear causing him to shiver.  Will couldn’t understand why he’d stopped.  Ken kissed the tip of his nose.

“Are you going to get that?”

Then he heard the tinny refrain of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.”  As soon as the song had come out a couple of weeks ago, Julian had programmed that to be the ring tone on Will’s phone.  He thought the song was funny, so rather than making it his own ring tone, he “bought” it for Will.  Meaning, Will’s dad had to pay for it on their wireless bill.  The acknowledgment of the cell phone’s presence thrust Will back into reality with a hard smack against a very solid wall of mortification.  He was still in Ken’s embrace and could feel the aftereffects of their kiss.  He sprang away from Ken and grabbed the phone, desperate to have some part of his normal life again.  He answered so quickly he didn’t even check to see who was calling.  It turned out to be Julian asking for some clothes.  He sounded pretty together over the phone, but Will wasn’t paying that much attention to him.  All he could think was, _Does he know?  Can he tell that I was just making out with a dude?_

He managed to stay clearheaded enough to learn that his mother was taking care of the situation, so he figured he’d have time to deal with Julian when he got home.  For now he just needed to get out of his current disturbing situation and go pick up Cornelius.  He pretty much hung up on Julian, feeling a little guilty, but to be fair, he had his own problems right now.  Like, he was leaning on the coffee table, mostly off the couch and his legs were sliding to the floor.  He let his lower half fall to the light tan carpet and stayed facing the kitchen.  He was clutching his cell phone.  What had he done?  What did he do now?  He stiffened as he heard Ken move off the couch.  He walked around the coffee table and into the utility room.

“I’ll check on your clothes,” he said.

Will dropped his head and his forehead thumped against the solid wood of the table.  Holy crap.  Had he just let Ken tongue him?  Had he just really enjoyed it?  No.  Okay, that solved that problem.  Denial is the most awesome thing in the world.  Will stood up and forced his features to go neutral.  If he pretended like nothing happened, then the situation would disappear.  Ken came out of the side room, holding his jeans, T-shirt, and—Will gulped uneasily—his boxer briefs.  Ken was touching his underwear.  Again.  Must be the third time now counting putting them in the wash and then the dryer.  Nope.  Four times.  The first time would be when he had slid them over Will’s hips, his lips following where his soft fingertips trailed down his sensitive skin…

“Stop!”  Will grabbed the clothes from Ken’s hands, surprising the man.

“Stop what?” Ken asked.

“I was talking to myself,” Will mumbled and fled toward the bedroom.

He slammed the door shut and clutched his clothes to his chest, eyes squeezed tightly shut.  Why couldn’t he stop thinking about that night?  In such vivid detail?  Wasn’t alcohol supposed to make memories blurrier, not sharper?  This was crazy.  Why had he come here?  He just needed to forget all about Ken West and eventually the memories and shame would fade to a dull ache.  He had more important things to focus on right now.  Julian being one, getting the sweatpants off being another.

He had been tugging at the knot since he got in the room, but couldn’t get it to come undone.  So he threw his clothes to the floor to have both hands available for manipulating the knot.  Even then it was too tight to pull out.  He tried pulling the pants down, but he had tied them too tight for a reason.  Now he was stuck in the pants.  He let out a noise of frustration and attacked the knot again.  He was probably making it worse by yanking and pulling on it.  He stifled a scream and covered his face with his hands.  Maybe he should just wear them home.  No, because then he would probably feel obligated to bring them back and then he would have to see Ken again.  There was a knock at the door.

“Will?  Are you okay?”  Ken’s voice was muffled through the wood of the door.

Will heard the door open and he turned to face Ken, cruelly forcing back the one errant tear that had tried to make its way out of his lachrymal gland.  Ken stood in the door, staring at him in concern.

“What’s going on?”

Will pulled on the knot.  “I can’t get this undone.”

He’d held back the tear, but his voice betrayed him.  Ken walked slowly into the room, trying not to spook him.  He raised a hand, but didn’t touch him.

“Can I try?”

Will gave him a “go ahead” gesture with his hand, and watched with morbid fascination as Ken’s hands came toward his waist.  Ken bent his knees and hunched his shoulders a bit to try to see what he was doing, but Will was a little too short to make it comfortable.  Ken guided him to the bed and told him to sit on it.  The mattress was high and Will had to hop up on to it, leaving his feet dangling a few inches off the floor.  Ken spread his feet apart to get rid of some of his height and began to work on the knot.  Will looked to the side, refusing to look at either Ken or his hands.

“Couldn’t you just use scissors?” he groused.

“I still use these pants,” Ken said, bending forward slightly.

Will could feel the slight movements of Ken’s hands over his body.  He gritted his teeth as his groin tingled with the unfamiliar proximity.  He dug his fingers into the bedspread and tried to force his body to relax.  The last thing he wanted was to get overly excited by the bizarre situation.

“Will,” Ken said, his tone very careful, “stop trembling.”

“What?” Will asked, his voice little more than a breathy gasp.

“It’s turning me on.”

Will’s attention snapped to Ken.  The older man was concentrating very hard on the knot and trying to ignore that the slender boy was gripping the bed, legs slightly spread apart, and breathing a little rapidly.  The realization that he was having an effect on Ken only made it impossible to stop.  He could feel the tension mounting in Ken, and it was spreading to him.  Ken’s hands fumbled desperately with the knot, then he managed to jerk it loose.  The drawstring fell free and the elastic waist loosened.

“There,” Ken said and ran from the room as quickly as Will had run toward it.  He shut the door behind him and Will let out a shuddering breath.  He fell back onto the bed, curling one hand into a fist and resting it on his chest.  He stared at the ceiling, trying to get his breathing back under control.  The pressure had been nearly overwhelming.  Will felt sick as he realized that if Ken had given in to his arousal and pushed him back onto the bed, he would have let the man do whatever he wanted with him.

“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered, tears escaping his eyes this time.

He couldn’t stop crying as he changed clothes.  So he had to stay in the room a little bit longer to get himself under control.  To help, he straightened Ken’s bedspread and folded the borrowed clothes neatly.  He went into the bathroom and leaned on the sink counter to see if his eyes were red.  He looked pretty normal, his eyes having faded back to a more human shade of green.  He took in a deep breath and steeled his nerves.  He walked to the bedroom door and hesitated with his hand on the doorknob.  What if Ken was waiting just outside the door?  What if he grabbed him and forced their bodies together?  What if Will didn’t fight him?

Will opened the door and saw Ken sitting on the couch, leaning on one of the arms with his hand covering his eyes.  Was he feeling guilty?  Or just trying to get himself to calm down?  Will walked over to the coffee table and pocketed his wallet, cell phone, and the Marches’ keys.  Ken looked up at him.

“I should go home now.  Thanks for the breakfast.  And the talk.  It did help.”

Ken smiled.  Will thought he looked relieved and happy.

“Good.  I’m glad.”  He stood up.  “Let me drive you home.”

“That’s okay.  I can take the metro.  If you can just tell me which way to the nearest stop.”

“Really, it’s no trouble.  It’ll get you there faster and save you some money.”  He grabbed his keys off the kitchen island and walked over to him.  He stood much closer than he needed to.  He smiled enticingly and ran a hand through Will’s hair, around his ear, down his jaw, and onto his neck.  Will had very nearly leaned into the caress, but then slapped his hand away.

“Hey!  I’m not going to deny that some weird shit happened here today, but do you really think _you_ should be acknowledging it?”

Ken laughed and walked to his front door.  “You are so cute.  I know I shouldn’t be thinking that, and definitely not telling you that, but…”  Ken turned to face him as he opened the door.  “You really are adorable.”

“Shut-up!”

Will snatched his shoes from the kitchen floor and struggled into them.  Then he stomped past Ken into the hallway and clomped down the hall toward the elevators.  He jabbed the down call button like it had betrayed him.  Then he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, tapping his foot impatiently.  Would Ken think this was cute too?  Probably.  The pervert.  By the time one of the three elevators reached the 17th floor, Ken had joined him.  He stomped onto the elevator and pushed the lobby button.  Ken followed him calmly on and pushed the button marked ‘G2.’  That’s right, they were going to the garage.  They rode down in silence, but Will could tell that Ken was still amused.  Shouldn’t he be panicking more?  He had assaulted a minor.  Again.  Maybe he was only worried about getting caught and didn’t actually care that he was breaking the law.

The elevator doors opened at the lobby.  The security guards looked up and stared at them as they stayed on the lift.  Then the doors slid shut.  They went down two more floors and this time the doors opened up to a parking garage.  He thought maybe at fancy places they had fancy parking garages, but it was just a typical concrete, poorly lit collection of parking spaces.  Ken led him down the row of cars to their left.  About four cars down he recognized the red Aston Martin.  But, Ken walked past it.

“Where are you going?” Will asked as Ken remotely unlocked a silver Lexus.

“You think I’m driving you home in my Aston Martin?  I just picked you up in that to make a good impression.  It gets crap gas mileage.  This is a GS.  It’s a hybrid.”

Will walked around to the passenger side and slid into the leather seat.  Ken had a thing for nice cars.  And this _was_ a nice car, but it wasn’t nearly as cool as the Aston Martin.  Ken started up the car and they headed out of the garage.

“So, if you don’t drive it, what’s the point of having it?”

“Um, because it’s cool?  You have to admit, you were willing to get into the car of a total stranger because it was so cool.”

“Is that how you pick up all your other high school victims?”

Ken gave him a dirty look as they pulled out onto the city streets.

“And besides,” Will defended himself.  “I didn’t get into the car of a perfect stranger.  I thought my friend, Scott, knew you.”

“Why would he know me?”

“Because he was setting me up with his cousin!  How was I supposed to know that he didn’t have a rich cousin?  People have all kinds of weird connections to people they wouldn’t normally associate with simply because they’re family.”

“That’s true.”

“Do you have any weird relatives?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Liar.  Your family is so affluent, there’s gotta be someone they’re ashamed of.”

“Yeah…that would be me.  Only, they don’t know it.”

“Ken, it’s not that big a deal.  I’m sure they’d be fine with it, especially since you’re so successful.”

“Is that so?  I’m sure my man’s man of a father will have no problem accepting his nancy boy son.  And my mother surely won’t have her heart break to know that she won’t ever get any grandchildren from me.  And my sister won’t have to deal with the whispers and looks from all of her friends and co-workers.  And, oh yeah, the family priest, who is a close friend, will probably have a few words to say on the matter.”

“Okay, one, there’s a difference between a nancy boy and a gay guy.  You are not a nancy boy.  Two, you can get a surrogate for your mom’s grandchildren.  And three, who points and stares over this kind of thing anymore?  Especially in a large, culturally progressive city.  And you know?  To hell with your priest.  He’s probably having sex with alter boys anyway.”

Ken laughed and then sobered.  He crossed himself and then pointed a finger at Will.  “Now, now, be nice.  You’ve never met him before.  You don’t know that for sure.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Will propped one foot up on the dashboard and looked out the window.  He let out a noise of pain as Ken slapped his leg.

“Get your foot off my leather interior.”

Will dropped his foot and glared at the man.  “You are a neat freak _and_ a control freak.  That is not a good combination.”

“But don’t they usually come together?”

“I guess.  And you know, I thought you had maid service or something, but there’s no way you could handle that.  _You_ keep that place that clean.  That’s strange for a bachelor.”

“But, I’m gay.”

“That would only make them offset to normal clean.  You’re a little bit past normal clean.”

Ken laughed.  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.  Cleanliness is Godliness, right?”

“Is that why you like your sex so dirty?”

Will froze after the words left his mouth.  He closed his eyes and sunk into the seat.  He could feel heat radiating from the skin of his face.  Why did he have to keep bringing it up?  And not just bringing it up, but bringing it up so as to evoke as many graphic details as possible.  He had a feeling Ken had a response to that, but he kept it to himself.

“So,” Ken said, a hint of a smile in his voice, “how’s soccer going?”

“It sucks,” Will muttered.  “We were eliminated from the possibility of regional play-offs about mid-season, so we only have one more game left.  Against the best school in our division, so we’re going to lose to close out the year.”

“You know what I love about you most, Will?  Your unwavering optimism.”

“Oh, hush, I—”  Will cut off.  He blushed again, but not quite out of embarrassment.  “What do you mean ‘love about me’?”

“It’s an expression, Will.”

“Ah.  Got it.”

The car filled with a slightly awkward silence, so Ken said, “I know you get this question all the time, but can you explain the offside rule to me?”

Will laughed despite himself.  He was grateful Ken was willing to fill up all the holes he kept digging.  Will talked about soccer for almost the entire half hour it took to get to his exit on the highway.  He had to direct Ken down a different street than the one they used last time.  He was going to Julian’s house, not his own.  When they pulled into Julian’s driveway it was pretty late in the day.  He wondered if his parents would wonder where he was.  Probably not.  But Julian would.  He should think of a good story now.

“Do you want me to wait and drive you home?” Ken asked, putting the car in park.

“No, that’s okay.  I’m taking the dog with me and he needs to go on a walk.  And besides, would you be able to handle having a dog in your precious car?”

“No.”

Will rolled his eyes.  “Freak,” he said in an exaggerated whisper.  He turned to look at Ken, smiling.  The man was smiling back at him.  There was such an easy and pleasant feeling between them.  Will’s stomach dropped and he turned away from Ken.  Holy crap.  Why was he okay with this situation?  Especially after what had happened that afternoon.

“So,” Ken said, strumming his fingers on the wheel.  “Are you going to get out?”

“Yes!”

“Well, it just seems like it’s always so hard for you to leave me.”

Will faced him.  “That’s not it at all and you know it!”

“Do I?”

“If you don’t, you should.”

“Hmm.  So, _this_ is the last time we’ll ever see each other, right?”

“Yeah, definitely this time.”

“Well, in that case,” Ken leaned forward, his hand sliding around Will’s neck, “I should you give a kiss goodbye.”

“What, again?”

“Nn.  And again and again and again…”

Will let him come closer, trying not to smile and give away his evil plan.  He was going to teach the homo a lesson this time.  He’d bite his lip off.  Then Ken kissed him, and pulled away, and kissed him again.  It wasn’t too involved, their lips were barely open.  And when Ken moved his head the other way, Will accommodated him by tilting his head in the opposite direction.  And his eyes were closed.  You didn’t kiss somebody with your eyes closed if you didn’t like it.  Will pulled away and fell back against the car door.  He stared at the gear shift.

“So, that’s it,” Will said.  “Never again.”

“Nope.  I guess not.”

Ken reached out a hand and opened the car door.  Will fell outside to the ground.  He looked back up at Ken with an offended scowl.

“Sorry, Will.  But you needed to get out.  Otherwise I might have taken you back home with me for good.”

“Ha, ha.”  Will stood up and brushed off his backside.  “Get lost, you queer.”

“Bye, cutie.”

Will slammed the door shut and walked up to the Marches’ front door.  Ken idled the car in the driveway until he was certain Will could get inside okay, and then he drove off.  Will couldn’t stop himself from watching.  Was that really the last time he’d ever see him?  And if it was, why did he feel a little down about it?  _Don’t question it, Will_ , he thought to himself.  _You won’t like the answer._

Cornelius was excited to see him back, but a little disappointed he was alone again.  He patted the dog’s head, telling him he could see Julian again soon.  Will grabbed the dog’s favorite toy and the small container of food the family kept in the pantry.  They’d have to come back for the large bag later.  When he stepped back outside with Cornelius in tow, it was misting again.  The fifteen minute walk to his house went by in a white blur.  He was refusing to let himself think about what had happened that afternoon.  He really needed to stick with his denial strategy, it would make life easier.

His parents and Julian were already at his house when he showed up.  While Julian petted Cornelius within earshot of the conversation, Will managed to convince his parents that it would be cruel to send the dog away now.  Manipulating people was another one of Will’s talents.  He and Julian took the dog upstairs to his room and Cornelius made himself at home in the papasan chair in the corner of his room.  The boys flopped on the bed and lay quietly together.  Now that Will wasn’t moving, he didn’t have as good control over his thoughts and he kept replaying the afternoon in his head.  From the moment he met Ken’s eyes in the restaurant, right until he fell on his ass outside Ken’s car.  Maybe he should focus on Julian, then he could stop thinking about it.  Besides, he should be trying to help his friend anyway.  Will rolled to his side to look at Julian.

“How are you doing?”

Julian turned his head to look at him and shook his head.  “I don’t know.  I feel, not numb exactly, but I don’t really feel anything.  Doesn’t that seem weird?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve never lost my parents before.  But you know, whatever you feel is how you feel.  There is no wrong or right.  It’s not a test.”

Julian laughed softly.  “That’s what the psychologist said.”

“Well, it’s good advice.”

“Yeah.  Where’d you hear it?”

Will felt himself blush.  Was he supposed to tell Julian his male rapist/adult mentor had told him that when he’d gone crying to him this morning?  “It’s just what I think.”

Julian smiled.  Will swallowed uneasily.  Did Julian suspect something?  How could he?  Julian turned to look at the ceiling and Will closed his eyes.  Was he going to blush every time he thought of that man?  How long would it be before he could at the very least push it to the back of his mind even if he couldn’t completely forget about it?  Will hunched in on himself.  He wondered if he was turning gay.  What else could explain him just accepting Ken’s kisses rather than biting his lip off like he’d intended?  He’d had every intention to do it too.  Not to really hurt him of course, but to spoil his fun.  But the moment their lips had met all thoughts of revenge had flown from his mind.  All he could think of was how warm Ken’s lips were.  He’d kissed a lot of girls before, but none ever had such heat.

Will opened his eyes and Julian turned to look at him.  Will realized he’d been talking the entire time.  He hadn’t a clue what he’d said.  What should he say?  He opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of a good thing to say that would be a universally appropriate response.  Julian turned to his side and put their foreheads together.  Will thought he might be a little jumpy about overly-close males today, but it didn’t bother him.

“Ah, I’m not that worried,” Julian said.  “I’m sure you guys will kick my ass back into reality.”

Will was confused.  What on earth had Julian been talking about?  Well, at least he could make a reasonably correct response to that statement.  “Definitely.  That is one thing we’re good at.”

“Yeah.”

They laid together quietly for a few moments.  Will felt guilty for not listening to his friend, so he let him stay close as long as he wanted.

“Oh, man.”

“What?” Will asked, worried about what was upsetting him.

“We have school tomorrow.”

Will inwardly groaned at the thought.  “I don’t think you should go.”

“Why?  I’ll have to deal with it eventually.”

“Yeah, but…”  Will sighed.

“What is it?”

“The accident was all over the news.  And since you were the only family to contact, the police released your names.  Everyone will know about it.  They’ll want to ask you questions or try to talk to you.  At the very least they’ll give you the same annoying look all day.”

“That does sound unpleasant.”

“I’ll go to school and take notes and get your homework for you.  Hell, I’ll even do it for you if you want me to.”

Julian smiled.  “Thanks buddy.”

They started slightly as the house phone rang.  Will knew one of his parents would get it, so he didn’t bother to move.  He figured Julian wanted to have him stay close for as long as possible.  Then he had to wonder exactly how far that feeling would extend.  So, he asked him point blank.

“So, where do you want to sleep tonight?” Will asked.

Julian’s eyes went wide and Will almost rolled his eyes at the inappropriate thoughts he could envision rushing around Julian’s imagination.

“You offering to let me sleep with you?” Julian asked quietly in a voice that if it had been Ken speaking would have caused Will to shiver involuntarily.  It was a little disturbing to know that his friend was hot for him, but it was nothing new.  He could handle it.

“Sure.  If you don’t want to be alone.”

“What if I take advantage of your kind offer?”

Will smiled.  “Yeah right.”

Julian let his face go serious and said, “Will, you know that when I flirt with you, I’m only half-joking, right?”

“I do.  You’re rather obvious.  But unfortunately for you, I trust you not to do anything that would jeopardize our friendship.”

Julian made a face.  “Damn.”

Will grinned and ruffled his hair.  “Sorry, honey.  Your half-assed bisexual tendencies will have to be carried out with some other pretty boy.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

Someone knocked at Will’s door and Will flew away from his friend.  If his mother caught him being too close with one man, what was to say she wouldn’t recognize it with another?  But then, she wouldn’t ever meet Ken, so that shouldn’t be a problem.  His mother walked into the room holding the portable handset of the kitchen phone and biting her lower lip.  Will felt his stomach drop.  Had Ken called and said something?  Had he given them away?  Did his mother know?  Was Ken in trouble now?  Maybe someone had seen them kissing at Julian’s house and called the cops on him.

“Julian, I just received a call from your grandmother.”

Will felt the tightness ease out of his body.  He couldn’t believe he had jumped to all those weird conclusions.  So much for pushing it all down and denying it.  It wouldn’t leave him alone.  Julian and his mom were talking about the phone call from Julian’s estranged grandparents.  And then his mother said something that really made him pay attention.

“Um, she also said that she and her husband would be on the first flight out here in the morning.”

“What?!” Julian shouted.

“Mom!  Why did you let them?” Will demanded.

His mother gave him a very familiar look.  “Will, I could hardly tell them what to do with their own time and money.  It’s not like I told them they could come pick Julian up and take him off our hands.  But I do imagine that they will want to see him tomorrow.”

“Maybe I _should_ go to school,” Julian murmured.

His mother put a hand awkwardly on Julian’s shoulder.  She wasn’t very good with comforting people.  Or touching them.  “I think it would be best to take a little time off.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a recovery time clause in cases like these and you’re going to have to make some decisions about what to do with your parents’ remains.  It might be good to have someone there to help you.  And mourn with you.”

“Mourn?  Why would they?”

“They’re coming, Julian.  That means they care.  And I’m willing to bet that this is going to hit them very hard because they had such an estranged relationship.  They’ll probably feel guilty for not reconciling sooner, and now it’s too late.”

Will couldn’t believe what his mother was saying.  If these people were so stupid as to turn their backs on Julian and not love him because of something his parents did, they didn’t deserve to know him.  “So, you think he should be nice to them?” Will growled.

His mother petted his head.  “Don’t be so defensive.  You look like a fluffed up kitty.”

Will sat back, thoroughly offended by the comparison.

“And no, you don’t have to be nice to them, Julian.  You don’t have to do anything.  But, it will make things go smoother if you’re at least civil to them.  Rich has to go to work tomorrow and I need to get your petition started right away.  Will it be a problem if they come here and you’re by yourself tomorrow?  Or would you prefer to go with me to the courthouse and we’ll arrange a place to meet?”

Julian thought about that for a long minute.  “No, I think I’ll be okay.”

“I could stay,” Will offered.

“No,” his mother shook her head.  “You’re going to school.”

Will frowned.  He didn’t want to go to school.  He wanted to stay with Julian.  And on top of that, how could he go to school now that he was some dirty slut?  Everyone always knew at school who the sluts were; would they all be able to tell he’d turned into one too?  But, he wasn’t a slut, he’d been raped.  There was a huge difference.  Oh, yeah, such a difference between the girls who spread for any boy and himself who would spread for one guy in particular.  Actually, that _was_ the opposite of a slut.  But what was he thinking?  He would do it for a guy.  That was just plain wrong.

“Will?”

He looked at his mother.  “What?”

“We’ll probably eat dinner around seven.  Can you get Julian settled in the guest room?”

“Yeah, sure.  No problem.”

Compared to the Ken situation, nothing was a problem.

 

Chris

 

Chris woke up as his mother walked into his bedroom without knocking.  Last night he’d been so physically and emotionally exhausted that all he’d done was strip down to his underwear and flopped into bed.  During the night he had also kicked all his covers to the floor.  But his mom seeing him in his underwear wasn’t so bad.  She’d certainly seen worse.  During the summer he tended to sleep naked, and on one or two occasions she’d found him with stained sheets and/or sporting morning wood.  The woman never learned her lesson.  Or maybe he never learned the lesson to lock his door.  But, that was a fire hazard, and Chris had an irrational fear of dying in a fire.  He’d never had any traumatic experiences to trigger such a phobia, but he had it all the same.

His mother sat on the edge of his bed and gently tucked his short hair behind his ear.  She looked worriedly down at him.  Chris raised his hand and took his mother’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.  Then he caught site of the clock on his nightstand: 6:34.  Chris groaned and rolled over, turning his back on his mom.

“Go away.  It’s too early,” he grumbled into his pillow.

“I have to go into work, so I just wanted to see how you were doing.  I didn’t want to just leave you alone if you were feeling…bad about what happened.”

Chris turned back over.  “You’re going into work?  You worked yesterday.  Seriously, Mom.  Just let me go to public school.  You deserve to have a life of your own.  And I don’t want your health to suffer for this.”

His mother stroked his hair.  “Thank you for your concern, but I’m doing just fine.  The reason I’ve been working so many weekends lately is because my team has a big sale coming up.  And if we make this, I’ll probably get a promotion.  So, I’ll be making more and working less.  Isn’t it great how those two things coincide?”

“Yeah.”

His mother tilted her head in concern.  “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.  Worried.  And honestly, just completely dumbfounded.  I can’t believe last night happened.  I don’t know how Julian’s doing or how he’s coping with it.  I’m worried.  Though, I do feel better knowing that Will is there for him.  And Mrs. Harder will help take care of the legal stuff.  So, it could be worse.  But, still.  It’s just…”  Chris shook his head.  “I don’t know, Mom.  I seriously don’t know what to think.  It’s so unreal.”

“I know, baby.  It was very shocking, so it will take some getting used to.  And there’s no telling how Julian may react to it.  He may lash out at his friends or pretend like nothing happened.  Whatever happens, you just have to support him.  Just be there for him and help him when he asks for it.”

Chris nodded.  “As long as he doesn’t ask for it before noon.”

He turned over and hugged onto his pillow, already drifting back into sleep.  He felt his mother pick the sheet up from the floor and drape it gently over him.  He didn’t hear her close the door.  When he woke up again it was almost noon.  He felt a little better and more clearheaded now that he’d gotten some deep, uninterrupted sleep.  But a clear head didn’t help him make any sense of what had happened last night.  It was so bizarre.  He felt weird for thinking the word bizarre.  Shouldn’t he be thinking tragic or horrific?  He’d known Mr. and Mrs. March reasonably well.  They were weird, but some of the nicest people he’d ever met.  And ridiculously over-affectionate with each other and their son.  Sometimes it was embarrassing how involved their PDA was.

Chris sat up and stretched his arms high over his head.  The movement, reflected in the dresser mirror, caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.  He stopped mid-stretch and looked at himself in the mirror.  With his stomach pulled taut like this he actually looked pretty fit, like Will or Julian.  He let his arms drop.  He didn’t look quite so fit now, but it wasn’t bad, he supposed.  He didn’t much know what girls found attractive in a man.  His first girlfriend had liked his “honey brown eyes,” which Chris thought was ridiculous.  He’d always thought of honey as golden colored, and he certainly didn’t have gold eyes.  But apparently there was honey out there in the world that was brownish in color and his eyes had reminded her of that.  The girl that had a crush on him in ninth grade said that she loved his “Heath Ledger smile,” which Chris thought was an exaggeration.  His mouth wasn’t nearly that big.  He knew he had an attractive face, but he was just kind of a typical teenaged high schooler.  Every high school in the country had its own “cute guys,” and depending on which school he was at would affect where on the list he would rank.  He was pretty high up at Calverton—he’d give his ego that boost at least—but then again, Calverton was full of a bunch of rich kids.  Weren’t rich people all inbred and kind of like the royal families of Europe?  Was he simply good-looking by comparison?  Excluding Will from that statement.  It just wasn’t fair that some people got to have everything.

Chris looked at his reflection again.  He’d noticed his abs more and more lately because whenever they were in bed together, Karen liked to run her hands over his stomach.  That’s what she found the most attractive.  Of course, he was lying flat on his back, so it was the same effect as stretching his arms out.  It was kind of an illusion.  But trust Karen to find something that she actually liked about him that only objectified him more.  Chris let out a soft noise of displeasure.  That had reminded him of Karen.

He had made up his mind to break up with her, and then she had to go act like a human being last night.  Had she really meant what she’d said?  There’d been no one around but him to hear it, so she couldn’t have been putting on an act.  Unless the act was for him.  Did she suspect that he was getting ready to send her packing?  Had she planned such an elaborate, dramatic scene in the rain so that he’d be persuaded to stay with her?  And how bad was it that he suspected his girlfriend of ruining her thousand dollar ball gown just to trick him into staying with her?  Chris realized he didn’t trust her.  She was hot and at times she could be sweet, but he didn’t feel comfortable around her.  He should definitely go through with his plans to break up with her.  In the long run it would work out better.  Because even if she’d had that great epiphany, she would undoubtedly revert back to her old ways before too long.

His stomach grumbled at him and he decided it would be best to heed the beast’s call.  It was almost noon so that totally justified making a large sandwich with lots of meat piled on it for breakfast.  He didn’t even bother to get dressed.  If his neighbors were slinking around the back door and wanted to see him in his boxers, let ‘em.  He was one of the “cute guys,” right?  His bare feet slapped on the tile floor of the kitchen and he yanked open the refrigerator.  As he stood in front of it, getting a chill, he wondered if he should call Julian or visit him today.  But where would he be?  Still at the hospital, or would someone have taken him somewhere?  He was pretty sure he remembered Julian saying his parents were estranged from their family.  Maybe the Harders would take him in.  That seemed as likely as anything.

There was a knock at the back door and Chris turned around in confusion.  Who would come to the back door?  He let the refrigerator shut and walked toward the door.  He couldn’t see out the window because of the frilly pink curtains that hung in the way.  He couldn’t believe his mom had put up pink curtains.  He hesitated for a moment with his hand on the knob.  He was practically naked; maybe he shouldn’t answer the door.  But, he didn’t care.  A little bare chest and hairy guy legs never hurt anyone.  Chris opened the door.

His stomach dropped and he went lightheaded.  The blood had drained from his face so quickly it was demanding that he faint dead away to the floor in order to restore the balance.  He fought the impulse and remained standing.  How had he forgotten about this?  Yes, Julian’s parents had died.  Yes, Karen had been replaced with a pod person.  But how could he forget his parole-violating father had been in his house last night?  His dad smiled at him.

“Hi, son.  Were you expecting a lady caller dressed like that?”

Chris was aware his jaw was hanging, possibly flapping, but he couldn’t get any words into his head.  Words?  What were those?  His dad just laughed and stepped inside the house, ushering Chris back into the kitchen.  His father shut the door behind him and the man put his hands on his son’s shoulders.  He held him at arm’s length and looked him over.  Then he pulled Chris toward him and hugged him.  The denim of his father’s shirt scratched against his skin.  But it wasn’t enough to snap him into functioning.  His arms were partway up, but he wasn’t sure what to do with them.  Push him away?  Reach for something to hit him with?  Then Chris decided to go with his instincts.  He hugged his father back.  He turned his head so that his nose wasn’t smashed and rested his head on his father’s shoulder.  The last time he’d seen his father they had been in this same position, only Chris had been much smaller and his feet had been dangling well above the floor.  His father broke the embrace and ruffled his hair.  Chris just stared at him.  What on earth was he supposed to do?

“Chris!” his father gave him a slap on the shoulder.  “Wake up, son.  It’s not that big a deal.  I’m not an escapee or anything.  I’m legitimately out of jail.”

“But you broke your parole!  I mean, the police called us and told us the day it happened.  How would they know you were gone on the first day already?”

“I was supposed to check in with my parole officer by phone, so I did.  And I almost got away with it too.  But he heard the sounds of the train.  So, he asked if he could see me in person, and I tried to talk around it, but he figured out I’d already skipped town.”  He sighed.  “Why did I have to get the one guy who actually pays that close attention to details?  He must be new.”

“But, Dad,” Chris said, pausing after hearing the word come out of his mouth.  He hadn’t said it in years.  “Couldn’t you have just stayed in Chicago and like, called me?”

“As if your mother would allow me to talk to you.  All my letters were returned to me.  She tried to cut me completely out of your life.  And she succeeded too.  I couldn’t even call you because she had the prison’s number blocked.”  His father started to pace the kitchen, he didn’t look happy at all.  “I wasn’t a bad father or husband.  I wasn’t a bad man.  I’m not a bad man.  It’s just that my job happened to be a little illegal.”

“A little illegal?” Chris almost laughed in disbelief.  “They put you in jail for _nine years_.  That’s not a little infraction.  I mean, I don’t even know what you did.  Nobody ever really told me.  I knew it was drugs or something, but even if you had 100 kilos of the stuff that’s not a nine year sentence.  What else did you do?”

His father rubbed the back of his head.  In the light of day Chris could see that his hair was cut unevenly.  The beard had gotten a little fuller too.  He was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing last night.  He looked tired.  There were bags under his eyes and his skin didn’t look quite the right color.

Before his father could respond to his question he said, “Are you okay?  You really don’t look it.  Are you hungry?”  His father hesitated and Chris smiled.  “Come on, Dad.  You don’t have to feel bad about asking for a meal.  I owe you at least that.”

His father looked suddenly serious and grabbed Chris by the shoulders again.  It made him a little nervous because he could feel how strong his father was.  He’d been strong in Chris’ head when he was a little boy, but there was little doubt that nine years in prison had hardened him in more ways than one.

“You don’t owe me a damn thing.  Don’t think that.  What I’m doing is selfish and completely unfair, but I wanted to see you again.  I had to.”

Chris took in a breath.  He was finally letting himself admit that he had missed his father.  He’d been forced to pretend like he was okay with never seeing his father again for his mother’s sake, but he hadn’t been okay.  He’d never been okay.  It was almost like his father had died, but Chris had never been given the chance to mourn him.  He thought maybe he understood a little bit of what Julian was going through now.  And with that realization Chris knew there was no way in hell he could turn in his father.  He’d lost him once, and he wasn’t going to be the reason he lost him again.

“You think I didn’t want to see you too, Dad?  You took me pole fishing and fly fishing and trolling, but we never went ice fishing.  Or deep sea fishing.  You promised me both of those things.  You promised to help me with my swing for baseball.”  Chris could hear his voice wavering.  His father blurred in front of him, and then cleared again when the tears fell.  His father hugged him close again.  “You promised we’d do all sorts of things,” Chris sobbed, a little embarrassed by his sudden breakdown.

“I’m sorry,” his father said, his beard scratching his face when his jaw moved.  “I’m so sorry.  I never thought about how it would affect you if I got pinched.  But you know, it wasn’t exactly the kind of job I could retire from, you know?  Once I was in it, there was no way out.  But I thought I could protect you and your mother from it.  I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

Chris held onto his father for a few minutes, wondering if he should feel this close to a man who was essentially a stranger.  He didn’t know who this man was, or who he had become after being in prison for so long.  But he remembered that smile.  The one he’d given him standing outside the door this morning.  That was his father’s smile and it was as familiar to him as his mother’s voice.  His father gave him a hard pat on the back.

“Okay, okay now.  You’d better let go.  Holding you without any clothes on is kind of reminding me of those lonely nights I spent with my bitch in the slammer.”

Chris let go of his father and backed away several feet.  He frowned as his father burst out laughing.  He remembered that laugh too.  That big bear of a laugh that sounded like it belonged to a burly logger.

“Real funny, Dad.”

His father wiped a tear from his eye, still chuckling.  “I thought it was.”

“Yeah real funny because we both you know you would have been the bitch.”

“Absolutely not.  I actually bought some guy for twenty cigarettes while I was in the joint.  I didn’t do anything to him of course.  I just felt sorry for him, so I decided I’d let him have a couple months of reprieve.  So, how about that food?”

“Look in the refrigerator,” Chris grumbled as he started to leave the kitchen.

“Where you going?” his father called after him.

“To put some clothes on!” Chris shouted back.

His father laughed again and Chris stomped up the stairs.  His father used to tease him and play tricks on him all the time.  His mother hated that he would be so mean to his son, but Chris hadn’t minded that much.  At least his vague memories led him to believe he hadn’t minded that much.  Maybe his dad had always been that annoying.  It was amazing what a little idolization will let someone get away with.  He pulled on khakis and a green striped button down shirt.  When he returned to the kitchen his father had pulled out practically everything in the refrigerator and put it on the counter.  He was slathering a piece of bread with mustard.  It was already covered in mayonnaise.

“Geez, Dad.  Could you find anything you wanted?”

“Ah, so you turned into a sarcastic smart ass.  I was wondering about that.  I was pretty sure my son would be a smart ass, but I wasn’t quite sure what kind he would be.”

Chris made a face at him and grabbed two slices of bread to make his own sandwich.  “So, what was it like?” Chris asked.

“What?”

“Jail.”

“Like jail, you know?”

“No, that’s why I’m asking.”

“Well, whatever you’ve seen on TV or heard about in jokes.  It’s kind of like that.  The guards treat you like the crap, there are cliques, just like high school.  And if you mind your own business and watch your ass, you just kind of slowly die of boredom.  There’s a not a lot to do there.  They only let us outside once a day for a very short period of time.  I did some work doing laundry a couple days a week.  I read every book that was ever donated and put in our little library.  Just not a lot to do.”

“Did you get that in there?” Chris asked, using a piece of cheese to point toward the scar on the left side of his father’s face.

He rubbed his fingers down the scar and nodded.  “Yeah.  It’s from my first month in the joint.  I hadn’t quite learned the rules yet.  I thought my status in the cartel would protect me, but in prison, you have to earn your status all over again.  And unless you have other people willing to back you up, you’re just another piece of meat.”

“You were the only one caught from your organization?”

“No.  There were a couple others.  But, they were charged with murder and sent to a different prison.”

Chris slapped the top piece of bread on his mountain of meat.  He stared at the crumbs he’d left on the counter.  “Murder?  What, uh—what happened?”

Chris’ father shrugged as he sucked some mustard off his thumb.  He took his sandwich to the kitchen table and sat down.  Chris stayed standing, not looking at his father.  Selling drugs was one thing, but what had his father done?

“When we got busted, the two guys I was with opened fire on the police.  I just ran out the backdoor.  Two cops died that night and one got paralyzed.  I was caught a few blocks down the road.  They’d had us surrounded.  Part of the charges, on top of the drug possession and selling, was resisting arrest and unlawful possession of a weapon.  And it was a stolen gun.  I got lucky that the cops didn’t try to get revenge for their guys by taking it out on me.  No one testified that I brandished a weapon or shot at the police.  Otherwise I would have been given decades to serve.  Possibly a life sentence if some expert had ‘matched’ a bullet from my gun to one found in one of the cops.”

Chris took his sandwich and sat down opposite his father, completely intrigued.  “So, who did you work for?  Did they try to kill you on the inside since you got caught?”

“Nah.  I didn’t roll on anyone.  The cartel actually paid for my lawyer.  I think their American contact liked me a lot.  Or maybe his daughter did.  She might have pleaded on my behalf.”

“Who is the daughter?”

“You never met her.”

Chris took a bite of his sandwich, chewed for several long seconds, and then swallowed.  “Did you sleep with her?”

His dad took a big bite of his sandwich.  He chewed slowly.  He was stalling.

“You cheated on Mom?”

“Not in the same way as other men who have affairs.”

“And how’s that?”

“I was completely in love and happy with your mother.  I didn’t go seeking this woman out.  But, it just seemed like a good idea to me not to piss anyone off who was in a position to make me disappear.  And if I made her mad, she could have come up with any number of lies to tell her father to have him bump me off.  After he got to know me better I doubt he would have believed his daughter over me, but in the beginning, it was in my best interest to do it.”

“How long did it last?”

“A few years.  And it wasn’t often.  Only a couple times a year when I visited her father in Florida.  And after you were born, I managed to convince her that it really wasn’t something I could do anymore.  She wasn’t happy, but she let it slide.  Usually.”

“How long have you been involved in it?”

“Ah, well, I think probably since I was kid.  I used to help some of the street pushers in Miami.”

“Wait, you’re from Miami?”

“Yeah.  Where’d you think I was from?”

Chris shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I never asked Mom.  I just assumed you were from Chicago.”

“Nope.  Miami.  You are partially Colombian, you know.”

“Colombian?  As in the country of Colombia?”

“Yes.  Generally that’s what Colombian means.”

“Am I, like, a prince of some drug royalty?” Chris asked, leaning forward.

His father laughed raucously.  “You think if you were I would have gone to jail?  Please.  I was just a little peon immigrant working for other peon immigrants.  I was just smart and quick and made a few good connections.  I pretty much had my choice of cities I could move to in order to run things for the business.  I chose Chicago because I had fallen in love with a young girl who went to college in Miami.  She was from Chicago.  So, after she left, I followed her.  And asked her to marry me.”

“My mom, right?”

“Yes, your mother.”

“Why did you never tell her?”

“I knew she wouldn’t approve and would leave me.  Hell, she might have even turned me in.  I loved her too much to be away from her.”

“So, you loved her enough to lie to her.  And the child you had together.  Every single day.”

“Yep.  Pretty much.  It made sense at the time.  And even if I could have gotten out of the business, I wouldn’t have been able to support us.  I’d never been to college.  And I wanted to make a lot of money because I wanted a lot of children.  Your mother felt a little overwhelmed with just you.  Your terrible twos lasted into your terrible threes and fours.”

Chris’ brow furrowed in confusion.  His mother had always said he’d been a good boy.  They finished their sandwiches with Chris doing most of the talking.  His father was drilling him on every aspect of his life.  About school, his interests, his friends, how life was going living with just his mother’s income.  He didn’t really mind telling his father everything, but would his mother be upset if he was talking about how it was a little hard not having a lot of money?  About how she was never home because she worked so much?  He didn’t think he was making her sound like a bad parent, but she might not want this man to hear it.  Or maybe he should hear it.  Maybe he should know that nine years later they were still struggling and feeling the effects of what had happened because of his dangerous lifestyle.

Eventually Chris did steer the subject away from their hardships and he focused mostly on stories involving Scott, Will, and Julian.  His father seemed particularly amused by Julian’s oddball behavior.  Though Scott’s neurosis and Will’s egotism made him shake his head and wonder if Chris himself wasn’t weird in some way.  Then Chris had to wonder if maybe he was painting his friends in a somewhat unfavorable light.  He was being honest, and their strongest characteristics came out as a result, but Chris never viewed them as negatives.  Quite the contrary, it was what made them who they were.  Julian pulled off the strange, gothic vibe because it was genuinely who he was, and not an act.  Scott was neurotic, but only because he empathized with people so well.  And if Will was modest on top of being perfect, he’d be insufferable.  Chris was certain he had the greatest friends in the world, and he wanted his father to know that.  So that he would know his son was happy and he had nothing to feel guilty about.

Talking about Julian had put his parents’ deaths in a corner of his mind.  He’d almost mentioned it two or three times, but it seemed like a weird thing to just say out of no where.  It had happened last night, but he never felt like there was an appropriate time to bring it up.  And what would be the point?  To convince his father that he wasn’t going to turn him in?  Certainly his father knew that already.  But, maybe he could talk about it with his father.  His mother had left him this morning.  He hadn’t talked to his friends about it yet.  Last night at the hospital they had been too awkward around their parents.  After Will had snuck back into Julian’s room, Scott had tugged on his arm and they had slipped inside as well.  Julian had been collapsed on the floor, crying like a small child in Will’s arms.  Tears had burst from his eyes without warning.  His chest tightened up on him and all he could think to do was reach out a hand to his friend, to let him know he was there for him.  And then some doctor had come in and shooed them away.  Nobody had bothered to see if they were okay.  Chris was certain Scott wasn’t doing well at all and Will was probably almost as torn up as Julian.  Not because he was necessarily close with Mr. and Mrs. March, but Will was extremely protective of Julian.  The reason why he didn’t get teased in school was because Will wouldn’t stand for it.  Chris wondered if Julian knew how big a part Will played in his relatively peaceful high school existence.

“Son?  You okay?”

Chris blinked and his fingers came into focus.  He was staring at his hands where they rested on the table.  He had completely zoned out.  He looked up at his father.

“What?”

“Are you okay?  You just disappeared on me.”

“Oh, yeah.  Sorry.  I had a rough night last night.”

“What happened?”

The doorbell rang.  Chris turned to look toward the front of the house.  Who could that be?  Maybe he should pretend he wasn’t home.  He didn’t want anyone to have even the slightest idea his father was here.  Including getting hints from his odd behavior.  Chris wasn’t a good actor and he got nervous even when he didn’t have a secret but people thought he did.  He got flustered and stuttered and often times ended up confessing to knowledge of Jimmy Hoffa’s whereabouts.

“You want to get that?” his father asked.  “I can go upstairs, or leave even.”

“No.  It’s probably just a girl scout or something.  They’ll go away.”

The doorbell rang again.  And then again.  And then someone pushed the button and held it for ten seconds before letting it go.  Then they started to push it rapidly in succession.  Chris looked at the ceiling in annoyance.  Really the only person he knew who would be that upset about being ignored was Will.  But why would he be over here?  Maybe there was something wrong with Julian.  Maybe he needed his help.  Chris jumped out of his chair.

“Sorry, Dad, maybe I should get that.  I’ll try to send them away soon.  You just wait here.”

“Okay.”

Chris ran to the front door and didn’t even look before he opened it.  Once he saw who was outside he realized he should probably stop just opening doors without looking to see who was standing there.  And he should have known that there was one other person who hated to be ignored, possibly more than Will.  Karen smiled at him.  She leapt forward and threw her arms around his neck.  He was caught off guard by her attack and stumbled inside the house.  He really didn’t want Karen and his father inside the house at the same time.

“Chris!  Baby!  I thought about you all last night!”

“Uh, Karen!”  Chris struggled a little with Karen’s weight.  She wasn’t heavy at all, but she had wrapped her legs around his waist.  He carried her back to the door and was going to dump her outside, but her legs were locked behind him.  She used one arm to the shut the door.  Chris stared in horror as now his girlfriend and his father were shut up inside the house together.  This was not good.  He had to get rid of her.  Then she used her hands to grab his face.  She pulled them together and kissed him sweetly.  Just a closed mouth smooch on the lips.  Chris was a little surprised by it.  He pulled back to look her in the eyes.  Then she smiled naughtily at him and kissed him again in a manner a little bit different from the first kiss.  She really was so good at this sort of thing.  So good in fact, that he forgot where he was or who was in his kitchen.  He slid his hands down and cupped her bottom in order to hold her better, but also just to feel her up.  Her fingers were in his hair again, messing it up as their tongues fought for control.  They never really had sweet, giving kisses; it was always a battle between them.  And while that often made it very exciting, it wasn’t very indicative of an equal, open relationship.

Air became an issue and they broke apart at the mouth to take in a breath.  The rest of their bodies remained pressed together.  Chris’ hands were roaming and so were hers.  She latched onto an earlobe and Chris let his head fall back in pleasure.  He tried to keep the noise he was making to a minimum, but Karen loved it when he capitulated to her talented lips and fingers.  His eyelids fluttered open and he started as he saw his father grinning at him from where he stood leaning in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Oh, baby,” Karen purred in his ear, sending an inappropriate feeling through is body considering his father was watching.  “Is it good?  I want to make you feel good.  We don’t even have to go to your room.  Here is perfect.”

She recaptured his lips, but Chris pushed down hard on her legs and she was forced to let go of him to catch herself on the floor.  She looked up at him worriedly.

“What’s wrong?  Are you worried about my dad?”  She giggled.  “If he realizes I’m missing he might come over here looking for me.”  She giggled again.  “But how great would that be for my daddy to catch me riding you like a stallion?”

She laughed and Chris mentally groaned.  His father had heard that.  How embarrassing.  Then he really paid attention to what she had said.  “What?  If he realized you’re missing?”

“Yeah, I’m totally grounded.  They were so embarrassed after I just ran out on the ball.  And also, that dress was, like, $1200.  It’s completely ruined.  My mother isn’t even speaking to me right now.”

“Karen!” Chris shouted/moaned.  “Your parents already don’t like me.  Please don’t make things worse.  You need to go home right now.”

“Okay, okay.  But, not even a quickie?  I want to touch you, baby.”

Chris was holding her shoulders very tightly to prevent her from turning at all.  His father was standing still, which was probably a good idea.  If he moved now, Karen might notice him.  But he still didn’t want his father listening to the details of his sex life.  Chris shook his head.

“Nothing is ever quick with us, and you know it.”

She smiled prettily at him and bit down on her lower lip.  Chris whimpered softly.  She was so hot.

“But that’s what makes us so good together.  Come on, honey.”

She sidled closer to him and Chris struggled to push her away.

“Seriously, Karen, now isn’t even a good time.”

“What if I just gave you head?  I should treat you to something nice, you know?”

Chris’ jaw dropped.  She _never_ wanted to do that.  And the things she did with her tongue in his mouth…it was absolutely heaven on his—stop!  His father was here.  Was he going to drop his pants and let his girlfriend go to town on him while he watched?

“Karen, sugar—”

Karen looked like she was about to snap at him, but uncharacteristically kept it to herself.

“I appreciate what you’re willing to do.  And believe me, I realize what an ass I am for turning you down.  But, I don’t even think I could get it up today.”  A lie.  He was half-hard already.  “I’m really not doing well.  You heard about the accident last night, right?”

Karen shook her head.  “What accident?”

“You know my friend, Julian, right?”

She nodded.

“He and his parents were in a car accident last night.  His parents didn’t make it.  He was really upset last night and I’m really worried about him.  I think I should see him sometime today.  To make sure he’s doing okay.”

“Oh.  That accident.  Yeah, I heard about it on the news.  I guess I just didn’t connect the name March with your friend.  That must really suck, huh?”

Chris turned her carefully and led her toward the front door.  “Yeah, it really does.  I want to make sure he’s okay.”

Karen planted her feet and stopped him from walking.  “But there’s nothing you can do for him, right?”

“Well, I don’t know that.  He may just need a friend.”

“But, he’s got your other friends.  Will is always around him.”

Chris noticed that Karen could never really remember his other friends’ names, but she never forgot Will’s.  Hmm, he wondered why?

“Look, when my cousin died, my parents couldn’t do anything for my aunt the first couple of days.  She was too angry and shut in on herself.  You have to give them some time to themselves.”

Chris blinked at her.  Had she just shown some compassion and imparted some good advice?

“So, there’s nothing you can do for him right now.”  She smiled at him and ran a hand up his arm to his shoulder.  “But there is something you can do for me.”

“Ugh!”  Chris felt disgusted with himself.  Why did he always give her the benefit of the doubt?  He always assumed that there was a good side to her.  He grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her toward the door.

“Ow, Chris!”

“Karen, I told you, I’m really not in the mood for it today.  And I’m really not in the mood for it now.  Go home.  Don’t get in trouble, okay?  You know you’re never happy when you’re at odds with your parents.  Just apologize for being so irrational last night and listen to their little lecture.  And if you be a good girl and listen to them, they might listen to you.  Then you can explain why you did what you did and hopefully you’ll all come to a happy resolution.”

Chris opened the door and stood in between her line of view and the kitchen entrance.  She looked a little shocked by his actions and his anger, but she didn’t get angry back at him.  She chewed on her bottom lip and then looked up at him.

“Do you think they’ll really listen to what I have to say?”

“If you don’t act like a child about it.  Don’t argue them on every point.  Don’t shout.  And definitely don’t roll your eyes.”  Chris couldn’t help but smile at her.  “You have beautiful eyes, honey, but when they get to rolling you look like a spooked horse.”

He couldn’t tell because of her skin, but he was pretty sure she blushed as she looked away from him.  She looked back at him with a smile on her face.  “Hopefully that’s all about me that reminds you of a horse.”

Chris shooed her out the door.  “Quit fishing.  No more complements today.”

“No more?  I only got one.”

“And that’s enough.  I spoil you as it is.”

Chris started to shut the door as she turned to leave, but then she whipped back around and put a hand on the door.  Chris felt his heart jump.  Had she spotted his father?

“Can I get a kiss goodbye?”

Chris leaned down and paused before he got to her lips.  He tilted his head and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek instead.  Her inhalation of air sounded a little breathy.  She met his eyes.

“You’re so mean,” she whispered.

Then she picked up the umbrella she had dropped when she launched herself at him and walked down the stairs.  He watched her walk up the street.  Her mother’s car wasn’t in the parking lot.  Had she taken the bus across town to see him?  That was something.  Then he realized he hadn’t broken up with her.  Well, that really hadn’t been the time to do it.  And he had needed to get rid of her fast.  He had a feeling that breaking up with her wouldn’t be fast and painless.  Chris shut the door and leaned on it, too embarrassed to turn around.  He was sure his father would have something to say.  Of course, he should have realized it wouldn’t be necessary for him to turn around for his father to say it.

“Well, that’s a little spitfire, right there, isn’t she?  You know, son, I could have left.  I would never want to come in between my son and a blow job.”

Chris spun around, mortified.  “Dad!  Stop!”

“Oh, come on, son.  You’re clearly a man now.  We can talk about things like this.  Though I do think it’s strange that in the last two hours you never mentioned her once.  That doesn’t sound like the relationship is going too well.  But I do appreciate you killing off your friend’s parents just to get rid of her for my sake.”

Chris sighed and slumped against the front door.  “I didn’t lie.  Last night they did die.”

His father didn’t seem to know what to say.  He just stood in the hall, looking at him.  “Well, ain’t that a kick in the head?  I’m sorry, son.  I had no idea you were dealing with that too.  Maybe I should leave and—”

“No!” Chris shouted.  He walked toward his father and grabbed his wrist.  It felt good to have physical proof that he was real again.  “Don’t leave.  I don’t want you to.”

His father pulled him close and kissed the top of his head.  “You know I have to, right?  I mean, your mother will come back eventually.”

“I know.  I know.  But, don’t leave the city.  Stay here for a while.  Can you?”

“Yeah, I can do that.  I have some plans in the works.  I’ve got some money stashed somewhere and a guy who can get me into Mexico, but those plans can be put on hold for a while.”

Chris pulled back in dismay.  “You’re going to Mexico?”

“Colombia, actually.  I can’t stay here.  No, I’m not really a wanted man on the run, but I’ll never get work here.”

“Colombia is really far away, Dad.”

“I know,” he sighed.  He patted Chris’ shoulder and walked away from him.  He wandered back into the kitchen and peeked out the backdoor’s frilly pink curtains.  Chris wasn’t sure what he was looking for.

“You could come with me,” he said, not looking at Chris.  “The money I’ve got squirreled away, it’s more than enough to pay my guy to get you a fake passport too.  We could go home together.”

Chris laughed.  “Yeah, right, Dad.”  He sobered.  “But, if you go to Colombia like this, they’ll be keeping tabs on mom and me.  It will be very difficult to contact us without giving away where you are.”

“I’m not worried about that.  They aren’t going to waste a lot of time, money, and manpower looking for me.  The reason they put people on probation is to keep tabs on them so that they don’t start doing bad things again.  They won’t much care if I’m not in the country anymore.”

Chris had his doubts about that.  His father turned around to face him.  He was smiling conspiratorially.  “You think your mother picked this town at random, didn’t you?”

“Huh?”

“When you guys moved from Chicago, did she say why she chose here?”

Chris shrugged.  “I just assumed it’s where she found a job.”

His father shook his head.  “We used to come out here all the time.  She loved the city and all the culture and entertainment and blah, blah, blah.  I just liked it because she got frisky when we did it in hotel rooms.”

Chris blushed.  “Dad.”

“Sorry.  And sometimes we used to ride around these suburbs, looking at all the pretty houses.  She hated raising you in the middle of Chicago.  She wanted to move you to a real neighborhood.  You probably think we lived in a real neighborhood because we actually had a backyard, but we were about three blocks from where there were regular drive-by shootings.”

“Had to be near work, huh?” Chris asked and immediately regretted it.  But his father laughed.

“Yeah, something like that.  It was really easy to find you guys.  All I had to do was look up your mother’s name in the three towns surrounding the city and voila.  There you were.”

“Mom thought you wouldn’t even remember her maiden name.”

“How could I forget?  Gillian Pelletier.  She’s the love of my life.”

Chris felt awkward listening to his father talk about his mother.  It never occurred to him that they knew each other before he was born.  That they had a whole history together.  His mother rarely spoke about him, and when she did it was very unflattering.  And yet, she still cried over him to this day.  They must have been very much in love.  Chris wondered if there was any hope for reconciliation between them.

“But, anyway. That’s ancient history.  Done and forgotten.  I’ve no doubt your mother has tried to bury me as surely as if I had died.  I’m willing to let her make that decision.  If that’s the way it has to be for her, then that’s the way it has to be.  But I couldn’t let her make that decision for you.  And I was really worried that she might have poisoned your mind against me after all these years.  I should have known better.  She’s not vindictive.”

Chris wasn’t sure about that.  She had burned all of his photographs and refused to acknowledge any of the positive things that had happened while she’d been married to him.

“And it works out even better.  The money I stashed away, it’s here in this town.  I had a feeling if I ever got caught she would move out here with you.  So, it would be more convenient to hide the money near you as opposed to back in Chicago.  I picked the smallest town so that it would be easier on my memory.  And it looks like your mother picked the smallest town in order to disappear better.  So, now that we’re both here, we can go on a treasure hunt.”

His father grinned and Chris gaped openly at him.  “Say what?  You want me to go dig up some buried money with you?”

“Yeah!  Won’t that be fun?”

Chris honestly didn’t know what to say.

“But, it won’t be that easy.  I actually hid it in a house.”

“What?!”

“I didn’t want to chance it being built over or dug up by some curious kids.  I hid it somewhere that wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“Undisturbed?  In _someone’s_ _house_?”

“Yep.  It should make it interesting to get in and out of.  Hell, there’s an outside chance you know the people who live there and we can just walk right in.  Probably not, but unless they’ve got a killer security system set up, it shouldn’t be that hard.”

Chris shook his head.  “I’m not hearing this.  I have no knowledge of it.”

He left the kitchen and headed for the den.  He sat on the couch and watched his father come into the room.  The man maneuvered the matching chair to be opposite his son and sat down.  He leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs; he looked like he was about to try to convince his boss not to fire him until he gave him one more shot at setting things right.

“Okay, look, I’m not going to ask you to do anything illegal.  I might just need you to do a little reconnaissance and maybe play lookout one night.  Or two.”

“Dad, just by telling me that you plan on breaking into a house and me not reporting it is making me an accessory.”

“Now, son, I’m not going to be breaking and entering, per se.  I’m just going to retrieve something that belongs to me.  Nothing wrong with that, right?”

“Dad—”

“Now, wait, wait.  I don’t want you to get into any trouble.  So, I’m not going to force you to do anything.  But I really need that money.  I can’t stay in the country for much longer and I can’t go back to prison.  I _won’t_ go back to prison.  Not even for the few months needed to work off my parole violation.  And more than likely, my sentence will be reinstated and I’ll have to serve the full twenty years I got.  That’s not going to happen.  I need that money.  I’m not going to hurt anyone to get it, but I will need some help.”

His father stared intently at him.  Chris couldn’t believe he was even in this situation.  Whose father asked them to go on a caper to break into someone’s house to retrieve some hidden drug money?  It was ridiculous.  But there was no way he wanted his father to go back to jail for another eleven years.  He didn’t want him to go back to jail for a month.  And maybe it would be best if he looked around the place and determined whether or not it was safe to attempt this bonehead idea.  He might be able to convince his father it would be too risky and avoid having to be an accessory.  It wasn’t a crime to _think_ about committing one.  Was it?

His father saw him breaking down and spent the better part of the next hour convincing Chris that it would be okay to do this.  He wasn’t convinced it was a good idea at all, but he’d already decided that he was going to help.  It would probably be best for his dad to have someone watching over him who could reel him in if he needed it.  It had gotten pretty late into the afternoon and Chris started to worry about his mother coming home.  His father seemed to have the same concern.  He stood up and headed for the backdoor.  Chris followed him.

“Well, we can talk more about this later.  I’ll make sure I don’t interfere with your schoolwork or your job.  We can do this whenever you have the time.  And of course, we don’t have to see each other only to talk about this.  I’d love to spend as much time with you as I can while I’m here.”

“Me too.”

His father opened the door to leave.

“Uh, Dad…”

He turned back to look at his son.

“Where are you staying?  You’re not sleeping outside, are you?”

His father smiled and ruffled his hair.  “Don’t worry about it.  I can take care of myself.”

“Dad!  It’s been raining.  And it’s cold.  I don’t want you to get sick.”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll be okay.  I’ve got some place I can go.”

Chris looked at his father, not believing him.  “Look, Mom leaves for work tomorrow at six a.m.  I leave for school around seven.  So, I can you let in then, or I can just leave the backdoor unlocked.  You come inside and take a shower, eat something, and get some sleep.  You can sleep in my bed.  Or on the couch.  Whichever.”

“Chris, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, I don’t think breaking into a stranger’s house is a good idea, but I’m going along with it.  So, if I do that for you, you do this for me, okay?”

His father nodded.  “Okay.  I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

Chris smiled.  “Good.”

His father turned to leave again, and then hesitated.  “I’m, uh, sorry about your friend.  His parents and all.”

“Oh.  Thank you.”

His father bobbed his head and then left.  Chris stared at the swinging pink curtains.  What was he getting himself into?  But his father had reminded him of Julian.  He should check to make sure he was okay.  He figured the best thing to do would be to call Will and find out if he knew where Julian was staying.  He checked the clock on the wall.  It was after five.  He couldn’t believe his mother was still at work.  She should have walked in on him and his father.  But no, she was still off earning his tuition money.  Chris grabbed the phone off the wall and punched Will’s number into it.  Both of his parents were punks.  Why didn’t they ever think about _him_ and not what was best for him?

Chris tucked the phone between his head and shoulder so that he could start cleaning up the mess in the kitchen.  The phone rang four times, but before the machine kicked in, someone picked up.

“Hello?”

Chris recognized Will’s voice.

“Hey, Will, it’s me.”

There was a pause.  “Ken?”

Chris stood up from putting the mustard and mayonnaise back in the refrigerator.  He grabbed the phone with his hand so he could hear better.  “Who’s Ken?”

There was another pause and what sounded like Will talking to someone—possibly himself—and then he came back on the line.

“Oh, hey, Chris.  Never mind.  What’s up?”

“I was calling to see how Julian was doing.  Do you know where he is?”

“Yeah, he’s here.  At my house.  My mom got temporary guardianship of him while he files for emancipation.”

“Oh, wow.  He’s going to do that?  How is he even thinking about that right now?”

Will sighed.  “He’s not.  My mom is.  You know how she is.”

“Yeah.  But, I guess it’s good someone is helping to take care of things.”

“That’s true.  But it’s so whacked out.”

“What?”

“His grandparents are coming tomorrow.”

Chris tossed the half-eaten loaf of bread on top of the refrigerator.  “Does he _have_ grandparents?”

“Apparently.  They’re coming tomorrow and we can’t be with him because we have to go to stupid school.”

“We could cut,” Chris suggested.

“Yeah, I thought about that, but my mom will check to see if I was there.  She’ll get mad if I don’t go.”

“Really?”

“Yes!  She is kind of like a mother.”

“Okay, okay.  I didn’t mean it like that.  Simmer down.”

“Oh, shut it.  I hate it when you tell me to simmer down.  You make it sound like I’m a crock-pot.”

Chris laughed.  “And do you take offense to the comparison of being round and dumpy?”

“No!  That’s not it.”

Chris laughed again.  Will was so easy to tease.

“Ugh, you’re impossible.  You’re just like—”

Will cut off.  “Just like what?” Chris asked, wiping crumbs off the counter into his hand.

“I don’t know.  Something impossible.”

“Like a Rubik’s cube?”

Chris realized his mistake as soon as he said it and heard the smile in Will’s voice.  “No, not like a Rubik’s cube.  Those are actually pretty easy.”

“Ah, put a cork in it, rain man.”

Will laughed, but he didn’t sound like his usual self.  Chris was concerned.

“Is Julian doing okay?”

Will hesitated. “You know, I don’t know.  He seems to be doing fine, but who knows if he’s not repressing everything.  Or if he’s not in shock or something.”

Chris heard a muffled voice on the other end of the line.  “You,” he heard Will say.

“Is that Julian?” Chris asked.

“Yeah, you want to talk to him?”

Not really.  “Sure.”

There was some noise as the phone exchanged hands and then Julian’s voice came over the line.  “Hey, Chris.”

“Hey, Julian.  How you doing?”

“Okay, I think.  I’m freaked about my grandparents coming and I still can’t believe this is even all happening.  It’s kind of like I’m an outside observer to all this.  Like I’m watching myself do it.”

What should he say?  “I’m sorry, Julian.  I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what to say.  I’m afraid I’m not being very helpful.  And that I’m just making it harder by making you have to deal with me too.”

“No, no way, man.  I need you guys.  I’m so grateful that you guys were there for me last night.  And the shit is only going to hit the fan once my grandparents get here and I have to start dealing with court stuff.  So, as long as you guys are willing to put up with me through all this…”

“Definitely.  I’m here for you.”

“Oh, how are you doing?  You were kind of down yesterday.”

Chris felt ashamed for the way he’d acted on Saturday.  He’d been so self-absorbed just because he was worried about his father, which at the time had seemed like a huge problem.  Compared to Julian’s problems, it was nothing.  Well, maybe now his problem was a bit bigger, but he should have been a bit better behaved yesterday afternoon.

“Oh, yeah, that was—I had a fight with Karen.  It was stupid.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chris said.  “Can you ask Will if he wants to model some clothes at the Abercrombie and Fitch store in the mall this weekend?”

Julian relayed the question.  “Hell no!” he heard shouted from across the room and over the line.  Julian came back on.

“He says he’ll think about it.”

Chris smiled.  “Okay.  Thanks.  Well, good luck tomorrow?  Is that the right thing to say?”

“I think so.  I’m going to need some luck to get through that meeting.  And good luck to you.  With Karen, I mean.”

“Yeah, thanks.  Bye, Julian.”

“Bye.”

Chris heard Will shout goodbye before he hung up.  He shook his head.  Will was almost as strange as Julian at times.  Why would he turn down the chance to be in the spotlight and have people, i.e.: girls, fawn all over him?  Well, it was a weird time after all.  Chris heard his mother come in the front door.  His heart sped up and he felt his face grow warm.  He tried to tamp it down.  He didn’t want his mother coming in here and suspecting him of something.  Worrying about giving himself away only made it worse.  Chris thought maybe it would be best to head for his bedroom so that he could calm himself down before he faced his mother, but she was already coming into the kitchen.

“Hi, baby.  How are you doing?”

“Uh-uh-uh…I was just…dinner.”

“What?  You were looking for dinner?  It’s only five.  I thought we might order Chinese tonight.”

“Good!  That’s fine!”

His mother dropped off her briefcase on the kitchen table.  The paper towels he and his father had used were still sitting out.  His throat closed up and he started to sweat.  She walked over to him, looking worried.

“Chris, are you okay?”  She put a hand to his head.  “What’s wrong?  You look all flushed.”

Chris panicked.  She knew!  She knew!  “Karen came over and we had sex!”

His mother froze with her hand on his head.  Chris felt his stomach turn in agony.  His mother dropped her hand.

“Oh.  Well.  That’s.”  She turned away and busied herself with putting up the dishes in the dish rack.  “So, is Chinese okay?”

Chris used a hand to cover his face.  Embarrassment.  Humiliation.  Mortification.  Were there any other words?  Oh, yeah.  Aw—kward.  “Chinese sounds great, Mom.  I’m just gonna—”

Chris stopped talking and left the kitchen.  If he was going to help his father with his crazy escapade, he was really going to need to learn how to lie.

 

Scott

 

The shadows had crawled slowly across his bedroom ceiling, and then faded into nothingness.  The sun had risen hours ago and Scott still couldn’t sleep even after staring at his ceiling all night.  After coming home from the hospital he’d taken a long shower.  He’d stayed in so long the water had turned cold, but he hadn’t noticed.  His mother had freaked out when he emerged shivering and blue from the bathroom.  She’d demanded he go to bed immediately and tucked him up to his chin in covers.  He’d lain on his back and stared at the ceiling.  What had Julian done all night?  Had he lain awake in a stupor too?  It seemed like he’d passed out when the doctors came back into the room to send them away.  Maybe he got lucky and had a night without his thoughts rushing around in his head.  Scott’s thoughts had gone in circles for hours.  He couldn’t quite believe Julian’s parents were gone.  And then he remembered wishing for some drama to happen.  Then he felt guilty for wishing for the boredom in his life to go away at any cost.  And then he felt guilty for thinking about himself while Julian was going through this.  Then he remembered Julian’s parents were dead, and couldn’t quite believe it.  Round and round those thoughts went in his head; never ending and never resolving.  His body and mind were exhausted, but he still couldn’t fall asleep.

Scott turned his head and looked at his nightstand.  His clock said that it was 9:00.  There was really no point in staying in bed; he wasn’t going to get any sleep.  He kicked back the covers and put his feet on the floor.  He slumped forward.  He felt even more tired now, but he knew it was pointless to stay in bed.  He couldn’t just bury his head in the covers and wallow in his own despair.  He hadn’t lost his parents, Julian had.  So, he needed to be strong for him in case he needed his help.  Then Scott slumped over even more.  What on earth could he do for him?  Tell him he was sorry he wished something exciting would happen?

Scott hit his mattress with one hand and let out a noise in anger.  He had to stop doing this.  He had to stop making this all about him.  He hadn’t done anything to make this happen and there was no sense feeling sorry for himself.  He didn’t need to be that selfish right now.  He stood up and left his room for the bathroom.  It was occupied.  Scott sighed and leaned against the wall.  He closed his eyes and hit the wall with his fist.  The toilet flushed and then someone washed their hands.  The door swung open and Joanna glared out into the hall.  When she saw Scott her expression softened.

“Sorry,” she said.  “I thought you were the twins banging on the door for me to hurry.”  She looked at him for a moment.  “Are you okay, Scotty?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said.  He patted her head and went into the bathroom.  She had turned around to say something to him but he shut the door in her face.  After he used the toilet he lingered in the bathroom hoping that his sister would move on.  He didn’t want to talk to her about this.  Or his parents.  They wouldn’t understand.  But who would?  His other friends probably.  At least they would understand what _he_ was going through even if they couldn’t comprehend what Julian was feeling.

Scott left the bathroom and his sister had disappeared.  He hoped he hadn’t hurt her feelings.  He paused at the top of the stairs.  He considered going down to eat breakfast, but he wasn’t hungry, which was strange.  The last thing he’d eaten had been two slices of pizza last night around 4:30.  He should be starving by now, but he couldn’t manage to find his appetite.  He heard his mother and brothers moving around downstairs.  He didn’t want to see them right now.  His brothers might not really understand what had happened, and he didn’t want to pretend like everything was all right for their sakes.  He turned around and went back to his room.  He knew it was early, but he decided to call Anna anyway.  He really needed someone to talk to.  He dialed her home number and flopped onto his bed.  After a couple rings her father’s deep voice came on the line.  For some reason, Scott always felt nervous when he talked to her father, like he was her boyfriend or something.  But, he was just a friend.  He could only imagine what José must feel whenever he talked to her father on the phone.  Today, though, his voice was subdued.  He passed the call along to Anna and she sounded like she had woken up to take it.  How had she managed to sleep last night?

“Scott?  Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Anna.  Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay.  How is Julian?  Have you seen him?”

“I saw him last night at the hospital.  Physically the doctors say he’s probably okay.  They kept him overnight to be certain.”

“But, how _is_ he?”

Scott shrugged even though she couldn’t see it.  “I don’t know.  He was pretty lucid when we went in with our parents, but when Will, Chris, and I went back in, he was collapsed on the floor, crying really hard.”

Scott wondered if that was something private he should have kept among them.  Hopefully Anna wouldn’t discuss it with the other girls.  Or José.  Damn.  Did she share everything with him because he was her boyfriend?  Scott didn’t know how he felt about that.  Could he not be as close to Anna anymore now that she had a boyfriend?  They’d started dating two months ago.  What all had she told him?

“Scott?”

“Huh?” he asked, pulled back to the current situation.

“I said, do you know where he’s going to go?  Who’s going to keep him?”

“No.  I haven’t heard anything since I left last night.  I’ll probably give Will a call later on today.  I bet Mrs. Harder will take care of a lot of that kind of stuff for him.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a lawyer.”

“Yeah, but, she doesn’t practice that kind of law.  And she’s always so busy, it would really be out of her way.”

“Yeah, but, it’s Julian we’re talking about.  It’s Will’s best friend.  Her surrogate son.  I’m sure she’ll take care of him.”

“I don’t know, I’m worried.”

“Anna, trust me on this.  I know my friends.”

“Yeah, you know Will, but not his mother.”

“Look, Anna, I know them better than you do.  And I know their parents.”

“Oh, don’t even start, Scott.  I’m just as much friends with them as you are.  This is upsetting for me too.”

“I never said it wasn’t.  I’m just saying I know them better than you.  And I do.  I’ve been friends with them longer.”

“No, you haven’t.  You met me when we were still in diapers.  You met them in second grade.”

“I’ve been friends with them longer than you’ve been friends with them.  That’s what I meant.  You didn’t start hanging around with them, really, until middle school.  Don’t get so defensive.”

“I’m not being defensive.  I just think you’re being very blasé about all this.”

“Blasé?!  How do you figure that?”

“You’re not even worried about what’s going to happen to him.”

“Anna!  What are you saying?  Of course I’m worried about him!  I just think that Mrs. Harder is going to take care of him.”

“Well, I think you’re being naïve.”

Scott didn’t know what to say.  Why was she being so unreasonable?

“Look, let’s just not talk about it, okay?” she said, exasperation evident in her voice.  “The courts will have to deal with it and we can just be there for him while he goes through it.  I don’t want to argue with you about who’s going to be his lawyer.”

“Um…okay.”

“Are you going to see him today?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know where he’s going to be.  I was going to call Will to find out, but since you seem to think the Harders are going to leave him flapping in the breeze, I won’t waste my time.”

“Uh!  Scott.  Stop being an ass.”

Scott pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it.  What the hell was wrong with her?  Maybe she wasn’t handling this very well.  Or maybe there was something else the matter.  Or maybe she was just cranky from being woken up.  Scott put the phone back to his ear.

“Sorry I’m being an ass.  I’m just—not coping with this well.”

Anna sighed.  “I know.  Me either.  Yesterday just sucked.”

“I know.  I couldn’t sleep at all.  I just kept thinking about what I’d said on Friday about some sort of accident happening.  And then I felt guilty for focusing on me.”

“Well, I agree.  It’s stupid to worry about what you said.  It’s not like you caused the accident.  Don’t be so melodramatic.”

Scott had had about enough.  “What is your problem, Anna?  Did you start your period last night or something?”

“Screw you, Scott.  Maybe I’m dealing with my own stuff right now.”

“Like what?  What is more important than Julian right now?”

“José broke up with me, okay?  He called last night and said that he was tired of me and of you.  And I tried to explain that we’re just friends, but everybody in the damn school seems to think we’re dating.”

“Well, I’m so sorry that the very idea offends you so much and that that loser decided to find someone else to bring down, but is that really more important than what Julian’s going through?”

“For me, yes!  I can’t do anything for Julian right now.  When I see him, I’ll tell him how sorry I am for him and that I’ll be there for him.  But I’m not in the mood to listen to your pity party.”

“Okay.  Fine.  Sorry to have disturbed you.”

Scott hung up.  He knew Anna well enough to know she wasn’t going to call him back, so he rolled off the bed and went in search of some clothes.  The jeans and T-shirt he’d worn yesterday had gotten a little funky after being rained on, so he pulled some khakis out of his closet.  He pulled a blue polo shirt over his head and slipped into his worn out brown flip-flops.  He grabbed his wallet off the dresser and cursed to himself all the way down the stairs that he didn’t own a car.  He could only borrow one of his parents’ cars if he asked permission.  But he didn’t feel like talking to anybody at the moment.  He stomped into the foyer and Drake was coming out of the kitchen.

“Awww!  Mommy!  Scotty said a bad worrrrrd!”

Scott didn’t wait to hear what his mother might have to say about that.  He went out the front door and ran down his driveway.  It was a long driveway.  Why did his parents have to be snooty rich people who lived on a five acre lot with trees surrounding the house?  He turned right once he reached the road and thought he heard the front door open behind him.  His mother might have called out to him, but he jogged away without bothering to find out what she wanted.

Despite the fact that his family lived in a wealthy community surrounded by trees and fences, the main neighborhood road was off what amounted to a small highway.  As he slowed to a walk on the sidewalk, cars whizzed by him going at least ten miles over the 55 miles per hour speed limit.  The local bus line had a stop about a half mile up from his neighborhood.  He collapsed on the bench and glanced at the schedule, and then at his watch.  He hadn’t put one on.  He must have just missed the last bus because he was fairly certain he waited for over twenty minutes for the next one to arrive.  He climbed on and sat in the first seat.  He pressed his forehead to the window and watched the familiar town roll by.  The bus wound its way all the way around his side of town, and then stopped off at the metro station.  He considered getting off there, but where would he go?  So he stayed on and rode the bus to the opposite side of town.  It was getting ready to make its way back to where it started, but Scott wasn’t ready to go home yet.  So, he pulled the stop cord and the driver pulled into a parking lot and dropped him off.  He looked around.  He was at the mall.

“Oh, great.  The mall.”

Outside of the city, the mall was the only place in their town where kids his age hung out.  There was no other place for them.  The nearest movie theater was in the next town over and there wasn’t so much as a bowling alley.  People pretty much lived in this town because they either couldn’t afford to live in the city or were rich enough that they wanted to own a really big house that wouldn’t fit in the city.  The bus had rumbled away and the next one wouldn’t come for half an hour.  It would probably be okay to go inside.  A large number of Calverton students lived in this town, but they couldn’t all be at the mall, right?  And the rest of the local kids wouldn’t know who the Marches were.  Scott was still irritated that the late night local news had released their names.  Maybe Julian didn’t want to have to deal with that right now.  But it’s not like the media would have enough common sense or integrity to worry about that.

Scott checked his watch again as he walked in the mall entrance.  And once again discovered it wasn’t there.  He rubbed his bare wrist with his hand.  He hated not having his watch—not that having it ever helped him be on time.  Inside it was pretty crowded.  The large clock in the center of the food court said it was almost 11:00.  What were people doing at the mall on a Sunday morning?  “Getting in my way,” he grumbled to himself as a couple of girls bumped into him as they passed.  One at least turned back and put up a hand of apology, but she was too involved in her pointless conversation to say anything.

Scott slunk around the mall, feeling dejected.  Almost all of his conversations with Anna were pointless.  Did that mean they were stupid or meaningless?  Was he wasting his whole life just talking about ridiculous, unimportant things?  His friend didn’t have parents anymore and what concerned him most was how long it would take for the next Final Fantasy to come out.  But was that bad?  He was only sixteen years old.  Shouldn’t he only be concerned about trivial matters at this point in his life?  Or was it time for him to grow up?  How long were children supposed to be children?  At sixteen he wasn’t allowed to throw temper tantrums when he didn’t get his way, but he was supposed to take responsibility for getting his own work done in a timely manner and managing what little finances he had.  And yet at the same time, at sixteen he was too immature to make decisions about his country’s leaders or to decide when and with whom he wanted to have sex.  If he slept with a woman in her twenties, she was committing statutory rape because as a child, he wasn’t capable of making that decision for himself.  Why did this sucky period have to exist?  At 18 he crossed that magical line that made him a real adult, but what about between the ages of 14 and 17?  What were you in those years?

Scott sat down on the edge of the fountain in front of the Macy’s.  He really wished Mr. and Mrs. March hadn’t died.  And not even for Julian’s sake, but just because he didn’t want to have to ask himself these questions.  But, he had to ask them.  And he had to wonder: _Do I handle this like an adult or a confused child?  I feel like a confused child, but I think I’m expected to handle it better than this._   Why couldn’t he have anyone to talk to about this?  Why had Anna abandoned him?  Over some stupid boy.  Wasn’t their friendship stronger than that?  But he had other friends.  He needed to call Chris or Will.  They would understand.  They would help him.

Scott reached into his pockets.  He felt around his khakis in the front and the back.  He sighed.  He’d forgotten his cell phone.  He put his hands on the edge of the fountain and let out a long, dramatic sigh.  Just yesterday he was sighing because his life was so boring, and now he was sighing because he wanted it back.  What an ungrateful little brat he was.

“Scott?”

Scott looked up.  Antoinette was standing in front of him.  She was wearing very low rider jeans and a very thin long-sleeved shirt.  It was pink and white striped and she was wearing it over a white tank top.  He knew this because one: the shirt was so thin he could see through it, and two: the bottom of the tank top stuck out a little below the shirt, both of which stopped before touching her jeans, revealing a line of soft skin.  Her blonde hair fell in waves around her pretty face.  With the light behind her, she looked like…well, Scott tilted his head in thought.  She didn’t look like an angel, but she looked like something pretty.

“Hi,” he said softly.

She glanced around, looked behind her, and then sat beside him on the fountain.  He could feel her looking at him, but he couldn’t get himself to face her.

“Are you okay?  You look really…not well.  I don’t know how else to put it.  You don’t look like you’re sick, but you look…depressed, I guess.  And not in a moody teenager kind of way, but in a real problem kind of way.”

Scott looked at her now.  She looked like she was acting concerned, as opposed to actually being concerned.  However, she was perceptive enough to notice that there was something really wrong with him.  Or maybe everybody could tell because he was being so mopey.  He searched her face for a moment, wondering if she really wanted to hear his problem or had asked out of politeness.  He realized he didn’t care.  He was stranded without Chris and Will, and Anna had abandoned him.  He was going to cling to Antoinette because she was there.

“I had a bad night last night,” he said.  He didn’t even get any further than that.  Her features suddenly became surprised and upset.

“Oh, my gosh!”  She put a hand to her mouth and then took it away.  “Oh, no.  My mom showed me the news last night.  I knew there was an accident, but I didn’t think it could really be someone I knew.  It didn’t even occur to me.  Julian’s last name is March, isn’t it?  Oh, my goodness.”  Antoinette reached out and took his hand in hers.  “Were those his parents?  That were in that accident?”  Scott nodded.  “Oh no!  Poor, poor Julian.  Is he okay?  Was he hurt?  They just said the son was pulled from the wreckage.”

“Yeah, he’s okay.  I saw him in the hospital last night.  Well, I mean, physically.  I don’t how he’s doing otherwise.”

Antoinette looked appalled.  She didn’t even know Julian all that well and had never met his parents, but she was upset over their deaths.  Why was Anna so concerned with José?  Antoinette put her other hand over his as well.  Her brows furrowed in concern as she looked at him.

“What’s wrong?  You look so angry all of a sudden.”

Scott forced his features to relax and took in a deep breath.  He didn’t want his fight with Anna to consume him the rest of the day.  He attempted a smile and reached up with his free hand to smooth the wrinkles from her forehead with his thumb.  She relaxed under his gentle coaxing.

“Come on now.  Don’t get so upset.  You’ll make yourself all wrinkly and old, and then you won’t be able to have two boys falling all over themselves over you.”

She laughed, but frowned as she pushed his hand away.  “I’m not that shallow.  I’m really not, Scott.”

“I know.  I just don’t want you to be upset.”

“Why?  Because I don’t know Julian that well?  It’s still sad.  I feel for him.  And for you, Scott.  You look so sad.  Are you doing okay?  This must be hard for you too.”

Scott swallowed the lump in his throat.  He didn’t want her to be the one who helped him through this.  She was just some chick who was using him to get back at her boyfriend or something.

“I’m doing okay.  You must have come here with someone.  You better head on before someone sees us together and gets the right idea.”

She shook her head.  “I came here alone.  I was looking for new shoes for my uniform.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean your friends aren’t here.  Or even your enemies.  I’m sure there are some girls who have a crush on Jake that would love to use this to break you two up.”

She pursed her lips.  “Well, if you’re so concerned about being seen, then come with me.”  She stood up and tugged on his hand.  He stayed seated.  She tugged harder, but he stayed in place.  Then Antoinette grabbed his hand with both of hers, braced her feet against the edge of the fountain, and pulled with all her might.  Scott let himself be pulled to his feet.  She smiled triumphantly at him and started to lead him toward an exit.  He shook his hand loose from hers.

“You know, you really don’t quite have the concept of sneaking around down yet.”

“But, this isn’t sexual.  I’m helping a friend.”

“True, but why am I suddenly your friend?”

“Oh, that’s a good point.”

They walked outside into the drizzly rain.  Scott just followed her as they wound their way through the parking lot.  She stopped by a blue Mitsubishi Eclipse.  Well, she was quite the cliché, wasn’t she?  Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, rich little white girl.

“Oh, do you want to follow me in your car?”

“I don’t have a car.”

She tilted her head.  “How did you get here?”

He almost wanted to laugh at her confused, airhead expression.  “I took the bus.”

“Oh.  Right.”  She rapped gently on her head with a hand.  “Duh.”

Scott smiled as he climbed into the passenger seat.  His smile didn’t last long, however.  He was soon clutching the seat and door handle for dear life.  He was certain his face now had a stupid, terrified expression on it, but she was really a bad driver.  Next time they went anywhere, he was driving.  Whether or not it was her car.  She pulled up to the gated community that Chris’s girlfriend lived in.  She waved to the gateman and he waved back as he opened the gate. She tore through the community at a speed that was very dangerous if there were a lot of small children and pets around.  Hell, if there were _people_ around.  The houses were set about fifty yards apart on large expanses of perfectly green grass.  The lots were smaller than in Scott’s neighborhood, but the landscaping was taken care of by the Home Owner’s Association.  Antoinette pulled into a concrete driveway and used a remote to open one of the doors on the three car garage.  It was only here that she drove carefully and slowly and stopped just as her windshield bumped the tennis ball hanging from the ceiling.  Scott looked to his right and saw that the garage was empty.  She shut off the car and looked at him.

“My parents are out for the day.  One took my brothers to their karate meet and the other took my sisters to their gymnastics meet.”

“Why aren’t you there cheering them on?”

She shrugged.  “They’re really just practice ones.  I’ll go when it means something.”

“Aw, that’s sweet.”

“Get out of the car, punk.”

Scott got out and was happy to feel solid ground under his feet.  He followed Antoinette into her house and thought he would be blown away by all the expensive stuff lying about, but it looked kind of like his house.  So either Antoinette’s family was conservative with their money, or he and his family were rich little snots too.  He was afraid it was the latter.  Antoinette hung her keys up on the hook by the garage door, and then she turned to face him.  She walked up to him and took his hands in hers.  He always thought it would be a bit of a turn off to be on even standing with a girl, but it was kind of nice to be able to look in her eyes without looking down so much.  She was a couple inches shorter than him, so it wasn’t like they were completely even.  He was kind of lost in that thought, so it didn’t even occur to him that she was moving closer until she kissed him softly on the lips.  He blinked and pulled back.

“Sorry,” she said.  “Come with me.  So you can talk about it.”

She led him by the hand, once again, up the stairs.  Scott started to feel a little nervous.  Was she taking him where he thought she was taking him?  Yep.  She opened a door at the far end of the hallway and inside was a pink room with a white canopy bed.  Did she seriously have a room like this?  Did her parents think she was a sweet, innocent little girl, or did they know about just how mature she really was?  Scott was appalled when he saw the unicorn picture hanging on her wall.

“Antoinette, please tell me this is your little sister’s room.”

She laughed.  “No, it’s mine.  I just haven’t bothered to redecorate it since I was a little girl.  And now it seems kind of pointless since I’ll be going to college in a year.”

Scott crossed his arms and looked around the space.  It was too cute, and little creepy.  Like a little girl ghost would haunt the place.  Scott shivered and Antoinette laughed again.

“That is exactly the same reaction Jake had the first time he saw my room.”

“Probably because he couldn’t imagine deflowering you in such an innocent looking place.”

Antoinette stood in front him, not touching, but very, _very_ close.  “And what you made you think about such dirty things?”

Scott smiled at her.  “You, naturally.”

She blushed and turned away from him.  She must not have been expecting that kind of honesty.  Or maybe bluntness was the word.  But if he was going to be the gullible dork who was seduced by the saucy vixen, he at least wanted to show her that he wasn’t totally innocent.  He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her gently back toward him.  He buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply.  She smelled like honeysuckle.

“Sorry,” he said.  “I’m not really thinking anything bad, I was just teasing you.”

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice a little breathy.

He thought he could feel her trembling underneath his fingers, so he let her go.

“Sorry.  I didn’t mean to…”

She turned around and smiled at him.  “I wasn’t shivering because I was cold or scared, Scott.”

He swallowed and it went down rather loudly.  She tried to hide her amusement at his discomfort, but didn’t do that good a job at it.  She hopped onto her bed and patted the mattress.  He obeyed and sat on the bed too, but left some distance between them.

“So, tell me about your mother,” she said.

He looked at her like she was crazy.  “What?”

“I’m going to psychoanalyze you and that’s where they always start.”

“They do not.”

“They totally do.  My mom is a shrink.  And she always starts off by asking that to break the ice.  As a joke.”

“And what if someone doesn’t see it as a joke?”

“Well, that would tell her a whole lot about their psyche as well, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Okay.  So, what are you feeling when you think about the accident?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?  I mean, how do you feel?”

Scott shook his head, not sure how to answer.  So, he sat quietly for a moment and thought about it.  “Disbelief.  I can’t believe this happened.  I don’t really know what to think.”

“That’s understandable.  It’s a big shock and a very new experience for you.  You have no reference emotions for this kind of situation.”

Scott turned to Antoinette and put a hand to her side to tickle her.  “Are you supposed to say stuff like that to the patient?”  She couldn’t get an answer out because she was squealing so loudly.  She fought against him and Scott pushed her back onto the bed.  He didn’t get over her, but remained to the side, tickling her until she cried uncle.  Then he lay on his side, propping his head up with his hand as he looked down at her.  She was breathing hard and trying to frown at him.

“That’s very unprofessional,” she said.

“So is seducing one of your patients.”

“Seducing?  Hmph.  You make it sound like it’s all on me.”

“It is.  I was going to back off and leave it be.  It’s not my fault you’re so sexy.”

She smiled faux-shyly at him.  “You think I’m sexy?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Again she blushed at his bluntness.  He ran a finger down the line of her jaw.  “Doesn’t your boyfriend tell you that?”

“He used to.”

“Oh, poor baby.  Are you an old married couple now?  Tell me about your mother.”

She giggled and hit him lightly on the chest.  He picked up her hand and held it in his.  Her smile slowly faded and her brow creased in concern.  He wished she’d stop looking at him like that.

“This is fake, Scott.”

He shook his head. “What do you mean?”

“I saw you in the mall.  You were so down it was affecting you physically.  This lightness and playfulness, it’s not real.  It’s forced.  Can’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

He shook his head.  “I don’t know you, Antoinette.”

“Well, won’t this help us get to know each other?”

Scott flopped onto his back, but Antoinette sat up and leaned over him, not letting him get away.

“I mean it, Scott.  There’s no reason we can’t talk about this.  You clearly need someone.”

“You think so?  Some people need space, Antoinette.  Some people like to be alone when they’re sad.”

“You’re not one of those people, Scott.”

He blinked at her.  How did she know that?  “How do you know?”

“Because you went to the mall.  A place full of people.”

“I went there by accident.”

“Really?  Was it really an accident?”  He watched her eyes search his face.  She leaned down and kissed his lips chastely and then looked at him again.  “Please, tell me what’s wrong.”

He took in a breath to tell her he had to leave.  But then what would he do?  Anna wasn’t talking to him.  He’d have to go all the way home before he got his cell phone to call Will or Chris.  He wanted to tell someone how he felt.  He wanted to vent in some way.  He wanted someone to sympathize with his guilt over wishing for something bad to happen.  Will and Chris probably didn’t want to hear it either.  So, it might as well be Antoinette.  He wouldn’t care if she thought he was being stupid.

“I feel guilty.  I hated that my life was so boring that I wished something dramatic would happen just to make it un-boring.  And I know that doesn’t mean I’m responsible for causing the accident, but I feel guilty all the same.  And then I feel even guiltier for thinking about how this affects me so much instead of worrying about Julian.  And I hate that she wouldn’t listen to me.  That she just blew me off because she was worried about some stupid jerk of a boyfriend who’s no good for her.  And I don’t know how to act around Julian.  What do I say to him?  Do I tell him what I thought and that I feel bad about it now?  Will he just be irritated that I brought something stupid like that up?  Will he use it as an excuse to explain away the accident and hate me?”

The image of Julian collapsed on the hospital floor, crying his eyes out flashed in front of him.  He felt tears sting his eyes.

“I can’t stand this!  I hate it!  I want to be there for him, but I can’t do that!  We’re not supposed to!  Boys aren’t supposed to cry or hug their friends or show that they care.  I don’t want to have to hide this.  But he has so many problems right now that I can’t put on him the pointing and whispering from our stupid society too.  And I can’t do it in private.  I can’t—I don’t want to—”

Scott broke off as he had to suck in some air to accommodate holding back his sob.  He rolled away from Antoinette and pushed his face into her bedspread.  He refused to cry and painfully forced back the tears.  He felt Antoinette put a hand on his back and he shrugged it off.

“Please stop.  I don’t want to be seen like this.  I don’t want to be this way.”

“Be what way?”

“Like this!” Scott screamed.  He was grateful it was muffled somewhat by the bed, but it still made him sound pathetic.  There was silence in the room following that.  Well, except for his wretched snuffling.  He wondered if Antoinette was thinking of polite ways to get rid of him.  He should leave now.

“Were you talking about Anna?”

Her question helped push the tears back.  He rolled over and looked at her.  “What?”

“When you said ‘she,’ were you talking about that girl Anna?”

Scott put a hand under one eye, grateful his skin was still dry.  He nodded miserably.  He almost thought he saw her smile at that.  And not a pleasant smile.  But the expression was gone before he could be certain.

“You know, it doesn’t seem to me that Julian would be the type of person who cares about what other people think.  And he wouldn’t be upset if you told him how you felt.  No matter what the emotion may be.  It’s possible he’ll be grateful to have someone who’ll be honest and real with him and not just offering him pity.”

That made sense, but she didn’t really know what she was talking about.  She didn’t know Will.

“And if you’re really worried about showing how you feel…do you remember in history when we studied that some ancient cultures expressed their mourning in the form of a physical transformation?”

Scott shrugged.  “I remember that the Peloponnesian War was from 431 to 404 BC.”

She smiled ruefully.  “Yes, I think that was actually on the test, whereas what I remembered, mainly when he talked about hair, was not on the test.  I guess that’s why you got a better grade than me.”

He smiled at her.  She really was cute.

“But anyway, the point I was trying to make is that a lot of times, especially in the more militaristic countries, expressing emotions was looked down upon.  So, they altered their appearance rather than displaying their emotions.”

“Are you suggesting I cut off an ear or something?”

“Nothing quite so drastic.”  She looked up at the ceiling like she was thinking really hard, but he already knew what she was going to say.  “You could cut your hair.  As a show of your inner turmoil for Julian.”

Scott sat up and looked her in the eyes.  “And this has nothing to do with your own personal inner turmoil over my hair?”

“But it’s just so stringy!”  She collapsed against his shoulder and shook her head.  “I mean, it might be okay if you took care of it, but…I mean, do you even wash it?”

“Yes!  I do!”

“With what?  Bar soap?”

“No.  I use the shampoo that’s in the shower.”

“What brand is it?”

“I don’t know.  The one my sister uses.”

“And what if she has dry hair and you’re only adding moisture to your greasy hair?”

Scott ran his fingers through his hair.  “It’s not greasy,” he pouted.  “It was drizzling outside.”

Antoinette turned her body to the side and her breasts pressed against his arm.  He tensed up and she raised her head a little to talk into his ear.  Her breath sent shivers down his spine.

“Won’t you cut it?  For Julian?”

He turned to face her, his eyes closed, lips seeking hers.  “Sure, for Julian.”

They kissed a little awkwardly, and then Scott leaned back so that he could tangle a hand in her hair and pull her closer.  He hadn’t forgotten his lessons from yesterday and slowly and lazily ran his tongue around in her mouth.  He could feel her trying to respond, but she was too far gone into the kiss.  All she could do was occasionally push back with her tongue and moan into his mouth.  He loved the sounds she made.  It was fun to touch her in different places and with changing paces to see what kind of noise she would make in response.  He even managed to pull his tongue out of her mouth so that he could bite on her lower lip.  That made her make a noise that caused him to come to attention.  He pulled away and put a hand over his groin.  He couldn’t do this now.  And certainly not while that Carebear was on the bed watching them.  She hummed with pleasure and kissed his cheek, her hand covering his where it convulsed around his crotch.

“Please, Antoinette.  I can’t do this now.”

She nuzzled his cheek with her nose.  “Okay.”

She stood up and took his hand, leading him from the room.  She seemed to be doing that a lot.  He wished he had something to hold in front of himself, but at this point it didn’t really matter anymore.  She led him to a large bathroom and sat him down on the toilet.  She commanded that he take his shirt off and then left the room.  He sat in her bathroom feeling a little uneasy.  Was he really supposed to take his shirt off?  She returned with a towel and a pair of scissors.  Scott became alarmed.

“What?  You meant right now?  And _you’re_ going to do it?”

“Yeah.  My cousin goes to a public school and they have a cosmology class—”

“Cosmetology.”

“Whatever.  And she let me practice on her wig once.”

“Oh, really?  Well, you’re totally qualified then.”

“I so am.”  She patted his leg.  “Trust me, cupcake.  Anything I do to it isn’t going to make it look worse.  You can only go uphill from rock bottom.”

Scott made a face.  “You know, I think it was your flattering that won me over.”

“Aw, you feel un-pretty?  You have beautiful eyes and last night when I saw you without your shirt on…goodness.  Why don’t you play a sport?”

Scott scoffed even while feeling pleased.  “Whatever.  I don’t look that good.”

“Wanna bet?  Take your shirt off.”

Scott still felt like this was all one big joke on some level.  That a group of people schemed together to see how far he would go.  When he didn’t move, Antoinette grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled up.

“Lift your arms.”

He did as he was told and she pulled the polo shirt off and tossed it to the floor.  She stood over him and nodded her head in approval as she sized him up.  She ran her hands over his shoulders and then onto his chest.  Then she abruptly turned away and pulled back the _Finding Nemo_ shower curtain.  She turned on the spigot and adjusted the temperature.

“Okay.  Stick your head under.”

“You want me to wash my hair?  Is it really that bad?”

“Well, at the very least I need it to be wet to cut it.  Come on.  I give good scalp massages.”

“It would be easier if I just got in the shower and did it myself.”

“No way.  I’m not letting you get naked in my house.  You’re the one who said you couldn’t do it now.  And I wouldn’t be able to hold back if you were all wet and naked.  And vulnerable on top of that.”

“What are you, a guy?”

She laughed.  “Girls get sexual urges too.  Now, stick your head under the water.”

Scott looked at the scissors and then at Antoinette.  Ah hell.  Even if she destroyed his hair, he could just shave it off.  Boys were allowed to wear their hair that short.  That’s the way Chris had always worn his until his witch—girlfriend—came along.  Scott slid off the toilet and kneeled on the floor beside the tub.  He leaned his head under the water and stiffened when he felt Antoinette lean over him to use her hands to wet his hair.  Was she going to wash his hair for him?  He braced his hands on the edge of the tub and flexed his fingers as her breasts rubbed lightly against him as she worked.  She opened some flowery smelling shampoo and squeezed some into her palm.  She worked it into a lather and then applied it to his head.  He closed his eyes as her thin fingers slid through his hair and over his scalp.  She was applying a pretty strong pressure, but it felt good.  He relaxed against the tub and enjoyed the soothing sensation.  Then she maneuvered him under the running water and rinsed out the shampoo.  His hair got a little tangled, so that wasn’t so pleasant, but then she started again with the conditioner.  His hair was so thin that the tangles immediately fell out and her hands worked over him sensually.  He was disappointed when she turned the water off.

“Wait there.”

Scott didn’t move and watched the water drip off his hair.  She came back and wrung his hair out.  It kind hurt at the roots, but he didn’t complain.  Then she wrapped a towel around his head and helped him sit up.  He hadn’t been aware of the pain in his side from leaning on the edge of the tub until he sat up.  He ignored that too.  He was a tough manly man.  Getting his hair washed with Herbal Essences.  He frowned.  Wasn’t that a girls’ shampoo?  What did his hair smell like right now?  Then everything went dark as Antoinette threw a towel over his head and worked some of the remaining water out of his hair.  Then she wrapped the towel around his neck and gave him a peck on the lips.

“I’ll be right back.”

She left the room again and he was left alone staring at the mermaids that held the toilet paper in place.  Was everything in her house still in the age of Disney?  Not that he was going to admit to still having a stuffed Simba in his closet at home.  Antoinette came back in with another large towel and spread it out on the floor.  She patted it and said, “Come sit here.”  Scott moved to sit on the towel and she moved him so that she could kneel behind him.  He was below the level on the sink so he couldn’t see the mirror.  He wouldn’t be able to watch was she was doing.  She combed through his hair and he closed his eyes again.  It felt really nice to have someone play with his hair.

“How long have you had it?”

“Hmm?” he murmured, lost in the sensation.

“How long have you had your hair this long?”

Scott shrugged.  “A few years.  Don’t worry; I’m not really attached to it.  I won’t miss it.”

“Okay then, ready?”

Scott felt her take a handful of hair and raise it up.  He pulled away from her and grabbed her wrist.  “Hold on, hold on.”

“You said you wouldn’t miss it!”

“I know, but you can’t just hack away at it!”

“Scott, it doesn’t matter at this point.  I’m just taking off the excess.  It’ll be neater when it’s the right length.”

“How short are you going to make it?”

She shrugged.  “I haven’t decided yet.  Now turned around.”

She shook herself free from his hold and squared his shoulders.  Then she took a handful of hair and Scott could hear the metallic scraping as the scissors cut through his hair.  He realized he was making a face, but she couldn’t see it, so he allowed himself that much.  Her hand appeared around the side of his face.  In her grasp was about four inches of hair.

“Feel better?” she asked softly.

“My head does feel a little lighter.”

“Good.”

She dropped the chunk of hair in the garbage can and then cut off a couple more large pieces.  She began to comb through his hair, making it stand straight up, and then cutting off what she felt was excess.  He honestly felt that the scissors were a little close to his head.  He was going to look like a freak when this was all over.  Served him right for snaking some guy’s girlfriend.  God was trying to tell him something.  She continued to snip away at the back and sides, and then she moved around to face him so she could work on the front.  He didn’t mind.  It put her boobs even with his face.  He shook his head.  What was with his obsession with boobs?  Oh yeah, he’d never actually touched one before.  He raised his hand a couple inches before he realized what he was doing.  He snatched it back down so fast his whole body moved.

“Stay still.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Scott played with the hem of his pants as Antoinette snipped away.  Hair fell around him onto the towel he was sitting on and before long he was quite certain that there couldn’t be anything left for her to cut.  What was she doing up there?  Then she sat back on her feet and examined him carefully.

“Well?” Scott asked.  “Can I see?”

“Your hair really is…full of moisture.  Greasy.  I’ve got something that can help with that.  Stay here.”  She started to get up.  “Don’t peek!”

“I won’t.”

“Promise!”

“I promise.”

She ran off again.  Scott wasn’t even tempted to look.  It was just hair, right?  It would grow back.  He stared out into the hallway.  There was a Sleeping Beauty nightlight glowing in the semi-dark space.  After a couple minutes and some distant banging Antoinette retuned with her arms full.  She moved behind him, pulled the towel off his neck and replaced it with a much rattier one.  Then she took a long piece of cotton and lined his forehead to his ears with it.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want it to get in your eyes.”

“What exactly is this stuff?”

“I don’t know.  I’m not a chemist.”

He heard plastic crinkling and then something cold dribbled onto his head.  She massaged the liquid into his hair and he could tell she was wearing plastic gloves.  What was she putting on him?  The liquid had a strong smell that he knew he knew what it was, but he couldn’t think of it at the moment.  She worked the liquid all over his head and then pulled her gloves off and tossed them into the garbage.  She set a timer for thirty minutes and leaned back against the wall, perpendicular to him.

“So, what is this stuff supposed to do?”

“Well…it dries out your hair.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“For you, I think it’s going to be okay.”

Scott laughed to himself.  “Okay.  I’m going to trust a total stranger.”

She smiled and poked him with her sock-footed toe.  When had she taken her shoes off?  “I’m not a total stranger.”

“I guess not.  Tongue kissing does knock down a few walls.”

She giggled.  “I didn’t mean that.  I meant we knew each other from school.”

“Did we?  Did we even talk once before last night?”

“I think so.  We were in the lunch line once and you were making fun of the Salisbury steak.  I remember laughing when you described what a Salisbury looked like.  I believe it had the head of a moose and the body of well-hung bear.”

Scott shook his head in confusion, smiling.  It sounded like something he would say.  “I don’t remember that at all.”

She shrugged.  “Well, it was a couple years ago.”

“And you remember that?”

“Well, it was funny.”

“Hmm.  I think you’ve been stalking me.  You’re obsessed.”

She pushed him gently with her foot.  “I am not.  _You_ just don’t remember it because I wasn’t hot in ninth grade.”

“So, you’re saying _I_ was hot in ninth grade?”  He smiled at her in a way that he knew was irritating.  She just rolled her eyes and said, “What _ever_.”

Scott grinned and turned to lean against the cabinet.  He stretched his feet out and was surprised that he could almost get his legs completely straight before touching the wall with his toes.  It really was a huge bathroom.  Much bigger than the one he had to share with his sister and brothers.  He always wondered why his parents had opted for a fifth bedroom upstairs instead of a third bathroom.  There was another full bathroom downstairs in the finished basement, but that was inconvenient.  Thankfully his sister wasn’t terribly fussy about her looks and his brothers spent as little time in the bathroom as possible.  Otherwise four kids sharing one bathroom might have been a problem.

“Hey, Antoinette?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you share this bathroom with all your siblings?”

“No, just my sisters.  But, why are you asking about that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, don’t you still have things you want to talk about?”

“What, you mean about Julian?”

“Well, yeah.  Or anything that’s bothering you.  You’re still on the clock you know.  Psychologist-in-training Antoinette Bixby is here to help.”

“Mm-hmm.  And what exactly is the going rate for advice from a psychologist-in-training?  Per hour.”

“Well,” she tapped her chin with a finger, “I guess it’s probably somewhere in the sexual favors category.”

Scott laughed and shook his head.  “Unbelievable.”  He said it softly, to himself, but she heard him.

“What?  Is it—do you really think of me as a colossal slut?”

“Huh?  Oh, no, no.  That’s not what I meant.  I just meant that I’ve never had a girl who seemed so anxious to get into my pants.  I’m used to girls looking at me like I’m the cute guy’s friend.  Do you how much it sucks to be hanging out with three girls, all of whom seem somewhat interested in you, and then all of a sudden Will Harder walks up?”

“Ah, I see.  Do you resent him for it?”

“No, he doesn’t do it on purpose.  He just walked up to give me my change from buying a drink and then the girls focused on him.”  Scott crossed his arms.  “I don’t entirely get it.  He’s kind of girly.  Don’t girls like guys who are, well, like men?”

Antoinette looked down and laughed softly.  “Oh, Will’s not girly.  He’s very masculine.”  She raised her eyebrows and gave a slight shake of her head, deep in thought.  Or was that fantasy?

“Yeah, well, girls shouldn’t date boys that are prettier than they are.”

“He’s not prettier than me!”

“I didn’t say he was.  Though, he is.”

“Oh, shut-up.  Are you in love with him or something?”

“With Will?  No.  Even if I was gay, I couldn’t love him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he wouldn’t love me back.”

“Not his type?”

“No…he just…I don’t think he really cares about anyone.  Except maybe Julian.  But even then, I think he fools himself into believing how much he cares about Julian.  If Will needed to, he could drop us all in a heartbeat and walk away without looking back.”

“Geez.”

Scott looked at Antoinette.  Oddly enough she looked a little alarmed.

“You’re making him sound like a sociopath.”

Scott smiled.  “Yeah, a non-practicing sociopath.  But, maybe that is being too hard on him.  He’s not emotionless or self-absorbed.  Well, not completely self-absorbed.  He is very considerate of others and is always doing things for us.  He really is a great friend.  He’s just a little detached from the world.  It’s a defense mechanism, I think.”

“Ooo, look at you going all psychoanalysis-y on someone.  Maybe _you_ should be a shrink.”

“You know, I actually thought the other day that that might be a good career for me.  For instance, Chris has no backbone when it comes to women.  His dad ran out on them when he was little, so he’s grown up with his man-hating mother and doing everything he can to appease her and make her happy to make up for his absent father.  As a result, he lets his current girlfriend walk all over him because in his head, _he’s_ the bad guy.  And then there’s Julian.  His parents were so weird that he felt that if he were normal, he would be letting them down.  So, he tries hard to be things that most parents would cringe at without realizing that he’s naturally pretty weird already.”

Antoinette laughed.  “Wow.  Your friends sound really messed up.  I never would have known just by looking at them.”

“Yeah.  Oh!  Hey, this is privileged information.  No talking about it with anyone.  Got it?”

“Got it.”

“I wonder why I told you anyway.”

“Because you trust me.  You’re opening up and sharing.  Probably because you believe that people shouldn’t have casual sex, so you’re trying to make me someone who is emotionally intimate with you so that when we become physically intimate, it won’t feel awkward for you.”

“Feh.  Touché.  I guess we should both become psychologists.”

“I want to be a psychiatrist.  Access to drugs and all that.”

Scott chuckled and then they went silent.  It wasn’t uncomfortable, but as it started to drag on into minutes of silence, Scott started to fidget a little bit.  The timer ticked steadily away in the stillness.

“Hey, Antoinette?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this stuff supposed to burn?”

“Oh!  Let me check it.”

Antoinette scrambled to her feet and Scott resisted the urge to scratch his head.  She wetted a wash cloth in the sink and then wiped at a piece of his hair.  The water on the end of the wash cloth dripped onto his nose.

“Okay.  I think it’s perfect.  It only took about twenty minutes.  Come over here.”

Scott crawled his way to the bathtub and Antoinette turned on the faucet.  She stuck his head under without checking the temperature this time and it was a little cold, but it felt good on his tingling scalp.  She shampooed and conditioned his hair again, but this time the feeling wasn’t quite as relaxing: he was a little worried about seeing the outcome.  As she toweled off his head he wondered how he would explain this to his parents.  His mother would be thrilled; she’d want to know where he went to get it done.  He should probably just say some little dinky place in the mall.

“Okay.  One more thing.”

“Geezus,” Scott muttered.

She dug around in one of the drawers under the sink and produced a fancy-looking hair dryer.  He sighed.  It really wasn’t necessary, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to talk her out of it.  She used her fingers to work the water out of his hair and waved the hairdryer so fast he was getting a ringing in his ears from the constant changing of volume from one side to the other.  At last she turned off the blow dryer and sat on her heels to examine him again.  She picked up the scissors and snipped off a few more places.  Then she smiled at him.

“Perfect.”

She leaned forward and gave him a nice, somewhat prolonged kiss, and then sat back.  “Take a look.  Tell me what you think.”

Scott steeled his nerves.  Even if he hated it, he couldn’t let her see it.  He stood up and turned around.

“Oh my God!”

Scott braced himself on the sink and leaned forward.  His jaw dropped as he stared at his head.  He glanced to his right and wondered how on earth he hadn’t been able to place that smell as he stared at the bottle of peroxide.  He looked back into the mirror.  Not only was his hair gone, it was white.  Well, maybe not _white_ , but he had been turned into a platinum blond.  A platinum blond with only about an inch of hair.  At least it all seemed to be a uniform length.  He raised his hands to touch his head, but he couldn’t do it.  If he touched it and it didn’t go away, then it would definitely be real.

“What do you think?” Antoinette asked, smiling at him in the mirror.

He met her eyes via the glass.  “What do I think?  What did you do?  I look stupid!”

“No, you don’t.  You look hot.  Look how your eyes jump out of your face.  Your eyes are gorgeous, Scott.  They’re such a vibrant blue and now they’re even brighter.  And with your hair shorter you can see your bone structure.  You have such clean lines: the angle of your jaw and your cheekbones.  And your hair being as bright as it is offsets against your skin tone.  You looked kind of sallow with that long brown hair.  But with short, blond hair your complexion looks so healthy.  Scott, you look amazing.  People won’t recognize you.”

Scott looked at himself in the mirror.  He looked at his features as she described them, but was it true?  Now that the initial shock had worn off, he really looked at himself.  He shook his head.  He didn’t look that good…it was just the lights.  Or her complements going to his head.  She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him to face her.  She ran her other hand up his arm and then slid them both around his neck.  She pressed herself close to him and Scott put his hands on her waist.

“You look really handsome, Scott.  And if nothing else, people will know that you share in Julian’s pain without having to say anything or get all emotional about it.”

Scott shook his head.  “If you say so, trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Oh, yes.  You are definitely trouble.”  Scott lowered his head and kissed her.  He pulled away and waited for her to pull him back down.  He smiled as he kissed her, and couldn’t help but look out the corner of his eye at the mirror.  He didn’t look like himself at all, but he was starting to think the change wasn’t all that bad.  Antoinette pulled back and saw what was distracting him.

“Oh, go ahead and look since I’m obviously not enough to keep you occupied.”

“No, you are,” Scott murmured as he leaned on the sink again and carefully inspected his new look.  He was afraid he might have a Billy Idol vibe going on, but his hair wasn’t gelled into hard spikes.  It was just a soft mess of hair.  It really didn’t look too bad.  Amazing.  Who knew he could pull off being a blond?

“Oh!”

Scott turned at Antoinette’s soft exclamation.  “What is it?”

“It’s 2:00.  My parents will probably be home in like an hour or so, and I was supposed to do some chores before they got back.”

“Do you want me to help?”

She smiled.  “Aw, thank you.  But, that’s okay.  Besides, I better drive you home.  Even if you aren’t my boyfriend I don’t think my parents would be happy if they knew I was alone in the house with a boy.”

“Yeah, that could be dangerous.  You might give him a makeover or something.”

“Oh, hush.  Put your shirt on.”

Scott picked up his polo shirt which had somehow gotten a little damp and Antoinette picked up all her hairdressing supplies.  Scott turned again to the mirror and picked at his hair.

“Should I do my eyebrows?”

“No, it looks sexy with dark eyebrows.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Way hot.  Though they could be thinned out just a bit.  Do you prefer plucking or waxing?”

“Uh…I prefer eyebrows, thanks.”

“Hmph.  Well, they’re not crazy or anything, you’re pretty lucky.  I guess I’ll leave them be.  For now.”

Oh great.  Every time he hung out with her she was going to change something about him.  Though that might not be such a bad idea.  He lingered in the bathroom, looking at his hair until Antoinette came back in and dragged him away.  The car ride to his house was even more frightening than the trip from the mall.  She was rushing in order to get back before her parents.  Scott was definitely not letting her drive him anywhere ever again.  Before he got out she entered his phone number into her cell phone.

“Is that so you can give me a booty call whenever you want?”

“Yep.”

“Ugh.  I can’t believe _I’m_ the bitch.”

Antoinette just laughed as he got out of the car.  She put her car in reverse and peeled out of the driveway backwards.  Her tires squealed as she shifted gears and headed home.  He couldn’t believe he’d actually survived the trip.  Then he turned and faced his front door.  He had to go inside at some point.  How would his family react to his sudden change in appearance?  Scott was forced to ring the doorbell; he’d forgotten keys again.  He heard stomping down the stairs and knew Joanna was coming.  The door swung open and she glared at him.  Then she blinked.

“Sc—Scott?!”

“Yep.  It’s me.”

He stepped inside and watched his sister’s eyes bug out.  He stopped and struck a pose for her.

“Do you like my new look?”

She stared at him open mouthed, her eyes working furiously back and forth as she took it all in.  He laughed and ruffled her hair.

“Don’t worry.  You’ll get used to it.

He was almost to the kitchen when she said, “I like it.”

He turned back.  “Hmm?”

She was looking at the floor and scuffing her toe.  “I really like it.”

“Good.  If I have your approval then I won’t worry about anyone else’s.”

She looked up and smiled at that.  Scott shook his head as he continued on into the kitchen.  She really needed to branch out and find other males to take interest in.  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table, looking through some old receipts.  She didn’t look particularly happy.  Maybe now wasn’t a good time to spring the hair on her.  He stopped moving forward and carefully tried to sneak back out the way he came in.  But his mother had a sixth sense about her children.  She looked up before he could get away.  Her jaw dropped.

“Scott Walker Ramsey!  What have you done to your hair?!”

“I cut it.  You’ve been on my case for almost two years now to cut it.  Aren’t you happy?”

She stood up and approached him.  “And what on earth possessed you to bleach it blond?”

Should he say a cute blonde with nice legs and even better tits?  He shrugged.  “No reason.”

“Oh, my goodness.”  She ran her fingers through his hair, still staring like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.  “Well, at least it’s not black.  With it bleached like this it should be pretty easy for us to find a dye that’s close to your natural color and—”

Scott jerked away from her.  “No!”  He took in a breath and counted to three.  “No, Mom.  I like it this way.  This is the way I choose to wear my hair.”

His mother put her hands on her hips.  “We’ll see what your father has to say about it.  We still provide you with all your basic needs so we get to say if we want our children to look like freaks.”

“Jesus, Mom, it’s not like I shaved it into a Mohawk and dyed one side green and the other electric blue.”

“I know, but honey, it’s doesn’t look natural at all.”

“Oh, no shit.”

Scott made a face and took a step back.  Whoops.  He looked apologetically at his mother.  She had a raised eyebrow and pursed lips.

“You know, I’m going to let that slide.  Even whatever it was you said this morning in front of your brother.  You’re going through a difficult time now.  But, don’t forget yourself, mister.  And we’ll see what your father has to say about that…that hair.  Uh!”

She walked away, completely exasperated, and started rooting through the receipts again.  Scott went to the pantry to get something to eat.  That could have gone worse.  On his way up to his room he ran into his brothers.  They screamed and wanted to touch his head.  They thought it was the greatest thing and asked if they could do it too.  He gave them a pat on the head and sent them off to play.  They were so cute.  In his room he saw his cell phone where he’d left it on the bed.  After Anna had dumped all over him.  She was having a rough time and she was friends with Julian too.  Maybe she didn’t need his baggage on top of hers.  But, had that been what he’d done to her?  He still felt that she’d been a total brat about the situation.  Or maybe he just couldn’t muster any sympathy over José dumping her.

He fell onto his back on the bed and forgot the bag of Doritos he’d brought up with him.  His sleepless night suddenly caught up with him and his eyelids felt like they had fifty pound weights attached to them.  He only tried once to keep them open, and then gave in to sleep.  He woke to a knock on the door.  He was a little disoriented because it was dark.  He looked at his nightstand to find the time: 9:07.

“Oh, crap.”  Scott sat up and put a hand to his head.  He’d meant to call Chris and find out about Julian.  Maybe he should call Will instead.  The knock came at the door again and Scott told the person to come in.  His father opened the door and flipped on the light.  Scott winced away from the brightness, and it took a few moments before he could open his eyes.  Then he looked up at his straight-laced father.  He worked for some company in the city.  He was pretty high up too.  He mostly sat around and ordered other people around and got paid very well for it.  He wore his hair cut conservatively and was always clean shaven.  Scott remembered his own head.  His father stepped into the room and the man ran a hand through his son’s hair.  The sensation was completely unlike when Antoinette or his mother did it.  It actually sent more of a thrill through his body.  His father never touched him; no hugs, no pats on the back.  If he ever did come into physical contact with him, there was usually an object in place of his hand.  Like the other morning when he’d hit him with the rolled up newspaper.

“I don’t know what your mother is complaining about.  To hear her talk about it I thought you’d shaved your head and then glued your pubic hair to it.”

Scott laughed.  “Dad!”

“It doesn’t look that bad.”

“Thanks,” he said softly.

“You go ahead and leave it like that.  But you realize if you want to keep it up you’re going to be bleaching your roots about once a month.”

“How do you know?”

His father became uncharacteristically speechless.  Scott could see his mind working pretty hard to answer this question.  “I dated a girl in college who…dyed her hair.”

“Ah.  I see.  You know, Dad, it’s okay to talk about your past girlfriends.  I know Mom’s not the only woman you’ve ever been with.  As much as I cringe to think about it at all.”

His father still looked uncomfortable.  “Well, I guess that’s true.  So, how are you?  I know yesterday was a terrible shock.”

“How do you think I’m doing?” he asked, pointing to his head.

His father laughed.  “I see.  Well, try to get some sleep tonight.  We _are_ being horrible parents and making you go to school tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t worry about your hair.  I’ll talk to your mother.”

Scott watched blankly as his father left the room.  “Um, thanks.”

“Goodnight, son.”

His father shut the door and he leaned back on his bed.  He stared at the ceiling, wondering if a dark part was an imperfection or a shadow.  He turned his head slightly and bumped against his cell phone.  Scott sat up and started dialing, but then stopped.  He flipped his phone around and took a picture of himself from the neck up.  Then he e-mailed it simultaneously to his three friends.  Scott figured he would go to the bathroom and get ready for bed, and when he came back he could see who responded first.  He hadn’t even gotten his pajamas together yet when his phone started dinging.  He went back and picked it up; three text messages were waiting for him.

Chris: Dude?!

Will: Who is she?

Julian:  I’ll save this for later when I’m alone tonight.

Scott laughed and pressed the phone to his forehead.  He couldn’t stop laughing.  He fell to his knees and put his arms on the bed.  He buried his face in his arms and clutched his phone tightly.  And still he continued to laugh.  Then he realized he was crying.


	3. Chapter 3

Saturday, May 7, 2005

Chris

 

Chris strummed his fingers on the steering wheel.  He pushed his lips in and out as he looked at the gate to his girlfriend’s neighborhood.  He recognized the guard in the gatehouse, so he would probably let him in without too many questions.  But, did he really want to go in there?  This just couldn’t be happening.  He turned to look at his father where he sat in the passenger seat.  He had shaved off the scruffy beard and looked even more like the father he remembered from his childhood.  But he still had that hard, lean prison look about him too.  Chris didn’t think it was just his imagination; he was pretty certain anyone would realize that this man had recently been released from jail.  His father was scoping the area out the window.

“Hmm, it wasn’t gated the last time I was here.  It might be difficult to get in.  I wonder if we can just make up who we’re seeing, or if they have to call us in.  If that’s the case we’ll have to go over the fence around the back or something.”

“Um, they do usually call the house to inform them of visitors, unless they recognize the person coming in as having been cleared by one of the residents.”

“Oh, how do you know?”

His father turned to look at him and Chris gave him a glare.

“My girlfriend lives here.”

“Well.  Isn’t that convenient?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What?  I didn’t know she lived here.”

“I know.  But, Dad, this is ridiculous!  All of these houses have alarms.”

“I can probably get around them.”

“You’ve been in prison for nine years.  Technology has changed a lot.”

“Well, where do you think I learned how to get around security systems?  Look, Chris, all we’re doing right now is checking the place out to see if it’s even doable.  Isn’t that your grand scheme?  To check it out with me and then convince me it’s a bad idea?”

Chris looked away.  His father had him pegged.  They’d only spoken one other time during the week and that was just to set up this outing.  His mother had been disappointed that he was going out on a Saturday since she was finally staying in for once, but Chris knew that postponing this would only cause problems.  He needed to get his father to see that he was just going to have to leave the money behind and head off for Mexico as soon as he could.  The Chicago police had contacted them again wanting to know if his father had shown up.  Chris was amazed he’d managed to keep his cool long enough to tell his mother that he hadn’t heard a word from him.  Then he had to leave the room.  He was lucky he didn’t have to talk to the police directly otherwise he might have spilled his guts about everything.  Including the time he shoplifted a pack of gum in the fourth grade.

“Why did you even put it in a place like this, Dad?  That was so stupid.”

“Well, I didn’t know the place was going to get turned into a fortress.  When I was here it was just a bunch of foundations with a little bit of sheetrock put up.  So, I stored it inside one of the walls.”

“What?!  What if a construction guy found it and it’s gone?  How were you going to get something _out of the wall_ when people lived there?”

“A construction worker wouldn’t have found it.  I tore a whole in the wall and then fixed it before I left.  No one would know it wasn’t just a plain wall.”

“Unless the family remodeled sometime in the last ten years!”

His father rubbed his chin.  “I didn’t think of that.”

“Uh.”  Chris flopped back against his seat.  This was so old movie worthy.  They were the stupid crooks who made so many dumb mistakes it was impossible for them _not_ to get caught.  He rubbed his forehead.  “Okay, assuming the money’s still there, and that we can get inside, how are you going to get it out of the wall without people noticing?”

“Well, obviously we have to do it while the owners are out.  We buy some plaster and paint that matches the color on the wall and we fix it before we leave.  No big deal.  It’s simple to fix a hole in the wall.”

“Dad…this is such a bad—”

“And how lucky would it be if it was your girlfriend’s house?  Then when her parents are out, you get invited into the house and leave the door open for me.  You keep her occupied while I get the money.  Just think, a little kinky sex and an orgasm or two later and it’ll all be over and done with without you even having to think and worry about it.”

Chris could feel the expression on his face.  If it looked half as pissed as he felt his father should die on the spot.  When his dad came out of his musings and looked at him, he actually shrank back against the side of the car and laughed nervously.

“I was just kidding, son.  Simmer down.”

Chris felt his anger dissipate without his consent because he realized where he got the phrase “simmer down” from.  He used it all the time, and it was because his father had always said it to him as a child.  Why did he not remember that until now?  How could he have suppressed so much about the first seven years of his life?  He wondered if his mother had something to do with it.  His father gave him a smile.

“Come on, let’s at least check it out.  It’s not breaking a law to cruise a neighborhood in your car.”

Chris put his car in gear and started forward while muttering, “No, but harboring a wanted man is.”

Either his father didn’t hear what he said or he decided to ignore him because he didn’t respond.  Chris drove up to the gate and started to roll down his window.  The guard just waved at him and opened the gate.  Chris breathed a sigh of relief.  At least he wasn’t going to have to make up a story about who was with him.  Chris was certain he wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything believable.  He cruised slowly down the familiar street, waiting for his father’s instructions.  He was leaning forward and looking out the window, searching for some familiar landmarks.  Chris rolled his eyes.  More than likely his father was going to pick the wrong house.  They’d end up cutting holes into every house in the neighborhood and then his father would remember he actually put the money in a tree in Albuquerque.

They rolled past all five streets and continued on the main road.  Chris scratched an eyebrow, starting to grow a little nervous.  He had really hoped they would turn off before now.  The main road led to a large cul-de-sac with only three houses situated around it.  That put him at 1:2 odds that he was going to be in very big trouble.  Chris drove slowly around the circle, his stomach sinking.

“Here,” his father said.

Chris stopped in front of the middle house.  His father had his nose practically pressed to the glass as he looked out the window.  Chris waited, but his father didn’t say anything.

“This is it?” Chris asked.

“Yep.  The one at the far end of the road on the right.  I didn’t want to make it too difficult to remember.”  He turned to look at Chris.  “It’s not your girlfriend’s house, is it?”

Chris shook his head.  “Nope.”  Then he looked at the house they were in front of—with the hand painted sign on the front door that read “The Greens.”  He put his head to the steering wheel.  In some ways this would be a good thing.  The people in the cul-de-sac were familiar with his car.  He picked Karen up for school and brought her home almost everyday.  So, his car wouldn’t be suspicious if it was sitting in the cul-de-sac.  However, if Karen or her parents looked out the window and saw his car sitting there, but he wasn’t in their house, then they would start asking questions.  Chris raised his head as his father opened the car door.

“Where are you going?”

“To look around.”

His father got out and shut the door on his son’s protest.  Chris pulled up to the curb past Karen’s house and killed the engine.  He jumped out and ran after his father.

“Dad, you can’t just walk all over someone’s lawn out here.  They notice stuff like that.  Besides, what if some of these people have security cameras and stuff?”

“I doubt they have cameras, but maybe you shouldn’t call me ‘dad’ out here, just in case we need to make up a story.”

His father stood on the sidewalk with his hands on hips, looking ridiculously suspicious.  Chris had bought him some clothes from the mall, so he was now in jeans and a casual dress shirt, but he still looked shifty.

“You should know,” he said, joining him on the sidewalk, “I’m not a good liar.  So, it better not fall on me to make anything up.”

“Well, if that’s the case, tell the truth.  Just give it a little spin.  For example, if someone asks us why we’re out here we can just say we’re here looking at the houses.  I’m looking to relocate.  These houses are mighty nice.  Now, I’m not looking to relocate _here_ , but I didn’t say that, did I?  That would be what I implied and what the listener would infer, but I still managed to say all three sentences without saying a single lie.”

“Wow, Dad.  If only you had been around to teach me the fine art of not-lying when I was a child.  That would have been some excellent father-son bonding time.”

His father grinned at him.  “There were so many things I wanted to teach you.  It’s a shame I was such a schmuck and got pinched.”

“So, you’re sorry you got caught and not that you did it?”

His father looked back at the house.  “Would you think less of me if that’s the case?”

“You don’t feel bad for getting people hooked on drugs?”

“ _I_ didn’t get them hooked on drugs.  I never actually sold any drugs to anyone.  All I did was distribute it and collect the cash.”

“I don’t know that that’s any better.”

“Well, if it’s something that makes you uncomfortable, then you should leave now.  I don’t want you here against your will.  I’ll do what I can to get the money and then get out of your hair.”

“No, no.  I don’t want that.  I mean, yeah, it’s bad what you did, but it’s not like you killed anyone.  Directly anyway.  Besides, people are responsible for themselves.  If people didn’t _want_ to do drugs, you wouldn’t have had a job in the first place.”

His father smiled grimly.  “Who says you can’t lie?  You’re doing a pretty good job of deceiving yourself.”

His father stepped onto the grass and started walking toward the back of the house.  Chris followed him nervously, glancing around to see if anyone was peeking out of their curtains.  Fortunately, only the three houses on the cul-de-sac were actually in a position to see what they might be doing, but who knew how many people lived in those houses?  Only three lived in Karen’s house, but maybe the other two were populated with Catholics with eight kids a piece and the nosy grandma upstairs.  While Chris was glancing around furtively, he didn’t notice what his father was doing.  So, when he grabbed him by the shoulders he screamed, which startled his father into screaming too.  Then they clamped a hand over their mouths and stood absolutely still, like if they didn’t move nobody would be able to see them standing completely exposed out in the open.  After a few moments his father relaxed and smacked him on the head.

“What’s the matter with you, boy?”

“You startled me!”

“Okay, okay.  Sorry.  Now, I want you to wait here and get in a position so that you can see the front of the house and also if somebody is heading toward either side.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m just going to peek around back.  Don’t worry.  I know how to be stealthy.”

“You know, that statement might have more stock to it if you hadn’t been in jail for _nine years_.”

His father gave him a kick on the ass and headed off toward the back.  “Show some respect for your father, boy.”

“Feh.”  Chris crossed his arms in a huff.  “So, wait, what’s the signal if somebody’s coming?”

His father turned to walk backward and shrugged at him.  “Just yell, ‘somebody’s coming.’”

Chris stared in disbelief as his father rounded the back corner of the house.  They were so going to get arrested.  Chris kicked a fluffy dandelion with his toe and watched the seeds disperse on the light, warm breeze.  Unlike last weekend, this weekend had turned out to be gorgeous.  And so far, nobody had died.  Though, it was only Saturday morning.

School had been weird all week and Monday morning had been a little crazy.  Only about a quarter of the students knew Julian’s parents had died, but by the end of the day, everybody knew.  And even if they didn’t know him personally, every kid in school knew who the freakish Julian March was.  Rumors had started circulating about satanic rituals and all kinds of weird stuff.  Chris had been very glad Julian hadn’t shown up.  Though even if he had, Scott’s hair would have been a decent distraction.

Chris hadn’t quite believed the photograph he’d received on his cell phone Sunday night, but it was real.  Scott had completely cut off his hair and bleached it blond.  The truly weird part being that it actually looked good.  And it almost seemed like every girl in school had taken notice of that fact.  He got asked out twice by lunch time.  Which had been terribly awkward.  The girls had wanted to talk about the accident, but the boys didn’t want to.  And not because they didn’t want to talk about it at all, but because they didn’t want to talk about it with the girls.  Chris knew that the four of them were very close, but it had never been so painfully obvious that they kept the girls at a distance until that day.  With the one exception being Scott and Anna.  And that had been a whole other crisis.  They weren’t speaking.  They didn’t say a word to each other and sat at opposite ends of the lunch table.

It had been the most excruciating lunch he’d ever sat through in his entire life.  And the insanity didn’t stop there.  Will had been a mess all day.  He’d been so worried about Julian meeting his grandparents that he couldn’t think straight.  It had at least provided a little entertainment watching him walk into walls and snap at Mr. Kilgore, the chemistry teacher.  The look on Mr. Kilgore’s face when Will barked that he didn’t know the answer to his stupid little equation…Chris would have sworn he was about to cry.  Poor Mr. Kilgore.  Nobody in the class cared about chemistry even though it was an AP class.  His one saving grace was Will Harder, boy genius.  But not on Monday.  Will was so distracted he didn’t even realize he agreed to go on a date with Liz.  If “determined” wasn’t the best adjective for Liz then “sneaky” certainly was.

The rest of the week had similarly been a mess.  He’d tried so hard to avoid Karen all week.  He knew he needed to break up with her, but he didn’t want to deal with it on top of all the questions from his classmates and even the teachers about Julian.  And his mother had been so snippy all week because she’d been upset that the police hadn’t managed to find his father yet.  This, of course, made Chris feel guilty and like he was betraying his mother.  But if he turned in his father, he’d really be betraying him.  Chris started as his cell phone rang.  He dug it out of his pants and told it to shush as he flipped it open.

“Hello?”

“Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssss…”

Chris raised an eyebrow.  “Will?”

“Helllllllllp me.”

“Um, I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“I can’t take it anymore!  I’m going to kill them!  Every single one of them!  At this point there’s no way it would really bother Julian.”

Chris laughed, but tried to hold it in.  It really wasn’t right to joke about killing Julian’s remaining relatives.  He hadn’t met them yet himself, but from what he’d heard from both Will and Julian they were more than a handful.  Julian’s mother’s parents were Mormon and his father’s parents were Greek Orthodox.  Either set by themselves would have been a headache, especially to a Wiccan, but both together and clashing with each other was creating quite a storm.

“Oh, come on, Will.  How hard can four senior citizens be?”

“Okay, one: they’re not that old.  They are very spry and _very_ opinionated.  And they are all being _so_ helpful.  And two: the uncles and aunts poured in on Friday night.  There are twelve people in this house.  Julian’s house only has four bedrooms.  I told them last night that they should stay in the motel by the mall, but they all want to be here for Julian.  Jesus fucking Christ they’re making it worse.  OW!”

Chris pulled the phone away from his ear at Will’s exclamation.  He moved it closer to ask him what had happened, but heard Will talking to someone over the line.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am.  I promise not to take the Lord’s name in vain again.  I’m sincerely sorry.”

Chris laughed at Will.

“Oh, fuck you, you little shit.  I swear if all you’re doing right now is having sex with Karen I’ll murder you.”

“I’m not with Karen.”

“Are you with Scott?”

“No.”

“Well!  Where the hell is he?  He’s not answering his cell phone.”

“Can’t help you.”

“Yes, you can.  Just come over here and help act as a buffer.  I can’t do it alone.”

“Will, I’m really sorry.  I do want to help Julian, but I _can’t_ right now.”

“Why?  What are you doing?”

Chris opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say.  What did his father say?  Just tell the truth.  “I have a lot of homework.  And my mom said I can’t go out unless I finish it.”  There.  That wasn’t so hard.  He did have a lot of homework and his mother never let him out unless he’d finished it.  Of course, he’d _already_ finished it Friday night.

Will was quiet for a few seconds.  “You’re lying.  What are you doing?”

“What?!  No, I’m not!”

“Chris, you know you suck at lying.”

“I know, but I _wasn’t_ lying!  I really wasn’t.”

“It was the way you said it.  You’re talking around the point.”

“How could you pick up on that?”

“Well, I only had an inkling you might be lying, but you just admitted to it.”

Chris looked at the sky.  “Shit.”

“Don’t try to outsmart a genius, Christopher.  You’ll lose every time.”

“Okay, fine.  How’s this?  I’m doing something right now and I can’t leave.”

“Okay, okay.  I see Karen’s loosened her grip on your balls a little bit.”

“Shut-up!  Liz can still work you over pretty well.”

“There are extenuating circumstances.”

“Like what?”

A pause.  “Nothing.  But, I will remember this, Chris Pelletier.  Oh, yes…I _never_ forget.  And you know it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  Later, punk.  Tell Julian I’m thinking of him.”

“Uh-huh.”

Click.  Chris looked at his phone.  The little booger had hung up on him.  Not that he much blamed him.  Will wasn’t used to dealing with…parents.  It was a new experience for him.  He just hoped Julian’s grandparents weren’t making the entire situation worse like Will said.  Hopefully it was good for Julian to have some family around.  He hadn’t seen him all week; of the three of them, only Will had seen him and he’d only done so last night.  After his grandparents arrived on Monday morning, they had taken Julian back to his house.  Chris wasn’t sure if he’d want to stay in the house where his parents used to live.  Though, they hadn’t died _in_ the house, but still.

Chris scoped out the front and side yard again.  He didn’t see anybody wandering around.  Maybe he looked suspicious just standing in the side lawn.  He walked toward his car to sit on the hood.  He’d still be able to see the front and side yards from there and he would look like he was just waiting on Karen if anyone saw him.  Chris sighed.  He didn’t want to think about Karen.  It had been pretty easy to avoid her in school.  They had gotten to know each other last year because they had four classes together, but this year they had none.  And they didn’t have the same lunch either.  He had also made up excuses for not being able to take her to and from school.  She had other friends who could do it, so he wasn’t leaving her in the lurch.  Not that she was incapable of taking public transportation.  Or maybe she was.  He wondered if her father would let her.  The brief exchanges they’d had in the hall had been perfunctory and robotic.  He’d leaned down and given her a kiss and then said he had to run to class.  He thought it might be good to have it seem like he was being distant all week; that way when he broke up with her this weekend, it wouldn’t seem so sudden.  And if nothing else, he wasn’t above using Julian as an excuse.  He would understand.  He didn’t like Karen any more than the rest of his friends did.

Chris started to fidget.  Where was his father?  He was about to go check on him when he saw him appear from the back of the house and start up the side lawn.  He started to call out to him when he heard, “Baby?”

Chris spun around.  Damn that quiet luxury car.  Karen was looking out the rolled down passenger window of her mother’s BMW.  The car was a few feet away, aiming toward the Green’s driveway.  Her mother was in the driver’s seat, giving him a very neutral expression.  She must be pissed with him.  Maybe she blamed him for the ruined debutante gown.  Chris felt the back of his neck itching; he wanted to turn to see where his father was, but knew that would be disastrous.

“What are you doing here?” Karen asked.

“Well, I came to see you.  I didn’t see you much during school at all this week.”

That came out pretty easy.  Karen turned and said something to her mother.  Her mother pursed her lips as her daughter got out of the car.  Karen walked over to him and smiled that pretty smile of hers.  He took her hands when she held them out to him and leaned down to accept her kiss.  When he straightened, her mother was still watching them.  Karen turned and gave her mother a look, and then she continued on up the driveway into the garage.

“What are you doing parked in front of the Greer’s house?”

Chris told himself not to panic and to think rationally.  “Don’t you think it’s funny that you guys are the Greens and the Greers live next door?  That’s only, like, one letter different.”  Oh, brilliantly done.

Karen tilted her head, and looked confused.  “Well, actually it’s two letters.  They have an ‘s’ and we don’t, but why is that funny?”

Chris sighed.  “It’s not.”

“Why are you nervous?  Is something wrong?”

She looked worriedly at him.  He should do it now.  _Don’t_ _be a pussy_ , he ordered himself.  He tried very hard to think of the right opening line.  Should he just go with, “I think we should talk?”

“Um, well, while you decide if something is wrong or not, I need to ask you a favor.  Well, a request really.”

“What?”  Maybe he could do one last thing for her.

“I know what you’re going to say, but please just consider it.”

“Um, tell me what it is, and maybe I’ll consider it.”

Chris couldn’t help it.  He turned and looked over his shoulder.  The side yard of the third house was empty.  Did his father see Karen and her mother drive up?  Had he gone back around the house?  He looked back at Karen.  She hadn’t noticed him looking because she had been looking at the ground.  She gave his hands a squeeze and looked back up at him.

“I want you to come to dinner tonight.”

He ran his tongue along his teeth.  “What’s the catch?”

“My family will be there.”

“Ohh…”  Chris took a step back, actually feeling nauseous.  Karen kept him from going too far by holding onto his hands.

“Oh, please!  Come on.  I know the last time you had dinner with my parents was a little awkward—”

“A little awkward?  It was a disaster!”

“I know, I know.  But, I think they finally realize how much you mean to me.  And I mean in the sense that they really want to get to know you now.  They want to see who you are.  And be open and talk with you.”  Karen gave a little laugh.  “I think they want to meet the boy who would make me run out on my first debutante ball.”

“I didn’t make you run out—”

“That’s not what I meant.  I just meant—”  Karen let out a frustrated noise.  “Why is this always so hard?”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be, Karen.”  Good, nice start.  Now dump her.

“Chris,” she pleaded, looking at him with her big, brown eyes, “please come to dinner tonight.  I already told them you were coming.  That you care about _me_ and aren’t just dating me because you’re trying to get into my pants.”

“Trying?”

“You think I told them we’re sleeping together?  Please.”  She almost sounded black for a second there.

“Karen—”

“Chris.  I’m begging you.  I’m throwing all my pride away.  Please do this for me.  For us.  I’ll get on my knees if you want me to.”

She started to drop down, but Chris pulled her back up.  “Please don’t do that.”

“So, you’ll do it?  You’ll come?”  She looked so excited.

Son of a—  “Okay, okay.  I’ll come.  It’s tonight?  Where?”

“Yay!”  Karen jumped up and wrapped her arms around his neck.  She hugged him tightly and Chris wanted to kick himself.  Why did he always give in to her?  “It’s here, at our house, at 6:00.  Homemade food.”

“Are you cooking?” Chris asked.  “Maybe I shouldn’t come after all.”

She let go of him and hit him on the chest.  “Be quiet!”

Chris rubbed the spot; it was stinging a little.  “Ow, baby.  Save that kind of stuff for the bedroom.”

She giggled and Chris wondered why he’d said that.  He was trying to get out of this relationship.  Why was he having dinner with her parents and bringing up their sex life?

“Okay, so I’ll see you tonight, right?  And you can wear those black pants I bought you and the green sweater over that striped shirt.  Remember to pull the collar up over the neck of the sweater.”

“Okay.”

Karen clapped her hands and jumped in place.  “This is going to be so great!”

“Yeah, so great.”

Chris waved goodbye and felt a worm of unease wriggling around in his stomach.  Having to talk to Karen’s parents was the last thing he wanted to do.  Even breaking into a stranger’s home to find some drug money stashed away by his father was higher up on the list.  But maybe the dinner would go so horribly that he could tell Karen he couldn’t put up with it anymore and break up with her that way.  Then he could spare her the knowledge that he was breaking up with her because of _her_.  He had an inexplicable soft spot for her.  He hoped he wouldn’t give in as readily to his future girlfriends.

Then Chris remembered his father.  He turned around and searched the yard next door.  He checked to see that Karen was inside her house and then started to walk away from his car.

“Chris, over here.”

Chris turned and saw his father scrunched on the ground behind his car.  Chris rolled his eyes and walked over to him.

“What are you doing?”

“Someone came out of the house next door, so I started to head back.  And then that car pulled up and your girlfriend started yapping.  I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t just stand in the side yard.  So, I slunk over here.  Do you think she saw me?”

“No, she would have had a fit.  Come around to the side of the car and crawl in the backseat.  She thinks I came here to see her.  So, we’ll just drive out all cool and calm and collected.”

“Uh-huh.  Just unlock the door.”

Chris opened the driver’s side door and got in slowly.  He pretended to mess with the radio to give his dad time to crawl in the back.  The Greers wouldn’t have been able to see him, but the occupants of the other two houses might have seen the man sneaking into the back of his car.  Why did they do this in the middle of the day?  Chris drove out of the neighborhood and once they were past the gates, his father crawled up front, accidentally hitting Chris and nearly causing them to swerve off the road.

“Sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as you’d be when my mother got a hold of you in the hospital for nearly killing her son.”

“Her son.  _Our_ son.  You’re mine too.”

“I’m not arguing that point.  But, couldn’t you have waited to move?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You want me to drop you off back at the motel?”

His father was staying in a rundown motel just outside of town.  The rent was taking all the money he had (which made one wonder where he’d gotten _that_ money from), so Chris was supplying him with food and clothes.

“Yeah.  I need to sit down and plan out a few things.  Then I’m going to need to go to the hardware store to get some spackling and tools.”

“Do you need me to take you?”

“Nah.  I can get there by bus.  Besides, don’t you have dinner tonight with your girlfriend’s parents?”

“Ugh.  Yes.”

“It’s getting pretty serious then?”

“No, just the opposite.  I’m trying to get out of it.”

“Well, meeting the parents is usually a step in the other direction.”

“I’ve met them before.  They hate me.  So, I just figured that this dinner would be so messed up that I can use it as en excuse to dump her.”

His father nodded.  “You know, I don’t know all the details, but it seems to me that a high school boy should be happy he’s a got a cute girl willing to sleep with him.”

“Okay, I know you were in prison for a while, Dad, but trust me.  Even you would turn her down.”

“Oh.  Does she cry?”

“Um…well, she can be a bit of a crybaby, but she doesn’t ever really use tears to get her way.  She uses intimidation and fear.”

“Huh?  Oh, no.  I mean, does she cry when you have sex?  Is that why it’s so bad?”

“What?  No.  I’m talking about her personality.”

“Well, son, I never met a woman whose personality was so bad it made her pussy undesirable.”

Chris blushed.  “Dad.  Can you not…say stuff like that?”

“Like what?  It’s nothing you haven’t heard before.”

“It’s something I haven’t heard from a parent’s mouth before.”

“Well, I ain’t a typical parent, am I?”

“A valid point.”

“Well, anyway.  You got plenty of time for sex and stuff, so if you want to cool it right now, that’s not such a bad idea.  Women are always trouble.  Even the ones that don’t cause problems.  They’re still trouble.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Chris said dryly.

“So, I’m going to work on the plan.  It might be few weeks off.  I’ll need to do some more reconnaissance before we go barging in.  You have fun tonight.  And don’t spend too much money on buying me food, okay?  I don’t need any fancy vegetables or healthy tofu stuff.  Fast food is fine.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dad.  I’ve got money to spare.  And you’ll be able to pay me back when this over, right?”

“Ten times over.”

Chris shook his head.  “Exactly how much is in that wall?”

“Enough to make the risk worth while.”

After Chris dropped his father off at the motel, he assumed the day would drag on since he would be dreading the impending dinner with Karen’s parents.  But the day flew by, and before he knew it he had to get ready to go over to her house.  How had it come so quickly?  He hadn’t had time to prepare himself by thinking up some answers he could memorize and regurgitate.  And since he had to mention Karen to his mother in order to tell her where he was going, the atmosphere had been strained.  Ever since he blurted out that he and Karen were having sex to his mother, she had been drawn in on herself.  It had gotten better over the course of the week, but mentioning Karen to her had sent her back into her funk.  Did she think she was a bad mother or something because of this?  Chris didn’t have time to worry about her though.  He had other parents to worry about.

He had gotten dressed in khakis and a red dress shirt in direct defiance of Karen.  And then he had gone and changed into the outfit she wanted him to wear.  Dinner was going to be bad enough without her being upset about his clothes.  All he had to do was make it through one dinner, and then he would be out forever.  He even thought about giving her a hint when he arrived.  He looked up flower meanings online and found that striped carnations meant “sorry, I can’t be with you.”  However, he couldn’t find any striped carnations at the store, so he bought her yellow carnations which meant rejection.  Close enough.  She probably wouldn’t get it, but he couldn’t show up empty handed and he certainly didn’t want to bring her roses.

Chris ran a finger under his collar.  He was a little warm.  The weather was definitely in full spring, and a sweater was not the best thing to wear.  He knew he should have worn that dress shirt.  It was cotton and very light.  Too late now.  He had already rung the doorbell and could hear the heavy steps of Karen’s father coming down the hall.  Chris took in a breath and let it out slowly.  The door swung open and he choked on the air.  He coughed softly and stood up straighter.  Mr. Green was nearly half a foot taller than him and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds if not more.  Some of that weight was him going a little soft at the sides, but a lot of it was muscle.

“Hi, Mr. Green.  How are you doing this evening?”

Chris could actually see Mr. Green internally telling himself to be civil.

“I’m doing just fine, Christopher.  Won’t you come in?”

Why did adults always want to call him Christopher?  Chris stepped into the large foyer and noticed that the hardwood floors had just recently been buffed and polished.  There was a yummy smell floating out of the kitchen.  Had they really done all this for him?

“Wow.  That smells wonderful.  I can’t wait to try some of Mrs. Green’s cooking.”

He smiled at Mr. Green carefully and the man smiled just at carefully back at him.  “Ebony’s cooking _is_ fantastic.”

“Chris!”

Chris and Mr. Green turned to see Karen coming down the stairs.  Chris felt his resolve weakening.  She was wearing a cute black and white polka dotted dress with a ribbon around the waist.  Tonight she had let her hair go natural and it was curly and poofy around her head.  She also wasn’t wearing as much make-up as usual and Chris could see that she really was a natural beauty, and he loved her eyes.  Her smile was beautiful; she looked so genuinely happy…and non-spoiled rich girl.  It seemed like she was walking down the stairs in slow motion.  Chris snapped out of his fantasy when Mr. Green nudged him.  He shook himself and remembered he was here to break up with her.  He held out the yellow carnations to her.

“These are for you.”

“Thank you!”  She took them with a smile and inhaled their fragrance.

Chris suddenly felt ashamed by the flowers.  “I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I can’t really afford to buy really nice flowers—”

“Chris, these are beautiful.  Thank you.”  She gave him a kiss on the cheek and took his arm.  Chris followed her toward the dining room, almost forgetting her father was behind them.  When they reached the entrance to the dining room, Chris stopped cold.  Karen actually was pulled back as she had continued walking.  Her father bumped into them.  He made a noise and pushed them gently aside as he stepped inside.  Karen looked back at Chris, smiling innocently.

“What?”

Chris smiled at the table full of at least ten people.  He turned slightly toward Karen.

“I thought you said we were having dinner with your parents,” he said softly.

“No, I said we were having dinner with my family.  Now come in.”

Chris was in a panic, but fortunately the numbness had already set in, so all he had to do was follow Karen to the empty chair reserved for him and smile.

“Chris, you know my and mom and dad, and this is my aunt Keisha and Uncle Tyrone.  And these are my cousins, Tameka, Afiya, and Ramone.  And this is my Aunt Lauren and my cousins Lindsey and Greg.”

Chris tried to remember all their names, but he wasn’t entirely sure which name applied to which person; Karen hadn’t pointed.  All the cousins were their age or older.  Then Karen pointed him in the direction of two old ladies and an old man with white hair.

“And over there are my grandma and grandpa.  And my Nana.”

Chris opened his mouth, but it had gone dry.  He swallowed, desperately trying to get spit back into his mouth.

“Everyone, this is my boyfriend, Chris Pelletier.”  She laughed.  “He’s the one I left the Cotillion Ball for.”

Chris finally found a little saliva.  “Nice to meet all of you,” he said.

No one said anything back.  He thought he heard a “Mm-hmm.”

Karen guided him into his chair and pushed him into the seat.

“Well, I’m going to put these flowers in a vase and help Mom bring out the food.  Chris, would you like sweet tea or un-sweet?”

“Um, actually water would be great.”

“Oh, okay.”

She patted his shoulder and left him alone.  Forget breaking up with her, he could murder her at this moment.  Chris put his hands in his lap and squeezed them together with his legs so he wouldn’t fidget.  He looked around the table and smiled.  He knew he looked awkward and uncomfortable, but he had no control over that now.  Just please don’t let them ask about his family.  He’d spill the beans for sure.

“So, Christopher,” either Aunt Keisha or Aunt Lauren said, “do you live around here?  I know you and Karen met at Calverton, right?”

“Uh, yes ma’am, that’s right.  We met in English class.  We were assigned reading parts in Shakespeare’s _Othello_ , and afterwards we laughed about how I…was Othello and she was Desdemona.”  It really wasn’t a funny story.  And would _they_ find it funny?

There were various noises made at the table and nobody was making eye contact with him.  Aunt Keisha/Lauren was still looking at him.

“Oh!  Um, no, I don’t live very near here.  I live over by the country club actually.  Off of Spring Street.”

“Aren’t those apartments?” asked one of the female cousins.

“Townhouses, actually.”

Chris looked around the table.  Were they all rich?  Definitely.  Were they now looking down on him because he wasn’t?  Probably.  The table was quiet.  Chris knew he wasn’t good at getting out of awkward silences, but he felt obligated to try.

“So…” he wasn’t sure which cousin to address.  “Did any of you go to Calverton?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of you.”

“Lindsey goes to Gellman Preparatory and Greg graduated from Huntington two years ago.”

Chris was now able to identify the woman sitting next to him as Aunt Lauren.  Gellman and Huntington were single sex private schools in the city.  And Huntington was known for churning out Ivy Leaguers.

“Wow.  Huntington, that’s very impressive.”

“Thank you,” Greg said.  He was sitting across the table and to the left.  He was pretty sure the girl next to him was his sister and that he was sitting next to Nana.  Okay, good.  Maybe he wouldn’t completely embarrass himself by calling someone the wrong name.  Then they wouldn’t be able to mutter about how white people thought all black people looked the same.  Though Ramone and Greg did look mighty similar.

“Yes,” said Aunt Lauren, radiant with pride, “he just got back from his sophomore year at Brown University.”

Chris nodded.  “That’s a very nice school.”

“Nice?” Grandma asked.  “It’s Ivy League, you know.  It’s a superior school.”

“Uh.  Yes, ma’am.  I didn’t mean—”

“Greg is following in his father’s footsteps.  It’s a great achievement.”

“Grandma,” Greg interjected, but she ignored him.

“Where did your father go?”

“Go?  What do you mean?”

“To school, of course.”

“Oh.”  Chris didn’t know if his father had attended college.  He didn’t even know if he’d graduated high school.  “I don’t know.  He left when I was eight.”

“Well, how’s that for irony?” asked Uncle Tyrone.

“What?”

“Oh, hush,” Aunt Keisha admonished.

“Well, I just mean,” Uncle Tyrone said, leaning forward on the table, toward Chris, “that usually it’s the black man who runs out on his kids.  Strange to find it the other way around, huh?”

Chris stared at him.  Was this a trap?  If he agreed would they accuse him of thinking all blacks were bad parents?  “Well, either way it’s kind of sad.”

Uncle Tyrone didn’t seem to be expecting that response.  He sat back, looking a little disappointed that Chris had taken the fun out of it.

“And what does your mother do, Christopher?” asked Aunt Lauren.

“Um, she’s in real estate.”

“She owns her own company?”

“No, she’s a realtor for a bigger company.  But, she and her team just succeeded in selling off a bunch of lots that are going to be turned into a gated community over in Springfield.”

“So, she works on commission?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s nice.”

Aunt Lauren took a sip of her iced tea.  Chris looked desperately at the swinging kitchen door.  Where was Karen?  Then the door opened and Karen and her mother came into the room.  They were carrying two large casserole dishes that brought a smell with them that made Chris’ stomach grumble in anticipation.  He leapt out of his chair to help Karen.

“Do you want me to take that?”

“No, that’s okay.  It’s hot.  I’ll just put it down here.  But, you can come with me to the kitchen to help get the rest.  Mom, why don’t you have a seat?”

“Oh…okay.”

Chris had already pushed Karen into the kitchen and let the door swing shut behind them.  Karen turned toward him and gave him an unhappy look.

“Why are you pushing me around?  What’s the problem?”

“What’s the problem?!  Karen, how could you do this to me?  It’s an ambush!”

“An ambush!  Don’t be so dramatic.  It’s just my family.”

“Karen, I was freaking out just having dinner with your parents.  Now I’ve got your entire extended family to deal with too?”

“It’s not my _entire_ extended family.  We just planned to have a family dinner and I asked if I could invite you.”

“Couldn’t you have told me?”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“Yes!  I wouldn’t have come!”

“Chris, honestly.  They’re just people.  They might be a little snippy at first because they care about me, but as soon as they get to know you, they’ll love you too.  Well, except for maybe Grandma Green.  She doesn’t like anybody.”

“Karen—”

“Chris, come on.  It’s okay.  All right, fine, they may be a little aloof and in some cases down right rude, but I’m not hiding you.  I’m not ashamed of you.  They’re going to have to get used to seeing you because I’m bringing you home for every Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

Chris looked at Karen with his jaw hanging.  “I’m sorry, did you just marry us?”

She looked away, probably blushing.  “No, that’s not what I meant.  Exactly.  Anyway.  Grab the meat platter and your water.  We’ve got to get back in time for grace.”

Chris watched her grab another dish and hurry back into the dining room.  Unbelievable.  He was trying everything in his power to dump her and she had probably already picked out names for their kids.  He picked up the plate of carved beef—his mouth watering—and walked slowly back into the dining room so as not to spill his water.  All he needed was to dump a glass of cold liquid onto Grandma Green’s head.  The conversation died when he entered the room.  Jesus.  Did they have to be that obvious about it?  He set the meat down on a trivet and took his seat.  The family then held hands and Karen took his and gave it an encouraging squeeze.  He looked over at Aunt Lauren and she offered him her hand.  Then Grandpa Green gave the blessing.

“Jesus.  We thank you for this food.  We thank you for the health of our family.  We thank you for all the bounty you bestow on us.”

Chris half expected the table to say, “Amen, brother,” like they were in a black Baptist church.  Was he stereotyping?

“Jesus!”

Chris started.

“Lord, we want you to guide us right.  And to guide us away from things that would do us wrong!”

Chris tilted his head.  Was that a reference to him?

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Jesus!” someone echoed.

Chris peeked an eye open.  Uncle Tyrone was looking at him.  He quickly shut his eyes.

“Lordy, Jesus.  Keep our family safe and happy.  Amen.”

“Amen!” the table chorused with various levels of a southern accent.  Chris was pretty certain all of Karen’s family was from the Midwest.  He mumbled his amen and opened his eyes.  The family was already digging into the food.  For the moment the table was a whirlwind of activity trying to get food onto everyone’s plate.  There was no time for discomfort.  Food was the priority.  Chris was really hoping that once everyone was eating, there wouldn’t be much talking.  No such luck.

“So, Chris,” said one of the female cousins, “do you find it hard to date a black woman?”

Chris choked on the bite he was trying to swallow.  He coughed and Karen slapped him gently on the back.

“Tameka,” she warned.

“What?  All I meant was does he have trouble from outsiders for being in an interracial relationship.”

 _Bullshit_ , Chris thought.  He was certain Karen knew it too.  He sipped his water and took in a quick breath to make sure his respiratory system was still functioning.  Then he put on a neutral, pleasant expression and smiled at Tameka.

“I actually don’t really notice to be honest.  There are a lot of interracial couples at Calverton, so we fit right in.  As for when Karen and I go out in public, I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any strange reactions from people.  Of course, it’s hard to notice much of anything when Karen’s around.”

She scoffed and pushed him lightly on the shoulder.  He almost never fed her cheesy lines, but she always loved to hear them.  She was smiling now and gave her father a “so there” look.

“That because you looking at her tits?” asked Grandpa Green.

The table chuckled and Mr. Green put his fork down.

“Dad.  Please.”

“What?”

Chris spoke on in order to move away from the comment.  “I don’t know if it sounds naïve to say it, but I don’t really view race as a difference.  It’s just a skin color.  I mean, I get that there is a whole culture and identity associated with being black, but that doesn’t mean we’re completely incompatible.  Or that we can’t have anything in common.”

“Do you talk about this with your black friends?” asked Aunt Keisha, taking a dainty bite of her mashed potatoes.

“Um, pardon?”

“Your black friends.  If you’re so open, you must have several black friends.  Aside from Karen of course.”

Chris thought for a moment.  Did he have any black friends?  “Well—my closest friends aren’t black.  And, I don’t think I’ve ever really talked much about it with my—acquaintances.”

“Oh, so you don’t have close black friends.  Why is that?”

“Well, to be fair, Calverton isn’t the most diverse school in the city.”

“Oh.  So all those interracial couples at school.  Is there, one or two?”

“No there’s more than that.”  He looked at Karen.  Why wasn’t she helping him?  “I guess a lot of the minorities at our school are Asians.”

“Asians don’t count as interracial,” mumbled Grandpa Green.  “They like crackers.”

“Grandpa!”

“Dad!”

Karen and her father yelled at the old man.

“What?”

“So, you acknowledge that blacks are a minority?” asked the female cousin who must be Afiya.

“Well, yes.”

“But do you really understand what that’s like?” asked Uncle Tyrone.  “To be so few and to have a constant reminder everyday that you are black and you’re different?”

“Do you know what it’s like to be singled out like that so much?” asked Ramone.

“I’m starting to get an inkling,” Chris mumbled.

“You guys!” Karen finally stepped in.  “What is this?  An inquisition?  Would you be this rude to my boyfriend if he were black?”

“We’re not being rude,” said Uncle Tyrone.  “We’re just having an open discussion.”

“No.  You’re being rude.  He’s done nothing to earn your animosity aside from being white.  So all this prejudice and racism that you complain about everyday, you’re doing it to him!”

The table went silent.  There were just the abrasive sounds of silverware clacking against plates and the soft sounds of chewing.  Well, Grandpa Green was being a noisy.  Did that man know how to breathe through his nose?  Chris had lost his appetite.  And he’d only gotten a few bites of the meal.  He didn’t want to cause trouble between Karen and her family.  She was fighting for him and standing up for him, and how was he going to repay her?  He was going to dump her.  Then her family would probably throw this back in her face.  They’d say that they were right about him.  That he was doing it for show and couldn’t really handle being the boyfriend of a strong, proud black woman.  But maybe he couldn’t.  Would it be so wrong if they were right?  She’d get over it eventually and his life would certainly be easier without her.  But it wasn’t because she was black.  It was because she was _Karen_.  But they probably wouldn’t see it that way.

“So, Greg,” said Karen’s mother after a very long and painful silence, “how did your second year go?  You didn’t hit that sophomore slump, did you?”

“Oh, no, Aunt Ebony.  I did really well.  I’m thinking of declaring my major to be public policy or international relations.”

“Oh.  You’re not considering law anymore?”

“Oh, he is,” said Aunt Lauren.  “He’s just exploring right now.  I’m sure he’ll find his calling like his father did.”  Aunt Lauren turned to Chris.  “My husband is working on a big case right now.  He’s a lawyer for Johnson, Hines, and Clark.”

Chris’ eyebrows shot up.  He’d heard of them before.  “Wow.”  But the wow was more for the woman.  He was so glad he didn’t have a pushy woman like this for his mother.  He looked at Greg and they had a brief moment of perfect understanding.

“Well,” said Greg.  “I’ll have to declare by the end of next semester, but that still gives me some time.”

“And it really doesn’t matter what your major is,” Chris said bravely.  “It’s like medical school.  Law schools don’t much care what your major was as long as you did well in the core classes required for admissions and your LSATs.”

“That’s true,” said Greg.  “You see, Mom, I told you.”

“And what about you, Christopher?” Aunt Lauren zeroed in on him.  “Do you know what you want to study yet?”

“Aunt Lauren,” said Karen, “we’re still juniors in high school.”

“I know.  But it’s never too early to start thinking about those kinds of things.  Besides, I’m curious to know what his interests are.”

She gave Karen a look to let her know this was exactly what she had wished for.

“Well,” said Chris, “I like to work with computers, and am actually pretty good at it.  I’m thinking of applying to MIT and then doing computer forensic work for the FBI.”

He hoped Karen was keeping a straight face because he had certainly never said anything like that to her before.  In fact, it had just sort of come out of his mouth.  Maybe he was good at lying after all.

“That’s an ambitious goal, don’t you think, Lauren?” Mrs. Green asked.

“Yes.  And a very good one.”

Chris raised his fork up with a hunk of beef on it.  “That is, of course, if I can’t get my computer game company off the ground.”  He bit into the meat and savored the flavor.

Across the table he could see Greg hide a smile with his hand and beside him Karen raised her napkin to her lips.  Mrs. Green had a small smile on her lips, but nobody else found it too funny.

“Why can’t we ever just have fried chicken?” Grandpa Green groused.  “All we get is this fancy beef that ain’t got no flavor.  _Lean_.  Hmph.  Cows ain’t supposed ta be lean.  They’d fall over.”

 

Chris volunteered to help with the dishes; mostly because he didn’t want to sit in the living room with Karen’s relatives.  Uncle Tyrone and Aunt Keisha really didn’t like him.  Neither did the cousins. Except for Greg.  He had volunteered to stay in the kitchen too.  Karen was “helping” by drying off the dishes they were washing.  She was basically sitting on a stool and watching them work while rubbing the same bowl over and over.  Fortunately Greg was very friendly and didn’t hold Chris’ whiteness against him.  Chris was actually enjoying their conversation.  It was interesting to hear about college life from somebody who wasn’t trying to sell their school.  When they finished with every last possible dish, they lingered in the kitchen.  Chris didn’t blame him.  He had heard his mother talking about her future lawyer son over the running faucet.

“So, Karen,” Greg said, leaning against the counter.  “You’ve got some cojones.  It almost makes me brave enough to tell the family about _my_ girlfriend.”

“Uh-oh.  You mean you’re not dating a black debutante?” Karen feigned shock.

Greg grinned and shook his head.  “And she’s even worse than your snowflake here.  Her name is Maria Fernandez.”

“No!” Karen put her hands to her cheeks.  “You’re dating…the help?”

Chris laughed and Greg threw a dish towel at her.  “She’s a student at Brown.”

Just then Karen’s mother walked into the kitchen.  “Are you three done yet?  I think we might all be ready for some cake and coffee.”

“What?  I still feel like I’m about to explode,” Karen said.

“Well, you know it will take forever for everyone to decide what they want and what kind of coffee to drink.  So, we might as well start now and hope we don’t starve to death by the time we’ve got it all decided.”

Chris smiled and then felt his nerves again as the woman looked at him.  “I even made something especially for you, Chris.”

He stood up straighter.  “Oh, really?”

“Karen told me that your favorite dessert is flan.  So, I found a recipe and gave it my best effort.  It came out looking a little funny, but hopefully it will taste all right.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Mrs. Green.  I’m sure it will taste great.  I can’t wait to try it.”

“Good.  Though, I must say, flan is a bit unusual.”

Chris laughed.  “Yeah.  Well, the person who first gave it to me is a little unusual.”  Chris’ face fell.  “Was unusual.  My, uh, friend Julian’s mom first gave it to us when we were kids.”

Mrs. Green put a hand on his shoulder.  It made him feel uneasy.  “I heard about the accident.  Karen said they were the parents of a close friend of yours.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  I’m just worried about my friend.  I haven’t seen him all week.”

Mrs. Green gave him a squeeze on the shoulder and a friendly smile.  He was glad she was being nice to him, but was grateful when she removed her hand.  Then her husband came in the kitchen and clapped his hands.  Uncle Tyrone and Ramone were behind him.

“Well, I think we should take over serving dessert.”

“You just want to sneak bites of everything,” Mrs. Green admonished him.

“Of course, of course.  Why do you think the men folk volunteered for the job?  Why don’t the dish washers take a break?”

“We’re going to run upstairs before that stain sets,” Karen said.

“What stain?” Chris asked.

“That one,” Karen said as she smudged raspberry sauce on his sweater.

“Now how did that get there?” Mr. Green asked.

“You been sneaking into the dessert already?” asked Uncle Tyrone.

“Can’t turn your back on whitey bastard for a second, can you?” asked Ramone.

The men, minus Greg, laughed and Karen gave her father an annoyed look.  She took Chris by the hand and led him out of the kitchen.  “We’ll be right back.”

Chris followed her obediently up the stairs, not terribly worried about the stain.  He didn’t really like the sweater anyway even though Karen said it went well with his skin tone.  Like, who cared?

“Take it off,” Karen ordered once they reached the landing.  Chris obeyed and started for the hall bathroom.  “This way,” she commanded, heading for her bedroom.  Chris followed, wadding the sweater up into a ball.  He entered her bedroom and she shut the door behind him.  Her room was done in pink and green, to match her Little Miss AKA awards.

“Thanks for the reprieve,” Chris said as he tossed his sweater to the floor.

“Sure thing.  Can you help me?”

“With what?”

She hadn’t turned on any lights and even though it was after eight there was still some sunlight filtering in through her windows.  It gave the space a soft, hazy atmosphere and she stood in the center of her room, looking at him over her shoulder.

“I want to change clothes.  I don’t want to spill on this.  It’s silk.”

“Okay.”

She sighed at him.  “Can you help me with the zipper?”

“Oh, right.  Sorry.”

Chris walked over to her and pulled gently on the small, pear shaped tab.  He slid the zipper down slowly.  He shouldn’t enjoy something like this so much, but it was fun taking off girls’ clothes.  Taking girls’ clothes off of girls.  Not himself.  The zipper went all the way to the small of her back.  He couldn’t stop himself from trailing his fingers over the soft skin revealed there.  He felt her shiver at his touch.  Then she let the dress fall from her body to the floor.  Chris had seen her in less than this before, but he always felt a little embarrassed seeing her in her underwear.  And this wasn’t her usual underwear.  It was new; some of those panties that were designed to look like lacey boy shorts.  He was pretty sure the matching bra wasn’t a push up, that was all her.  It was a deep green color that looked extraordinary against her skin.  It was designed to have an effect on him.  And it did.  Why was she teasing him like this?  Chris was stunned when she suddenly turned around and started unbuttoning his shirt.  He watched her fingers move quickly, working their way down his shirt.  Then his brain kicked into action.

“Wait, Karen, what are you doing?”

She pulled his shirt out of his pants and then pushed it off his shoulders.  “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

“But, but—your family.”

“I know,” she said sweetly.  She looked up at him doe-eyed and biting her lip like an innocent, nervous virgin.  While her hands were deftly undoing his belt.  “They were so mean.  I’m sorry.  I want to make it up to you.”  Her fingers slid the zipper down and she pushed the fabric off his hips.  It pooled on the floor around his ankles.  Chris used his toe to hook off his shoe, and then did the same to the other.  He stepped out of his clothes let his shirt fall to the floor.  He wrapped his arms Karen’s waist and picked her up to kiss her.  Her legs wrapped his waist and their lips met in a perfectly timed kiss.  For some reason, this part of their relationship was always easy.  Even their first time together.  It hadn’t been awkward or scary; it had just happened as naturally as breathing.

Chris took a few steps forward and fell onto her bed.  She let out a small noise as his weight settled onto her.  As much as she loved to make him make noises, it made him just as hot to know that he was making her feel good.  He worked them up toward the top of the bed, causing their bodies to rub together in all the right places.  They had yet to break the kiss.  Chris flung an arm out and felt for the drawer beside her bed with familiarity.  She kept a hefty supply of condoms in the drawer and he always had to wonder what it would be like to know you could put something in plain sight in a drawer and know that your mom wouldn’t go snooping around and find it.

Beyond the thought to find the condom, there was nothing in his head.  That was what he loved about Karen.  How she could touch him and the tension would melt from his body.  How they could incite a passion in each other that blocked out all their problems and worries.  How their bodies just seemed to fit together and the way they moved so well together.  When their lips finally came apart, the noises they were making were almost embarrassing as they gasped for breath around their moans.  Chris felt her nails in his back; there were going to be marks.  He had one hand braced against the mattress.  He was being rougher than usual, but he needed it to be hard.  And she was willing to accept his pain into her body; he truly loved her for that.  Though if he wasn’t careful he would embarrass himself by finishing before her.

Chris’ vision went black.  When he could see again he was lying with all of his weight on Karen, gasping for breath.  He forced himself to slide off her, but she held him in place.

“Stay,” she whispered.

He dropped his face into the pillow under her head and forced his breathing to even out.  She seemed to be having similar difficulty breathing.  They lay still for several minutes, finally managing to get themselves under reasonable control.  Now Chris moved to her side.  He was a lot bigger than her and he always felt like he was crushing her when he was on top of her.  She rolled to her side so that they remained pressed close together.

“Oh, my god, Chris.  That was amazing.”

“Yeah.  Sorry.”

She giggled.  “Why are you apologizing?”

“I was too rough.”

“Not at all.  It felt great.  It was wild, but it was good.”

Chris rubbed his forehead with a hand.  “Maybe it’s my Latin blood.”

“Hmm?” she asked, tilting her head back to look at him.

“I learned recently that my father is of Colombian descent.”

“Ooo.  So, you’re my Latin lover?”

He laughed softly.  “Yeah, looks like it.”

She leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the lips.  She pulled back and smiled at him.  Chris internalized his sigh.  He had really needed this tonight, but it had been stupid.  There was no way he could break up with her after having sex with her.  He wasn’t that much of a jerk.

“Okay, come on,” Karen said, sitting up.  “We’ve got to get back downstairs before someone comes looking for us.”

Chris sat up quickly.  “Oh, my gosh.  I can’t believe we did this with your parents at home.  With your family here.  Karen, your grandparents are downstairs.”

“So?  My parents are alive aren’t they?  They’ve had sex before.”

Chris shook his head and scooted toward the end of the bed, looking for his boxers.  Karen laughed at him as she slid her underwear back on.

“How come you never let me see you naked?”

“Because.  It’s embarrassing.”

“Chris, honey, trust me.  You have _nothing_ to be embarrassed about.”

“I do afterwards.  It’s gross.  I mean, you really wanna see me slide this off?”

He pulled his shorts up and waved the used condom around in front of her.  Her squeal blocked the sharp rap on her door.  All they heard was, “Karen?” and then her father opened the door.  Something exploded in Chris’ head as he stared at Mr. Green.  He was certain he was about to throw up.  And he couldn’t get his outstretched arm to come down.  The offending item still swung gently from his fingertips like a noiseless wind chime.  Karen had her comforter pulled tightly to her chest.  Neither of them could say anything.  Neither could Mr. Green for several of the longest seconds of Chris’ life.  When he spoke, his voice was quiet and dark.  It made Chris’ nausea worse.

“Get dressed.  Get downstairs.  Now.”

Then he left and pulled the door shut.  Chris and Karen remained still.  Should they make a run for it out her window?  He whimpered.

“This isn’t how I wanted to die.”

“Oh, Chris!  Will you put that away?”

Chris became aware of the condom again.  He finally managed to put his arm down.  They didn’t try to stall at all.  Her father had been pretty clear about when he wanted them downstairs.  Karen put the same dress back on and they both checked their appearances in the hall bathroom before they walked meekly downstairs.  The family was still in the living room, their desserts mostly finished.  They didn’t give them any terribly weird looks when they came in.

“What were you two doing?” asked Tameka.

“I’m sure we don’t want to know,” said Ramone.

They all laughed and carried on with their conversation.  Mrs. Green came up to Chris with a plate in her hand.

“Chris, your flan.  Tell me how you like it.”

He accepted the plate and forced a smile.  “Thank you.”  He glanced at Mr. Green.  He had a completely normal expression on his face, but he wouldn’t look at Chris or his daughter.  Chris didn’t know if he would be able to keep the flan down, but he knew he had to try.  He took a bite and couldn’t taste a thing.  Either his senses had completely deserted him or it was really terrible flan.

“This is fantastic, Mrs. Green.”

She smiled.  “Well, thank you.”

“Could you not get it out?” Greg asked.

“What?” Chris and Karen cried together, choking on their desserts.

Everyone looked at them strangely.

“Your sweater,” said Greg.  “The stain?”

Chris looked down.  He was only wearing the striped dress shirt; he’d left the sweater on Karen’s floor.

“Oh, yeah.  It’s soaking in some warm water in the sink.  We were waiting on it, but it seems to have already set.  That’s why we were gone for so long.”

The family let out a collective, “Oh.”  That seemed to explain everything for them.  Since when had lying become so easy for him?  Two days with his father and he was ready to jump into the criminal life.  The next half hour was very surreal for Chris, and he was sure Karen was right there with him.  The casual family gathering continued on uninterrupted by an incredible-hulk-turned father.  It almost seemed like Mr. Green was going to pretend like it hadn’t happened.  Chris even thought he might get away with it.  Then when the family all stood up to leave, Mr. Green placed a hand on Chris’ shoulder and gave it an almost debilitating squeeze.

“Why don’t you stick around, son?” he said with a fake smile for his sister-in-law.

“Yes, sir,” Chris squeaked.

There was a lot of commotion and noise and it was several minutes before everyone got outside and headed off for their cars.  Everyone except Nana.  She was apparently spending the night.  Once the door was closed on the family, Mr. Green maneuvered Chris to the couch and forced him to sit down.  He pointed a finger at Karen and then the couch.  She sat beside Chris, but left some space between them.

“Ebony, why don’t you get your mother settled in her room and then come back down here.”

Everyone could tell by his voice that something was wrong.  Chris assumed that was why his wife didn’t question him.  She just ushered her mother upstairs and Chris and Karen sat in the heavy silence under the scathing glare of Mr. Green.  Chris stared at his hands.  This wasn’t fair.  Mr. Green wasn’t his father or teacher or anyone who really had any authority over him.  So what if he slept with his daughter?  Too bad for him.  Should he tell him that?  Did he _want_ to die tonight?

Mrs. Green came back downstairs and sat in the large reclining chair.  However, she sat on the edge with perfect posture.  Chris didn’t think he’d ever seen her slouch.  Mr. Green started pacing.  He was seething.  Everything he’d masked while the family had been present now all burst forward.  Chris was actually feeling a little frightened of the large man.  Mrs. Green waited him out.

“Do you know what those two were doing up there?” he demanded of his wife.

She had a patient though knowing look on her face.  Like she was used to her husband overreacting.  “Rinsing out a sweater?” she asked.

“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“Oh, Derek, please.  Don’t be so naïve and stop overreacting.  So they were making out.  Big deal.”

He stopped pacing to face his wife.  “Making out?  Do you _really_ think I would be _this_ upset if I just caught them making out?”

Mrs. Green looked at him for a moment.  Then she gasped and looked at Chris and Karen.  “What exactly were you two doing?”

“They were having sex, Ebony!”

It was quite a roar and Chris was certain that Nana had heard that upstairs.  He slunk down in the couch cushions.  Mrs. Green stood up.

“You did _what_ while your family was downstairs?”

Karen didn’t respond.  Chris wondered if he could make it through this fiasco without saying a word.  Now it was Mrs. Green’s turn to pace.

“I can’t believe this.  I thought you were responsible.”

“Do you have any idea how stupid you two were being?” Mr. Green bellowed.

“Derek,” Mrs. Green said as she put a hand up.

He turned around and ran a hand over his mouth and then turned back to them.  “Karen, you are a junior in high school.  I’m not even going to get into the possibility of disease right now—though who knows what _he’s_ been doing—but do you want to have a baby before you graduate?”

“Dad, we’re using protection.”

“Condoms are not 100% safe!  They have thin spots.  They break.  Then what would you do?”

“I’m on the pill, Dad.”

Mr. Green physically reeled back.  “Oh, great.  Just great!  Your horny boyfriend forces you into sex so you decided to go to the free clinic to make things easy for him.  Is that it?”  He looked at Chris.  “Boy, I will—” he took a step toward the couch and Mrs. Green got in way.  Chris was already halfway to the hallway.

“Dad!  I didn’t go to the free clinic.  Mom took me to the gynecologist.”

He turned on his wife.  “You knew about this?”

Mrs. Green put her hands in the air.  “Now, Derek, listen to me.  Karen came and talked to me about this like an adult.  She told me she’d made the decision to do this and she was going to do it whether I helped her or not.  I thought it would be best for her to be safe than—”

“Oh, great!  Just perfect.  And you didn’t think you should tell me?”

“No, I thought it might be a bad idea.  And now I see that I was right.”

Mr. Green gave her a look and then focused on Chris again.  He felt his back pocket.  His keys were there.  He could probably make it if he ran.  Then Karen stood in between him and her dad.

“Dad, Chris didn’t force me into anything.  We decided to do this together.  Actually, if you had to pick the one person who was being pushy about it, it was me.”

Mr. Green threw his hands in the air and started to leave the room.  He turned back and pointed a finger at Chris.

“Don’t come into my house anymore, boy.”

“Derek,” Mrs. Green said, exasperated.

He stomped out of the room.  Chris finally felt able to breath again.

“Oh, Jesus,” he gasped.

“Chris,” Mrs. Green said, “I’m sorry for the way he reacted.  I’ll talk to him.  And Karen will have a chat with him after he calms down.  But honestly, you two.  While we were in the house?”

“He needed me, Mom.  And I love him.  I don’t care who knows about it.”  She turned toward the stairs.  “Did you hear that, Nana?  I love my cracker boyfriend.”

A shadow moved away from the top of the stairs.  Mrs. Green looked at the ceiling and sighed.  Chris felt a smile fighting to slide onto his face.  He couldn’t believe Nana had been eavesdropping.  How funny.  He tried to get his features under control, but his nervousness and tension burst out of him and he laughed.  Karen looked at him worriedly.

“Oh, great, Mom.  He’s cracked up.”

Chris waved a hand.  “No, I’m fine, I’m fine.  But, really.  I need to go.  I’ll see you in school, Karen.  Mrs. Green, thanks for dinner.  And the flan.  It was great.”

He didn’t wait to hear their responses; he just left.  Outside the evening was a little cool and it felt good on his flushed cheeks.  He walked to his car not sure how to feel about the situation.  One, it definitely sucked, but two her father had given him an out.  And he wasn’t going to feel guilty about this.  Just because the sex was good didn’t mean the relationship was good.  Chris didn’t notice the person standing beside his car until he already had the keys in the lock.

“Hey, Chris.”

Chris started violently and his keys fell to the ground.  Scott bent over and picked them up.  He handed them to Chris, and he just stared at his friend.

“Good grief, Scott.  What are you doing here?”

“It’s a long story.  And I can’t talk about it.  Can you give me a ride home?”

“Um…sure.”

Chris watched his friend walk around to the other side of the car, his head gleaming in the light from the streetlamp.  They got in and Chris started the car.  He turned to Scott.

“No seriously,” Scott said, “I can’t talk about it.”

Chris shrugged.  “Okay.”

They drove in silence out of the neighborhood.  Then Scott asked, “So, how was your night?”

Chris shook his head, smiling.  “Karen’s father caught us…you know.”

“What?!  No _way_.  Like, _during_?”

“Oh!  No.  Thank God no.  But after.  And there was no way to pass it off.  I was waving the used condom around in the air like a victory flag.”

Scott laughed.  “Why?”

Chris shrugged.  “I have no idea how it happened.”

“Man.  But you know.  I would take getting caught by the girl’s father over still being a virgin.”

“You might feel differently once you’ve had sex.  It’s nothing but a headache.”

“And yet, you keep doing it.  Must not be that bad.”

Chris smiled.  “No, I guess not.”

“Yeah.  And even with that, I bet your night was still better than Julian’s.  He called me in a panic.  He can’t handle his relatives.”

“Poor guy.  Where was Will?”

“Julian said he bailed.”

“That punk.  I hope he got some karmic retribution for that.”

“Yeah, for real.”

“So, are we going over to Julian’s?”

“Nah.  He called me after the fact.  They’re all settled in for the night.  We can stop by tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

The trip to Scott’s house went quickly.  When Scott got out, Chris tried again to find out what he had been doing.

“Can you at least tell me why you were in that neighborhood?”

“Nope.”

Chris put his hands in the air.  “Okay.  Fine.  I’ll come pick you up tomorrow.”

“Not too early.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Chris watched Scott walk up the path to his porch and go inside his house.  That was so suspicious.  Why had he been out there?  Then he remembered what he had been doing out there earlier in the day.

“People in glass houses,” he muttered as he backed out of the driveway.

 

Julian

 

It was a nightmare.  If he just put his head in his arms, closed his eyes for a moment, when he looked up it would all have gone away.  It would all have never happened.  Nothing more than a nightmare.

 

He had paced the Harders’ kitchen floor on Monday morning.  Mr. and Mrs. Harder had gone to work.  Will’s mother had actually driven him to school to make sure that he got there.  And Julian had paced.  His grandparents had been very punctual.  Right at 10:00 the doorbell rang.  Julian had frozen in place, not sure what to do.  He had actually considered bolting for the backdoor, but in the end had gone to the front.  They looked a lot younger than he had expected.  He knew they were only in their 50’s, but they still looked young.  They were conservatively dressed and had pinched, worried expressions.  Julian wasn’t sure he looked much better.  He kind of wished he had forgone the black attire and eye make-up, but he was in mourning.  His grandparents had stared at him for several, long moments.  And then his grandmother had stepped forward, taken his face in her hands, and frowned.

“You look like _him_.”

Those had been her first words to her grandson.  “You look like him.”  Julian didn’t really think so.  He didn’t look particularly like his mother or father.  He looked like a combination of the two of them.  He had had little doubt that his other grandmother would declare that he “looked like her.”  His grandfather had been a bit more gracious and simply hugged him.  Julian had appreciated the sentiment, but the embrace had made him uncomfortable.  They were strangers after all.

The whole meeting had been awkward and uncomfortable.  Neither party knowing what to say or how to act.  They had eventually gone to Julian’s house.  Julian knew they were perfectly within their rights to go through their child’s belongings, but he didn’t feel that way.  He hated that they were pawing through his mother’s possessions and making comments about every single Wiccan artifact in the house.  He hated them for worrying about his upbringing.  He hated that they felt like they were here to save him.  And things had only gotten worse that night.

The doorbell had rung while they had been having dinner.  His grandmother had cooked.  The food had probably tasted good, but Julian had a constant bitter taste in his mouth.  The woman wouldn’t shut-up about the ungodly way in which he had been raised.  And how silly and misguided his parents had been.  Silly and misguided was what he thought of his grandparents.  They were Mormons for crying out loud.  No wonder his mother left and took up a religion so extremely different.  And when he had gone to answer the door he knew that dinner wasn’t going to get any better.  His other grandparents had been standing on the stoop.  He hadn’t a clue they were coming.  What had possessed these four people to fly across the country to come see the grandchild of the children they’d rejected for so many years?  Guilt.  That’s what had possessed them.  And it was insulting.

And so, in came the Greek Orthodox grandparents.  Needless to say, even though they were all “Christian” the two sets of grandparents didn’t exactly see eye to eye on a lot of issues.  And it didn’t help that his father’s mother kept talking to him in Greek.  He explained to her over and over that he didn’t understand a word of it, but she acted almost like it was a conspiracy to keep secrets from the Mormons.  And his mother’s mother didn’t believe that he didn’t speak Greek.  She thought he really was in on it with his other grandmother.

This crazy fight had gone on all week.  The two grandmothers pulling and pushing against each other while the grandfathers just kind of sat back and did nothing.  Until it came to dealing with his parents bodies.  Then everybody had an opinion.  Julian had intended to have their bodies cremated and then have his parents’ coven hold a little ceremony for them.  That wasn’t going to appease either set of grandparents.  In fact, he’d been wise enough not to mention the coven at all.  But his grandparents had mentioned where they wanted the bodies buried and what kind of ceremony to have.  And since neither could agree and Julian wouldn’t pick one or the other, his parents’ bodies were still at the medical examiner’s office.

They had been taken in to be tested for alcohol and drugs.  Julian had pitched a fit to the police over that.  He had tried to explain to them that they should be looking for the jerk who had cut his father off and caused the accident.  And he also wanted to know why they weren’t prosecuting the driver who had been parked on the side of the road.  Mrs. Harder had explained to him that the truck driver wasn’t doing anything illegal and wasn’t liable in any way.  And they had no witnesses for the other driver.  Julian had been bent over and only one person had come forward after the accident and said they saw a person on a motorcycle, but didn’t know the make and model or catch the license plate.  And of course, they couldn’t say for sure that the motorcycle had been the one to cut them off.

And so nothing positive had happened at all during the week.  Mrs. Harder was doing everything she could for him, but she had a case she was working on for her company that was taking up a lot of her time.  His grandparents had kept him so occupied that he hadn’t even seen any of his friends, and last night more relatives had come.  Aunts and uncles that he’d never really even seen pictures of.  They had all come to help and pay respects to his parents, but so far all they did was argue with each other and fight over who was going to take responsibility for him.  And it wasn’t that they were all trying to foist him off on someone else, they were all trying to claim him for their own.  He wasn’t entirely sure that was less emotionally damaging.  Needless to say, he hadn’t told anyone yet that he was petitioning for emancipation.  It was a nightmare.  A horrifying, living nightmare.  He wondered if it was too late in life for him to run away and join the circus.

 

Julian lifted his head as the closet door swung open.  He squinted as the light hit his eyes.  He put up a hand to shield them and tried to see who had found him.  He thought it was a fairly good hiding place, though there were twelve people other than him in the house now.  The person was kind of smallish, maybe it was Aunt Kathy?

“Okay, we’ll skip over the hundreds of jokes I could make about you being in a closet, and you’ll just get your ass out here right now.”

Julian’s face broke into a smile and he launched himself at the figure.  “Will!”

They spilled onto his bedroom floor and Julian hugged his friend for dear life.  Will let himself be practically smothered to death for a few minutes, and then he kneed Julian in the stomach.  Julian grimaced and sat up, releasing Will.  The pretty boy glared at him.  Julian was surprised to see that his eyes had actually gone more hazel than green at the moment.  He must be upset.

“Are you angry with me?” Julian asked.

“With you?” Will asked, his face not softening a whit.  “No, not you.  I’ve been here twenty minutes and have only just now been allowed up here to see you.  What is with those relatives of yours?”

“Don’t ask me!  We left them for a reason.”

“More than one I’m sure.  They kept asking me if I’m Wiccan.  Like, even if I was one of your Wiccan friends they would throw me out of the house.  Bunch of bigots.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you dare ever apologize for any of them.”

Julian stood up and helped Will to his feet.  His friend looked him over.

“What’s with this?” he asked, gesturing with a hand up and down Julian’s body.

Julian was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.  He had no make-up on and had let his hair air dry this morning.

“I think my normal appearance kind of freaks them out.”

“So what?”

“Will, look, pick your battles, right?  I’m totally willing to dress like this right now.  My parents are still at the medical examiner’s office.  We can’t decide what to do with them.  How messed up is that?  And I haven’t even had a chance to talk to the coven yet.  The high priestess has called and talked with me, but only briefly.  I didn’t want my grandparents to know.  And while they were more or less behaving when it was just the four of them and me, with their other kids here now they feel like they have a stronger base and are just fighting with each other.  And not just about the arrangements, but about whose fault it was that their son/daughter/brother/sister strayed from their religion and picked up Satan worshiping.  Right now, I’m wearing normal clothes so that I can convince them all that my parents were not devil-worshiping freaks.”

Will’s face wasn’t softening to compassion.  He was still pissed.  “I can’t believe my mother abandoned you during all this.”

“Will, she has a case.”

“Don’t fucking defend her.  I—”

“Julian?”

They both turned toward the door.  His aunt (he forgot her name, but judging from those bushy eyebrows she was from his father’s side) was standing in the frame.  She was frowning at Will.  Julian had learned very quickly that his relatives did not like profanity and had cleaned up his language.  He had a feeling that Will’s would only get worse around them.

“Yes?” Julian asked.

“We’re going to have a family meeting downstairs.  Can you join us?”

He held back his sigh.  “Sure.  Give me five minutes.”

She smiled at him and then left.  Julian turned to Will.

“We’ve been having these little ‘family meetings’ since yesterday.  Every time a new relative shows up we have to have the same argument all over again.”

“Why are they all here?  Don’t they have jobs?”

“Well, my grandparents took off to be with me and my aunts and uncles didn’t show up till last night.  And they’re leaving on Sunday, thank god.  Well, I don’t know about my grandmothers.  Neither of them works actually. So they can stay with me as long as I need them.”

“Lucky you.”

“I know.  God, I can’t do this.  I can’t just listen to them talk about my parents like they know anything about them.”

“Well, I’m here.  We’ll go down to this little ‘meeting’ and you’ll tell them everything.  About the coven and about your emancipation.  And they’ll just have to deal with it.  And if any of them try to do anything to you, I’ll kill ‘em.”

“Thanks, Will.  More funerals are what I need right now.”

“Julian, that’s not what I—”

“I know, I know.  Just come on.”

Julian left the room and expected Will to follow him.  He knew he shouldn’t take any of his anger out on Will.  Not only because he didn’t deserve it and was only trying to help him, but Julian was afraid that if he pushed him away too much, he wouldn’t come back.  Julian headed to the den.  It was the only place that could hold all of them at once.  And even then they had to bring in chairs from the kitchen and dining room.  His relatives were all seated with their respective clan.  It was evenly matched.  Two grandparents, two aunts, and two uncles apiece.  He knew he had other aunts and uncles and was more than grateful that they hadn’t all shown up.  The loveseat was still available.  Julian sat on that and Will sat beside him.  He thought it would be the Greek grandmother who complained first, but it was the Mormon.

“Julian, honey, this is a family meeting.  I think it might be best if your friend went home.”

“Okay,” Julian said in a very snippy voice, “can I see a show of hands of people who have known me longer than a week?”

Will raised his hand.

“He stays.”

The family shifted uncomfortably, but nobody said anything further about Will needing to leave.  Julian didn’t want to mediate, so he just waited for whoever was going to speak first.  It was Mormon grandma again.

“Okay, well, I think it is important that we see that Miranda and Nikolas are given a proper burial.  The police said they were done with their remains, correct?”

The family murmured yes.  They had already been through this last night.

“Well, they’ve both been baptized, so it’s not a problem for them to be buried on their family plots.”

“But Mee-randa vaz not baptized in de Greek Orthodox church,” Greek grandma said.

“I know, but your son was.  So, he can be buried there.”

“Whoa, wait,” Julian cut in.  “Your solution to not agreeing on what type of ceremony to have or where to bury them is to split them up?”

“Julian—”

Julian wasn’t sure who was trying to placate him; he was having none of it.  Will’s presence finally gave him the courage he needed to speak up.

“Look, let’s not pretend that they’re really your family anyway, okay?  You disowned them.  All of you disowned them and turned your backs on them.”

“That’s not true,” said Uncle Isaac.  “We were young at the time.  We didn’t have any say about what happened.”

“Oh, so then where have you been for the last eighteen years?  You don’t live with your parents any more.  They don’t control you.  I don’t ever once remember you contacting my parents.”

Uncle Isaac looked away and remained silent.

“That’s what I thought.  You severed all legal ties with them.  You officially and legally declared that they weren’t part of your family anymore.  So what’s this crap about wanting to bury them in the family plots with their own religious rituals?  Guess what, the only family they had was each other.  And me.  And they are being buried together.  Well, actually, they aren’t going to be buried.  Did you see the news?  Did you read the autopsy reports?  There’s nothing left but some legs and a smear!”

Julian felt Will’s hand on his leg and a couple of the female relatives reacted to the vulgar terms he used.  He took in a breath, but continued on.

“They have to be cremated, okay?  So, if you bury them, it’ll just be ashes.  But, that’s not what my parents would want.  They aren’t Christian any more.  They are Wicca.  They are proud of their religion and believers in their faith.  Or were.  Or whatever.  The fact of the matter is their coven has been making arrangements for the funeral.  I’m going to coordinate it with them, and you can attend if you want.”

Though, that might be a bad idea.  There would be some ritualistic anointing going on, and it wouldn’t be his parents’ bodies that were being anointed.

“Absolutely not,” Aunt Kathy declared.  “A coven?  Of witches?  I will not have my sister consecrated to unholy ground.  Do you want your parents to burn in hell?”

“Uh!  They are not devil worshipers!  That’s not what Wicca is.  Can’t you people read anything other than a Bible?  Look it up on the Internet.  Jesus.”

Julian wondered why that slipped out of his mouth.  Maybe it was because his friends all used it.  His relatives weren’t happy that he had used it.

“Don’t say His name with that—”

“Okay, hold on,” Will interrupted her.  “Things are getting heated, which is to be expected when it comes to religion.  But, what you have to remember is that none of you have any say in what happens here.  Julian is an adult and can make these decisions based on what he feels his parents would have wanted.  If you don’t agree with it, then go home.  You can’t help your children now.  It’s too late.  You missed that boat a long time ago.”

“You think we don’t regret that?” Mormon grandma said.  “You think that we don’t mourn the time we lost with them and wish that we could do it all again?”

“So what?” Julian asked.  “Like Will said, it’s too late now.  What’s done is done.  My parents are Wicca, and they will have a Wiccan funeral.  They’ll be cremated and their ashes will be spread wherever I think they should be.”

“But, Julian,” said Mormon grandpa.  He was the most rational of them all.  “You didn’t know your parents before they were born.  I didn’t know Nikolas all that well, but I’m certain that he was devoted to his religion when he was younger.  Miranda was.  Very much so.  When they were young, they diverted from that path.  But that doesn’t mean they were never going to come back to it.  That one day they wouldn’t want to reaffirm their original beliefs.  Their lives were cut short.  They were never given that chance.”

Julian knew what his grandfather said made sense, but he wasn’t persuaded.  “You didn’t know them for the last eighteen years.  I know what they believed.  I was a part of their faith.”

“But you don’t know that they didn’t have doubts.  That they didn’t still think about their old religion.  In fact, can you say for sure that they didn’t still believe in their original religions?”

“Yes, I think I can.”

“But, if they did, and they aren’t buried in the proper way—”

“Gr—” Julian was still having trouble with the word grandfather.  It wouldn’t come out.  “Mr. Lowell, I don’t believe my parents are in hell.  I don’t believe that they will go there if they aren’t rubbed with the right oils or don’t have the right words said over them.  I don’t believe in hell.  And neither did my parents.  So, you’re not going to scare me into doing what you want for the sake of my parents’ poor immortal souls.  That’s not what we believe.”

“Well, it is what we believe,” said Aunt Kathy.  She was a tiny woman, but with the possible exception of his Greek grandmother, she had the biggest personality.  “We cared about your mother a lot.  She was my sister.  I was sad that she wasn’t a part of our lives.  And I don’t want her to suffer eternally for the mistakes of her youth.  It’s important to us.  And you may still be too young yet to understand the full gravity of this situation.”

Julian felt Will tense up beside him like a compressed coil.  He whipped a hand out to place it on his leg and squeezed hard with his fingers.  Will didn’t release his tension, but he thankfully kept his mouth shut.

“We’re only doing what we think is best,” Aunt Kathy continued.  “We’re also trying to protect you.  I can’t even pretend to know how hard this is for you, but that’s why your judgment is clouded.  You need adults to help you make these decisions.  Besides, I don’t think you would be allowed to say what happens with your parents’ bodies.  Legally speaking, I mean.”

“Where the hell is my mother?” Will groused.

“Aunt Kathy,” Julian said, forcing his anger down as far as he could.  “I’m not a child.  I’m a young man.  Fully capable of making informed decisions.  The police and medical examiner have already talked to me about what I’d like to do, with no mention of needing anyone else’s input regarding this.  And if I do need help, I have a lawyer.  A really good one.  And for crying out loud my birthday is in five months.  I’ll legally be an adult in less than half a year.  Actually, sooner than that.  I’m petitioning for emancipation, and I’m certain it will be awarded to me.  So, everything my parents had will go to me, and I’ll be able to take care of myself.  I won’t need any of you.  To take care of me.”

The family erupted into noise.  Mostly declaring that he would not be taking care of himself and that he needed to stop pretending that he didn’t need help.

Julian leapt off the couch and screamed.  The room went silent.  He looked up and glared at them all.

“I never said I didn’t need help.  I _am_ getting help.  I’m getting help from people who actually care about me.  _Me!_   And not people trying to ease their own guilt!  You all only want my parents buried back in your church because that will get people to stop talking.  It will make _you_ feel better.  And you only want to take care of me because you feel like shit for abandoning my parents!  Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t care about your pain or your guilt.  It’s something that you’ll have to deal with on your own.  If attending a funeral will help with that, I’ll try to arrange to have it done tomorrow morning so that you won’t miss your flights home.  And forget about taking me with you.  Any of you.  I would rather _die_ than live with people who couldn’t unconditionally love my parents!”

Julian felt something warm and wet on his cheeks.  And then Will’s hand on his shoulder.  His Aunt Theresa—who was the least vocal of them all—started crying too.  Julian felt a little guilt over that.  He didn’t care about the rest of them, but she had been nothing but, kind, supportive, and undemanding since she had arrived yesterday evening.  She stood up now and came over to hug him.

“Oh, Julian, I’m so sorry!”  She sobbed in his ear, and he put his hands on her shoulders.  One so he could give some show of returning the gesture, and two so he could push her away when he needed to.  “We’re making this so hard on you!  But, please know that we have the best of intentions.”

Julian sighed and pushed her gently away.  “Thank you, Aunt Theresa.  I know, and I’m sorry too.  I guess I’m not thinking about this from your point of view.  I feel mad that you’re acting out of guilt, but it must be difficult for you too.  Having things end the way they did.”

Julian heard Will mutter something under his breath and leave the room.  He had a feeling he was upset with him now and not just his relatives.  Everyone was standing and Uncle Isaac was trying to comfort Aunt Theresa.  Why was he starting to feel like the bad guy?  He hadn’t done anything wrong.  Being Wicca wasn’t wrong.  He wasn’t going to let them make him feel like some sort of deviant sinner.

“Listen, everyone, I’m sorry this is—well that this is like it is.  It really does mean a lot to me that you were willing to come out here for me.   For my parents.  But, you have to realize, you all are strangers to me.  I don’t know anything about any of you.  I have a lot I have to deal with right now, and I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with this on top of it.”

“Which is why you should listen to us, Julian,” said Aunt Kathy.  “We can handle all these details for you.”

“But you can’t!  You don’t know the right way to handle them!  Your religion can’t and won’t help me.  It won’t help my parents.  You can rely on it to help you all you want, but I’m sorry.  You’re just going to have to accept the decisions I make.  You have no say in what’s going to happen.”

“Julian, you are a confused child right now!  And you don’t have the capacity to make these decisions for yourself!  Goodness.  Mother told me what you’ve been wearing and I’ve seen your room.  You’ve been steered down the wrong path by your parents.  As much as I loved my sister, when she turned away from her religion, she turned away from God.  But, He is very forgiving and loving.  And He will make things better if you accept Him.”

Julian looked at the ceiling and clenched his hands into fists.  He was dying to grab onto something and choke the life out of it.  He didn’t really much care what it might be at the moment.  Before he could scream at the Jesus freak to get out of his house, his other relatives jumped in and started yelling at each other.  Some were telling Aunt Kathy to not try to force anything on him and others were yelling at those relatives for not being more concerned about Julian’s misguidance.  And Aunt Theresa was balling hysterically.

Julian covered his eyes with a hand.  What was going on here?  Why had he even allowed them to stay in his parents’ home?  They hated everything his parents believed in.  They thought it was a house dedicated to the devil.  Why were they even willing to stay here?  Were they trying to cleanse him somehow?  The ruckus was getting louder, and then Uncle Angelo (who was quite a large man) stepped into the center of the room and waved his hands.  Everyone stopped yelling and waited to hear what he had to say.

“Maybe we should eat,” he said, “that might help us all calm down.”

That was Uncle Angelo’s solution for everything: food.  Well, it was the Greek’s family answer for everything.  They all started to migrate for the kitchen and the Mormons stayed behind to pray for something.  Julian followed the Greek relatives.  He was kind of hungry and Christian prayers were freaky.  As he came into the kitchen he saw his Greek grandmother pinch Will hard on the cheek.  He apologized to the woman while rubbing his cheek and then disappeared into the utility room on his cell phone.  He slammed the door shut behind him.  Julian was worried.  Will was probably going to abandon him soon.  Not that he blamed him.  He wondered if they could both sneak out together.

His grandmother handed him a plate of homemade baklava.  Okay, so here was one thing he could say was good about them coming.  The food was great.

“Thank you, _Yia-Yia_.”

He started to take a seat at the kitchen table, but his grandmother made him stand up straight.  She looked him over with a hawk-like eye.  Julian towered over her physically, but he felt a little intimidated by her presence.  She shook her head.

“You too thin.  I make you something vith some more heft to it.”

“Uh, okay.”

Julian started to hand the plate of baklava back to her.  She looked at him like he was crazy.

“You eat that as appetizer.  You!”  Julian started even though she was singling out Will as he came out of the utility room.  “You not one of those new agey peoples who don’t eat no meat, are you?”

“No, ma’am.  I’d eat it still alive if society would let me.”

“Hmph.  Seet down.  I make you something too.”

Will sat next to Julian at the table and took one of his pieces of baklava.

“So, something bad must have happened if we’re eating.”

“Aunt Kathy is insane.  She’s so worried about keeping up appearances for her religion that I wonder if she takes the time to even believe in it.”

“Ugh, I know.  I really don’t like that woman.  She’s the one who gave me the most trouble last night.  And I only had to deal with her on the phone.  I can’t believe none of them were willing to just go to a hotel for the night.  It’s not like they couldn’t be over here annoying you today.”

“Who’s annoying?” Uncle Angelo asked as he sat across the table from them.  His plate was piled high with meat.

“I have a question,” Will said, wisely not answering that question.  “If you guys are all here, who is watching all your kids?”

“Huh?  My wife is back home.”

“Wait, so Aunt Maria or Aunt Diane isn’t your wife?”

“No!  They’re my sisters of course.”

“Wait, all four of you are Mr. March’s siblings?”

“Yes.  And our two youngest brothers couldn’t make it.  They had exams.”

“Exams?”

“They’re still in college.”

“Whoa that’s weird.”  Will turned to Julian.  “You have uncles that are, like, your age.”

“It’s not that strange,” Uncle Angelo said around a mouthful of meat.  “I think it’s weird that you only have aunts and uncles that are the same age as your parents.”

“I don’t have any aunts or uncles.”

Uncle Dinos sat beside Uncle Angelo and crossed himself.  “God help us.  You’re the product of two only children marrying.  You’re an only child yourself, aren’t you?”

Will glared at Julian’s uncles.  “Yes.”

Uncle Dinos looked at Julian.  “He’s got a warped personality, doesn’t he?”

Julian nodded.  “Yep.”

“Hey!  You’re an only child.”

“But I’m warped because my parents are devil worshippers.”

“Oh, right.  I forgot.”

The uncles laughed as they continued to devour their meat.  The Greek grandmother came to the table with a steaming plate of…something.  Julian and Will leaned forward to see what was on it.  It wasn’t really recognizable, but it smelled good.  Julian and Will looked at each other.  They shrugged and dug in.

“This isn’t too bad,” Will said.  “A lot better than what I’ll be getting the rest of the weekend.  Even if I have to put up with the McCrazy’s to get it.”

Julian chuckled.  “So, where is your dad right now?”

“Uh…Belgium I think.”

“Well, your mom’s cooking isn’t that bad.”

“She’s in San Francisco.”

Julian paused to look at Will.  He didn’t seem any different from usual.  He knew that he was used to his parents being gone all the time, but that didn’t make it right.  And now that he thought about it, when Will’s parents were gone, he often spent time with him and his family.  His parents were like second parents to Will.  Was Will feeling like he lost his parents in some removed way?  Did he feel like he couldn’t express that to Julian?  Or maybe he didn’t really feel that way about them at all.  Julian felt a sudden wave of anger flood his body.  Why wasn’t Will upset that his parents had died?  Why wasn’t he hurt and crying?  Didn’t they mean anything to him?  Will looked up at him.

“What’s wrong?”

Julian flexed his jaw and looked away.  He knew he needed to keep his mouth shut.  He was displacing his anger on Will.  He couldn’t do that.  Will wouldn’t put up with it.  He’d leave him.  And then he’d have nobody.  Nobody but his Christian relatives who had no regard for his feelings or beliefs.

“Nothing.  I’m sorry.  It comes and goes, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

He hadn’t explained what “it” was, but he was glad Will understood.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Uncle Angelo.  “What’s going on?”

“Do you two have your own language?” asked Uncle Dinos.

Julian laughed.  “Yeah, we’re like twins.  We have that twin talk thing.”

“Obviously not identical twins,” said Uncle Angelo.

“You must have gotten your good looks from your father’s side,” said Uncle Dinos.

“Yeah, and all the small shrimpy genes went to him,” Julian said and nodded toward Will.

“Hey!  I _will_ leave you here.”

Julian smiled and patted Will on the head.  “Now, now.  Calm down.  You know I love you just as you are.”

“Oh, perfect.  Just perfect.”

Everyone in the kitchen turned to see the Mormons entering.  Aunt Kathy was leading the way.

“Not only has he been led away from the right, proper religion, he’s engaging in deviant behavior.”

“Deviant behavior?” Julian questioned.

“I know you live on the edge of the city and your parents were very ‘free,’ but they didn’t give you the proper moral foundations to base your life on.  And you know it’s wrong deep down.  That’s why you lied to us about it.”

“About what?”

“What are you talking about?” Uncle Angelo growled.

“You hid it because you know it’s wrong.  I know your parents probably said it was okay, but we all know it is an abomination before the Lord.  And to bring your—your—calling him your ‘friend’ into the house.  Julian.  This emancipation can’t happen.  You need to come back to Idaho with the family.”

“We are his family too!” Uncle Dinos said, standing up.

Uncle Angelo put a hand on his arm to give him a silent warning.  The kitchen was now overly crowded with everyone squishing in.  Will was staring at Aunt Kathy like she was a math problem he was having trouble solving.

“Oh,” said Will.  “You think Julian and I are dating?  Because he said he loves me?”

The kitchen was silent.  Everyone was looking around at each other.  Had everyone interpreted what Julian had said to mean that he and Will were together?  Will stood up.

“Sorry, Julian, but I’ve got to go.”

Julian started to stand, protesting, but Will held him down with a hand on his shoulder.  Julian pleaded with Will with his eyes.  “Come on, Will.  It was just a misunderstanding.  It’s not a big deal.”

“No, I know.  And I feel for you.  They’ll be gone tomorrow.  I’ll help you cope tomorrow, okay?”

“Will!  Come on.”

“Sorry, baby, but they insulted me too much.”

Julian’s brow creased in confusion.  “What do you mean?”

Then one of Julian’s most far-fetched fantasies came true.  Sort of.  Will bent down and kissed him.  It was more on the side of his face, and not quite on his lips, but Aunt Kathy probably couldn’t see that.  Then Will straightened and sashayed out of the kitchen.  Julian felt despair settle in.  Not like this!  He’d dreamed of Will instigating the action between them for so long, but not in a kitchen full of his relatives!  Without a bed in sight to throw him down on so that he could violate him!  He sighed.

“No fair, you little bitch,” he murmured.

“See!  I told you!”  Aunt Kathy screeched.  “There is more to the clothes and make-up than just this witch religion.  He’s strayed in so many ways!”

“Oh, calm down!” said Uncle Angelo.  “They only did it to piss you off.  Looks like it worked.”

Aunt Kathy crossed her arms and glared at Uncle Angelo.  Julian looked at the ceiling.  He couldn’t believe Will just left him here.  Well, maybe it was good that he was gone.  He had a temper and absolutely no reason to keep it in check.  He should ask Chris to come over.  He had the patience of a saint.  As long as he could keep his smart ass comments to himself.  So, who did that leave?  Scott.  Well, Scott was used to a lot of relatives, but he tended to say things without thinking about them first.  Julian frowned.  Why were his friends such ‘tards?

The relatives were griping amongst themselves.  Mostly about kids these days and Julian’s upbringing.  If they hated it so much, why didn’t they just turn their backs on him like they did his parents?  Why is it that they were willing to save his soul, but completely incapable of showing the same concern for his parents?  Did being the grandson really make that much of a difference?  Maybe because he didn’t “choose” this life, so they were trying to save him from all the evil his parents had instilled in him.  But then again, he had to remember that a lot of this wasn’t true concern or caring, it was guilt.  They couldn’t save his parents, so now they were going to save him.  What absolute crap.  He needed to get this emancipation thing done as soon as possible.  Mrs. Harder had already filed the petition for him, but she told him it could take up to two months before the hearing took place.  As long as his relatives were gone during those two months, he was pretty certain he would be able to survive.

Julian got out of his chair and headed for the refrigerator to get something to drink.  Then he saw the reminder stuck to the freezer door about his appointment with Dr. Gorman.  His face broke into a smile.  He never thought he would be so happy to go see a shrink.  But the appointment was in thirty minutes.  He got to leave his relatives and go spend an hour away from them.  Awesome.  He had canceled everyday this week because he didn’t want to go see her, and then said that he could do it on Saturday knowing full well she wouldn’t see him on the weekend.  However, she had agreed to the time and he couldn’t back out of it because he’d already said he was free.  He was grateful now that she was willing to see him on a Saturday.  He turned to face the kitchen.

“Um, I have to go see my shrink now.  So.  You guys just chill here.  Or go shopping or something.  This town is pretty small, so you can’t get lost.  And the metro is about four miles to the east, and that can take you into the city.  And, I’ll see you!”

Julian left the kitchen and ignored all the questions thrown at him.  He ran upstairs to his room and found his wallet and keys.  He had the key to his father’s car.  He hadn’t driven it yet and was feeling a little weird about doing so.  His father never really let him drive that car; he always had to drive the SUV.  Which was now gone forever.  He hesitated in his room while he fingered the key.  Would his father mind if he drove it?  Were there still payments on it to make?  How much was car insurance?  How much were property taxes?  This sucked.  Maybe he should just let one of his relatives take over for him.  His head snapped up.  Whoa.  He really needed to go see his shrink if he was so depressed he was willing to subject himself to them.

Julian started for the door and saw Mormon grandpa standing in the hall.  Julian walked up to him and waited to see what he wanted.

“I thought I might drive you,” he said.  “It’s hard to drive when you’re distracted.  And maybe afterwards, I can take you to get some ice cream or something.  Soy ice cream.”

Julian smiled.  “What?”

“Isn’t that what Miranda always fed you?  Soy and rice cakes?”

Julian laughed.  “She tried to.”

“Yeah, she tried to make us eat that kind of stuff too.  I’ll never figure out how a ten year old becomes a vegetarian on her own.”

“Oh.  So, she was always like that?”

“Yes.  She loved animals and couldn’t stand the thought of eating them.”

“Huh.  I always thought she picked it up with the Wicca religion.”

“Are all…Wiccans vegetarians?”

“Oh, no.  My dad and I are total carnivores.”

Grandpa Lowell smiled.  “Well, I guess you can take the boy out of Greece, but you can’t take the Greek out of the boy.”

Julian laughed.  “That’s true.”

They lapsed into silence, looking at their toes.  Julian looked up and held out the keys to his father’s car.  “You can drive me.  And we can get some normal ice cream afterwards.”

“Great.”

There were more questions and nagging when he got back downstairs, but the relatives relaxed a little when they realized Grandpa Lowell was going with him.  Did they really think he was incapable of doing anything on his own?  And even though they had had their little moment of bonding, the car ride to the hospital was quiet and awkward.  His grandfather dropped him off out front and told him he’d be waiting there for him in an hour.  Julian watched his grandfather drive off in his father’s car.  That was weird.

Inside the hospital he followed the signs on the walls to the fifth floor in the east wing.  Dr. Gorman had an office in the city that was her own practice, but here at the hospital she just shared some space with the other psychologists that wandered in and out periodically.  They did have a secretary at the front desk.  She was ugly.  Julian felt bad for thinking it, but it was the first thing that popped into his head when he saw the young woman.

“Hi.  Do you have an appointment?”

“Yeah, I’m here to see Dr. Gorman.”

“Let me see…Julian March?”

“Yes.”

“She’s waiting for you.  Go on in.”

Julian was happy to be able to look away from the woman.  He shook his head.  He shouldn’t be so mean, but she was just one of those of people that made you want to look away.  He entered the office and saw Dr. Gorman sitting at her desk.  She looked exactly like he remembered her.  Maybe it was because she was wearing a white coat, had her hair pulled back, and was still wearing those ugly glasses.  She smiled and stood up when she saw him.  She removed her lab coat and underneath it were a dull black skirt and a poofy white dress shirt.  She really had no fashion sense at all.  It was a shame too because she was pretty.  Though the clothes, glasses, and hairstyle managed to hide that fact fairly well.

“Good afternoon, Julian.  Have a seat.”

There was a couch and a desk chair.  He assumed he was supposed to sit on the couch.  He sat on the couch, but didn’t lie down.  He didn’t think that was really necessary.  Dr. Gorman sat in the strangely designed ergonomic chair and crossed her legs.  She had nice legs.  Julian looked up at her face.  He was getting to be as bad as Will.

“So, Julian.  How has the first week been?”

He gave her a look.  “My relatives came into town.”

“Oh.  I take it that’s not a good thing?”

“Okay.  My grandparents—both sets of them—disowned my parents because they became Wiccan.  And now my Mormon grandparents and aunts and uncles are here and clashing with my Greek Orthodox grandparents and aunts and uncles.  But, at least all of them can agree that my parents were devil worshippers and that I have been brainwashed.”

She tapped her pen on the notepad resting on her leg.   “Hmm.  That doesn’t sound terribly good for your emotional state at the moment.”

“No, it’s not.  I can’t even deal with my parents’ deaths because of it.  I can’t even deal with the bodies.  We can’t all agree on what should be done with the remains.  Not that it’s any of their business.  And I can’t convince them that it’s none of their business and they refuse to accept that I’m filing for emancipation and—”

“Wait, you’re trying to get emancipated?”

“Yeah.  I’ll be eighteen in a few months anyway.  What’s the big deal?  I don’t need to live with some strangers for five months.  Especially strangers that are only going to tell me how wrong my religion is.”

“Well, I agree with that.  But emancipation is a rather serious process.”

“I know.  I’ve got a lawyer.  I think I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

“You have a lawyer?”

“Yeah, she’s the one who bullied the social worker into letting me go home with her.”

Dr. Gorman raised her eyebrows.

“She’s my best friend’s mother,” he explained.

“I see.  She seems very capable, but did she take the time to discuss the process and the responsibilities that come with it?”

“Yes.”  Mrs. Harder had actually glossed over a lot of it saying that she would handle the gritty details.  She had seemed to know a lot about the process and was all ready to set things in motion.  It was almost like she had been preparing for this for some time.  He wondered if she had done research in order to emancipate Will and get him out of the house sooner.  And when this came along, it was a perfect trial opportunity to see if Julian could survive.  Because if he could, then Will surely could.  Then he felt bad for thinking that Mrs. Harder would do such a thing.  She knew those things because she was a lawyer, and that’s what lawyer’s did.

“What are you thinking about?” Dr. Gorman asked.

“Huh?”

“After you said ‘yes.’ You kind of drifted off.  What were you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

Dr. Gorman crossed her arms.  “You know, the only way for me to help you is if you open up to me.  You kind of started to the first day in the hospital, but I’m afraid your relatives have made you draw in on yourself.  Don’t shut down, Julian.  That could be very dangerous.”

“I’m not shutting down.  What I was thinking about wasn’t pertinent to the situation.”

“Wasn’t it?  Even seemingly innocuous, unrelated thoughts are probably colored by this event.  As will most thoughts and decisions that you have for the rest of your life.  What I’m here to help you with is to learn to recognize that and control it and eventually let it go.”

Julian rolled his eyes.  “So, like, when I’m at a barbeque and someone asks me if I want a hamburger or a hotdog and I freeze up and can’t make a decision, it’s because I can’t decide if I want to eat the ground up red meat, which reminds me of my parents’ upper halves, or the plump hotdogs that remind me of the remnants of my parents’ legs?”

Dr. Gorman didn’t look grossed out.  She just uncrossed her legs and then re-crossed them.  Julian’s eyes followed every movement.  “Have you often found yourself describing your parents’ bodies in graphic terms?”

He focused on her face again.  He inhaled and let it out slowly.  “Maybe.  So, what’s that mean, Doctor?”

“Well, it could mean many things.  Or it could mean nothing.”

“Ah.  Now I see why you cost so much per hour.”

“Julian, no matter how good or intuitive I may be about assessing another’s frame of mind, only the individual is capable of truly understanding what they are feeling.  I’m here to help you sort it out.  I can’t tell you what’s going on in your head for you.  We can talk about it and discuss it, and hopefully that will help you understand and cope with your feelings.”

“So, you want to discuss what’s going on in my head?”

“Well, that’s the idea.”

“Like, what’s going on _right_ now…or when I’m alone in my room listening to my relatives whisper about me?”

“Either.  Both.”

“Well, at night, I’m mostly just thinking, ‘Shut-up and go away.’  And right now, I keep watching you cross and uncross your legs.  And it’s reminding me of that scene in _Basic Instinct_.  Well, I’ve never actually seen the movie, but everybody knows the scene.  When Kim Basinger is being interviewed by the cops and she uncrosses her legs and she’s not wearing any underwear.  See, I’m not in a position to be able to tell with you, but it’s making me terribly curious.  And while I’m not particularly attracted to you, it’s piquing my interest enough that I totally want to have sex with you right now.”

She put on a bored face and almost uncrossed her legs.  She forced her legs to remain where they were and gave him a disapproving look.  “Trying to alienate me is not—”

“Alienate you?  I’m trying to hit on you.”

“Julian.  I can’t have any sort of inappropriate conversation with you, and if our sessions always devolve into that, I’ll have to recuse myself from being your doctor.  If that’s what you want, you can simply request someone else.  But, I can’t just let you go.  You need to talk to _someone_ about this.”

“I’m not trying to get rid of you.  I was just being honest.  And who’s definition of inappropriate?  Isn’t anything we say confidential?”  Julian laughed.  “And it’s not like I have any parents who are going to sue you or claim that you’ve been taking advantage of me.”

“It’s unprofessional to have a relationship with a patient.”

He gave her a chiding smile.  “So, you think it’s a bad idea to form a relationship with your patients.”

She clutched her pen.  “Uh, no.  That’s not what I meant.  What I meant was a relationship outside of the office.”

Julian tried a smile that he saw Will use when he was flirting.  “I’m fine with it being in the office.”

She went red.  Absolutely cherry red.  Julian made a mental note to ask Will about his other looks later and how well and often they worked.

“That’s!  That’s not what I meant either.  I meant it’s inappropriate to have anything other than a doctor-patient relationship.”

“So, doctors and patients can’t be friends?”

“Well, no, they can—I—I—”

She was so flustered.  She had yet to recover from whatever dirty thoughts his suggestion had put into her head.  She put her hands flat on her notepad and closed her eyes.  She took in a breath and then opened her eyes.  The look she gave him wasn’t very pleasant.

“Julian.  Perhaps we should start over.  And I request that you keep any inappropriate sexual suggestions to yourself.  For the sake of our session.”

“But, you see, that’s not normal for me.  My parents were very sexual people and raised me to believe that there’s nothing wrong with sex and not to feel ashamed about my feelings.  If you really want me to be completely open with you, you have to be aware that I think about things like that.  Even in the wake of this terrible tragedy, I can still think about sex.  Of course, that may have a lot to do with the fact that I’m a teenaged boy, but whatever.”

Dr. Gorman played with her pen and chewed on her bottom lip.  She looked at Julian like she had found some strange creature that was trying to communicate with her, but she just couldn’t quite grasp what it was saying.

“Okay, so you’ve been raised in an environment that is very open about sex.  But, do you ignore all societal restrictions and taboos on the subject?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you were out with your friends, would you continue to talk about sex or make sexual advances with one of your friends if she said it made her feel uncomfortable?”

Julian saw where she was going now.  “Ah.  No.”

“Well, then I think we have an understanding.”

“Mm.  It’s just that, I don’t think it was making you uncomfortable.  At least not in the way you’re implying.”

She let out a noise of exasperation.  “Julian March.  Just tell me how you’re feeling about your dead parents.”

“Sad.  Lonely.  Confused.”

He waited for her to respond.  She just wrote something on her notepad and then looked up at him.  She pushed her glasses up her nose.  He looked right back at her.  She still didn’t speak.

“Am I supposed to say something else?” Julian asked.

“That’s all you’re feeling?  And even if it is, can you expound upon it?”

Julian put his hands out in front of him and shrugged.  “I’ve got too much going on right now to deal with it.  I have my relatives, my emancipation, the bills for the mortgage and the utilities, and the car payments.  I mean, I have to pay off the SUV that was completely demolished.  I have to worry about if the money in my college trust fund will cover these things until I graduate high school and still have enough left over to put me through school.  I’m going to have to look for a job.  I’m going to have to try to sell the house and find an apartment to live in.  Though quite possibly, I might just stay in my house because the monthly mortgage payments would be less than the monthly rent for an apartment in the city.

“My friend, Scott, is having some issues.  I don’t know what they are, I haven’t had a chance to talk with him really, but he cut off all his hair and bleached it blond.  And Chris, well he’s with this terrible girl and I think there’s something wrong with him if he can’t figure that out.  And Will, the love of my life, will never love me the way I want him to.  And he’s been a little weird lately too.  There’s just too much going on right now.  I can’t think about how much my parents’ deaths are going to affect me because I’m too busy being affected by it.  I mean, do I have to _think_ about it?  Can’t I just experience it?”

Julian looked away from the ceiling.  For some reason during his little spiel he had stared at a crack in the paint above Dr. Gorman’s head.  Now he looked at her and waited for her reaction.  She was scribbling in her notepad and it was several minutes before she finished writing and looked up.  She uncrossed her legs and re-crossed them.  And then seemed irritated with herself that she had.  She met Julian’s eyes.

“A lot of people try to immerse themselves in day to day to activities to cope with loss.  The problem is, a lot of times they put off with dealing with the pain for far too long.  But, I have a good feeling about you.  It is very good that you’re not falling apart and you are able to be rational and aware of what’s going on around you.  And you’re also willing to accept help from other people.  This is all very good, Julian.  But remember, if you need to, you take a time out.  You just tell everyone and everything to stop.  Take in a few breaths.  Take a day off to do nothing but cry in your room.  Don’t be afraid to give into it every now and then.”

Julian nodded.  Dr. Gorman gave a sweet, sympathetic smile.  It made her look pretty again.

“Why don’t you tell me about some of your favorite memories with your parents?”

Julian tilted his head.  He thought that was a little off topic, but it wasn’t a bad one.  He thought about the question.  His favorite memories with his parents…

“When I was six, we went to the zoo.  Baby cheetahs had been born not long before and we got to see them outside for the first time.  We stayed by the cheetah cage for a long time.  And we just…were a family.  Our attention was only on us and the cheetah cubs.  I remember that because outside there were always other things pulling us apart.  I had started school the year before and Mom and Dad had work and other obligations.  I never felt neglected; that’s not what I mean.  I just mean that there’s always something going on in life, even for a six year old.  So, it was nice to have that whole day when the only thing we were concerned with was each other.  It felt good.”

“That’s nice.  Tell me more.”

Scott would have started blabbing away.  Chris would have said that he couldn’t really remember anything else in particular, just to keep from opening up too much.  Will would have never told her the first memory.  So, how did _he_ react to that?  He didn’t feel annoyed or angry.  And he did have some time to kill.  He didn’t want to waste a minute of this precious time away from his relatives.  And he liked Dr. Gorman reasonably well, so he started talking.  He told a few funny stories from when he was younger.  And then a few from when he was older.  And for some reason he told her about their last night together, when his mother had given him a massage and his father had promised him meat after the game.  He realized he liked that memory best of all.  It was the most vivid.  He was about to explain that to her when her wristwatch started to beep.  She looked at the time.

“Oh.”  She frowned at the timepiece.  “Our time is up for today.  Unless you had something else you want to tell me.  We can go a little over.  On the house.”  She smiled at him.

Julian smiled back, in a non-doctor-patient relationship way.  She didn’t want to send him away.  She kept her features under control, but he could still tell his smile was having an effect on her.

“It’s okay.  I’ll see you in less than a week.  We need to set up a time during the week I can see you.  I can also see you in your office in the city.”

“Oh, yes.  That would be convenient.”  She scribbled something in her pad and looked up.  She pushed her glasses up.  “Are you going to go to school on Monday?”

Julian nodded.  “I think so.  I think it will help.  I really want to be around my friends as much as possible right now.”

“Okay.  Well, I know without checking that 3:30 on Tuesdays will work for me.”

“That’s fine with me.  Soccer is basically over anyway and I can afford to miss practice.”

“Okay.  Excellent.  I’ll let my assistant know to expect you.  And you still have my card, right?  The address is on there.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Julian got up from the couch and Dr. Gorman flipped back a couple pages in her notepad.  She had used several pages in their short session together.

“One quick thing to clarify, if I may.”

“Yes?”

“You said the love of your life is someone named Will?”

“Yes.”

“And I believe the pronoun you used for this person was male?”

“It was.”  Julian laughed softly.  “He’s a guy.”

“Hmm.  Is this gender non-preference due to your Wicca upbringing?”  She looked up, suddenly red.  “Oh, I’m so sorry.  That’s not really something I need to know.  It honestly was curiosity on my part.  I apologize.”

“No, no.  It’s okay.  I don’t mind.  And I actually do have a gender preference.  I prefer women.  I’ve discovered that I am blandly heterosexual.  It’s just that—I kind of fell in love with Will.  The fact that he’s a guy is rather inconsequential.”

Dr. Gorman tapped her lips with her pen as she looked at him.  “Is it unrequited?”

“Yes and no.  He loves me.  But not in the way I want him to.”

“Was he one of the ones with you that night?”

For the first time during the whole session Julian started to feel uncomfortable.  He’d never actually admitted this out loud even to himself before.  He had loudly proclaimed how horny he was for Will, but he’d never allowed himself to acknowledge that he was that deep in it.  And for some reason if Dr. Gorman were able to connect a name with a face, it would make it real and out in the open.  When he didn’t answer, she just nodded.

“You know, I think it might be good if I could talk with him sometime.  Or he could even sit in with us once.”

“He doesn’t know,” Julian said quickly.

“Oh.  Oh, okay.  Your feelings for him wouldn’t come up.  But, I still think it might be helpful to have a group session.  Maybe you could ask all your friends to come once.”

“Yeah, maybe.”  Julian didn’t think that was ever going to happen.  “Well, my grandfather will be waiting for me.  I should go.”

“Okay.  Thank you for meeting with me Julian.  I hope we can get through this together.”

She smiled at him, but it didn’t make her pretty this time.  He nodded and left.

As promised his grandfather was waiting for him downstairs.  His father’s blue Sonata looked sad. Did it miss Nik March too?  Julian slid into the passenger seat and could see that his grandfather was very curious about his meeting with his shrink.  But he wisely refrained from asking any questions about it.  Instead he asked for directions to the nearest ice cream parlor.  And he used the word parlor.  Like ice cream parlors existed anymore.  They went to a Baskin-Robbins.  His grandfather ordered chocolate chocolate chip, but it was low fat and had no sugar.  Julian learned that Grandpa Lowell was diabetic.  Julian got a scoop of vanilla.  It didn’t seem fair to his grandfather if he had something really good in front of him because he was certain that no sugar, low fat ice cream was god awful.

They ate in silence, but it wasn’t strained.  Julian was glad he had Grandpa Lowell.  If there wasn’t at least one rational person from either side of his family, he would have wondered if he was adopted.  His parents had been nutballs and his relatives all seemed to be high-strung.  While Julian was weird, he had always been sane.  He saw now that he got that from his mother’s father.  And he had a full head of hair.  Awesome.  He should be safe from male pattern baldness.

Julian asked his grandfather about his other grandchildren.   That got Grandpa Lowell to think that he was actually interested in hearing about them, so he had no problem blathering on about them.  Julian got to tune him out and eat his ice cream in peace without any questions or being forced to talk about his feelings.  Despite his best efforts, he still managed to learn that he had fifteen cousins and they were all just the sweetest things on the planet.  And that was just from his mother’s side.  He might very well have close to thirty first cousins.  Then his grandfather’s cell phone rang.  He barely managed to get out a hello, and then he was silent for a full five minutes.  Then he hung up without actually saying anything.  He looked at Julian.

“I think we need to head back.”

Julian’s stomach dropped.

“What happened?”

“The best I can figure is that someone from Miranda and Nik’s…church stopped by.”

Julian held back a laugh.  “Really?  This should be good.”

His grandfather couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to frown or smile.  They left the Baskin-Robbins and drove home a little slowly.  Apparently Grandpa Lowell was not excited about seeing the showdown taking place between the pagans and the Christians.  When they arrived at the house, from the outside, everything appeared to be calm.  Julian didn’t recognize the car in the driveway, which meant there was probably only one person it could be.  He went in the front door with Grandpa Lowell behind him and instead of tense quiet, there was shouting.  Julian followed the noises to the den and peeked inside to see what was going on.  Several of his relatives were lecturing a beautiful woman who was sitting poised and silent on the loveseat.  She wore a white dress and her long, dark hair stood out strongly against it.  Dangling between her rather large bosoms was the blue septegram symbolic of their faith.  Julian was thankful their branch of Wicca focused on the septegram rather than the pentagram. Otherwise his relatives probably would be even more worked up.  As it was now, they probably didn’t even realize the necklace was a religious symbol.  The woman looked up when Julian entered the room.

“Julian!” she cried in relief.  She stood up and crossed the room, and then folded him into her embrace.  “Blessed be!  I have been worried about you.  I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see you sooner.  I was away.”

“It’s okay.  It’s good to see you.”

Julian hugged the woman back.  She was the high priestess of his parents’ coven.  He had known her since before he could remember meeting her and she had had a hand in raising him herself.  It wasn’t like suddenly having his mother back, but she certainly was a maternal figure in his life and he was grateful she was there for him.  The relatives had temporarily quieted down, but now they were all talking at Aaliyah again.  And she was ignoring them to focus on Julian.  She clasped his face in her hands and had to stand on tiptoe to kiss his forehead.

“How are you doing, my dear one?”

He attempted a smile.  “Not too well actually.  But what I’m mostly worried about at the moment is my parents’ remains.  They haven’t been taken care of yet.  And they died in such a sudden and traumatic way, I’m afraid they may be confused and still attached to the bodies.”

“Yes, it is very important that we perform the funeral rites as soon as possible.”

“Excuse me,” Aunt Kathy finally managed to make herself known.  “I don’t know who you are but—”

“I already told you,” Aaliyah said calmly.  “I am the High Priestess of the Rowan Star Coven.”

Aunt Kathy’s face screwed up into something quite unpleasant.  “You shouldn’t be here.  You’re not wanted.  You are responsible for leading Miranda down a path of hedonism and blasphemy.”

Aaliyah kept her pleasant smile in place.  “I met Miranda and Nik the first time they came to an open circle, when my aunt was the high priestess.  They came willingly and stayed willingly after deciding that Wicca was the path they wished to travel.”  She cut off Aunt Kathy, “Blasphemy was certainly not a part of their initiation.  Blasphemy is cursing or reviling sacred objects or practices.  All Miranda and Nik did was choose to worship and experience their spirituality in a different way.  As for the hedonism, while pleasure can be and sometimes is an important part of ritual and general happiness, the main focus of Wicca is not achieving pleasure in order to reach the highest good.  It is our belief that self-discovery—”

“We don’t care what your beliefs are,” said Aunt Theresa.

Julian was a little surprised to hear her actually say something that harsh.

“Vaht ees important,” said _Yia-Yia_ , “ees vaht their fami-lee believes.”

“We just want them to rest in peace,” Greek grandpa finished.

Julian wondered why his Greek grandfather spoke perfectly unaccented English, but his Greek grandmother had a very strong accent.

“That is all I want for them as well,” said Aaliyah.  “I’ve known them for close to twenty years and I believe I know what _they_ wanted.”

The relatives started talking over each other again, so Julian took Aaliyah by the hand and led her to the front door.  “If you can make the arrangements for the funeral, I’ll call the medical examiner’s office and tell them when we’ll pick up the remains.  They’re open seven days a week, so I’ll be able to get a hold of them whenever you’re ready to hold the ceremony.  Don’t worry about my family.  They’ll just have to deal with it.”  Julian took in a breath.  “And _I’ll_ deal with them.”

“Julian, don’t take this all on alone.  I’m here for you.  We all are.”

“I know, but honestly I think it would make things worse.  Please, just do what you need to do to make this happen as soon as possible.”

She looked at him with sad eyes and hugged him.  “I’m worried about you, Julian.”

“Don’t worry too much.  I have my friends.”  He laughed.  “And I even have a shrink.”

Aaliyah pulled back and smiled at him.  “I know you’re a strong boy.  I believe you’ll be okay.  But promise you will talk with the coven about it.  Death is in inevitable and unavoidable part of life.  But sometimes it’s hard to just accept it.  It helps to talk about it.”

“Okay.  I will.”

She pulled him down and kissed him on the lips.  It wasn’t uncommon for her to do this with all of the members of the coven—young, old, male, female—but he hoped his relatives were still stewing in the den.

“May the Goddess keep you.  Blessed be, Julian.”

“Blessed be,” he responded out of habit.

She gave his hand a squeeze and left out the front door.  Julian turned around and saw his Greek uncles looking at him.  Uncle Angelo was grinning.  What did he think he had just seen?

“It’s not what you think, Uncle Angelo,” he said, hoping the warning tone in his voice would convince both of them to keep what they had seen to themselves.

“Yeah, yeah.  Maybe _I_ should become Wiccan.”

Uncle Dinos hit him on the arm.  “Watch it or I’ll tell the priest.”

“I was just joking.  My Dina is all the woman I need.”

“Has that woman left yet?” Aunt Kathy bellowed, causing the two uncles to cringe.

Uncle Angelo and Uncle Dinos started for the stairs; probably to hide in their rooms.

“Can you believe Nik turned down Athena Dimakakos to marry into that family?” Uncle Angelo asked.

“I honestly believe fruitcake Wiccans are better than those crazy Mormons,” Uncle Dinos replied.

Julian glared at them as they made their way upstairs.  Aunt Kathy was in the foyer now, still screeching.

“Yes!” Julian shouted.  “She’s gone!  She left!  But you should know she left to take care of arrangements for the funeral.  The _Wiccan_ funeral we will be having for my parents.  You can either attend or not.  It’s up to you.  But I don’t want to hear another word about it.  This is technically my house and if you can’t deal with it, or don’t want to, then you need to leave.”

“Are you going to kick all of us out if we feel that way?” asked Grandma Lowell.

“I said I don’t want to hear another word about it.  If you can keep it to yourself, stay if you want to.  But if you’re going to vocalize all your hate and ignorance and disrespect for my parents’ religion and faith, then you need to get out.  And Aunt Kathy, I don’t trust you can do it even if you’re willing to try.  I really want you to leave.”

“Julian,” Grandpa Lowell said softly, but Julian cut him off.

“Don’t start, Mr. Lowell.  You’re the only one I like right now.  Don’t ruin it.  I need all of you to decide right now if you’re going to be quiet and stay or not because the rest of you need to go make arrangements for a hotel room.”

Julian stomped up the stairs and rolled his eyes as all his relatives shouted at him for being unreasonable and in a “fragile state.”  A couple called for him to come back down, but like hell he was going to listen to any of those people.  He slammed his bedroom door shut and locked it.  Then he angrily shoved his dresser in front of the door making a lot of the stuff on top fall over onto the floor.  He didn’t bother to pick any of it up.  He dove onto his bed and hugged his pillow.  Then he grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand and wondered when the next bill was due.  He didn’t want to suddenly lose access to his cell phone.  He was already dialing Will’s number out of habit, but then he stopped.  Will didn’t want to deal with it today.  Lucky for Will, he had a choice in the matter.  Unlike Julian who couldn’t escape it.  Julian realized he was a little angry with Will for just leaving him when he’d promised he’d help him through this.  He dialed the next number that came to him.  It rang several times before Scott picked up.

“Hello?  Hello!  Julian?!”

“Uh—yeah.  Calm down, Scott.”

“Oh, sorry.  I just haven’t heard from you.  And it’s my fault.  I should have called.  I really wanted—will you stop?!”

Julian started slightly.  Why was Scott angry with him?  “Stop what?”

There was noise on the other end of the line, some muffled conversation, and then Julian heard a door slam shut.  Scott came back on the line.

“Sorry about that.  My, uh, brothers were giving me a hard time.”

Julian thought that was strange.  Not that his brothers would be giving him a hard time, but that he would ever yell at them like that.  He must be on edge.

“Is something wrong, Scott?”

“What?  No.  Not at all.  And I mean, how can you even worry about me right now?  You’ve got so much going on.”

Julian wished Scott could see his face.  “That doesn’t mean I can’t think about other people.  Just because I’m having problems doesn’t mean that everybody else in the world stopped having problems.”

Scott sighed.  “I know, but my problems are so petty compared to yours.  I don’t want you to worry about me when you’ve already got so much weighing on your mind.  I mean, that’s why you called me, right?  Do you need some help?”

He needed a lot of help.  But, did he want to dump all this on Scott when he was clearly having issues of his own?  He had heard from Will that he and Anna were having problems, which meant something was really wrong.  But Scott was willing to push all that aside to allow Julian to be selfish.  If he rejected Scott’s offer, then all that effort he was putting into being a helpful friend would be in vain.  It would be rude to squander Scott’s offer.

“Julian?”

“Uh, yeah.  Sorry.  I’m just thinking about a lot of stuff.  Like, the funeral rites for my parents.  I finally stood up to my relatives and told them that I was going to have it done according to Wiccan ritual.”

“Good.  That must have been hard.”

“Well, yes and no.  They get me so angry that a lot of times I can say what I want to say when I just start screaming at them.”

Scott laughed.  “Good.  Feed on your emotions.  Isn’t that Wiccan?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“But, that’s not what worries me.  I mean, I’ve decided to have it be completely Wiccan.  But both my parents came from strong religious backgrounds.  And both sides are convinced that unless they’re buried according to their rituals, my parents will suffer for it.  You know, nobody knows for certain what’s the right religion.  How do I know that one of them isn’t right?  What if I’m condemning my parents to an eternity in hell?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in hell.”

“I don’t.  But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“And just because someone else says it does exist doesn’t mean it does.  Your parents already made that decision for themselves.  It’s right for you to respect their beliefs and wishes.”

“But what if they were just going through a phase?  What if later on they might have changed their minds?”

“Julian, come on.  How cliché is it for me to have to say you can’t worry about what ifs?  And honestly, I don’t believe those are your what ifs.  I think they’re your relatives’ concerns.”

Scott had hit right on it.  He was only worrying about it because his relatives were instilling him with doubt.  And worst of all, self-doubt.  His faith taught him he needed to believe in and understand himself first and foremost.  He shouldn’t allow others to cloud to his judgment.

“Ah, you’re right, Scott.  Thanks.  I guess I just needed someone impartial to be on my side.”

“I’m not impartial, Julian.  I’m totally on your side even if you start living in a cave and wearing underwear on your head.”

Julian shook his head.  “Thanks.  But I just meant that you don’t really care what kind of funeral my parents have.”

“Well, I care about what kind of funeral _you_ have for them.  Julian, what you have to remember is that funerals aren’t for the dead.  They’re for the living.”

Suddenly all the fighting and the strong emotions made a little more sense to Julian.  What happened to his parents’ corpses didn’t matter.  They were just bodies.  His parents were long gone.  He knew that.  The ritual surrounding the funeral was for the surviving family.  And the guilt his relatives felt made it that much more important to have them safely laid to rest.

“Thank you, Scott.  Can I see you tomorrow?”

“Of course.  All three of us will come.”

“Feh.  I’ll happily see you and Chris, but Will abandoned me today.  I hope the rest of his day sucked as much as mine did.  But, I still want to see him tomorrow.”

“Okay, we’ll come over tomorrow afternoon.  Goodnight.”

“’Night.”

Julian hung up and held the phone to his chest.  He wondered what Scott was really doing.  Something was wrong with his voice.  He sounded, not like he was in trouble exactly, but like he was unsure of what he was doing.  Maybe they would all be able to work out all their problems tomorrow.  Maybe they should call the girls over too.  Then Scott and Anna could make up.  But Julian didn’t want to see them just yet.  He needed it to be just the four of them first.  They hadn’t been together since the night of the accident.  It would be good for the four of them to have some time with just each other.

A loud knock at the door ruined Julian’s brief moment of serenity.  It was the first time he had felt calm since last Saturday.  The promise of seeing his friends had made him so happy, and now he had to deal with his relatives again.  He fiddled with his cell phone and waited for the person to knock at the door again.

“Julian, it ees _Yia-Yia_.  Come here.”

Julian sighed and rolled off the bed.  He pushed the dresser out of the way, spilling more items to the floor and flung the door open.  He tried not to glare, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded.  His grandmother smiled at him and put something in his mouth.  He was stunned for a moment, and then he began to chew.  He hadn’t the slightest idea what was in his mouth, but it was good.

“I make good things.  So, you have to like me too.”

She patted his cheek and walked away.  Julian smiled.  He did like his _Yia-Yia_ , and not just because she cooked for him.  He followed her downstairs and found most of his relatives still in the den.  It didn’t appear that anybody had gone upstairs to pack, of course that didn’t mean they weren’t going to still complain about the funeral.  Everyone looked at him when he came in.  Usually mouths started wagging, but tonight they just stared at him.

“I think,” Julian started, and then stopped.  He hoped this would come out right.  “My parents will have a Wiccan funeral, but if there is something you’d like done in addition to that, it would be okay.  If you want to get a priest or whatever to say a few words—not hold a ceremony—but say a prayer or something, I think that would be good.”

Strangely, everyone was quiet.  It looked like Aunt Kathy was about to speak, but Grandma Lowell cut her off.

“I think that would probably be the best thing to do.  Thank you, Julian.”

Julian nodded and abruptly left the room.  He went back to his bedroom and sat in front of his computer.  He turned on a first person shoot ‘em up game and allowed his mind to deteriorate into white static.

 

Scott

 

Scott leaned on the bathroom sink and looked at himself closely in the mirror.  He had dark circles under his eyes.  He hadn’t been sleeping well at all lately.  He’d been having nightmares since the accident, but he couldn’t ever remember what they were about when he woke up.  He leaned in closer and looked at his roots.  It had been a week, but he still couldn’t see any traces of his original hair color.  His gaze was drawn again to the bruised skin under his eyes.  It really did look bad.  He wondered if he should borrow some of his mother’s make-up.  What was worse: chancing someone realizing he was wearing make-up and being called a girly-boy, or looking like he’d been punched twice in the face?  With the change in his appearance, his popularity had gone up quite a bit, so risking some make-up might be okay.

Even though the house was empty, he still slunk cautiously into his parents’ room.  He didn’t want to get caught putting the stuff on, though it was unlikely.  His mother was at the grocery store, his siblings were playing with friends, and his father was—well, he wasn’t sure where his father was.  He hadn’t been very clear when he’d run out the door that morning.  Scott poked around the basket that housed his mother’s make-up and wondered what he should use.  There was a stick, a powder, and a liquid.  How much cover-up did one woman need?  She was in her 40’s, but she wasn’t looking that bad yet.  Scott opted for the stick.  That was more like putting on black markings before a game, or army camouflage.  He wasn’t sure if he should smudge or dab, but dabbing seemed more girly, so he ran the stick under his eye and cocked an eyebrow.  Interesting.  It was about two shades too light.  He used a finger to work it in.  The dark color had diminished somewhat, but he could see the lines in his skin.  Did that mean he had dry skin?  He rubbed some more and the lines went away.  He could still see the dark ring under his eye, but compared to the other one it looked much better.

He was just starting on the second circle when his cell phone rang.  He jumped and dropped the stick.  He looked around, afraid someone had caught him in the act, and fished his phone out of his back pocket.  It was Will.  Scott ran his thumb over the answer button.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to answer.  Will was extremely intuitive.  Would he manage to deduce that he was putting on make-up?  Okay, he wasn’t psychic, but he had made the conclusion that Scott had changed his hair because of a girl.  And he had pestered him all week about who the mystery girl was.  He had probably done it more to take his mind off of Julian, but it had been hard for Scott to pretend that he didn’t know what Will was talking about.  Today was his first sneaky date with Antoinette, and that was something Will could definitely pick up on.  The phone stopped ringing and he shoved it back in his pocket.

He began applying the concealer again and tried not to think about the previous week.  It had sort of been fun at first, flirting with Antoinette from afar and “accidentally” running into her in the halls.  But then they had started getting careless about it.  And they had started doing more than flirting.  By Friday it had made Scott a nervous wreck.  Every time he saw Jake in the halls he felt like he knew, and the soccer team captain was biding his time before he kicked Scott’s ass.  Of course, they hadn’t really done anything flagrant where anybody could actually see them, but weren’t people always just happening upon things like that and then spreading it around school?  That’s the way it happened on TV.  And Scott’s unease may also have been contributed to by Anna.  They were not doing well right now.  It was worse than when they fought; they weren’t talking.  That had never happened before.  When they’d had problems in the past they’d always just shouted and screamed at each other until they were calm enough to work it out.  Scott wasn’t sure what to do in this situation.  It was much more serious than anything they had faced before.  And for what?  Julian’s parents?  José?  For some stupid and basically unknown reason he was cut off from his best friend.  And he could really use her right now.

Scott put the make-up back into the basket and looked at himself in the mirror.  He looked a little less like a zombie now, and his hair was shining in the fluorescent bulbs surrounding the vanity mirror.  He frowned.  What was he thinking?  He needed Anna right now?  If he told her what he was doing she would have a whole bunch of talking to do to him.  First she’d ask why he was such a complete loser-idiot and then she’d start in on all the reasons why it was wrong and a bad idea.  Scott already knew those things.  He didn’t need his “friend” getting all sanctimonious and talking down to him.  Just thinking about the condescending tone of her voice and the choice insults she would use pissed him off.  It made him even more resolved to go on the date.  He gave himself one last look in the mirror.  He’d tucked in his lime green button down shirt to show off the nifty leather belt he’d put on to hold up the khakis, but now he was rethinking it.  He pulled the shirt out and left his parents’ room.

He tromped slowly down the stairs, extremely unhappy that both the cars were gone.  Where had his dad gone and why wasn’t his mom back yet?  He was just going to have to take the bus again.  It was so lame.  His parents could totally afford to buy him a car. So why didn’t they?  It would make life easier for everybody.  He was certain his younger siblings would get a car when they turned sixteen.  After his parents learned how difficult it was driving their son everywhere or sharing the car with him.  It wasn’t fair being the oldest.  He could go whine about it to Antoinette.  She’d understand.  Except, she _had_ a car.

The bus was a little more crowded than it had been last Sunday, but he still had a seat to himself.  Two twelve year old girls were sitting across the aisle and one seat up from him.  They kept glancing back at him, completely unaware of how indiscreet they were being.  They were giggling and gushing to each other about something.  Scott wasn’t entirely sure if they thought he looked funny or cute.  And how lucky that they got off at the mall too.  While they were standing on the sidewalk trying to organize their big-girl purses, Scott decided to try an experiment.  He flashed a smile as he passed them and they turned pink and started laughing nervously to each other.  That made Scott feel better; they thought he was cute.  Then again, was it really that great that twelve year olds found him attractive, but not girls his own age?  Or had that been the old Scott?  This week in school he’d been asked out by three girls.  He hadn’t known what to do; girls had never approached him before.  He’d only ever talked to girls that were his friends or interested in his friends.  And all because he’d changed his hair.  How shallow was that?  At least Antoinette had expressed an interest in him while he still has his “bad” hair.  Though Scott didn’t think it was all _that_ bad.

Once inside the mall, Scott meandered slowly toward the center.  They had agreed to “casually” bump into each other at the fountain where she’d found him last Sunday.  He looked at his watch and he was right on time.  Antoinette was already there waiting for him.  Why was it that _she_ was the one who was so eager about this?  She was wearing a knee-length patterned skirt of blues and greens and a silky, blousy top to match.  Her black knee-high boots weren’t clunky or anything, put they still looked a little incongruous with the rest of the outfit.  It kind of gave a hint that she wasn’t the good girl she appeared to be, though Scott already knew that.  He stopped in front of the fountain, a couple feet away from her, and flicked a coin into the water.

“What’d you wish for?” she asked, not looking at him.

“Can’t tell you.  Won’t come true otherwise.”  Of course, Scott hadn’t wished for anything at all.

“Hmm.  So, you wanna go shopping now?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and shook his head.  “Sounds boring.”

“Not the way I shop.  Come with me.”

She stood up and he fell into step beside her.  He wasn’t going to stalk her through the mall, that would be stupid.  And if she was really concerned about not being seen with him, she should have chosen someplace else.  He wondered about that actually, so he decided to ask her.

“Why did you want to meet in a mall where about a third of our school goes to on the weekends?  Wouldn’t it have been better to go into the city?”

“We’re just as likely to run into kids from school there.  And besides, if we’re both together in the city, it’s harder to pass that off as a coincidence.  Like you said, a lot of people from our school go here on the weekend.  It’s not weird for us both to be here.  Oh, in here.”

She veered off suddenly into a trendy store with loud pop music blaring.  Scott walked in and would have felt uncomfortable, but there was a guys section on one half of the store.  Though Scott suspected that the type of guys who shopped for clothes here were either pussy-whipped or gay.  And now, here he was.  Did this make sense?  Antoinette wasn’t his girlfriend.

“So,” she said, turning to him, “pick out what you’d like to see me in and I’ll try it on.  _Anything_ you want me in.”

She smiled teasingly at him and Scott raised an eyebrow.  “Anything, huh?  So, do I have to just show it to you, or are you going to tell me your size?”

“Uh!  My size?  No way.  How embarrassing.”

“Oh, I know.  That Oreo last week must have bumped you up from a two to a four.”

She made a face and hit him lightly on the arm.  “Fine.  I’m a six.  As for shirts I’m pretty much a small, unless it’s fitted.  Then I’ll probably need a medium to fit this all in there.”

When she said “this” she pushed up on her breasts.  Scott looked away.  No fair.  Antoinette smiled at his discomfort and wandered away from him.

“Pick me out something good and meet me in the fitting rooms in ten minutes.”

Scott watched her disappear among the racks of clothes.  Was this really supposed to be fun?  Picking out girls clothes?  Like he would even know what he wanted to see a girl in.  It was so—Ooo.  Scott walked over to a blue halter-top dress.  It had a short skirt and not a lot of cloth to form the halter.  He bet this would look nice.  He looked through the rack and found a six.  It looked really small.  Would she really fit in this?  Well, all the better if she didn’t.  Scott idly thought that a six seemed small for a girl Antoinette’s height.  And he only knew that because Anna was about the same height and she was a ten.  Antoinette didn’t seem unhealthy though; no bones poked out awkwardly from her skin, so she must be okay.  And she might very well be a bigger size and was just picking out clothes that she would try on in her size and then say she didn’t like anything he picked out.  He would soon find out.

Scott wandered through the store and picked out a few more items.  He had to pass the lingerie section to get to the fitting rooms.  He paused there and wondered if he picked something out if she would accept it as a joke or get mad with him.  He decided to skip it.  He didn’t know her size in that kind of stuff anyway.  The guy manning the fitting rooms raised an eyebrow when Scott came in.  He gave him a strange smile and reached for a placard with a number on it.

“So, you have five?”

“Huh?  Oh!  No.  These aren’t for me.  They’re for—”

For what?  His friend?  Girlfriend?  Which wouldn’t make him seem like a cross-dressing pervert?

“They’re for me,” Antoinette said, coming into the fitting rooms.  She collected the items from Scott and told the attendant she had a total of twelve items.  Scott didn’t think he’d let her go in with all of it, but they had a placard with the number twelve on it.  He led her to the first open stall and she requested the one at the far end of the hall.  She motioned for Scott to follow, so he did.  She stood in the entrance and smiled at him.

“Wait there.  And I’ll give you a fashion show.”

“Um, okay.”

The door closed and Scott leaned against the wall.  Was this really something he was supposed to be interested in, or was he supposed to be so desperate that he didn’t mind doing the crap jobs her boyfriend wouldn’t do?  There were clunking noises as her boots were taken off, and then some softer noises as she shed her clothing.  Scott bounced nervously against the wall.  There was a naked girl just on the other side of some flimsy wooden slats attached to a couple hinges.  Then the door swung open.  Antoinette posed in the frame so that only he could see her.  She was wearing the blue halter dress.  Scott had really only seen her a few times in clothing other than their school uniform, so this was the first time he became aware that Antoinette was physically more mature than a lot of the other girls at Calverton.  She looked amazing in the dress.  The color was good on her, but what was even better was the soft tan of her skin.  She must regularly get a fake tan, but it looked natural.  And there were no tan lines on her shoulders or—on other exposed parts.

“Wow, Antoinette.  You look like a model.”

She smiled and shook her head like she was embarrassed.  She dropped the pose and Scott believed she was a little humbled by the comment.

“No way.  I’m not even close.  But, thank you.  You know, I never would have picked this out for myself, but I do look pretty good in it.”

“Pretty good?  People would start a war over you.”

She cocked her head.  “Is that a good thing?”

“Well, no, I guess not.  But, I just meant like, Helen of Troy, you know.”

“Oh.”  She looked embarrassed.  “Yeah, right.  Got it.  You must think I’m such an airhead.”

Scott smiled and shook his head.  “Not at all.  It was a bad reference.”

“No, it was a good one.  Thank you.  I think I’ll put this one aside.  I might buy it.  Now, on to the next one.”

She shut the door and Scott relaxed back against the wall.  This wasn’t so bad.  Maybe not his first choice on a date, but it certainly was entertaining.  For the next half hour she tried on various outfits and they had discussions about the merits and/or failures of each one.  Scott had even picked out something he knew was hideous and three sizes too big, just to see if she would try it on.  When she opened the door, she looked like a couch that had fought with a vacuum cleaner and lost.  He laughed when he saw her and she just crossed her arms in mock annoyance.  She slammed the door on him and moved on to the next outfit.  Scott hadn’t really been counting, but after a particularly sexy number that the tag said was a skirt, but he could have sworn was a belt, he thought they must be near the end.

“Was that the last one?” he asked.

“Nope.  There’s one more.”

Scott glanced at his watch.  He didn’t really have anywhere to be, he just did it out of habit.  So, he didn’t even register what time it was.  There was a sound of some elastic snapping in the fitting room, and then some adjusting.  Then the door swung open.  Scott gulped and clasped his hands together in front of his groin.  Antoinette had stopped by the lingerie section herself.  The matching bra and panties were black.  He never really though of black as a sexy color, but it was working for him right now.  The bra was nothing special, but her breasts were fantastic enough on their own.  The panties were cut extremely high and barely covered anything.  He’d only ever seen naked women in magazines before, but he knew enough to know that she must have done some grooming down there to pull off the look.  And on top of that, the panties were attached to garters that held up black, thigh-high stockings.  It really was too much, so Scott closed his eyes.

“Scott?”

“Yes?”

“Look at me.”

He opened his eyes, not quite sure if he was still breathing.  She was completely in control of him, and she knew it.  That’s what her smile told him.

“Does this look good?”

She did a slow turn and Scott looked at the ceiling in desperation.  It was a thong.  He swallowed with a little difficulty and forced himself to look back at her.  She looked a little more concerned now and less like a seductress.

“Aw, Scott.  You’re so cute.  Too much?  How about I buy this and hang on to it?  And you can see it again when you’re ready.”

He tried to swallow again and couldn’t.  His mouth had gone dry, but his hands had gotten sweaty.  He felt really hot.

“Um, I’m going to go get some air.  I’ll meet you outside the store.”

Scott bolted down the hall and bumped into a mother and daughter coming in to try on some clothes.  It made him feel nauseated.  Did they know what he had been doing?  What he had been thinking?  Was this normal?  Was this what guys were like?  He should talk to Chris.  Or Will.  But, had Will actually gone all the way with anyone yet?  But it didn’t matter if he had, he could at least explain if he’d ever felt anything like this before.  Scott thought it was a natural reaction, but he still felt guilty.  Maybe it was the Christian upbringing.  Or the damn Puritans ruining it for everyone by making America so prudish.

Scott leaned on the glass front of the store and found it very cold.  It made him feel much better.  It was quite a while later before Antoinette came out of the store.  She rubbed his arm down by the wrist.

“Hey, sorry it took so long.  There was a line at the register.”

Scott wouldn’t look at her and shook his head.  “It’s okay.”

Antoinette waited for him to do something, but he did nothing.  So, finally she said, “Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  Let’s go to the food court.”

They parted ways to get different food and Scott used the time to clear his head even more.  Why had he reacted like such a spaz?  It must have weirded her out.  He wouldn’t be surprised if she felt uncomfortable around him now.  They met up with their food in the middle of the court and managed to find a table fairly quickly.  Probably because it was nearing the end of the lunch rush.  Scott was pleasantly surprised to see that she had gotten a large, greasy slice of pizza.  At least she didn’t eat like a model.  They ate in silence a few minutes, and then Scott couldn’t take it anymore.

“Antoinette, I’m really sorry.”

She looked surprised.  “For what?” she asked around a mouthful of pizza.

“For the way I acted.  I know it just made things awkward.  And it was totally inappropriate and I shouldn’t have acted like some pervert voyeur.  I just…”  Scott trailed off.  How could he end this for her?

“Scott, do you really think that I tried that on without knowing the effect it would have on you?”  He looked up at her and she appeared to be feeling a little guilty.  “I’m the one who should be apologizing.  I’m the one who made you uncomfortable.  I didn’t realize you were so…”

“Such a virgin?”

She laughed.  “No.  I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.  I take it that sex means something to you.  And that’s not a bad thing.  It’s a rather humbling realization.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Don’t apologize, Scott.  Geez.  I almost felt like a child molester.”

Scott sat back in his chair.  “Don’t say that!  That makes me sound even more pathetic!”

She laughed.  “I don’t mean it to.  You’re very sweet.”

“No, I’m not.  I’m not at all.  I wasn’t acting like a little kid.  I was acting like some pervert who couldn’t control himself.  It was pathetic.”

“Scott, seriously.  Don’t freak out about it.  I’ve seen guys who really are perverts and the way they act.  You were nothing like them.  Please, don’t feel awkward or embarrassed by it.  It was a totally normal reaction.  And one that I was anticipating when I provoked it.  It’s all on me, okay?  Let’s forget about it.  How’s Julian?”

Scott was thankful for the subject change, but he wondered if it would really help.

“I’m not sure, actually.  I haven’t had a chance to talk with him.  His relatives have been in town and they’ve been monopolizing his time.”

“Hmm.  How have you been dealing with it?”

Scott kind of talked around the issue.  He wasn’t sure how he was dealing with it.  More than likely his nightmares were connected to the accident, but he couldn’t remember what they were about.  So, they might be unrelated.  Antoinette seemed to sense his hesitation and changed the subject again.  They talked about unimportant school events and mean teachers and the fight between the hottest girls in school who might be breaking up and returning to a life of heterosexuality.  Scott felt relaxed and happy for the first time all day.  He loved talking about nothing.  It was the best thing in the world.  Why had he missed it so much?  Because usually Anna was the one would sit down with him and blather on and on and on.  Scott refused to think about Anna right now.  It would just bring him down.

“Antoinette?”

Scott and Antoinette were approached by three of Antoinette’s friends.  They were pretty-ish and wore trendy clothing that made them look good, but they always seemed so fake to Scott when he saw them in school.  Antoinette had been like them, but different.  Or was he just convincing himself that’s what he thought about her before this started?

“Oh, hi, Samantha.  What are you guys doing here?”

“Uh, we’re shopping,” said the one in the middle.

“And we totally invited you,” said the one on the left.

“You said you couldn’t come,” said the one on the right.

“Well, I couldn’t,” Antoinette said, her voice changing a little to be closer to their pitch.  “And this is why,” she said using a hand to gesture unhappily at Scott.  He was a little taken aback.

“What do you mean?” asked the middle.

“Who is he?” asked the left.

“Where’s Jake?” asked the right.

“Do you guys always speak in order?” Scott butted in.

They looked at him and then back at Antoinette, waiting for an answer.

“My mom made me get a tutor.  And afterwards, she was all like, ‘why don’t you two go to lunch?’  So…”

“Oh.  What a drag,” said the middle.

“A tutor.  Your grades are like, so good.  Better than ours,” said the left.

“Well, at least he’s cute,” said the right.

The middle and the left looked at her.  She shrugged.

“What?  He is.”

She gave Scott a wink.  Scott was a little dumbstruck by the way these girls were talking like he wasn’t even there.

“Yeah, so,” said Antoinette, “that’s what it is.  Like, don’t tell Jake.  He’ll be all like, ‘Why do you have a boy tutor?  Get a girl tutor.’  So Neanderthal.”

“I think it’s sweet that he’s possessive,” said the middle.

Scott rolled his eyes discreetly.  Who were these people?

“Well,” said the left, “it’s not like you got Will Harder to be your tutor.  _Then_ Jake would have something to worry about.”

The girls laughed and Scott crossed his arms.  Will, Will, Will.  He was starting to feel like Jan Brady.

“You hang out with Will, right?” asked the right.  “He’s so cute.”

“Yeah,” said Scott.  “He is a dreamboat.  But we’re just good friends.”

The right laughed but the middle and the left weren’t amused.  Middle rolled her eyes and looked at Antoinette.

“So, since you’re done with lunch, why don’t you come shopping with us?”

Antoinette pouted.  “I wish I could.  But I’m his ride home.”

“There is a bus,” said the left.

“Ew.  Don’t make him ride the bus,” said the right.

“I’m not that mean.  You guys have fun and maybe we can hang tomorrow.”

“Okay.  If you’re sure.  I’ll call you later,” said the middle.

The three girls moved on and Scott waited for them to be out of hearing range.  “She’ll call later to talk about the social tragedy that happened at the mall today?”

Antoinette laughed.  “Probably.  You know, I know they’re so shallow and silly, and that I’m like them, but it doesn’t really bother me.  Does that make me a bad person?”

“A little.”

She frowned.  “I hate that you’re so honest.”

He shrugged.  “Our relationship is enough of a deceit that we really shouldn’t lie to each other.”

She took in a breath and Scott was a little concerned by the way she was eyeing him.  She stood up abruptly from the table and he wondered if she was mad with him.  She took her tray to the garbage and Scott followed her.  She walked at a fast trot down the hall to the nearest department store and Scott wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be following her or if she was trying to get away from him.

“Antoinette,” he called out.  “Wait.  Are you mad?”

She made her way through the labyrinthine store until she came to a back corner where there was a secluded fitting room.  She paused at the entrance, waiting for him to catch up.

“You are mad,” he said when he reached her.  “I didn’t mean to imply that—”

She yanked on his arm, causing him to stumble into her.  They fell into a changing room and she slammed the door shut.  And then she was on him.  She pressed their bodies together and kissed him hard.  He was so stunned all he could do was let her have her way with him.  And she worked him over with hands and lips and teeth.  She broke the kiss to push him onto the bench and then straddled him.  She smiled as she kissed him again.  This time he was ready for it and kissed her back.  He was getting much better at this whole making out thing.  She ran her fingers through his hair and rocked in his lap.  He pushed her away.

“Whoa, Antoinette, hang on.”

She kissed him again and he forgot his argument for a minute.  Their hands were roaming everywhere and Scott was afraid they were going to let things get out of hand.  He pushed her back again.

“Antoinette.  What is up all of a sudden?  I thought you were mad with me and now—”

“Mad?  I’m so hot right now.  Didn’t that turn you on?”

She kissed his lips and then worked her way down his jaw to his neck.

“Didn’t what turn me on?”  He was surprised his brain was functioning well enough to get that question out.

“Almost getting caught.  I didn’t even have a cover story before we went out.  I came up with it on the spot.”

She captured his lips again and then sat back, pulling on his lower lip with her teeth.  She smiled when she let go if it.

“They might even tell Jake.  Then I’ll have to make up something to him too.  Mmm.”

She leaned forward and tried to kiss him, but Scott pushed her away.  He struggled to get out from underneath her and ended up dumping her onto the bench.  He stood up and ran a hand through his hair, but it didn’t give him the same comfort it used to.  There was no hair to run his fingers through anymore.

“What’s the problem, Scott?  Wasn’t that the point of this whole sneaking around thing?”

Scott didn’t answer.  He wasn’t quite sure what the point was.  He thought it had been to make his life less boring, but how was it supposed to make it less boring?  By almost getting caught?  That wasn’t sexy.  It was scary.  Or maybe because it was scary it was an adrenaline rush.  Either way, he wasn’t particularly feeling it.

Antoinette stood and sidled up against him.  He couldn’t bring himself to push her away.  He liked the way she felt against him.  But what exactly did she plan on doing in here?

“Come on, Scott.  Don’t I turn you on?  I know I do.  Maybe I should try on that last outfit again.”

Scott took a couple steps to his left to get away from her.

“Not here.  Not in public.  I don’t care if you think it’s stupid or that I’m a prude.  But I’m not doing it here.”

She sighed.  “Okay.  Let’s go to my house.  Everyone’s out doing stuff again.”

She opened the door and led him out by the hand.  A woman coming in saw them coming out and made a shocked, disapproving face.  Scott felt bad.  He had been doing what she disapproved of, but he had tried not to.  Sort of.  He really didn’t have the sort of personality that was good at standing up to women.  His mother always took care of things for him whether he wanted her to or not, and Anna had always worn the pants in their friendship.  So, who was he to look down on Chris?

Antoinette was rushing through the parking lot, dragging Scott with her.  He wondered why she was really so worked up.  When they reached her car he demanded her keys.

“What?  Why?  Being horny isn’t like being drunk.”

“God I hope to never see you drunk and driving.  You’re bad enough sober.  Now give me the keys.”

She frowned but didn’t argue.  He thought she must have figured that arguing with him would just waste time.  So, she gave him her keys and slid into the passenger seat.  As much as Scott wanted to preserve his life, he had to admit he also just wanted to drive her car.  His parents had sedans.  As rich as they were they couldn’t own at least one sporty little number.  He could understand a little better now why Antoinette was such a bad driver: it was hard to go slow in a car when you could feel it was capable of going so much faster.  The drive back to her house was uncomfortable not only because of the silence, but because she kept fidgeting.  She didn’t look like a girl who was desperate to jump some guy’s bones; she just looked nervous and upset about something.  Scott decided that once they got there, he would just leave her and walk to the nearest bus stop.

Scott carefully maneuvered the Eclipse into the three car garage and killed the engine.  He looked at Antoinette and she appeared to be more herself now.  She got out of the car and asked him to come inside.  She didn’t wait for a response, so Scott felt obligated to follow her inside.  He didn’t want to just leave because that would be a little rude.  In the kitchen Antoinette had poured them both a glass of sparkling water.  Okay, so maybe Antoinette’s family was a little more pretentious than his.  They had bottled water in their refrigerator, but it wasn’t Perrier.  Scott accepted the glass, but didn’t drink from it.  He hated Perrier.

“Can I show you something?” Antoinette asked.

She left the room without waiting for a response again, and Scott considered just leaving.  But why?  Had what happened at the mall really been that weird?  She had only kissed him.  And it hadn’t been in public, it had been in a closed room.  This is what he wanted, right?  An un-boring life.  Scott put his glass down on the counter and followed Antoinette upstairs.  As he suspected, she had gone to her bedroom.  When he entered she was hanging up the blue dress she had bought at the mall.  Scott hung back by the door and watched her put away her purchases.  Then she walked toward him and pulled him gently into the room.

“What did you want to show me?” Scott asked, putting up a little resistance.

“Nothing.  Don’t be so naïve.”

She shut the door and pushed him onto the bed.  She didn’t push him too hard though, so he managed to catch himself before he fell all the way back on it.  Not that it did him any good.  She crawled on top of him and started kissing him sloppily.  He was kind of surprised, and weirded out by the style of the kiss, so he didn’t do much to reciprocate.  Her hands were running over his chest and he couldn’t help but notice that she was sitting perfectly on his groin.  There wasn’t much he could do to fight it.

“Ah, yes, Scott,” Antoinette broke the kiss and arched her back, pressing herself down into his lap.  “That’s the right response.  Don’t get embarrassed.”

Scott made a face, but more out of pain than pleasure; he was sitting on his cell phone.  And then it saved his life.  It rang.  He leaned to the side and dumped Antoinette onto the bed.  She had her arms wrapped around his neck however, and kept him close.  He pulled out his phone and saw that Julian was calling him.

“Antoinette, stop.”  His tone made her pause.  “It’s Julian.  I need to talk to him.”

He sat up and answered in a panic, afraid Julian might have hung up and taken away his reprieve.

 “Hello?  Hello!  Julian?!”

Antoinette sat up too and continued to run her hands over his chest and shoulders.

“Uh—yeah.  Calm down, Scott.”

One hand traveled down his torso.

“Oh, sorry.  I just haven’t heard from you.”

The hand ran over his hip and onto his thigh.

“And it’s my fault.  I should have called.  I really wanted—”

The hand dipped in between his legs.

“Will you stop?!” he yelled at Antoinette.

He got off her bed and ran for the exit.  She followed him into the hallway and he covered the mouth piece of the phone with his hand.

“Look, I have to take this now.  You don’t tell your grieving friend that you’re too busy to talk, okay?”

Antoinette pouted, but nodded in understanding.  Scott ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.  He sat on the commode and talked to Julian.  He felt bad about lying about what he was doing, but he didn’t want to distract Julian.  It was important that he get to say whatever was on his mind.  The conversation with Julian also helped Scott calm down.  Not just from the sexual arousal, but also from his rising anger at her forwardness.  It really made no sense why she was being so aggressive.  But, that wasn’t important.  Scott focused completely on Julian and hoped that whatever advice he could offer would be helpful.  He was woefully inexperienced in real life situations and was nervous that anything he might say would be the wrong thing.  However, by the end of the conversation, Julian’s voice had lost a touch of the despair that had colored it when he first called.  After promising to go visit him tomorrow and to bring Chris and Will along, Scott reluctantly said goodbye.  Actually, he’d said goodnight, but he didn’t think it was really that late out.  He just felt tired and Julian sounded tired; it seemed like going to bed would be the best thing to do.

Scott looked at the bathroom door.  Though “going to bed” had more than one connotation.  He chewed nervously on a finger and then stood up.  He cracked the door open, and Antoinette was standing directly outside, waiting for him.  He almost shut the door again, but he wasn’t going to be that retarded about it.  He flung the door open and put his hands on his hips.  Antoinette glared right back at him.  Then she pulled gently on his shirt and kissed him tamely.  He liked this much better than the wild girl that had been attacking him earlier.  He put his arms around her waist and pressed them close together.  If she was going to behave herself, they could do this.  They stumble-walked back into her bedroom and Scott let himself be pulled down on top of her on the bed.  There was nothing wrong with making out on someone’s bed.  That didn’t necessarily mean that more was going to happen.  But why was he not ready for something more to happen?  Why was he being such a girl about this?

He allowed his hands to roam freely over her body.  It was the first time a girl was letting him explore all those mysterious places that had been off limits before.  She did nothing to discourage him and put her hands in between their bodies to undo the buttons on his shirt.  As soon as the skin of one of her fingers lightly grazed his bare chest, he felt that panic again.  He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t ready for this.  He rolled off her, but she rolled on top of him, continuing to remove his shirt.  He pushed on her shoulders.

“Antoinette, I’m sorry.  I can’t do this.”

“Why not?  I don’t care if you’re a virgin.  I’ll take of everything for you.  Just lay back and let it happen.”

She was starting to get overly aggressive again, kissing him hard and grinding their lower halves together.  Scott couldn’t deny that it felt good, but he was also too freaked out to really appreciate it.

“It’s not that—mm.”  She cut him off with her tongue.  He lost all cognitive functioning for the next three minutes.  When she pulled away for air, he was seeing black spots in his vision, and his shirt was almost off.

“Antoinette, what is wrong with you?  Why are you in such a rush to do this?”

“Because I have to know!” she cried.

She kissed him again and started working on the leather belt.  He’d picked it out more to match the outfit than to hold his pants up, but he was thankful he had it now to slow her down.

“I need to know what’s so great about cheating,” she got out between biting his lip and lapping at his mouth.

Scott’s hand wrestled with hers over his groin, making it harder for him to keep his resolve to stop.  And to be honest, whenever she kissed him, he was kissing her back.  But her words were finally starting to register in his head.

“I don’t understand.  What is great about cheating?”

She finally stopped messing with the opening to his fly and sat up.  She looked very upset.

“That’s what I want to know!  Why do people do it?!  What makes it so great that you would chance ruining everything just for a little thrill?!  If you really love that person, then what can you get out of cheating on them?!”

Antoinette covered her face with her hands and started to cry.  Scott propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her.  Not sure what was going on or what on earth he could do to make her feel better.  He let her cry for a few moments, and he hoped her distress was keeping her occupied enough that she didn’t notice that his erection wasn’t going down at all.

“Is,” Scott started carefully, “is Jake cheating on you?”

She shook her head and sniffed a couple times.  Then she used her hands to wipe away the tears and looked miserably at him.

“My dad is.  Cheating on my mom I mean.  I just don’t get it.  If you want to be with someone else, why don’t you leave them?  If you’re that unhappy, why stay with them?  And if it’s not because you’re unhappy, what’s so great about cheating?  Is it supposed to feel more intense because it’s wrong?  I want to know why he’s doing it.  I wanted to feel what he was feeling.”

Scott took in a breath and let it out slowly.  “Antoinette, don’t take this for excusing him, because I’m not, but there are a lot of different reasons why people cheat.  And they always seem to make sense at the time.  Some people do it for a thrill, or to spice up their dull lives, but often times, when it’s a marriage, it’s because one or both of them have fallen out of love.”

“How can you fall out of love?  Isn’t love forever?  Isn’t that what it means?”

Scott shook his head.  “Love doesn’t just magically happen forever.  Love is something you have to work at.  Or at least, I think that’s what Dr. Phil says.”

She let out a miserable laugh and shifted.  Scott felt acutely embarrassed that he was able to be such a jerk when she was so vulnerable.

“Oh, sorry about that,” she said.  “I’ll take care of it for you if you want.”

Scott let out an incredulous noise that was almost like a bark.  “What, no.  That’s okay.  God, Antoinette.  You’re a mess right now.  Don’t even think about me.  It’ll go away.  I’ll just think about some grapes or something.”

“Grapes?”

“They gross me out.”

“Oh.”

She climbed off him and sat beside him on the bed.  She was probably looking at the floor, but he felt like she was staring at his crotch.

“So, you think my dad doesn’t love my mom anymore?”

Scott really didn’t want to continue this conversation.  “I don’t know.  I’ve never met them.  It could be for another reason.  They could still be in love.  That’s why they’re willing to deal with the infidelity.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if your mom knows about it and is letting him stay then—”

“She doesn’t know about it.”

Scott looked at her.  “Then how do _you_ know?”

“I recognize the signs.  His secretary calls all the time about ‘work,’ but I know it’s not.  How cliché, huh?  His secretary.”

“Now, you don’t know for sure, do you?  Maybe he really is busy.”

“Scott, he’s always out late.  He’s always getting called away at the last minute for work things.  He comes home smelling like the wrong soap.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only soap my mom buys is Tone.  Everybody in the house, including my dad, uses it.  I know its smell.  A lot of times when he comes home from ‘work’ he smells different when I hug him.  And it’s soap.  Who showers at work?  Just before they come home?”

“Antoinette, I know these things can seem strange.  But don’t you think you’re jumping to a big conclusion?”

 “I thought I was too.  So I skipped school one day and followed him to work.  He went out to lunch with his secretary and they went to a hotel for lunch.  Is it really that much of a leap now?”

Her voice was shaking again.  He put an arm around her and she leaned into him.

“I don’t know what to do,” she cried softly.  “I don’t want to tell my mom because then she’ll get a divorce.  I don’t want to see my dad every other weekend and for two months in the summer.  I like us all being together.  So, I thought it would be okay to let him cheat.  But, it’s bothering me.  He got a new secretary, and he started sleeping with her instead.  Or maybe in addition to.  I couldn’t understand it.  Why is Daddy doing these things?  Why is cheating so great?”

Scott put his cheek on the top of her head.  “I take it this has been going on a long time.”

“A couple years.  That I’ve known.  Who knows how long he’s actually been doing it.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his shoulder.  “I hate this.  I hate that he can’t love us enough to keep it in his pants.  Is he really so unhappy with my mom?  And I thought all guys were just horny and went after whatever they could.  But Jake has never cheated on me.  And you won’t sleep with me.  Apparently not all guys are like that.  Why is my dad?”

Scott didn’t know, but he figured she already knew that without him saying anything.  She leaned toward her pillows and pulled Scott with her.  He had to move his legs onto the bed to keep from lying on top of her.  She nestled into his side and hugged him tightly.

“Is it okay if we just stay like this for a while?” she asked quietly.  She sounded like a little girl.  Scott just nodded and shifted slightly so that he was mostly on his back.  She slid down to move her weight off his arm, but kept her head on his shoulder.  They would be able to stay this way for a while and his arm wouldn’t fall asleep.  She must have experience snuggling with guys.  He let his head fall back into the soft pillows and listened to her cry softly.  This really wasn’t what he had signed up for.  He stared at the white canopy over his head.  He felt those fifty pound weights on his eyes again.  When they attached themselves to his eyelids, there was no fighting it.  He fell asleep.

He woke up to a door slamming.  He blinked in the darkness.  He didn’t recognize his surroundings.  When he tried to sit up, something heavy prevented him from doing so.  He looked down at his side and saw a girl there.  Whoa.  When had he slept with a girl?  His shirt was unbuttoned, but they were both still clothed.  There were more distant noises, like people coming inside and messing with things and talking.  Scott’s brain finally snapped to attention.  He sat up quickly while shaking Antoinette.  She woke up and rubbed her eyes.

“Antoinette, wake-up.”

“I am awake.  Man, it’s dark out.  We must have fallen asleep.”

“Yeah, we did.  And I think your parents are home.”

She started out of bed so quickly Scott reeled back in surprise, his heart pounding.  “Jesus, Antoinette.”

“Scott, you’ve got to leave.  Like now.  And my parents can _not_ see you.”

“Okay.  Fine by me.”

Antoinette ran to her window and opened it.  She looked down and then turned to him.  “I don’t think you can find a way down from here, can you?”

Scott got off the bed and buttoned his shirt as he walked to the window.  Her bedroom was on the second floor, but the house was on a hill, so the ground at the back of the house was about three stories down.  There were no trees nearby and no climbing equipment conveniently hanging about.

“Um, no.”

“Great.  If my parents are in the kitchen, it will be easy getting you out unseen, but the problem is my siblings running around everywhere.  But let’s hurry.  If we do get caught it will be better if we’re on the first floor.”

Scott checked to make sure he still had his cell phone on him and hoped that he hadn’t left anything lying around the house.  He didn’t think he had.  Aside from the glass of Perrier in the kitchen, but that could just as easily be Antoinette’s as far as her parents were concerned.  Antoinette had poked her head outside the door and was now checking the hallway for family members.  She waved for him to follow her into the hallway and they crept quietly down the corridor, listening for footsteps coming up the stairs.  At the landing, Antoinette looked around the corner and Scott hung back against the wall.

This was like some bad spy movie.  Or really, like some bad soap opera and the cheating girlfriend was trying to get her lover out of the house.  Only, they weren’t lovers and the angry boyfriend would be replaced with an angry father.  It wasn’t fair.  He hadn’t actually done anything to his daughter.  Then he had to wonder if Antoinette was trying to hide him not because she was worried about being caught with a boy, but because she didn’t want her parents to know that she was cheating on Jake.  Maybe he was a dirty secret and she didn’t want anyone to know about him.  She certainly hadn’t wanted to pass them off as friends at the mall today.  Had she chosen him as the person to experiment with because nobody would ever believe that Antoinette Bixby would voluntarily have anything to do with Scott Ramsey?

“Scott!”

Antoinette hissed his name and he saw that she was already at the bottom of the stairs.  He hurried down after her and a shadow moved across the entrance to the foyer.  Antoinette shoved him hard enough to send him flying into the darkened living room.  A light flicked on in the foyer.

“Hi, honey,” said a male voice, “were you sleeping?”

“Yeah.  I woke up when I heard you guys come home.  I guess I wore myself out shopping.”

“Wore out my credit card more likely.”

“Yep.  So, how did the karate/gymnastics/whatever thing go?”

“Well.  There was a whole scandal with the gymnastics judges.  Something about the wrong starting value.  I didn’t understand it.  You’ll have to ask your sisters.  Oh, sweet pea.  I forgot to get the mail, will you go get it?”

“Yes!  No problem.”

The footsteps went back into the kitchen and then several feet pounded down the hall and up the stairs.  Several voices shouted “hi” to Antoinette and declared that they had so much to tell her.

“Okay.  I’ll listen to every word after you get changed.”

Doors slammed upstairs.  Then Antoinette appeared in the entrance of the living room and waved him over.  They scuttled to the front door and then ran down the driveway.  They stopped when they got to the mailbox, laughing and out of breath, more from the anxiety than the short run.

“I’m so sorry,” said Antoinette.

“It’s okay.”  Scott assumed she was not only apologizing for almost getting caught, but also for pulling him into her desperate need to understand her cheating father.  And it really was okay.  He would go back to a normal life of boring.  It would give him more free time to make up with Anna and to better evaluate his need for something more in his life.  If nothing else, he had gotten in some good kissing practice.

“And I’m really sorry to leave you stranded like this.  I can’t take you home.”

“It’s okay.  I—” Scott glanced next door and saw a lot of cars parked out front.  One of them looked like Chris’ car.  “Is the family next door named the Greens?”

“Yeah.  Their daughter goes to Calverton.  Karen.  Isn’t she dating one of your friends?”

“Yeah.  That’s his car.  I can just wait on him and he can drive me home.”

“What if he’s spending the night?”

“Trust me.  He’s not.  And it’s already after eight.  I’m sure he won’t be in there too much longer.”

“Okay.”

Antoinette got the mail out of the mailbox and Scott started walking toward Chris’ car.  He turned back when she called out his name softly.

“Thank you.”

Scott just bobbed his head.  He didn’t really think “you’re welcome” was the right thing to say back.  He watched her walk slowly up her driveway and then sighed.  If she was going to work through her angst and not need him anymore, maybe he should have at least let her get rid of his stupid virginity for him.  He was only sixteen, so he wasn’t in a _huge_ rush, but now that he understood why she had been so weird and intense about it, he probably would have been okay with giving it up.  He ended up having a long time to think about different scenarios for the way the whole affair could have ended.  Chris didn’t come outside for over an hour.  And he was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn’t see Scott perched on the trunk of his car.  And he still didn’t see him when he hopped off and stood next to him.

“Hey, Chris.”

Chris started violently and his keys fell to the ground.  Scott bent over and picked them up.  He handed them to Chris, and he just stared at him.

“Good grief, Scott.  What are you doing here?”

“It’s a long story.  And I can’t talk about it.  Can you give me a ride home?”

“Um…sure.”

Chris was a good sport about it.  He tried a couple times to get the story from him, but he let it go.  Because they were best friends and Scott was pretty certain that Chris knew that he would eventually know what it was all about.  He’d probably tell all three of them—after a sufficient amount of time had passed.  And it was entertaining hearing about Chris getting busted banging Karen by her dad.  Scott hadn’t even done anything with Antoinette and he had worried over getting caught by an irate father.  He couldn’t even imagine what Chris was feeling.  Maybe he was in shock.

Chris dropped him off at his house and agreed to pick him up in the morning so that they could all go see Julian together.  Scott watched Chris back out of his long driveway with an amused smile.  So, there was proof that sex was worth a bad relationship.  Maybe what he had been doing with Antoinette wasn’t so wrong after all.  Well, he wouldn’t consider doing it now.  She was clearly messed up and in need of her mother’s psychoanalysis skills.  And if her mother was a shrink, shouldn’t she be able to figure out that her husband was cheating on her?

As Scott turned to go inside, he saw headlights appear on his driveway.  He wondered if Chris had forgotten something, and then he recognized his father’s car.  Had his dad been out all day long?  He waved to his dad as he pulled up to the garage and then turned to go inside.  When he walked in the front door his brothers were tearing across the room to go to the garage door.  They bounced from foot to foot as they waited for their father to come in.

“Daddy!” they shouted in the same pitch as they flung themselves at the foot that had just made its way through the door.  The twins’ father bent over and grabbed them under the arms and hauled them into the room.

“Scott, come help me with these two terrors.”

Joanna was glaring at them from the stairs.  Scott ruffled her hair as he passed, and she lost some of her gloom.  He grabbed Ferris from his father’s left arm and hoisted him over his shoulder.  The little boy squealed and Drake attempted to come to his rescue, but their father had a firm hold of him.

“Where were you, Daddy?” Ferris asked, his breath causing a warm spot on Scott’s back.

“I had some important Daddy errands to run.”

Scott looked at his father.  That excuse would work with eight year olds, but what would he have said if Scott had asked him?  Where _had_ he been all day?

“Here, take this one too,” his father said, and leaned forward to dump Drake into his arms.  When he leaned in close Scott could smell the strong soap scent clinging to his father.  It was one of those manly smelling soaps, but it wasn’t familiar to him.  Scott shook his head and juggled the twins carefully.  Antoinette had made him paranoid.

His mother was used to him coming home late on the weekends, but she still gave him a disapproving eye.  It only intensified when he went snooping in the refrigerator.  His father was right behind him.

“Do you two really think you need to eat a snack this late?”

“I didn’t eat dinner,” Scott said.  He’d skipped breakfast that morning because he had been nervous and he’d only gotten to eat half his lunch.  He was starving.

“I didn’t eat dinner either,” his father said.

“Honestly!” the woman exclaimed and shooed her husband and son away from the fridge.  She began to pull out the leftovers from that night’s dinner and prepared plates for them.  They really were spoiled Scott mused as he waited at the kitchen table.  And he was glad that his father hadn’t eaten.  He hadn’t been out on a date with someone.  Unless they’d spent the entire day having sex.  Scott frowned.  He was going to kill Antoinette.

After he had eaten Scott trudged up the stairs.  Even though he had gotten some uninterrupted sleep that afternoon, he was still tired.  His brothers had been sent off to bed and Joanna was barricaded in her room listening to angsty girl rock.  At least he didn’t have to entertain them.  His parents were downstairs discussing something, so Scott took the opportunity to duck into their room to make sure he had put the cover-up stick back in its right place.  Though his mother had possibly already been through there.  Nothing appeared to be out of place, and Scott realized the real reason he had gone into his parents’ bathroom.  He walked to the shower and reached inside to grab the bar of soap sitting on the tile dish protruding from the wall.  Scott brought it to his nose and inhaled.  It was the same scent his father had had on him earlier.  Scott laughed at himself.

“Stupid,” he muttered and went to his own room.

He just managed to get his clothes off and then flopped into bed.  He was so tired that even if he had a nightmare tonight, there was no way it was going to wake him up.  That was his last thought as he fell immediately into a deep sleep.  He woke up later in a cold sweat, his heart racing, his body shaking.  Scott felt an almost overwhelming urge to run to his mother’s side.  He sat up in bed and clutched his knees to his chest.  He let his breathing even out and the fear slowly subsided.  He looked at the time.  It was two in the morning.  This was not good.

 

 

 

Will

 

Will looked at his watch.  It had been ten minutes since he’d stormed out of Julian’s house.  From the outside everything appeared to be perfectly fine.  It was like any other house on the street; it belied nothing of the torment and turmoil going on inside.  Most houses were like that.  If the outside was a mess, then everybody already knew the family was having problems because they made them public.  But when the houses were neat and organized, you never knew if the family was the same way or messed up to the point of perversion.  Will didn’t know why he was hanging out in his father’s car in the March’s driveway.  He already knew he wasn’t going to go back inside.  Julian was going to be pissed with him for ditching him, but he didn’t like the relatives.  He wasn’t used to them.  He wasn’t used to having a whole bunch of people around that he was required to be polite to simply because he was related to them.  He rarely even saw the one remaining set of grandparents he had left.

Will started the car and backed out of Julian’s driveway.  He almost hit a passing car.  He slammed on the brakes and choked on his heart while the car whizzing past him honked at him.  He wasn’t sure who would be more upset if he got into an accident: his parents for ruining the car or Julian for making him have someone else he cared about get hurt in a car accident.  After carefully checking for traffic this time, Will backed out and headed to his house via the long way.  He wanted to stop by a fast food place and get some lunch.  He hated that whenever his parents were gone all he ate was fast food.  It didn’t bode well for when he would be out on his own.  Maybe he needed to marry young so that he could have a wife cook for him.  Ken was a good cook.  Will nearly ripped the steering wheel out of the steering column as he waited at a stoplight.  So what if Ken was a good cook?  What did that matter?  Nothing.  Why was he so obsessed with this guy?  It wasn’t healthy.

Among other things that also weren’t healthy was the burrito the size of his head that Will purchased.  He could smell it all the way home and his mouth was watering.  It didn’t take him long to devour it once he had a foot in the house.  The house was still and quiet and often sounded like it hadn’t been lived in for a very long time.  If a house could make a sound like that.  It never bothered Will though; it was what he was used to.  He didn’t like going over to Scott’s house, where there was always activity and a lived in, _used_ feel to the house.  Will was into precision and stillness.  It bothered him when there was too much activity going on because he couldn’t ever block any of it out.  He noticed everything.  So, it was always best when there was very little to notice.

He went to his bedroom and sat down at his computer.  After a couple hours of mindless searching and playing on the Internet, he decided to take the practice MCAT he’d had to put off for two weeks.  He liked to take them.  It was fun to see how much of the material he already knew, and how well he could deduce the correct answer when he didn’t know it.  He wasn’t going to take the MCAT until his junior year of college, and being his junior year of high school, people might think that he was starting a little too early.  But the test was actually challenging for him.  Mostly because he hadn’t been taught most of the material yet.  He was afraid by the time he did take it for real, it would be just like taking any other test.  Nothing was ever challenging for him.  Nothing academically anyway.  The situation with Ken was a bit of a problem.  Will snarled at the dead frog that was his computer’s wallpaper.  He was not going to think about it.  He was done with that man forever.  He’d never see him again.  If he took the test, he’d be too busy to think about him.

An hour and a half later, Will leaned back in his chair stretched his arms over his head.  He’d just finished checking his answers and had scored a 31 on the test.  That was pretty good for someone who had been to college and prepped for the test.  Will was pretty certain he would hit 40 by the time he took it for real.  The dead frog stared at him.  It was probably less bored than he was right now.  What was his problem?  He had friends.  He could hang out with any of them.  And tomorrow he was going somewhere with Liz.  He didn’t even remember what he’d agreed to do with her.  Maybe it would be good to go out with her.  It would be nice to kiss someone who wasn’t that schmuck.  Will kicked his desk.  He was thinking about him again.  Maybe he should go back to Julian’s; that would certainly distract him.

Will kicked his desk again.  He had to admit that in addition to not liking the relatives because they were being mean to Julian and disrespectful of the March’s faith, he hated them because they all wanted to take care of Julian.  In their own messed up kind of way.  They were fighting over who got to take him home, who got to be there for him.  Will had never experienced anything like that.  And he thought he liked it that way.  But what if his parents died?  Who would claim him?  Who would want him?  Will realized he didn’t really have a family.  Four blood relatives were _all_ that he had.  He had his friends, but it wasn’t the same thing.  He needed to start his own family.  He might need a wife sooner than he thought.  But then again, he’d probably grow bored with one woman very quickly.  Unless he married someone as smart as he was; someone who could keep him properly stimulated.  Will kicked his desk again and the energy thrust back at him almost sent him toppling out of the chair.  He was too worked up; he needed to calm down.  Relieve some stress.

Will raised his eyebrow as the idea popped into his head.  His parents were gone.  He could watch one of his dad’s old porno movies on the big TV downstairs.  That could be fun.  And stress relieving.  Will stood up and grabbed a towel from his bathroom on his way downstairs.  He hadn’t done this in a long time.  Well, _that_ had only not been done since—the incident.  He hadn’t snooped around in his dad’s secret porn stash for several months.  He wondered if saying secret stash was redundant.  A stash was secret by its very nature, wasn’t it?  Will turned around and went back upstairs to check in a dictionary.  He was right, it was redundant.  He started back downstairs again and wondered if other teenaged boys were distracted from masturbation by word etymology.

Will continued on to the basement and made his way through the “game room,” which consisted of a pool table, a foosball table, a dartboard, and a bar.  In the back was a small storage room that hadn’t been finished off with the rest of the basement.  In here were a bunch of old documents and files from work that his parents kept copies of.  He wasn’t sure if that was legal or not, but the FBI had never raided their house looking for hidden documents.  And also back here was a box labeled “the McPherson Study.”  It had porn in it.  Will had found it by accident when he was eight.  It had taken a few years for him to understand the true value of his discovery.  It was all old magazines and movies from the 70’s.  He wasn’t even sure if his dad still looked at the stuff or remembered he even had it, but Will was always careful to put everything back in just like he’d found it.  It probably wouldn’t matter if his father realized he was looking at this kind of stuff, obviously both his parents assumed he did by now, but it was a habit he’d gotten into when he was twelve.  When he still thought his parents might care about what he did.

Will pulled out his favorite movie: _MASH: Mobile Asian Sex House_.  It was a parody of the movie _MASH_.  It was really more a comedy than a porno, but it did have its moments.  Will slid the tape in and out of its cover as he went back upstairs.  His father had a lot of Asian oriented material.  He was surprised he hadn’t married an Asian woman.  He slid the tape into the antiquated VCR the Harders held onto for some reason and just let it play.  There were actually previews for other movies at the beginning.  Will didn’t have much experience with contemporary pornos, but he was pretty sure they just started right at the beginning.  He turned on the TV and heard the familiar creepy voice describing the other videos in the “Orient Series” (his father owned three) and then ran back upstairs to change clothes.  Why he hadn’t done this before he came downstairs was kind of silly, but that’s what happened when he started thinking ahead of himself.  His brain worked so fast that it often skipped over steps; even steps that were important.  He changed into a T-shirt and loose fitting boxers.  He never did this sort of thing completely naked unless he was in the shower.

Finally, he was seated in the large chair in front of the huge TV with towel in hand.  And the movie was just getting started.  It took about ten minutes to get to the first real sex scene, but usually the anticipation and knowledge of what was coming was enough to get him started.  Today, he was going to have to wait it out.  Then the big army general came into the tent, surprising the young Asian girl recovering there.  Why “one of the enemy” would be given medical treatment in a US army facility had always bothered Will about this movie, but he figured things like facts didn’t mean much to the porn industry.  And even as the burly military man began to teach the young Asian girl about American “culture,” Will still wasn’t feeling anything.  Maybe he was thinking too much about the discrepancies of the film.  He should just focus on the action.  But it didn’t work.  It wasn’t turning him on.  Maybe he’d seen it too many times before.  But what was the difference between the hundredth and hundred and first times?  It had always done the job before.  In fact, he could get off to this movie three or four times before it was over.  But…nothing.

His brain must be working too hard.  He should just fast-forward to his favorite scene.  That one never failed to get his mind focused on only one thing.  Will picked up the remote and fast forwarded through the movie.  He recognized other parts in the movie, and watched two girls take it from multiple men in super fast motion.  Porn was really funny when it was going too fast.  Then he got to his favorite part and let the tape play.  He settled back in the chair and waited.  And waited.  Nothing was happening down below.  He looked down in his lap, up at the movie, and then back at his lap.  He gave it a poke with a finger.  Not even a twitch.  Had he slept on it wrong and cut off the blood supply so now it was broken?  When was the last time he’d used it?  He thought back to the last time he’d even felt a tingle.  It had been when Ken was trying to take the sweatpants off.

Will stood up in the chair in a panic.

“Oh, no.”

He continued to watch the movie, but his insides were feeling too weird to even have a chance at getting turned on now.  He paused the movie and the Asian girl was frozen pulling at her restraints while Private Biggkok descended on her.  He jumped out of the chair and stopped moving when he realized he didn’t know where he was going.  Maybe he just wasn’t used to doing it in the den anymore.  It had been a while.  Maybe it felt too open.  Maybe he was too mature for porn now.  Wait, was that possible?  He ran upstairs to his room and threw himself on his bed.  He took in a few breaths to calm himself down.  This was nothing.  He was freaking out over nothing.  He didn’t need any visual aides.  His imagination was vivid enough.  And he hadn’t done it in a while; maybe it just needed a little physical stimulation as well.

Will buried his face in his pillow and tried to think of something.  Anything.  For some reason he was drawing a blank.  He needed to think about something real.  That would help.  He thought about the last girl he had made out with.  He’d gotten nearly to third base with her when the janitor had found them in the closet at school.  She’d been so embarrassed she hadn’t done anything with him since, but it was a good memory.  And his brain recalled practically every detail of the twenty-five minutes in the steamy closet.

Will rolled over and let out a frustrated groan.  He removed his hand from his boxers.  It hadn’t helped.  He stared at his ceiling.  Maybe he was trying to force it too much.  He needed to take it slow.  First, just start with the hottest kiss he’d ever had.  Who had it been?  Liz was always good.  And then there was the hot chick lesbian who gave him a whirl every now and then.  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the feeling again.  He could feel lips on his, working them apart to give access to a tongue.  He could feel himself getting practically fucked by someone’s tongue.  But, that was unusual; he was always the aggressive one.  Will’s eyes flew open.  He was thinking of that kiss…with Ken.

Will sat up screaming.  “He turned me gay!”

He clutched his sheets and screamed again.  But, wait, not necessarily.  He still wasn’t hard.  A kiss wasn’t proper stimulation.  Maybe he should watch same gay porn.  Then he’d know if he’d turned deviant or not.  Will balked at the idea.  How gross was that?  Gay porn.  Ick.  But what if it _did_ turn him on?  Shouldn’t he know?  Will looked at his computer.  It would take too long to download a movie off the peer-to-peer server he used and he didn’t have a credit card to buy any from a website.  Not that he wanted gay porn on his computer.  He couldn’t rent one from the video store because he wasn’t old enough plus they would want his real name and address.  He might be able to get a hold of a magazine, but the town was too small for someone not to recognize him if he bought it.  And again, he was too young.  The one place where he’d heard that nobody checked ID was at the adult theater in the city.

Will rolled his eyes.  Was he seriously considering going to the gay porn movie theater in the really shady part of the city?  That was beyond a bad idea.  Although, he probably wouldn’t run into anyone he knew there, and more than likely people would keep their eyes on the floor.  He shook his head.  It was a stupid idea.  It wouldn’t work.  He’d be too nervous while he was there to get an erection.  Of course, he’d been nervous about getting caught the first time he’d snuck into his father’s collection, but he’d still managed to do what he’d set out to do.  Will kicked his feet on the bed like a child having a tantrum.  Wasn’t there any easier way to figure this out?

He looked at his clock; it wasn’t that late yet so it wasn’t dark.  He certainly didn’t want to take on this endeavor during broad daylight.  And he certainly didn’t want to be in that part of town too late at night either.  He would have to transfer metro lines twice to get there and he wasn’t even sure exactly where the theater was.  He could always look it up online, but he didn’t even want a record of that on his computer.  But the newspaper had listings for all theaters, even the seedy ones.  Will got out of bed and went downstairs to find the weekend section of the daily paper.  He spread it out on the kitchen island and started making a sandwich.  He used the activity as a way of only furtively glancing through the movie listings.  When he found the gay adult theater listings he grimaced at the titles.  They were terrible.  Would he have to pick one and ask for it by name?  He just memorized the address and chomped on his sandwich.

When he was done eating, he stopped the _MASH_ tape and rewound it.  He returned it to its exact location in the McPherson box and then spent a good deal of time straightening up the house.  He was nervous.  He felt stupid for even considering going to the theater.  He felt guilty about it.  And he hadn’t even gone anywhere!  But, why hadn’t he got turned on by the straight stuff?  Why was he always thinking of Ken?  Had he always been gay?  Had he gone out with so many girls because he didn’t actually like any of them?  Will didn’t think that was plausible.  He didn’t feel gay.  But, he wasn’t feeling straight at the moment either.  He should just go.  It wouldn’t hurt anything but his pride to find out.

Will went upstairs and changed into ratty jeans, an even rattier T-shirt, and put on a hooded sweatshirt.  He pulled a baseball cap low over his eyes and took with him only his metro card and enough cash to pay for the movie.  He didn’t want to take his ID with him.  But that meant he couldn’t drive the car to the metro station.  It would be better if he took the bus anyway.  He didn’t want to leave any physical trail of evidence of this night behind.  And by now it _was_ night.  He knew he looked pretty sketchy as he boarded the bus with the hood pulled up over his hat, especially since it wasn’t cool enough to really warrant a sweatshirt.  He fiddled with the drawstrings of the sweatshirt.  Just because he was on the bus didn’t mean he had to go.  He could chicken out at any point during this process.  That’s what he kept telling himself for the length of the bus trip and the duration of the metro ride.

It had taken him nearly two hours by the time he got off at the right stop and located the theater.  The neighborhood was so bad he was sure he was going to get mugged any second.  Even still, he wandered up and down the street, looking at the run down building that housed the theater.  Every now and then a man would furtively make his way inside.  Was he really going to do this?  There had to be a better way than this.  But, this would be so easy.  All he had to do was run inside, watch a movie for a couple minutes, and then he would know if it turned him on or grossed him out.  More than likely it would gross him out and this would all be over.  He would be able to laugh about it later.  With himself of course because he would _never_ tell anyone about this.

Will steeled his nerves and walked casually across the street.  Then he walked by the theater like he had nothing to do with it.  He turned around at the corner, calling himself a wuss, and headed back.  This time he managed to go inside.  Like he expected it was very dim inside and the carpet was old and dirty.  There was no concessions stand, no video arcade, but there was a ticket booth with a lone college student reading out of a textbook.  How could a college student work here?  He guessed it was probably like the college girls who stripped to pay their tuition.  Technically, this wasn’t even as bad.  Will walked up to the booth and put his money on the counter, keeping his face mostly hidden by the hood and the angle.  He had a brief moment of panic that the student would ask him for ID, but he simply asked which movie he wanted to see without even looking up.

“Does it really matter?” Will muttered.

The student let out a snort of laughter.  “Good point.”

He took Will’s money and handed him a ticket.  It wasn’t even a real movie ticket.  It was the kind you got at school carnivals when they were having a drawing for door prizes.  And better yet, there was no one even to collect it.  If the student didn’t look up every now then, people could probably wander in and out as they pleased.  He bet more than one person got a free movie whenever this particular attendant was on duty.

The front hall was empty, for which Will was thankful.  He probably shouldn’t go too far into the theater.  The lights were out toward the end of the hall.  He looked at the names on the changeable signs on the doors, but he couldn’t remember the times the movies started.  It would be better if he walked in on the middle of one anyway, then he wouldn’t have to wait any longer than he needed to.  Will reached out a hand for the handle of the nearest door.  He hesitated and then pulled the cuff of his sleeve over his hand so he wouldn’t actually have to touch the door.  He pulled it open a crack and from inside he could hear bad porno music and the grunting and groaning of several men.  Will pushed the door closed.  He made a face.  Come on.  He _had_ to do this.  Did he?  Just the sounds had made him queasy.  Just do it!  He swung the door open wide and stepped inside.  The image on the screen made him stop in mid-stride.  He averted his gaze, but looking at the audience wasn’t any better.  Two guys in the back were making out, a lone guy near the front was shaking too much for him not to be doing something with himself, and Will was pretty certain three guys in the middle were trying to mimic the guys on the screen.  The door didn’t even get all the way closed before Will spun around and darted back outside.

He leaned on the door and felt bile rise in his throat.  Did stuff like that really go on nowadays?  Hadn’t the AIDS scare at the beginning of the 90’s taught people anything?  There was only so much condoms could protect you from.  Will felt his stomach turn and he saw the sign for the bathroom.  He ran inside, afraid he might throw-up in the hall.  He didn’t want to draw any attention to himself.  He stumbled to a sink, too scared to go into a bathroom stall, and spit the caustic fluid out of his mouth.  He took in a breath and then turned on the faucet.  He knew the water wasn’t clean, but he wasn’t going to drink it.  He just needed to rinse out his mouth.  When he was done, he looked around for the towel dispenser.  It was empty.

“Shit.”

Will leaned back on the wall and closed his eyes.  Why had he done this?  He was supposed to be smart.  Why had his brain betrayed him so horribly?  There was a scoffing sound, like bitter laughter.  Will opened his eyes.  There were two men at the far end of the bathroom.  One was zipping his pants up (he was in front of a urinal) and the other was looking at Will with derision.  He was in the same place, how could he possibly feel like he had any moral high ground to stand on?

“What?” Will spat at the man.

“Was it worth it?” he asked.

“Was what worth what?”

“The twenty bucks your friends paid you to venture inside the fag reels.”

Will shook his head.  “What?  No one paid me to come here.  Someone couldn’t pay me _enough_ to come here.”  Will realized he was actually standing in the place he claimed he wouldn’t go to if he were paid.  “Again,” he amended.

“Yeah right, you fucking het.”  He advanced on Will.  “You think it’s funny to come in here and see all the queers humping?”

“No,” Will ground out, edging for the door.

“Oh, of course not.  It’s gross, right?  Stomach churning.  But maybe that’s because you don’t know that you like it.”

Will grabbed the handle of the door as the man grabbed his arm.

“Should I show you how good it can be?”

“Let me go!” Will shouted.  He yanked his arm away from the man and the momentum sent him flying back into the sink.  The porcelain caught him in the lower back, sending a wave of shooting pain down his legs.  Will cried out and leaned against the sink.  There were spots in his vision his back hurt so much.

“Ah, leave him alone,” said the other man finally.  “We’ll get in trouble if he really hurts himself.  He’ll probably scream rape.”

“Yeah, right.  Like I would fuck this little piece of shit.”

The man opened the door and pushed Will outside into the hall.  He fell to the floor because his feet had gotten tripped up underneath him.  The impact made his back hurt even more.

“Well, he actually is really cute,” he heard the other man say.

“No matter how pretty the face or tight the hole, I can’t fuck a homophobe.  Go home, you brat,” he called out as the door shut.

Will lay on the floor, utterly humiliated.  He’d never felt so angry and ashamed in his entire life.  Not even that morning after with Ken was as bad as this.  The college student was looking at him from the ticket booth.  Will felt tears coming.  He was not going to cry on the cruddy floor of some seedy adult theater.  He forced himself to his feet, wincing from the pain in his back.  He was glad it was already subsiding, but it still hurt.  He forced himself to walk out of the theater rather than run.  He could feel the student watching him.  He wanted to turn his head and yell at him to fuck off, but he was too embarrassed to raise his head.  He might never be able to hold his head up again in his life.

Will pushed the theater door open hard and entered the cool night.  It felt good against his flushed skin.  He couldn’t believe what he’d brought on himself.  He couldn’t believe what fortune had dumped on him.  Nothing had been right since last Saturday.  Everything was wrong.  The world was upside down and backwards.  And this night was easily the worst of his life.  Nothing else could possibly be added to this nightmare.  Will started and threw himself against the brick wall of a brownstone.  He was just asking to get mugged with a thought like that.  No one appeared to be around.  And that was even more suspicious.  It wasn’t that late out.  Shouldn’t there be people who lived in this neighborhood around?  Or maybe they were smart enough not to go out at night.  Will took off at a fast trot for the metro station.  By the time he started underground he realized he’d aggravated his back, so he didn’t even bother to sit, he just leaned against a pole wincing with the slight swaying of the train.

Will groaned softly out of pain, but it wasn’t physical pain.  He’d completely humiliated himself, and yet he still didn’t have an answer to his question.  One might think that nearly throwing up at the sight of two—well, three—men having sex would be a pretty strong indication that one wasn’t gay.  But he had been nervous to begin with and probably scared if he allowed himself to admit it.  Quite possibly anything might have set him off.  And if he was going to continue to be honest with himself, he wasn’t worried about being gay in general, he was worried about being gay in particular.

The train pulled into the central hub of the metro system and Will had to get off to change trains.  It wasn’t the same station he’d gotten off at on the day following the accident, but he knew where in relation he was to the one person who might be able to answer his question.  And get him some ice for his back.  Will walked slowly and stiffly up the stairs.  He passed a tipsy couple running to catch the departing train.  Their laughter and shouting echoed off the tunnel walls and Will was glad when he reached topside.  He took a moment to gather his bearings, but then realized he didn’t need to remember his way there.  The high rise condo building was visible just off to his left.  He was in a better part of the city now, but he tried not to look like a lame wildebeest as he made his way through the streets.  No sense in looking like an easier mark than he already was.

When he reached the building he grimaced up the stairs and then stared at the call box.  He didn’t actually know which number his condo was, except that it was on the seventeenth floor.  He glanced to the side and saw the number pad.  He did know the code to get into the building though.  He hadn’t intentionally looked, but the pattern had stuck in his brain.  He punched it in now and the door unlocked.  At the desk inside the lobby were different guards than when he was there last time.  He pushed the hood of his shirt back and stuffed the rolled up bill of his baseball hat into his back pocket so that he didn’t look quite so shady.  The guards looked at him as he came in, clearly suspicious, but since he had known the code, they didn’t try to stop him as he punched the button for the elevator.  All he had to do was look like he belonged there, and mostly likely they would think that he did.  He actually probably fit in as one of the rebellious kids who were always trying to annoy their rich, posh parents.

The elevator ride went ridiculously fast.  And no matter how much he dragged his feet he still found himself standing in front of Ken J. West’s door sometime before the end of the millennium.  He didn’t have to knock.  He could just turn around and go home.  He’d already embarrassed himself enough for one night, was there really any point in piling on to it?  He shifted on his feet and winced as his back reminded him that pride goeth before a fall and he needed some ice.  And besides, it was a Saturday night, he might be out.  Then Will shook his head.  That closeted workaholic?  No way.  He raised his hand, but stopped before knocking.  What if he’d hired another male escort?  What if he was entertaining him right now?  But, surely he would do that in a hotel, and not at his condo, right?  So maybe he wasn’t home.  Will shook his fists in the air and held back a scream.  Just do it or don’t!

He rapped sharply on the door three times.  He turned to leave, and then turned back.  He waited a few seconds.  Should he knock again?  He had knocked loudly already, so he should just leave.  What if he’d been in the shower?  Or sleeping?  Will looked at his watch and the door opened.  He stared at his watch, not seeing the time, afraid to see who had opened the door.  Ken wasn’t necessarily alone.  He could have a boyfriend over.  Or a girlfriend for that matter.  He could even be at the wrong door for all he knew.  He knew it was the middle door on the left, but what if he had punched the wrong number on the elevator?  He thought he had pushed the right—

“Will?”

Will looked at him.  He was wearing olive slacks and a pinkish cotton sweater with three large asymmetrical pinkish brown stripes running across it.  The collar was strange, being wider and pink on the right side and narrower and pinkish brown on the left.  A large red marking covered the right upper breast and shoulder.  It distracted Will from him purpose.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing rudely at the shirt.

“This is an Akai Kuma.”

“A what?”

“Akai Kuma.  It’s a designer label.”

“Well, it’s weird.”

“I think it looks nice.”

“Maybe for someone ten years younger.”

Ken crossed his arms.  “Did you come over just to make fun of my clothes?”

Will met his eyes and he could tell from the softening of Ken’s expression that he must look pitiful.  He hadn’t meant to give him one of his puppy dog expressions, so it must have been real.  He hated it when he couldn’t control what he was emoting.

“No.  I didn’t come here for that.”

“Oh, God.  Did someone else die?”

 _I nearly did_ , Will thought.  “No.  No one died.  I need some ice.”

“Ice?”

“Yeah.  Like, frozen water.  Dihydrogen monoxide in its solid form.  Ice.”

“Um, okay.  So…do you want to come in?”

“May I?” Will sighed.

Ken stepped to the side to allow Will to enter.  He immediately started for the back room.

“I’m gonna use your bathroom, okay?”

“Sure.  Help yourself.”  His tone wasn’t exactly hospitable or welcoming.  “So, this ice, you want it in a glass?”

“No.  A big plastic bag.  Wrapped in a towel.”

Will stripped off his sweatshirt and dropped it on the floor.  Then he went into the bedroom and fumbled on the wall for a light switch.  A tall floor lamp came on in the corner and he could see the bed was made without a single wrinkle marring the bedspread.  Did this guy even sleep?  He went into the bathroom and flipped the light on.  Then he turned his back to the mirror and lifted up his T-shirt.  He grimaced.  A large section on the left side of his lower back was red and swollen.  It was already starting to form a dark bruise.  Will had had enough deep bruises to recognize the signs.  He made a face.  It was going to hurt for several days, but it wouldn’t be too serious.  The only problem would be the amazing Technicolor show his skin would put on over the next couple weeks.  He tromped back out to the main room, leaving the lights on, and found Ken sitting on his couch with his feet propped on the coffee table working on his laptop, which was situated on a tray table over his outstretched legs.  His favorite position.

 _One of many_ , Will thought with a wry smile.  He should be getting upset with himself for thinking something dirty again, but that’s what he was here for, right?  His sweatshirt had been picked up and neatly folded over the back of one of the dining room chairs.  He rounded the corner of the couch and saw a kitchen towel wrapped around what he assumed was a bag of ice.  Will picked it up and sat on the end cushion, leaving the middle one as a buffer zone.  His hat was so deformed from use that he didn’t even feel it when he sat on it.  He put the ice under his shirt and leaned back against it.  The towel was pretty thick, so it would take a while for the cold to start to work.  Ken looked away from his laptop and removed his expensive glasses.  Straight or gay, Will really did think he looked cute in those glasses.  In an endearing way, not an attractive way.

“So, what’s the ice for?”

“Oh, I’ll get to that,” Will muttered.

Ken crossed his arms and settled into the green couch.  “This sounds like it might be interesting.  Go ahead and tell me why you’ve shown up on my doorstep late on a Saturday night.”

“Well, it all starts with my father’s secret stash of—there I go again.  Saying secret stash.  It’s redundant.  Anyway, it actually doesn’t start there.  It starts with Julian’s relatives.”

“Whose relatives?”

“Julian’s.  My best friend.  His parents died last weekend.”

“Oh, yes.  _His_ relatives.”

“Yes.  You see, his parents are—were Wicca and—well, long story short, _his_ parents were disowned by _their_ parents so he’s never even met them.  And now they’ve all flown out here feeling guilty.”

Ken made a disingenuous sympathetic face.  “That’s a shame.”

“Yes, it is.  They were being so controlling and just down right mean sometimes.  It pissed me off.  So, I left him and went home.”

“Wait, you left your best friend with his guilt-ridden, mean, controlling relatives only a week after his parents’ deaths?”

Will raised an eyebrow and gave the man a glare as his jaw jutted out to the side.  “This is not about what _I’ve_ done.  This is about what _you’ve_ done.”

“And what have I done?”

“If you stop interrupting me, you’ll find out that much sooner.”

Ken put his hands in the air in mock surrender.  “Okay, okay.  Get on with it.”  He re-crossed his arms, a hint of a smile on his lips.

Will let out a noise of irritation, but continued.  “So, I go home.  I’m mad and upset and stressed and working myself up over hypothetically wondering who would be around to worry about me if my parents died.”

“I would worry.”

Will felt his face contort into something unpleasant.  It was going to be difficult enough to get this out without Ken making smartass comments after every sentence.  He should just forget it.  He started to get up, but Ken quickly dropped his feet and moved the tray table out of the way.

“Hold on, hold on.  I’m sorry.”  He turned partially to Will and waved a hand for him to sit back down.  “I’ll be quiet.”

Will inhaled deeply, letting his displeasure out with his exhalation.  He settled back on the ice, making a face as the cold had finally penetrated the towel and was now stinging his skin.  If he put up with it for a few more minutes the spot would eventually go numb.

“Yes, be quiet.  You might actually like this next part of the story, being the dirty pervert you are.”

Ken raised an eyebrow but remained quiet.

“So, I’m all upset and worked up.  I decide to relieve a little stress.  I go and find my dad’s porn stash.  I get out a movie and pop it in.”

“What was it called?”

Will gave him look.

“What?  Can’t I ask pertinent questions?”

“ _Mobile Asian Sex House._ It’s a parody of that movie _MASH_.”

Ken fought a smile.  “This is—your dad’s?”

“Yes.”

“Is your mother Asian?”

“No.  Why?”

He shrugged.  “Seems like he likes Asians.  And you look kind of Asian.”

“How many Asians do you know with green eyes?”

“Well, it’s more the shape of your face and the color of your hair.”

“Okay, can we stay focused, please?”

“Yes, sorry.  Your dad’s into Asian porn.  On it.  This is—straight porn?”

“Yes!”

“I just meant it could be girl on girl.”

“Well, it’s guy on girl.  Several guys on girl.  But,” Will shook his head and waved his arms, “that’s not important!  The point is, I like it.  Or used to.  Or.  Fuck.  Okay, so I turn it on, right?”

Ken settled back against the arm of his couch and smiled.  “What were you wearing?”

“Boxers and a T-shirt.”  Will blushed.  “Wha—shut-up!  You don’t need to know that!”

“You’re the one who said I’m a dirty pervert.”

Will clenched his hands into fists and shifted against the cold of the ice.  “I turn it on and start watching.  But, I don’t get turned on.  I even fast forwarded to the best scene in the movie, and nothing.”

“Uh-huh,” Ken said.

“And, you see where this is going?  I went upstairs and tried to do it on my own, but it’s not moving at all.  So, do you see how this is your fault?”

“I’ve made you so insecure that you’re scared of sex right now and can’t respond?”

“I—” Will stopped.  “I didn’t think of that.”

“So, what _did_ you think of?”

Will didn’t want to say now.  Ken’s explanation was much more reasonable.  “I thought you’d turned me gay.”

Ken stared at him.  And continued to stare at him.  And then he burst out laughing.  He laughed so hard he had to hold his stomach and even wipe a stray tear from one eye.  Will ground his teeth, enduring even more embarrassment on an already crappy night.  And he hadn’t even gotten to the bad part yet.  Ken struggled to catch his breath and contain his laughter.  He managed to get an apology out between giggles.  Then he calmed down enough to put on a faux serious face.

“Okay.  So, I turned you gay.  I apologize.  Dare I ask what the ice is for?”

Will looked away from him.  He looked at the candy dish on the coffee table.  There was something different in it this time.

“I was worried that I might be gay.”  It sounded so silly when he said it aloud.  “So, I thought I should look at some…stuff of that persuasion to check.  I didn’t want to wait to download it, and since I’m not eighteen, it would be hard for me to buy or rent any.  So, I thought I’d go to the adult theater because I heard that they don’t check ID.”

Will heard Ken sit up and when he spoke his voice had a more serious tone.

“You went to the Pink Poodle?”

Will didn’t even know if that’s what it was called.  “I guess.  The one over on Bonfoy.”

Ken suppressed a noise.  “Go on.”

Still staring at the candy dish, Will continued.  “So, I went inside and went to see a movie.  I just picked one at random and it was right in the middle of—well, of some really gross stuff.  And these guys in the theater were making out and having sex.  I mean, don’t people know better nowadays?”

“One would think.”

Will shook his head, feeling angry and embarrassed again to remember it.  “So, I ran for the bathroom because I felt sick.”

“You went into the bathroom?”  Ken sounded worried.

“Yeah.  And there were these guys in there.  And they made fun of me and yelled at me.  They thought I went there on a dare from some friends.”

There was movement on the couch and Will looked up.  He was surprised to find that Ken had moved much closer to him.  He put a hand on his shoulder.

“What did they do to you?  Are you okay?  Should we go to a hospital?  I know you might be embarrassed, but—”

“What?  No.  No, it’s not like that.  What, you were worried they did to me what you did?”

Ken sat back and removed his hand.  He looked like he’d been slapped and Will regretted saying it.  He had wanted to hurt him, but now he didn’t know why he had.

“Sorry,” Will mumbled.

“No.  I deserve that.”

Will didn’t think he really did, but he wasn’t going to admit it.  “I was just upset by being there and scared when he yelled at me.  He grabbed my arm and I jerked away from him so hard that I fell into a sink.  That’s how I hurt my back.  It’s only a bruise.  It’s not serious.  But then, he threw me on the ground and said some things.  It was just embarrassing.  Humiliating, actually.  I still feel like—God, there aren’t even words.”

Ken was quiet for so long Will didn’t know if he was waiting for him to say something again or what.  Then he said, “I’m so sorry, Will.  This is all my fault.  Everything.  From hurting you the first time to teasing you and making you confused and scared.  I don’t know what I could possibly do to make this all up to you, but you name it, and I’ll do it.  If it’s within my power, I’ll do it for you.”

Will took in a breath and focused on the red symbol on Ken’s shirt.  He couldn’t ask this while looking him in the face.  He had a hard time asking it in general and mumbled his request inaudibly.  Ken leaned forward slightly.

“What was that?”

“Kiss me,” Will said softly.  From the tense silence that followed he knew that Ken had heard him.

“What?  Why would—”

“Because if you kiss me and I like it, then I’ll know.  Or I mean, if I don’t like it, then I’ll know that I was just being paranoid.  And I’m fine.”

“Will, kissing is kind of gender neutral.  As long as you have your eyes closed, you could fool yourself into thinking about anything or anyone.  And what if you are gay, but you don’t like me, so you don’t like my kiss, and you go on thinking you’re straight?  Or, what if you are straight, but you like me, so the kiss doesn’t bother you much and you interpret that to mean you’re gay?  Look, being gay or straight, it’s kind of something that you just _know_ , okay?  And I’m sure you know what you are already.  You were just having trouble this afternoon because you’re a little emotionally traumatized right now.  Give it some time and I’m sure you’ll be back to normal in no time.”

Will remained focused on the red character.  “So, you don’t want to kiss me?”

“Well, I…”

“You do, right?  So why are you turning down an opportunity like this?  I’m in perfect control of my faculties and giving you consent.”

Ken was quiet for a long minute.  “Do you know what you’re asking me to do?”

“Well aware.  So do it already.  I guarantee you this is a one time thing.”

Will stiffened as the couch shifted as Ken scooted forward.  His arm slid across the back of the couch and he leaned in close to the nervous teenager.

“You don’t really want me to do this,” Ken murmured.

Will looked up and defiantly met his eyes.  “Are you going to do it or not?”

Will’s breath caught in his throat as Ken ran his fingertips softly down the line of his jaw.  When they reached his chin, Ken tilted his head up a little.  Will closed his eyes, afraid to watch or see it coming.  He felt the warmth of Ken’s lips before they came into contact with his own.  Then their lips pressed gently together, barely touching, but opening a fraction and then closing again.  Ken’s tongue ran along Will’s upper lip, and then his lower.  Then he pushed just the tip past the soft barrier.  He pulled it back and gave Will a slightly harder kiss.  Will opened up to him.  His tongue delved in as far as it could go, tasting every corner of his mouth, tracing his teeth, and teasing his tongue.  Then he pulled back just enough to whisper, his lips brushing Will’s with each word: “Give me your tongue, Will.”

He pushed back into his mouth, and Will felt like he couldn’t disobey.  Shouldn’t disobey.  He tentatively pushed back on Ken’s tongue and the strong, warm muscles slid against each other, sparking a current of heat to run through every nerve in his body.  He tried to hold back the noise, but it escaped into Ken’s mouth and the older man swallowed the sound.  Will felt Ken’s hands at his waist as he pushed their lips harder together.  Will fought back.  He wasn’t going to be simply pushed over like last time.  He was good at this too.

He was too busy concentrating on lapping the inside of Ken’s mouth, which tasted of wine and chocolate, to notice when Ken’s hands moved.  He also didn’t feel the hand on the numb spot on his back (under his shirt) pulling him forward.  But he did feel the hand under his knee that swung his leg to the side of the couch.  Will’s hands were tangled in Ken’s hair, holding them tightly together.  He knew that during kissing, occasionally it was necessary for lips to come apart a little bit, but he hated it.  He hated not feeling them joined, so he held him close.  And then they were even closer.

Ken was leaning in between his legs.  One of his hands was running up and down Will’s thigh and the other was sliding around from his back to explore his abs.  His fingers were cold from touching his back and when Will felt them on his warm skin, he arched into the feeling.  Their groins collided and they both groaned, feeling the other’s pleasure hum across their lips.  And it was obvious Will’s problem had been solved.

Will yanked back hard on Ken’s hair and kicked against the couch.  Ken let out an exclamation of surprised pain and Will had pushed himself practically onto the couch arm.  He continued to struggle away and felt anger wash away anything else he might have been feeling.

“Jesus Christ!  I said ‘kiss me’ not ‘fuck me!’”

Will struggled some more and fell off the arm and onto the floor.  He landed on his back and let out a string of swear words.  The impact had stunned him more than hurt him, so he was relieved that his back hadn’t been seriously injured at the theater.  He opened his eyes and saw Ken pull himself up onto the arm rest to look down at him.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Will ground out.

He struggled to sit up and pulled his knees up.  He rested one arm on his knee and put his head in his hand.  He heard Ken slide off the couch.

“Get up,” the man said.

Will froze.  What was he going to do?  Was he going to take him into the bedroom and make him finish what he’d started?  Would he even make it to the bedroom?  What if he just threw him on top of the table and had at him?  What would Will do if that happened?  He would struggle of course.  But how hard?  And for how long?  How long would it be before Will gave in, and _really_ let Ken…in?

“Will.”

Will turned his head slowly toward Ken.  He didn’t sound happy at all.  Would he be extra rough because of it?  Then he saw Ken holding his sweatshirt out to him.

“Come on.  Get up.  I’m taking you home.”

“Huh?”

“It’s late.  The metro will stop running soon.  And even if you make the last train, the buses will have stopped their routes long ago.  How will you get home?  I take it you don’t have your own car, right?”

“But, but—”

“But what?”

“Aren’t you going to—”

Will cut off.  _Shut-up_ , he warned himself.  He used the couch as support to get to his feet.  He took a couple steps forward and took the sweatshirt from Ken.  He looked him in the face and Ken shook his head slightly.

“No.  I’m not going to.”

There was more than a little regret in his eyes.  Will tried not to blush under his stare.  He didn’t succeed, but maybe it didn’t show.  Ken grabbed a set of keys from off the kitchen island and opened the door leading to the hallway.  Will slunk into the corridor, feeling like a scolded child.  The sheer amount of stupidity and lack of rational thinking he’d accomplished this night was astronomical.  Their relationship had started off with Ken as the bad guy, but Will had a sneaking suspicion that he was now just a pest and a reminder of something Ken would rather forget.  He shouldn’t bother him anymore.

In the parking garage Will headed for the silver Lexus, but Ken walked past it to a blue BMW Z4 Roadster.  Will’s jaw dropped.

“Are you kidding me?  There’s a third car?”

“Yeah.  I grabbed these keys by mistake.  Just get in.”

He sounded tired and irritated.  He got into the car and slammed the door shut.  Will purposefully walked slowly to the passenger side.  There was no reason for him to be so snippy.  He was barely seated with the door closed when Ken backed out of the space.  Will hurriedly put his seatbelt on and the Roadster pulled onto the empty city streets.  It was pretty dead for a Saturday night at…Will looked at his watch: 2:12 a.m.  He raised his eyebrows.  When had it gotten so late?  How long had he spent pacing the street in front of the theater before going in?  No wonder Ken was tired.

“Did you get up early?” Will asked.

Ken was staring intently out the windshield, concentrating on his driving and worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.  Will thought he was being ignored, and then Ken seemed to realize that he’d heard something.

“Did you say something?”

“I asked if you had gotten up early this morning.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  I did.  I had work to do.”

“You worked last Saturday too.”

The man shrugged.  “I’m a busy guy.”

“I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have come over.”

“No, I’m glad you did.  Please don’t ever do anything that stupid again.  I want you to know that you can come over whenever you want.  Whenever you need help.  But, try to do it _before_ you nearly get yourself raped in an adult theater.”

“I wasn’t—and why is it okay that I come over?  Why do you want to help me?  I’m a virtual stranger.  Is it guilt?  You shouldn’t help people out of guilt.  That would make you as bad as Julian’s relatives.”

“Ah, well, maybe there is a twinge of guilt in there.  But the honest truth is that I like you.  You’re cute.  And funny.  And a total study in functioning mental cases.”

“What?!  I am _not_ a mental case.”

“Uh-huh.  Because most teenaged boys look to their male rapist for guidance and support.”

“That’s not what I think of you as.”

“No?”

Will felt something close around his throat.  He turned in his seat and pressed his forehead to the cold glass.  Did he really not see Ken as a rapist?  No, of course not.  Not an intentional one.  Not one at all.  He was totally developing Stockholm Syndrome.

“And I also like you to come over so that I can hear great stories about how you masturbate to Asian porn.  And that you wear clothes when you do it.  That’s strange.”

“What?!  Shut-up!  Why do you always have to bring stuff like that up!  And it’s not strange to wear clothes when you do it.  How do _you_ do it?”

Ken opened his mouth.

“Wait.  Don’t tell me.”

“But, you asked.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Even if you’re not interested in it out of mere curiosity for what I personally do, you’re still cerebrally interested in the different ways men do it.”

“I am _so_ not.”  He was a little.

They argued about this for most of the way to Will’s house.  And Will recognized it for it was.  Ken was always saving him from his scarier thoughts.  He didn’t force him to hash out his feelings for the older man.  Ken could tell when the subject got too personal, too painful for Will to deal with, so he would give him something else to talk about.  Something else to focus on.  How did he know him so well?

As they pulled into Will’s neighborhood, the teenager was peeved enough from their conversation that he no longer felt bad for just dropping in unannounced.  And even though he was grateful the subject had been changed from Will’s thoughts on their relationship, he still didn’t know why Ken had to be so frickin’ irritating.

“You know, you said that people just know if they’re straight or gay.  And I kinda think I do know.  But obviously, there is some evidence to the contrary.  And there’s only one way to solve this problem.”

“And what’s that?”

“I need to study this scientifically.  I need to observe the actions and mannerisms and feelings of a real live homosexual.  Now, obviously I don’t want to try to go find a random one, so I’ll just have to use you.  I believe after a couple weeks of surveillance and careful monitoring I will be able to tell what it is exactly that makes you gay.”

“Uh, I think it’s the part that likes to have sex with men.”

They pulled onto Will’s street (Ken hadn’t needed a single direction or reminder on how to get there) and Will glanced sidelong at him.

“We shall see.”

The Roadster made a smooth entry into the Harders’ driveway.  Ken put the car in park and sat back in his seat.

“You waiting on something?” Will asked.

“Well, I just figured it would probably be awhile before you got out of the car.”

“Ha, ha.  Shut it.  I’m serious about observing you.  I think it will help to categorically classify your life.  That way I’ll have something to compare myself to.  I expect to find that they will differ quite a bit.”

“Uh-huh.”  Ken yawned.  He covered it with a hand.  Will was worried he might be too tired to drive back.  But he couldn’t bring himself to ask if he wanted to spend the night in a guest room.  He couldn’t even offer him a cup of coffee.

“Don’t worry,” Ken reassured him.  “I’ll be fine.”

“How did—”

Will stopped and looked away.  Ken saved him again.

“So, I guess this _won’t_ be the last time we see each other then, huh?”

“No.  I expect to commence with my observations sometime next week.”

“Ah.  Too bad.  No kiss goodbye this time.”

He smiled at Will, half friendly joking, half flirtatious teasing.  Will didn’t let the words filter through his brain, afraid that it would prevent him from saying them.

“We’re still saying goodbye though.”

Ken looked surprised for a moment, and then he leaned forward and held Will’s face with his hands.  He brought their lips together, but instead of kissing him he said, “You’re almost mine.”  Then there was a very prolonged and very wet kiss.  Will didn’t do much to participate, but he enjoyed the sensation of being devoured by Ken.  When the man pulled back Will put on his most unpleasant scowl.

“I think you misinterpreted my sentence.”  Backpedal, backpedal, backpedal.

“Did I?  I apologize.  You can write that down in your lab notebook.”

“I think I will.”

Will raised a hand and barely let his fingertips come in contact with skin as he ran them down Ken’s jaw.  His beard had started to grow in.  He had probably shaved that morning, and now already had scruff coming in.  Will was certain his own face was as smooth as if he had just shaved.

“Drive carefully,” Will said softly.

Ken smiled, clearly happy that Will was showing concern for his wellbeing.  “I will.”  He kissed him.  “Goodnight.”

Will got out of the car without answering him.  He stumbled in a daze to his front door.  Not in a lust-addled stupor, but in genuine perturbation.  He didn’t know who he was anymore or what he was doing or if he was doing it on purpose or subconsciously or defensively.  He knew he was going to see Ken again, but he was never more certain about anything in his life that he definitely should not.


	4. Chapter 4

Saturday May 21, 2005

 

Will

 

The door to 1703 swung open and Will made sure he had on his most disarming smile.  Ken was already becoming immune to his charms after just two weeks.  He simply leaned his weight on the doorknob and said, “Oh.  You.”

“Yes, me,” Will said barging right in.  He dropped his messenger bag to his left just off the tile of the kitchen floor and slung his cotton jacket off to the right.  It hit one of the dining room chairs, clung desperately to it for a second, and then slipped to the carpet.  Will was normally a very neat person and hated messes, especially when he was the cause of them, but it was fun to irritate Ken.  The man hadn’t closed the door yet, but he eyed the crumpled garment on the floor like an untrustworthy whore.

“You know,” said Ken, “while I just _love_ these little visits of ours, now’s not a good time.  I was about to head out.  I’ve got plans.”

Will headed directly for the coffee table with the candy dish.  It was never empty.  “No, you don’t,” he said, unwrapping a raspberry flavored chocolate.

“Actually, yes, today I do.  Unlikely as that may seem.”

Will looked at Ken.  He was wearing brown dress pants with a white tailored shirt that wasn’t quite white, but had a bluish tint to it.  A pattern of muted green vines wound its way around on the fabric.  He was clean shaven and had his short brown hair pulled out of its businessman shape; it was as mussed up as hair as short as his could be.  His Gold-Toe socks poked out from under the pants.

Will smiled at Ken.  “No, you don’t.”

Ken let out a noise and shut the door.  “Fine, I don’t.  But that doesn’t mean I necessarily want you here.”  He grabbed Will’s bag and stomped over to the dining area.  He picked up the jacket and neatly put both it and the bag on a chair.

“It’s too warm today for a jacket,” Ken observed.

“Is it?” Will asked innocently.  He licked the remnants of the chocolate off his fingers.

Ken looked at him with consternation.  He put his hands on his hips.  “Okay.  We’ve established on more than one occasion that I have no life, so that explains me.  But why are _you_ here?”

“My parents are out of town.  My friends are busy.  The last date I went on with my ex-girlfriend has convinced me that I can’t do it again in good conscience.  She’s still totally in love with me and while I do find her extremely attractive, I just don’t feel that way about her.  And if I continued to go out with her, I’d just be leading her on.”

“Fascinating, really,” Ken said flatly, “but why are you _here_?”

Will turned his back on him and examined the candy dish again.  Which one should he try next?

“Well obviously I’m here because I have no one else to entertain me.  So, you do it.”

Will jumped a little when he felt the strong hand slide across his abdomen.  Ken hadn’t gone for the stomach; he’d purposely gone lower, his thumb slipping in between the opening made by Will’s low slung jeans and tailored-fit T-shirt.  The light pressure on his abdomen was enough to pull him flush against Ken’s body.  He turned his head a little to the left and felt Ken’s chin even with his temple.  Ken really was a tall man.

“Is that a proposition?” Ken asked.

His voice moved slowly, like honey, sliding and dripping over Will’s body evoking a strange, almost painful frisson.  Ken’s thumb skimmed lightly along the taut skin of his lower abs.  He leaned his head back against Ken’s shoulder and met his eyes.  The deep blue of his irises was much darker than usual.  Will parted his lips, well aware of the invite he was imparting.  Ken let out a soft, strangled sound and started to lean down.

“Absolutely not,” Will snapped.  He extracted himself from Ken’s arms and plopped down on the green couch.  He found it rather admirable that he didn’t gloat and watch Ken try to pull himself together.  Though his victory was somewhat lessened by the fact that he had gotten a little excited himself.  Gross.

Ken walked to his favorite end of the couch and set himself up with his beloved laptop.  He removed his glasses from where they hung on the second button of his shirt and slipped them on.  He picked up a file from the end table and opened it.  Will watched him read the file and then pull up an Excel spreadsheet.  Will scowled.  He was being ignored.  He waited a few minutes for Ken to start talking to him, like he always did.  For some reason Will had it in his head that serious-minded businessmen were taciturn; Ken, however, could almost be classified as a chatterbox.  And it wasn’t because he hated silence, it was just because he enjoyed talking.  He was almost as bad as Scott.  But he remained silent and focused on his work.

Will toed his shoes off and put one foot on the couch.  He could push him with the little messes he made, but there were absolutely _no_ shoed feet on the furniture.  He tugged gently on the end of his sock and watched Ken.  The man continued to work and made no comments about being stared at.  Will repressed a sigh.  He couldn’t do his research if his subject kept acting like a normal workaholic CEO.

“So,” Will made his first attempt, “why do you always have so much work to do?”

“Because I’m very busy and important,” Ken said.  He ran his finger over the mouse pad and clicked the left button a couple times.  Then he checked the report.  He obviously wasn’t going to explain himself.

“But,” Will made his second attempt, “aren’t you _really_ high up?  Isn’t that one of the benefits?  Getting paid more and working less?”

“I suppose I could rest easy being pretty certain that my father will never fire me, but that would be irresponsible.”  Ken adjusted his glasses and then typed something on the computer.

Will ran his tongue over his teeth in annoyance.  He had to get him to react somehow.  He readied his third attempt.  “There is a difference between being responsible and micromanaging.”

Ken slapped a hand on the keyboard and looked at Will.  “I do _not_ micromanage.”

“Ooo.  Looks like I hit a nerve.”

Ken let out a noise that was akin to a growl.  “Why are you always here?” he snapped.

“I’ve told you.  I need to observe the homosexual in his natural environment.  But you never go to clubs or the gym.  I bet you don’t even know when the parade is.”

Ken fake laughed and then took his glasses off.  “Look.  You’ve come here almost every day for the past two weeks, and since I’m usually not home yet, you just hang outside my door.  I’m sure my neighbors have noticed.  They must think it’s pretty sketchy.”

“So what?” Will said defensively, “Are you saying you don’t want me to come over anymore?  I don’t believe that,” he scoffed.

Ken’s eyes narrowed slightly and then he moved his laptop aside.  He stood up and walked toward the kitchen without answering.  Will felt a little distress.  Ken wasn’t acting like his usual self today.  He really did seem irritated and tired of him.  Maybe he really did want Will to go away and never come back.  Maybe he was tired of playing mentor.  But so what?  Why should Will care if he was told to go away and never come back?  Because that would mean that Ken really didn’t care about him and was just humoring him.  And that was insulting.  But really, Will would miss coming over to talk with him.  Their conversations together were different from the ones he had with his friends.  Honestly, they were more intellectual and focused.  When they talked, they usually had a point.  Not that Will didn’t enjoy being with his friends and talking about nothing and everything with them.  But, it was nice to have a conversation with someone when he didn’t have to carefully choose his words or be accused of making some up.  Ken’s vocabulary was on par with his.  He didn’t want to give that up.

He’d looked at his fidgeting fingers while he’d been thinking, so he didn’t notice Ken’s return until he sat beside him on the couch.  Will looked up and Ken held a fist in front of his face.  He opened his hand and a key dangled from his fingers.  Will’s eyes followed the object back and forth as it swung gently.  He took it and looked it over, and then glanced at Ken.

“What’s this?”

“A key to the apartment.  So you can let yourself in rather than making the neighbors curious by loitering around in the hallway.”

Will wasn’t quite sure what to say, or even what to think, but Ken continued.

“That way you can come in after school and get your homework done while you wait for me.  Or I noticed you often have a laptop with you.  I have a wireless connection, so you could use that.  Also, I could use a plant/fish-sitter.  I’ll actually be going on a business trip next week, so it would be really helpful if you could come in and water the plants and feed the fish while I’m gone.  I’d pay you of course.  Since your study subject won’t be here.”

He smiled sardonically.  Will understood that the intention behind the gift was innocent in nature, but it _was_ rather suggestive.  He played with the key and eyeballed Ken, wondering if any other reasons had crossed his mind.

“Well,” Will said, “that doesn’t make sense.  Plants and fish are nothing.  They’re a once a day kind of thing if not every other day.  It would seem more likely that you would just ask a neighbor to do that.  It would be even more suspicious to give a key to some kid for a reason like that.”

“Oh.  Well.”  Ken had an expression of melancholic acceptance.  He didn’t look hurt exactly, but like he’d expected to be turned down.  He reached out to take the key back, but Will closed his hand around it and moved it away from his reach.

“So,” Will said, opening his hand and flipping the key from side to side with his index finger, “that just means you need to have a better reason for me to housesit.  Something inconvenient that would require someone to come over two or three times a day.”

Ken raised an eyebrow and narrowed an eye.  “Like what?”

 

Will ran his fingers lightly over the steel bars as he walked slowly by the row of cages.  At the third cage, a black and white kitten jumped after his fingers.  He smiled and stopped to play with it through the bars.  It batted at his fingers and tried to nibble on them.  He glanced over his shoulder at Ken, who was still standing with his arms crossed over his chest and had a very sour expression on his face.  Will shook his head and looked back at the kitten.  It was rising up and down on its front legs, trying to determine how best to get at his fingers.

“Come on,” Will said.  “We came all this way.  The least you can do is look at them.”

“Yes, you did manage to convince me to come down to the pet store with you, but you haven’t convinced me yet that I want to get a pet.  A high maintenance pet.  It’s really not a good idea.”  Ken edged forward carefully and peeked into the cages of kittens jumping, lying, and sleeping on top of each other.  “You know how busy I am.  I forget to feed my fish a lot of the time.  I’ll just neglect it.”

“But that’s because the fish don’t run up to you when you get home and snuggle with you on the couch.”  Will undid the latch of the cage and pulled out the black and white kitten.  He could hold it in one hand.  He watched Ken look down uncertainly at the black and white’s litter mates.  A fluffy black one with white-tipped ears mewled at him.  Will bit his lower lip to keep from laughing at Ken’s expression.  He clearly thought the thing was adorable, but was panicked by the realization.

“You’re crumbling,” Will said in a sing-song voice.

He held out the kitten in his hands to Ken.  He shook his head and resolutely held his ground.

“Absolutely not.  The black hair will get on light clothing and the white hair will get on dark clothing.  I’ll never be able to go out in public again.”

Will rolled his eyes.  “Maybe so, but I doubt it would be because of the cat hair.”  He put the kitten back in its cage and moved on to the next pen.  He pulled out a grey tabby and an orange tabby.

“It’s the hair,” Ken was saying as he put a finger to a bar and watched a kitten attack it.  “I don’t want hair everywhere.  You know how clean I am.  There are some dogs that don’t shed, but all cats do.”

“Yes, but dogs are so needy.”

“Like cats aren’t.  They’re just as needy only they don’t show you how much they appreciate it.  If they appreciate it at all.  What are those cats called with no hair?”

“I think it’s a Sphynx.  How about one of these?”

Ken glanced at the kittens squirming in Will’s arms.

“Well, at least pick a pretty one.”

“Ugh!  Geez.  Calling a cute, little kitten ugly.  Then _you_ pick one.”

“But, I don’t really want one,” Ken said, rubbing the kitten who had attacked his finger on the bridge of its nose.  It pressed against the bars, trying to get closer to him.  Will put the grey tabby back in its pen and petted the orange one as he watched Ken open the latch on the cage.  He smiled but didn’t comment as the reluctant pet owner picked up the snow white kitten and held it in front of his face.  It cried out in its soft kitten voice and gently bit Ken on the nose and then licked the spot.  Ken pulled the thing back and stared at it.  Will knew Ken had just picked out his new kitten.

“You’re in love, aren’t you?” Will asked playfully.

Ken glanced over at Will and then back at the kitten.  “Yeah, I am,” he murmured.  He brought the kitten to his chest and smiled as it snuggled against him.  Will put the kitten he’d been holding back into the cage and closed the door.  He was a little sad to be leaving that one, but it was better if Ken picked out a kitten that he liked best.  He walked over and scratched its head.

“I’ll go get the lady so we can get her.”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” Ken asked.

Will shrugged.  “It just looks like one.  Here.”  He took the kitten from Ken and gently turned it on its back.  He splayed its hind legs open and then displayed her to Ken.  “It’s a girl.  And a good thing too.  Now you won’t be tempted to molest her.”

Ken took the kitten back and made a face at Will.  “Ha, ha.  Just hurry up before I change my mind.”

 

Will wondered why Ken took such care to try to sneak the kitten back into his apartment.  He’d said that his building allowed them to have cats and dogs, but he’d told Will to be as discreet as possible with the carrier cage as they walked past the unobservant guards to the elevators.  The kitten gave them away with a high-pitched mewl just as the doors were closing.  On his floor, no one was in the hall.  He walked swiftly to his door and opened it, waving at Will to walk faster.

“What’s the big deal?” Will asked once he was practically dragged inside with the door slammed shut behind him.  “I thought you were allowed to have pets.”

“We are.  I just.”  Ken put the other kitten paraphernalia they (well, _he_ ) had bought at the store on the kitchen island.  “I just don’t want people to know I have one because then they’ll want to talk to me about it.”

Will opened the box and took out the kitten.  She wasn’t happy.  “Okay, I knew you were a little off, but I didn’t know you were _that_ asocial.”

“I’m not.  What I mean is that my neighbor across the hall has been asking me out since the day I moved in.  I just don’t want to give her another excuse to come over and bug me.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Who?”

“The neighbor!”

“Oh.  Yeah, I guess.  But, I’m not attracted to her.”

“That’s not what I asked.  I asked if she was pretty.  Because if you don’t want her, maybe I could distract her for you.  It might be fun to try an older woman.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Ken carried the litter box and twenty pound container of kitty litter into the utility room.  Will followed him with the kitten.  He watched as Ken set up a little area for his new roommate and then followed him back into the kitchen.  He had bought one of those rubber trays to sit on the floor (which Will said was ugly, but Ken insisted on) and then put the food and water bowls on it.  The tray and the dishes were green.  The kitten was settled snugly in the crook of Will’s arm and trying to take a nap.

“Why am I the one doing all this?” Ken asked plaintively.  He put the bag of kitten chow in his pantry, next to an expensive bottle of wine.  “You’re the one who wanted it.  You should be doing this.”

“But, it’s not like I’m your kid or anything,” Will said, heading for the bathroom.  “I didn’t promise to take care of it if you would just buy it for me.”

“Well, you sort of did.”  Ken’s voice was muffled; he was still in the other room.  “Where are you going?  I don’t want her in the bedroom.”

“I’m going to give her a bath.”

“What?!”

Ken was in the bathroom before he even had the chance to turn on the sink faucet.

“Don’t get cat hair caught in my drain.”

“Not that much is going to come out and she needs one.  She’s dirty from being in that communal cage.  Go get the kitten shampoo we bought.”

“We?” Ken grumbled but did as he was told.

Will tested the temperature of the water and then put the kitten in the sink.  She cried out in distress and betrayal.  Ken returned with the shampoo.

“You know, you’re right.  You’re not my kid.  So, promising to take care of her isn’t what you should offer me.”

“What do you mean?”  Will squeezed a little too much shampoo into his hand and then slathered it on the kitten.  He worked it into her fur and Ken had to put out a hand to prevent her from escaping the sink.

“I just meant, this is more akin to a gift from a sugar daddy,” he laughed.

“Oh please,” Will groaned.  “That is so lame.”  He held the kitten under the gentle stream of water and worked the soap and bubbles out of her fur.  She’d given up crying, but her eyes were still wide open and searching for escape routes.  “It’s _so_ not the same thing because you will _not_ be getting any sex from me.”

“Oh, no?”

Ken slid his hand across Will’s stomach, knowing full well that Will was unable to stop him because of the frantic, sopping wet kitten in his hands.  Three fingers had made it under his shirt.  Will squirmed a little under his touch, but that caused him to rub against Ken.  He stopped moving altogether and tried not to react to the hand sliding back across his skin.  And then Ken stepped away from him.  He opened a cabinet and pulled out a small white towel.

“Use this to dry her off,” he said, dropping the towel on Will’s head.  Then he left the bathroom.  Will muttered to himself as he finished rinsing off the kitten and then gently squeezed as much water out of her as he could.  He enveloped her in the fluffy, white towel and considered using the blow dryer on her, but she was probably already traumatized enough.  He bundled her up in his arms and walked back into the main room.  Ken was just setting himself up with his laptop in his corner of the couch.

“Stop!” Will demanded.  “Put the computer away.”

“Why?”  Ken had his glasses on and Will smiled despite himself.

“You have to bond.”

“Bond?  But, she’s _your_ kitten.”

“No, she’s _yours_.  Put that away.”

Ken made a face but moved his laptop to the side and removed his glasses.  Will walked around the side of the couch and past his usual cushion.  He sat at the end of the buffer zone, almost on Ken’s cushion.  He’d already taken his shoes off and sat cross-legged on the couch with the kitten in his lap.  Ken put out a hand and petted her wet head.  She mewled pitifully at him.  They laughed softly at her.  Will turned a little to settle back against the couch.  He could feel the outline of Ken’s body beside his.  He wondered if Ken was just as aware of him.

“So,” Will said, rubbing the towel over her, “what’s her name?”

“Joyce Greene.”

Will tried to hold back his scoff of distaste.  He only partially succeeded.  “Okay.  I know you have a hard on for the color green, but what’s with Joyce?”  Will pointed a finger at him.  “Is that your mother’s name?  Just how gay are you?  And don’t be afraid to tell me.  I’m an impartial scientific observer.”

Ken gave him a sarcastic smile and grabbed his finger.  He lowered it to Will’s lap and then rubbed Joyce Greene under her chin.

“My mother’s name is Carol.  I picked the name Joyce Greene because my favorite authors are James Joyce and Graham Greene.”

“Ohhh.  There’s an ‘e’ at the end of Greene.”

“Yes.  And what do you mean I have a hard on for green?”

Will waved his hand to the side.  “Look around you.  You have green everywhere.”

“So?  It’s my favorite color.  Lots of people decorate using one color as a theme.”

“Yeah, but, with you it’s just…”

“What?  You think I get hard every time I look in your eyes?”

Will tried so hard.  He really did.  But he couldn’t stop himself from looking away from the kitten to meet Ken’s eyes.  Ken was leaning on his arm on the back of the couch and smiling at him.  Will felt himself blushing and couldn’t look away.  Ken’s smile widened.

“I guess it’s a good thing she’s in your lap and not mine.”

“Uh!”  Will looked away.  “Shut-up.  That’s gross.  And you’re not really…I can tell.”

“Were you looking?”

“No!  And that’s a crap name.  She needs a better one.”

“Well, it’s not negotiable.”

Will pouted and shifted on the couch.  He rubbed the kitten vigorously and then tossed the towel onto the coffee table.  Joyce Greene’s fur was clumped together and sticking out at wild angles.  It would be a little while before she started looking like a feline again.  It wasn’t often that the silence between Will and Ken was awkward, but it was now.

“So,” Ken said, “I guess school must be winding down now, huh?”

Will shrugged.  “Not really.”

“Which prep school do you go to again?”

“Calverton.”

“Calverton.  Right.  It’s not one of those weird no-homework-let-kids-grade-themselves schools, is it?”

“No.  Of course not.  Why would you think that?”

“Because you’ve been over here everyday after school until pretty late.  And I doubt you feel like doing homework when you get home.  And even if you do, you don’t have time to study.”

Will waved a hand dismissively in the air.  “I don’t need to study.  And I usually do my homework during class.  Because I don’t have to pay attention.”

“Ah, so Calverton is one of those as long as you pay the tuition you can stay in school schools.”

“What?  No.  I have a 4.8.”

“Out of what?  Ten?”

“No, out of a 4.0”

“How is that possible?”

“Because AP classes are weighted.  I would have a 5.0, but my language class won’t be weighted until next year.”

“Unh-hunh.  So, you don’t study, you don’t pay attention in class because you’re doing your homework.  Does this school have low standards?”

“Geez.  Why do you keep blaming the school?  It’s me.  I’m a genius.”

“Ah!”  Ken clapped his hands together.  “You know, there is this _one_ quality about you that despite my better judgment keeps me pining after you.  But until now, I couldn’t put my finger on it.”  Ken raised a hand and tapped Will’s nose with his finger.  “It’s your modesty.”

Will slapped his hand away.  “You are so funny.  And haven’t you ever heard the line ‘it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true?’”

“Yes, I believe Cassius Clay said that.”

“No.  It was Muhammad Ali,” Will said in a voice that made it obvious he was glad he knew something the “grown up” didn’t.

“Um, Cassius Clay is Muhammad Ali.  He changed his name when he converted to Islam.”

“Oh.  Well, whatever.  There you go.”

“So, you’re saying you’re a genius?”

“Well, I have an IQ of 174.”

Ken’s eyebrows shot up.  “You are remarkably well adjusted for someone with an IQ that high.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Haven’t _you_ ever heard the line there’s a fine line between genius and madness?  Most of the notable geniuses in history were a little crazy.”

“But not all of them.  Besides, I’ve taken steps to ensure that I remain grounded and normal.”

“Like what?”

“Well, obviously the fact that I’m still in high school should tell you something.  I could probably be in graduate school by now.  Working on my _second_ PhD.  But honestly, that doesn’t sound that fun.

“It was obvious early on that I was smart.  I taught myself how to read, and once I understood basic addition, I figured out subtraction, multiplication, and division on my own.  My parents could tell I was smarter than the average pre-schooler.  But, they thought it would be good for me socially to go to school anyway.

“By the time I got to second grade, I was causing trouble because I was so bored in class.  My teacher and principal and everybody suggested I be put on an accelerated schedule.  My parents asked me what I wanted to do.  I’d known Julian—the guy with the dead parents—since kindergarten, but it was in second grade that we met our other two friends, Chris and Scott.  The four of us were like—perfectly interlocking pieces.  I asked my parents if doing this advanced schooling would keep me away from my friends.  They said yes, so I told them I would behave and stay in school.  So, I did.”

Ken stared at him.  “Are you serious?”

“Yes.  I weighed having friends versus having multiple degrees, and I just decided that I would be happy with a normal course of life with a couple bachelor’s degrees and an MD.”

“Wow,” Ken said.  He lifted up Joyce Greene’s chin.  “Did you hear that?  He’s a bona fide genius.  I feel a little intimidated now.”

“Don’t be.  It really is a meaningless designation.  That’s why I don’t like to tell people.  My friends don’t even know.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’ve figured it out.”

“No, they know I’m ridiculously smart, but I’ve never told them my IQ.  Not even my closest friends.”

Ken rubbed the kitten under her chin and she started to purr.  “So, why did you tell me?”

“I—”  Will searched Ken’s face.  He was relieved to find that he was looking at him the same as he always did.  “Because I knew that you wouldn’t act differently around me if you knew.”

Will realized he was staring at the older man, so he dropped his gaze.  Ken was technically petting the kitten, but his hand was in Will’s lap.  Why had he put her there?  The silence was getting awkward again.

“So,” Ken said, “how is your back?”

“It’s better,” Will replied, thankful and a little annoyed that Ken had had to save him yet again.  “The last remnants of yellow are fading away.  And like I told you before, it stopped hurting after a few days.”

“Did it affect your soccer?”

“No.  Not at all.  We lost miserably in our last game.  Even worse than…the game you saw.  But the good news is that my summer league already started up.  So, it’s great to be playing on a team that actually knows how to play.  Our first game is June 11th.  The day after school lets out for the summer.  Great summer vacation, huh?  I have to wake up early to drive out to a soccer game.”

He was babbling.  He should stop.  Ken was looking at the kitten, but his gaze seemed unfocused.  He must be thinking about something.  What was he going to say?

“Would—would you mind if I watched?”

Ken looked up and met Will’s eyes.  No one ever wanted to go to his summer league games.  No one had ever gone before.  Not his parents, not his friends, not even his girlfriends.  He nodded.

“Sure, you can come.  Just don’t wear anything weird like last time.”

“What was wrong with what I was wearing last time?  That was a Versace suit.  It’s very expensive, very well made, and I _know_ I looked good in it.”

“Right.  But you were at a high school soccer game.  You kind of stood out.  Like some dirty old man who shows up at Little League games and takes pictures and stuff.”

“I didn’t take pictures!  And I’m not a dirty old man!  I swear, you keep saying stuff like that and you’re going to hurt my feelings.”

He pinched Will on the shoulder.  Will let out a soft exclamation of pain and grabbed his hand.  He tried to bend it backwards, but he was at an odd angle.  He let go of the kitten and grabbed on with both hands.  Ken used his arm to push back on Will’s right arm so that he couldn’t get as a good a grip on his hand.  They struggled for a minute, laughing and disturbing the kitten.  She got fed up and hopped out of Will’s lap.  Will moved to grab her just as Ken gave another push back on his arm.  Their shoulders came into contact and the rest of their bodies were centimeters apart.  Will forgot about the kitten and watched Ken carefully.  He could see the internal struggle going on behind his eyes.  He wondered if he would be able to tell when he gave in to it.  Will blinked slowly, and looked up at Ken from under his lashes.  Will saw his resolve melt away.

“God, how cliché is this?” Ken asked.

Will was ready when Ken kissed him, so he let him.  What could it hurt?  Wasn’t this part of the experiment?  This time there was a lot of movement to the kiss, their heads tilting from side to side in order to stay on top of the other’s lips.  Their tongues were barely touching, just running over the other’s top lip and then the bottom, and occasionally brushing together.

Ken was being very careful with his hands: one was still held loosely in Will’s hand and the other was resting lightly on his shoulder blade, not moving.  Then Will moved his right hand behind Ken’s neck, and his left let go of Ken’s hand, dropping onto Ken’s knee.  The slight touches Will gave him must have been enough to make him become bolder.  He moved both his hands to Will’s back and pulled him closer, running his hands over the muscles he could feel through the thin T-shirt.  Then one dropped lower and splayed across his hip gently only to grab him suddenly and pull him up a little.  Will let out a small sound and tried to mask it by pushing his tongue into Ken’s mouth.  Ken mirrored the movement and soon their heads were mostly still, letting their tongues do all the work.  And such good work too.  Will was feeling dizzy, but couldn’t bring himself to stop.  It felt too good.  Why did it feel so good?  It made no sense.  Will knew that he still liked girls; his date with Liz two weeks ago had proven that.  So why did it take so little for Ken, a grown, masculine man, to get him so excited?

Will felt a sense of vertigo and realized they were falling back onto the couch.  Ken’s torso was against his knees.  He wouldn’t open them for the man, but when Ken pressed against one knee with a hand, he didn’t stop them from being pushed apart.  Then Ken slid in between his legs, bringing them into contact from lips to groin.  And they continued to lean back.  Will had a sudden flashback to what it felt like to have Ken on top of him.  He was tall and muscled, so he was actually very heavy.  And when he had lain on top of him, he had felt exhilarated by the weight pushing onto and into his body.  And in moments, he would feel that again.  Will felt his body relax in anticipation, and then he was jarred into cognitive functioning when Ken stopped kissing him and held him just off the couch.  He reached behind his head and produced the white kitten.  Then he laid Will’s head gently on the couch and turned to move the kitten out of the way.

“Well, that was close, wasn’t it?” he asked the kitten.  “You almost got squished.”

Will laid on the couch, panting and shivering from missing Ken’s body heat.  He could feel where Ken was still pressed against him between his legs.  He was completely exposed and open to the man, lying on his back, welcoming…what exactly?  Fear rushed through Will so quickly he actually cried out softly.  Ken turned to him.

“Are you okay?”

Will pulled himself away from Ken and shook his head.  He pulled himself off the couch and crawled on all fours a couple feet away from the offending piece of furniture.  It was always responsible for them going too far.  No, not the couch.  Ken.  That dirty pervert was always trying to make him do things he didn’t want to.  Never mind that he had been kissing and touching Ken just as much as he’d been kissed and touched.  It was Ken’s fault, not his.  Will sprang to his feet and started pulling on his shoes.

Ken settled back on the couch with the kitten in his lap.  “You leaving?” he asked in a blasé tone.

“Yes, I’m leaving!  What the hell did you think I would do?  Rejoice in your queerness running over onto me?”  Will hopped on one foot and nearly crashed into the coffee table in an attempt to get his shoe on.  “I mean, I agree to come over and take care of your house and I bathed your kitten for you, and how do you thank me?”  He managed to get his shoes on, but left them untied.  He marched over to the dining area and grabbed his jacket and bag.  “You molest me and slobber on me and you take advantage of my confusion and vulnerability!”  Will noticed Ken wasn’t terribly impressed with his rant.  He started for the door and then turned back to point a finger at the man, his jacket and bag flailing around him with the movement.  “Why are you incapable of just talking to a person?  Why do you have to always jump all over them?”

“Excuse me?” Ken asked, incredulous.  “I haven’t touched you in two weeks.”

“Oh, you want a medal or something?”

“Look, you’re the one who flirted with me.”

Will’s jaw dropped opened.  He was speechless.  Flirt?  With Ken?  As if!  It was the only thing that came to mind, so he said it.  “As if!  Don’t allow your delusions to spill over into reality.”

Ken rolled his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“So, I take it you’re so mad this time that your observations are over and you’re never coming back?”

Somehow his voice managed to be colored with hope and despair at the same time.  Will put his bag on his shoulder and fussed with his jacket.

“That’s exactly right, but I can’t stop coming over now.  I can’t leave Joyce Greene in your care.  You’d probably molest her or something, you dirty pervert.”

“Well, then.  I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Not necessarily,” Will intoned, turning his back on him.  He walked to the door and grabbed the handle.  It wouldn’t open and he pulled on it harder.  Then he stopped pulling and unlocked it.  He flung the door open and glared back at Ken.  He was trying to think of something scathing to say, but Ken said, “Bye-bye, sweetheart,” and waved the kitten’s paw at him.  He let out an infuriated shout and stomped out into the hallway, slamming the door shut.  He made as much noise as possible down the hallway and jabbed the call button for the elevator.  Then he leaned his forehead against the door, suddenly becoming acutely aware of the painful discomfort his tantrum had caused his groin.  He put a hand between his legs and grimaced.  He was still hard as a rock.  How had this happened?

The doors dinged and Will stepped back quickly, using the jacket to cover his crotch.  It was a good thing too because someone was getting off on the 17th floor.  She was a pretty woman in her thirties wearing a power skirt suit much like the ones his mother wore.  Her honey blonde hair was styled in a French twist and she had chestnut brown eyes.  She must use a lot of ageing-preventing products because when she smiled there weren’t any natural lines around her eyes or mouth.  Maybe she was already into Botox.

“Oh, hi,” she said, stepping out of the elevator and allowing him to step on.  She put a hand in the door to keep it from closing.  “I’ve seen you around in the hall a couple times.  Is your family new here?”

“No.  I’m a—I’m Mr. West’s housesitter, and he’s only just now gotten around to giving me a key.  So, now I won’t have to hang out in the hall anymore.  I can just go in and feed the fish and be on my way.”

“Oh, is he gone?”  The door bumped against her arm and Will wished it would cut it off so he could go.

“No, not yet.  But he needed to give me some instructions.”

“Do you live in the building?”

“No.”

“Hmm, that’s strange.  That seems rather inconvenient to me.  He should have just asked me.  I live across the hall.”

Will hated her even more now for detaining him.  _She_ was the one from across the hall.  But, what was it about her that irritated him?  “Well, he didn’t want to be a nuisance to his neighbors.”

“But,” the doors bumped her again, “if it’s just the fish and plants, how hard can that be?”

Will held back his scowl and smiled pleasantly at her.  It was the look he gave slow bank tellers and math teachers.  He could bring up that Ken now had a kitten, but the thought of her then rushing over to his apartment and asking to see it and then cooing over Joyce Greene set his blood boiling.  He was rapidly losing control of himself.  He was careful to keep the smile in place.

“I need the money,” he said.  “Mr. West found me in a newspaper advertisement.  So, he’d rather help out a poor kid than bug his neighbors.”

“Oh, I see.”

Will punched the lobby button on the elevator.  The movement made the woman realize she’d been holding him a while and let the doors go.

“My name’s Autumn Rose!” she called out through the closing doors.

Will dropped the smile and nearly puked in the elevator.  Autumn Rose?  Please.  She just better keep herself away from his…his kitten.

 

Scott

 

Scott’s ears were still burning from Will’s cursing.  It wasn’t so much the words he used as the creative way in which he used them.  He had wanted someone to entertain him today, but Scott already had plans.  He wouldn’t have felt too guilty about turning Will down since he had been the last one he’d called of the three of them, but the reason he turned him down made him feel a little guilty.  He was going to see Antoinette.  It seemed somewhat wrong that he was turning down his friend to go sneak around with some chick.  Of course, it was wrong in general that he was still seeing her even though she was clearly still having some issues.

After her breakdown and the confession behind her reasoning for wanting to cheat, Scott had assumed that would be the end of it.  But come Monday morning at school she had pulled him into the girls’ bathroom after second period.  Needless to say the panic (and curiosity) of being in the girls’ bathroom had distracted him from what Antoinette had been trying to do.  That attempt had failed, but the rest of the week she made her case for wanting to continue their affair.  Scott had rebuffed her each time, asking her why she wanted to do this when she already had her answer about cheating.  Or at least knew that why she was doing it wasn’t a good reason.  She hadn’t managed to give him a satisfactory answer, but after a week of being molested, Scott caved like…was there an analogy for caving in?  Like a mine with weak supports?  Or could you go more abstract and say “caved like a pro spelunker?”  Scott rubbed his chin.  It didn’t really matter though.  The point was that he had given in to his penis.  The little brat had won out, which was ridiculous.  Because every time Scott gave it what it wanted, it chickened out on him.  Or was that his head?

Scott jumped as the door swung open.  Antoinette was wearing a short skirt and a low plunging halter top.  She put a hand on her hip and the movement caused her bracelets to jingle.  Scott smiled at her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Scott’s face fell in panicked confusion.  “You told me to come over.  Right?” he asked meekly.

“Yeah, I did.  But, why are you just standing on my front porch?  You’ve been standing there for like, ten minutes.”

“Oh.  Have I?”

“Yes, you have.  Not very inconspicuous you know.”

“Ah.  Sorry.  I was thinking.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that about you, Scott.  You can’t think and do anything else at the same time.”

Scott couldn’t help but feel dejected. She wasn’t the first person who had noticed that about him.  She immediately softened her body language and held out a hand to him.

“Oh, Scott, I don’t mean that in a bad way.  I think it’s cute.  Most of the time.  Come on, come in.”

Scott took her hand and let himself be pulled into her house.  That one motion, her leading him by the hand, completely defined their relationship.  She led them into the kitchen and Scott wondered why her family was always gone on the weekends.  And it wasn’t just like her father was off sneaking around; he was actually with his children.  And he worked all day during the week.  When did the man find time to cheat?  How much stamina did he have?  If Antoinette had gotten her sexual drive from her mother he couldn’t imagine Mr. Bixby needing to cheat.  Of course, if Antoinette had gotten it from her father, that might explain a few things.

“Hey, Ann,” Scott started, and then stopped.  What had he been about to ask her?  Did he want his balls to be external or not?

Antoinette paused with her hand on the refrigerator handle.  “Did you just call me Anna?”

“No.  I said, ‘Ann.’  Sorry.  Do you not like nicknames?”

Antoinette gave a slight shake of her head, smiling to herself.  “No, it’s fine.  Just, call me Ann.  Not Anna.”

Scott was a little confused, but he nodded.  “Okay.”

“So, do you want something to drink or eat?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Antoinette moved away from the fridge and they stood awkwardly in the kitchen for the space of a couple heartbeats.  Well, maybe four because Scott’s heart rate was accelerating.  And for good reason.  They reached for each other and their bodies crashed together with enough force to hurt.  Or maybe Scott was a wuss because Antoinette didn’t seem to notice any pain.  She was too busy running her hands over his back and teasing his lips with her tongue.  Scott knew that there two kinds of men in the world: boob men and ass men.  He’d known quite early on that he was an ass man, which made him worry just a little about being gay, but Antoinette had been all the proof he needed to believe that it was okay to be a fan of that body part.  She had such a nice one and Scott was grabbing it now, well aware that it would be so easy to get his hands under her skirt.  The reason he didn’t turn the thought into action was because he knew she wouldn’t stop him.

She took a step forward and Scott walked backwards, letting her guide them toward the den.  He moved his hands so they had a little more freedom to move their lower halves and cupped her face.  He held her close to prevent them from breaking the kiss.  He liked kissing her.  She wasn’t just soft, she was sweet.  He could actually taste her every time they kissed.  Then the backs of his knees hit the arm of the leather sectional.  They fell onto the cushions and Scott returned a hand to her ass to pull her forward a little bit.  She let her legs fall on either side of his body and Scott slid a hand into her hair.  It got tangled immediately and he knew he now had control of her head.  He could make her stay where he wanted her for as long as he wanted.  How refreshing to be in control for once.  So, where was that place on a girl’s leg that he could touch that was technically innocent but tended to drive them wild?  Will had told him about it once.

Then Scott thought about poor Will.  He wondered if he was bored right now.  Maybe he should have spent some time with him.  After school let out he would be so busy with his summer soccer league that they wouldn’t see each other as much.  Especially since they didn’t have school everyday.  He wouldn’t see any of them as often.  And Julian probably needed someone to be around him all the time right now.  What was he doing today?  Was he alone?  Maybe he should call him and see if he wanted to hang out.  It had only been three weeks since his parents had died; that certainly wasn’t enough time to deal with that sort of thing.  But was it enough time to get over being dumped by a boyfriend?  He and Anna hadn’t spoken in so long, but was she still mad at him?  Even if she was, shouldn’t he try to get them to talk about it?  It was about time they made up.

“Scott!”

Scott sucked in a breath, and shifted on the couch.  He purposely moved his hips and held Antoinette down.  He loved feeling her pelvic bones grind on his.  It was a little painful, but it felt so good.  He must be a touch masochistic.

“What?” he groaned, upset that she had stopped kissing him.

She put her hands on his chest and let him move her hips in a circular motion.  Her breathing caught in her throat just a bit and she let out a soft cry of pleasure.  Scott smiled.  He was pretty good at this for someone who’d never actually had sex before.  Then she forced them to stop moving.

“Scott, you’re distracted.”

He opened his eyes.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re thinking, Scott.  And so while you may be enjoying what I’m doing to you, you’re barely even kissing me back.  I want you focused on me.”

“Oh, sorry.  You’re right.  My mind wandered.”

She heaved an unhappy sigh and crossed her arms over her chest.  “Why is it so easy for your mind to wander when you’re with me?  Am I really not that engaging?”

“No.  You’re very engaging.”  Scott moved under her and grinned.  “I’m very engaged at the moment.”

She forced herself not to react to him, but it was a struggle and Scott could tell.  “Tell me what you were thinking about.”

Even Scott knew better than to say another girl.  “Will.”

She ran her tongue over her teeth.  “Why were you thinking about Will while making out with someone?”

Scott let out an uneasy laugh.  “Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m a straight female.  How about you, Scott?”

“Okay, look, I was thinking that I was enjoying making out with you.  And I was glad I came over.  Will had called me and asked me to hang out with him, and I told him I couldn’t.  So, I was wondering what he was doing.  If he was as lucky as I was.”

He smiled brightly.  She wasn’t buying it.

“No, Scott, tell me what you were thinking about when you stopped kissing me.  Will was the start of your thought process.  I know you well enough to know that it led to something else.  And it eventually led you to think about something more important than me.  What was your last thought?”

“Come on, Antoinette, can’t we just…you know?”

“‘You know’ what, Scott?  You won’t have sex with me.  What ‘you know’ are you getting to?”

“Don’t you like just making out with me?  Does it have to be more?”

“Yes, Scott, I enjoy making out with you.  I really, _really_ do.  But I don’t feel like _you_ like it all that much.  You get distracted so easily!  Tell me, what were you thinking about?”

Her brow was furrowed and she looked really upset.  He felt like he couldn’t lie to her.  She really wanted to know, and he supposed she had a right to know.  He just wished he wasn’t in such a vulnerable position.  He sighed.

“Okay, okay.  I’m sorry.  My train of thought led me to think about Anna.  We still haven’t made up yet.  I’m worried about our friendship.”

Scott was startled by the angry look that passed over her features.

“Why are you _always_ thinking about her?  Why are you so worried about what she thinks and what she’s doing and what she’s feeling?!”

Scott stared at Antoinette in disbelief.  In his mind, this had come out of left field.  “She’s my friend, Antoinette.  My best friend.  We’re in a bad fight right now.  I’m really worried about her.”

“So?  What about me?  You’re so worried about your _friend_.  What am I?”

Scott smiled tightly and half-shrugged.  “I don’t know.  What are you?  You’re not my girlfriend.  Otherwise, that would defeat the point of your wanting to be with me.  So, why are you acting so jealous?”

She went pink across the cheeks, but Scott thought it was due more to anger than anything else.

“Anyone would be upset if the person they were making out with was thinking about someone else.”

Scott did feel a little twinge of guilt about that.  He certainly wouldn’t be happy if Antoinette were thinking about Jake when she was with him.  He sort of shrugged and looked apologetically at her.

“Sorry.”

“Sorry?”  Antoinette let out a noise and shook her head.  She looked away from him and licked her lips.  She turned back to look at him again and seemed more hurt upset than angry upset.  “Whatever.”  She moved off of him and headed for the kitchen.  “If you’re so worried about her, then go take care of it.  I don’t want to see you until you get the situation resolved.”

Scott sat up and looked at her over the back of the sectional.  She was facing the refrigerator, but hadn’t moved to get anything out of it.  Scott got off the couch and started to head to the foyer.  He paused when he passed her.

“Thank you for understanding.  I—”

“Don’t thank me,” she said, her voice sounded thick.  “I’m not doing this because I care about your problems.  I just don’t want you thinking about her when you’re with me.”

Scott rubbed a hand through his short hair.  “Well, thank you anyway.”

“Just leave.”

Scott felt that he should oblige her.  Anything he said would probably make things worse anyway.  He walked out the front door and was careful to shut it quietly.  He didn’t want to shut it too hard and have her think that he was angry with her.  He knew this was his fault.  It was his fault for giving into her and agreeing to keep up the affair, and it was his fault for not trying to make up with Anna sooner.  He should go talk to her right now.

He frowned at his mother’s minivan as he unlocked it.  He should be grateful he had a car at all today, but he hated the purple monstrosity.  Not only was it a purple minivan, but it was filled with crumbs and trash and junk from his brothers.  And his mother always complained that he never put the seat back where he found it.  He was a lot taller than his mother and needed more leg room, and it was impossible to remember _exactly_ where she had it set up.  She also complained about the rearview mirror.  He usually left that alone and just drove with an obstructed view.  Sure it was dangerous, but no more than sneaking around with an extremely athletic guy’s girlfriend.

Anna lived in a large house near Will’s neighborhood.  As long as he was over in the area, maybe he should drop by and make sure Will wasn’t building a bomb in his basement out of boredom.  He’d actually unintentionally done that once when he was nine.  He’d been messing around with his junior chemist set and added a few chemicals of his own.  He’d blown out a couple small windows in the basement and given himself a concussion.  Scott shook his head and grinned at the memory.  Only Will Harder.

Scott pulled into Anna’s driveway and saw that the flowerbeds were in full bloom.  Surprisingly they didn’t have someone do their landscaping for them; it was how Anna’s mother spent her time when she wasn’t telling people how to eat.  He wouldn’t mind seeing her today because he hadn’t seen her in weeks, but he could live without seeing Anna’s father.  He didn’t like any of his daughters’ male friends, even if they were only friends.  Fortunately Mrs. Norwood was the one to answer the door.  She gave a little shout of delighted surprise and hugged him when she saw him.  Scott hated to think it, but she was a bit of a ditzy blonde.

“Oh, Scott!  I’m so happy to see you.  I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I know.  I’ve just been so caught up in—”

“Oh, my God!  Look at your hair!”

People had pretty much gotten used to his head by now, so he forgot that Mrs. Norwood hadn’t seen it yet.  He rubbed the back of his head embarrassedly.

“Yeah, I, uh, thought it was time for a change.”

“A change is right!  It’s so different!  But, I like it.  You can actually see that handsome face of yours now.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, scuffing his toes.  Maybe Mr. Norwood didn’t like him so much because he had a bit of a crush on his wife.

“Are you here to see Anna?” she asked.

Obviously he was here to see Anna.  “Yeah.  Is she at home?”

“Yes, she’s upstairs in her room.  You can go on up.  I’m actually really glad you’re here.  She hasn’t been herself for a while now.  Hopefully you can perk her right up like always.”

Scott felt a flutter of hope at this news.  If she was upset, maybe she was just as worried by their fight as he was.  Maybe it would be really easy to make up because that’s what they both wanted.  What they both needed.

“I hope you’re right, Mrs. Norwood.  I could really use her right now myself.”

Mrs. Norwood patted him on the back as he came in.  It wasn’t just a friendly gesture; she was feeling how much fat was in between his bones and skin.  It was a habit she did almost anytime someone came into her home.  She was a nutritionist after all.  Her house also looked like it was a patient on one of her programs: optimistic and shiny.  Well, one of her patients at the beginning of the program.  By the end they looked more haggard and oily.  Her home, however, was perpetually bright and squeaky clean, done up in primary colors and white.  It was little wonder that the Norwood children (when not in uniform) tended to lean towards purples, maroons, and burgundies.  They never quite joined Julian in the all black category, but the middle daughter had leaned that way more than her sisters.  He passed her now on the stairs, raising an eyebrow at the short black pleated skirt and tight dark red top she wore.

“Hey, Arielle,” Scott said.

Arielle stopped on the stairs and turned to look at Scott.  Of the three sisters, she had the darkest skin.  She had also not liked Scott since he had rebuffed her affections when he’d been nine and she’d been seven.  She put her hands on the banister and let them slide out so that her back arched in and her little breasts pushed out.  They had just grown in over the winter, and she was very proud of them.

“Hey, Scott.  You here to piss off my sister again?”

“Again?  She can’t still be upset by the whole it’s-a-science-project-not-a-snack fiasco, can she?”

“Uh, not Adrielle, Annabelle.”

Scott smiled at her.  “I know.  I was just teasing.”  He tickled her side and she was forced to move out of her “cool-sexy” pose and protect herself.  She was as easy and almost as fun to tease as Joanna.  She made a face at him and ran down the stairs.  Before she disappeared out the front door she called back, “Your hair looks so stupid.  It’s not like you’re hot or anything.”  Then she slammed the door.  He took that to mean that Arielle thought he was very hot now.  He wondered what Anna thought of it.  They hadn’t spoken since he’d had it done.

Scott walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door that had “Annabelle” written at the end of a rainbow.  All three of them had one, and they couldn’t take them down.  Their grandfather had made the signs for them, and he was still alive.  There was no response from inside, so he knocked again louder.  Mrs. Norwood had said she was home, but maybe she had snuck out?  But why would she need to sneak out of the house on a Saturday afternoon?  Her mother hadn’t said anything about her being grounded.

“Adrielle, I told you not to bother me!”

Her voice was muffled through the door.  Scott didn’t think he wanted to bother her.  If she was yelling at her little sister, Lord only knew what she would do to him.

“Anna, it’s me.”

There was a pause.  “Scott?”

“Yeah.”

The door opened a moment later and Anna stared at him like she couldn’t quite believe it was him.  He wasn’t sure if it was because she couldn’t believe he’d come over or if she hadn’t really gotten used to his hair yet.

“I, uh, I’m sorry I didn’t call first.  Your mom let me in.”

Anna shook her head.  “When have you ever needed to call first before coming over?”

 _Since you started dating_ , he thought.  He shrugged and said out loud, “I just thought you might want a little warning.  Though, it’s so strange.  I feel like we’re in this huge world war three fight, but it wasn’t really that bad.  Was it?” he asked, knowing he sounded a little pitiful.

Anna opened her mouth and then closed it.  “Come inside,” she said.

Scott stepped into her familiar room.  She’d changed it over the years, but he’d been there for every incarnation.  So, the current lilac and ivy motif was as much home to him as his own emo “punk” band posters.  Her bed wasn’t made, but that had never stopped him from sitting on it before.  What stopped him this time was because for the first time in his life, he felt like an intruder in her room.  He sat in the chair at the front of her desk instead.  She sat on her bed and put her hands in her lap.  She kept her eyes on her hands.

She was wearing a pair of jeans and a purple capped-sleeve T-shirt.  Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and more or less fell straight and frizz-free behind her.  Scott wondered what it would be like to put his hands in her hair.  Antoinette’s hair was thick, but it was very soft and pliable.  Anna’s hair would probably be a little stiffer.  But, would it be scratchy?  On humid days it looked scratchy.  He was certain he’d touched her hair before sometime during their sixteen year friendship, but he couldn’t quite remember what it felt like.  What he really wondered though was what it would be like to run his fingers through it while he kissed her.  That desire came from pure curiosity about how her hair would feel compared to Antoinette’s.  He didn’t really want to kiss Anna at all.  He knew that she was pretty and she had a nice enough body, but he’d never had a single romantic or sexual thought about her.  She just…wasn’t his type.

Several minutes had passed and neither of them had said anything.  At least the silence didn’t feel strained.  Scott turned the chair around and straddled it.  He put his arms on the back of the chair.  He decided he would be the one to suck up his pride this time.  Their friendship meant more to him than being right, which he might not even be.  He wasn’t sure.

“Anna,” he said, “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” she said softly, still not looking at him.

Scott had expected that response, but he still felt relieved and happy to hear it anyway.  He didn’t want to take their friendship for granted.  He knew he couldn’t just always expect her to be there just because he knew she would be.  He had to make sure that she _wanted_ to be there for him.  They needed to stay friends, and not just feel obligated to each other.  She took in a breath and let it out slowly.

“But that’s part of the problem,” she said.

Scott tilted his head slightly.  He didn’t know yet where she was going with this.  “What do you mean?”

“I miss you because I’m so dependent on you.  Because I’m so close to you.”

She paused but Scott didn’t think it was for a response.  So he nodded silently and let her continue.

“It’s just that it’s so hard for people to accept that a boy and girl can _just_ be friends.  Everybody thinks we’re dating.  And even people who know we’re not dating think that we have some sort of unresolved sexual tension.”

“Not our closest friends.”

“Liz and Laney do.  And Riley said that our fight would be over if we just gave in and screwed each other.  Even they think so.  I’m sure the boys do too.”

Scott shook his head.  “No, they don’t.”

“How do you know?  Or is this going to be another ‘I know them better’ speech?”

Scott swallowed his response.  She was being intentionally hostile.  He refused to take the bait.  If she wanted the fight to continue it would have to be all on her.  He was ready to make up.  She looked at him and waited for a response.  When he wouldn’t give her one, she looked away with a mixture of annoyance and shame.

“And what do we even _do_ together?  All we ever do is talk for hours.  About nothing.  We just blather on and on and half the time I don’t even know what we’ve been talking about.  I mean, what’s the point?”

Scott felt a weird sloshing in his gut.  That had hurt.  The fact that they could talk about nothing for hours was one his favorite things about their friendship.  The feeling sloshed its way into his chest.  It hurt, but it wasn’t painful.

“Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing,” she said too late.  “I like that we’re that comfortable around each other.  But, wouldn’t it be nice to talk about things that mattered?  Or to have a point to a conversation?  I mean, we don’t really get anything from each other, you know?  Aside from a way to fill the time.”

Now it started to be painful.  Scott was struggling to keep his breathing from losing its rhythm.  And she continued on.

“And because we’re so close, it’s hard for us to be close with anyone else.  Especially people we date.  It’s stupid of them, but they get jealous.  I mean, they can’t help that they feel jealous.  I would be jealous if the person I was dating had a friend that they were closer with than me.  And you have to have noticed, Scott.  All those girls who’ve started asking you out.  I don’t think it’s just because of the hair.  I think they noticed that we weren’t close anymore.  And you seemed available.”

Scott had never had a real girlfriend before, but he knew that this was what it felt like to get broken up with when you were still in love with the person.  Scott swallowed the lump in his throat.  For all intents and purposes, his body was crying, but his eyes remained dry.  He was grateful for that much at least.  He licked his lips so that he could speak without having to try too many times to get the words out.

“So,” he said, his shaky voice giving him away a little bit, “since you want to be able to talk to someone about ‘real stuff’ and have sex, we shouldn’t be friends anymore?”

Anna covered her mouth with a hand and stared at the stuffed bunny on her bookshelf.  She shook her head and dropped her hand back into her lap.  Then she stared at her hands again.

“It sounds bad when you put it that way.”  The pause made him feel a little less like a bothersome dung heap.  “But, yeah.  Maybe.”

Scott’s vision had gone out of focus.  He was pretty certain he was staring at the corner of her bed.  He just couldn’t quite process the meaning of her statement.  Was it that they should spend less time together, or their friendship should just end?  Either way, he didn’t want to talk to her anymore right now.  He stood up and forced his eyes to see again.  He didn’t look around to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind.  She could keep it.  He walked out the door.  He heard her call his name as he left, but she didn’t come after him when he didn’t answer.  He hurried down the stairs and ignored Adrielle as she said hello to him.  He didn’t have to be nice to her anymore.  The same went for her asshole of a father.  Well, he would be getting his wish.  Scott would be gone.  Of course now that just probably meant that his daughter would soon be having sex with horny, teenaged jerks.  He’d be wishing Scott stayed around before too long.

“Well, Scott, haven’t seen _you_ in while,” Mr. Norwood said in his deep, slightly disapproving tone as he poked his head from out of the kitchen.

“Yeah.  And it’s going to be a while before you see me again.”

Scott walked out the front door and left it open.  He thought that would be better than childishly slamming it and possibly knocking Mrs. Norwood’s wreath off its hook.  He really was such a considerate guy.  He climbed into his mother’s minivan and backed carefully out of the driveway.  He didn’t want to hit some little kid because he was angry.  Though he might aim for that squirrel in the road.  It escaped being smashed by a hair’s width.  Stupid girls.  Why were they so difficult?  Why was it always about sex with them?  Scott thought that perhaps it was a bit reversed that the girls in his life wanted sex and he just wanted a nice friendship.  How lame was he?  Maybe he should check to make sure he still had his balls when he got home.

When he was free of the evil minivan and stepping inside the house through the garage door, he was attacked by yet another woman.  His mother was vacuuming and yelling at him as he made his way to the stairs.  He couldn’t really hear her, so he ignored it.  She turned off the vacuum.

“Scott!”

“What?!” he snapped.

“Don’t ‘what’ me.  I was calling you.”

“Well, I didn’t hear you.”

“Stop walking away from me!  Did you put gas in the car?”

“No.”

“Scott!  Why not?  That’s all I asked you to do in exchange for borrowing the car.”

“I forgot, okay?!” he yelled.

He let his mother scream at him from the bottom of the stairs and stomped into his room.  He slammed the door shut and plopped down in front of his desk.  Why didn’t he have a computer?  Why were his parents so stingy?  They obviously had enough money to afford a million dollar home, couldn’t they afford to buy a fucking computer?  Someone knocked at his door.  He groaned inwardly and looked at the door with disgust.  Couldn’t his mother take a hint?  She could scold him later.

“What?” he asked, as calmly as he could.

“Scott?  Can I come in?”

It was Joanna.  “No, Joanna.  I’m not in a good mood right now.”

“Please?  It will only take a second.  I need your opinion on something.”

Scott picked up a mechanical pencil and tapped it on the top of his desk.  “Fine, come in.”  He glared at the tapping point of the pencil and Joanna came inside.  He didn’t look at her and waited to hear what stupid middle school crisis she was worried about now.

“Scott, are you okay?”

“No, Joanna.  I’m in a bad mood, remember?”

“Okay.  I’m sorry.  I just wanted to know what you think of this.”

“Of what?”

“Well, you have to look at me.”

Scott half turned his head against his shoulder and stopped tapping the pencil.  He raised an eyebrow in mild confusion.  His sister was the last person he would ever think would be into fashion, but at the moment she was wearing something straight out of a Forever 21 store window.  She wore opaque white tights under a black and red plaid miniskirt with a black ribbon tied into a bow at the top of her waist.  Her red shirt didn’t quite fit the definition of a tube top because it had two thin straps originating from the slight dip where her breasts met and circled her neck.  She put her hands on her waist and smiled at him.  She was wearing make-up too.  Dark eyeliner (and she must have put in the contacts she never wore) and bright red lipstick.  He blinked at her.

“Haven’t you ever heard of sleeves?”

Her face fell and she dropped her arms.  “The point is for there to be no sleeves.”

Scott grabbed his English assignment from his book bag and opened it on his desk.  He couldn’t look at his sister a second longer.  He liked her being a mousey dork that guys wouldn’t like.  The last thing he wanted was for his baby sister to be wearing sexy clothes and not looking half-bad in them.

“Do you really think Mom and Dad will let you out of the house looking like that?”

“That’s something I’ll have to deal with later.  I just want to know if it’s worth the fight.  Do I look good?”

Scott shook his head.  “I’m your brother.  Of course I’m going to say no.”

She hopped onto his desk and crossed her legs.  He pushed her knee off his paper.

“I thought brothers were always supposed to say their sisters look good.”

“Not when they’re wearing sexy stuff.”

“So, you think I’m sexy?”

He could hear the smile in her voice.  “Absolutely not.  I think you’re wearing slutty clothes.”

“So, then why won’t you look at me?”

Her voice sounded funny.  Scott looked up and she was leaning toward him on one arm.  With her free hand she tapped a pen against her lips.  Scott’s eyes narrowed.  If he didn’t know better he’d say she was flirting with him.

“Good grief, Joanna.  If you want to practice flirting, do it with your friends.  Not me.”

He looked back at his paper and then rubbed his brow with his hand.  This was _so_ last millennium to be writing papers by hand.  He needed a computer.

“I’m not practicing, Scott,” she said, not taking a hint and leaving the room.

“Well, you should because you kind of suck at it.”

“Why?  What am I doing wrong?”

Scott pushed back in his chair while throwing his pencil on the desk.  Joanna jumped at the violence of his actions and sat up straight.

“Joanna.  I don’t know what skeevy junior high kid you think you have a crush on, but the last thing I’m going to do is teach you how to get that horny brat’s attention, okay?  I don’t want you dating anybody.  Like ever.”

“Really?” she asked, elation flooding her face.

Now Scott was really confused.  Usually little sisters didn’t get excited when their brothers said that they didn’t want them dating.

“Well, yeah.  I’d be happy if you stayed a virgin the rest of your life.”

“Oh.”  She looked disappointed, so she must have finally caught on to what he was saying.  “You’re saying this because you don’t want any other guy to ever touch me, right?”

“Um.  Yes.”

“And you want me to stay a virgin because you know it’d be wrong otherwise.”

Scott let out a noise and shook his head.  “No, it’s not wrong _per se_.  I just would rather—look, it’s just the way big brothers think, okay?”

“But it’s okay!” she said, leaning forward and grabbing his arm with her hands.  “It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world says just as long as we’re happy!  I don’t care if no one ever knows!”

Suddenly the light switched on in Scott’s head.  He pushed on the floor with his feet and his chair rolled away from her.  She had to let go of him or risk falling off the desk.

“Whoa,” Scott said, feeling a very unpleasant sense of trepidation rising in his belly.  “Joanna, are you carrying out some kind of sick dare from a Truth or Dare game gone horribly wrong?”

She hopped off the desk and walked toward him.  Scott pushed away from her and she stopped.

“No,” she said, looking defiant.  Of what exactly?  “Scott, I know why you’ve never really had a girlfriend.  And why you always tease me.  And why you always make fun of the womanly things about me.  It’s the only way you can look at them and talk about them without getting in trouble.  I know you’ve noticed me.  I’m glad I’m finally someone you’d find attractive.  Now it doesn’t have to be one sided.”

“Oh, God.”  Scott stood up and started pacing his room.  He needed to be able to get to the door fast if he was going to throw up.  Joanna followed his pacing.

“I know, Scott!  You were afraid to say anything because it’s ‘wrong.’  But you don’t have to hide it anymore.  We shouldn’t have to.  When two people find each other, it doesn’t matter how they came into the world, related or not.  A love like ours transcends cultural taboos!”

She was smiling like she’d just won the lottery.  Scott felt like he was having a stroke.

“Joanna.”  He closed his eyes and ordered the churning in his stomach to settle.  When he looked back at her, she had moved a little closer.  “What the _fuck_?” he said darkly.  Her whole countenance changed at his tone; she looked frightened.  “You can’t be serious.  You just have a brother complex.  Get over it.”

“That’s not it!” she cried, looking like she wanted to move forward, but was too afraid.  “I’ve tried to find guys at school or anywhere that remind me of you.  I just thought you were my ideal, so if I just found a guy like you, then I would be happy.  But that’s not it.  I love you!  I’m _in_ love with you!  I know that we’re soul mates!  Soul mates are people joined by their spirits; the physical body has nothing to do with it.  Just like, sometimes soul mates are the same gender or born years and years apart.  And worst of all, sometimes they’re born to the same family.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t belong together!  We could run away together and never tell anyone!”

“Joanna!  Stop talking!  Are you listening to yourself?  You sound insane.”

“Am I?!  I know you want me, Scott!  Don’t try to protect me!  I don’t want to be protected!  We can be together!  You can have what you’ve been looking at for so long.”

“Are you kidding me?!  I make fun of the fact that you’re underdeveloped and you think that I’m hitting on you?  That’s what brothers do.  We’re mean and we make fun of our little sisters.  And you think all of a sudden I’m attracted to you?  Get real, Joanna!  I’m currently seeing a _blonde_.  With tits twice the size of yours.  What would I want with you?  And you’re my Goddamn sister!  It’s sick!  _You’re_ making me sick.  Get out of my room.  And don’t ever talk to me again until you get your brain fixed!”

He grabbed her by the arm roughly and she cried out as he shoved her outside the room.  He slammed the door shut and fell against the wood.  He slid slowly down his back to the floor.  He put his face in his hands and could hear his sister crying bitterly as she struggled to stand up and walk away.

The sloshing had returned to his stomach, but not because of his sister’s confession.  Yeah, it was gross and a little messed up, but it didn’t actually bother him that much.  He had overreacted in order to get Joanna to hate him.  Wasn’t that the easiest way to get rid of love?  To turn it into hate.  He was willing to be hated by his little sister for the rest of his life if it meant she could get over this quickly and without doing anything she might seriously regret.  Like trying to kiss him or something.  Scott shuddered at the thought, and then let his head fall back against the door.  He was upset that he had hurt her so much, but what else could he do?  If he just tried to convince her that it was a bad idea, she’d continue to believe that he really did like her and was just trying to conform to societal rules.  This would leave her with no doubts that he didn’t feel that way about her and hopefully it would soon make her no longer feel that way about him.

Scott closed his eyes as a headache began to throb between his temples.  How had he not noticed it had gone this far?  He knew that she worshipped him, but he never seriously considered that she might misinterpret that to mean that she was in love with him.  Why couldn’t she be like every other girl and have a crush on Will?  Will would be able handle turning her down a lot better than he could.  Of course, Will wouldn’t have to deal with the bizarre weird grossness that was having his little sister declare her unnatural, illegal love for him.  Scott shook his head.  A love that transcends cultural taboos?  Where did she come up with stuff like that?

And what if she didn’t get over it?  Or what if it took a long time?  How was he going to explain what was wrong with his sister?  Should he keep it between them?  Or if it _really_ was that serious, should he try to get her help?  Maybe Julian’s shrink could help.  Then he might have to tell Julian.  Should he tell any of his friends?  It might be good to have someone to talk to.  His first instinct was to call Anna, but she didn’t want his problems anymore.  He finally had something “real” to talk about, but it probably wouldn’t be good enough for her.  Besides, Scott couldn’t stomach the thought of talking to her right now.  No matter how messed up the situation was, he couldn’t imagine even looking at Anna at the moment.

Scott forced himself to work on his assignment.  He thought that writing about T.S. Elliot’s poems would keep him distracted, but his sister’s crushed face kept hovering over the paper.  He’d never seen her afraid of him before.  That hurt the most.  After struggling with his paper for two hours he gave up and flopped on his bed.  He stared at the ceiling until his mother called him down for dinner.  He wondered if he should go.  He was positive Joanna wouldn’t want to see him, but if she stayed in her room, then he should eat now so that they wouldn’t accidentally bump into each other later while looking for food.  Scott started as someone rapped sharply on his door.  He looked up in trepidation.  Was it Joanna?

“Scott,” his mother said, her voice as sharp as her knocking had been.  “I want you downstairs in two minutes.”

Scott was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any negotiating on that point.  Had she tried to talk to Joanna?  Was she so hysterical that his mother assumed he did something terrible to her?  Or was she still just mad about the car?  Scott got up immediately and started downstairs.  Joanna’s door was shut when he went by it and the Indigo Girls were wailing and commiserating through the cracks.  Scott sighed.  If the worst thing that came from this was that she listened to angry girl rock for the rest of her life that would be fine by him.

Downstairs the twins were waiting anxiously at the table.  They must be having hotdogs or pizza.  They never wanted to eat when it was their mother’s home cooking.  They chirped “hi” to him and Scott smiled at them.  He didn’t want to take his problems out on them.  He’d done that a couple weeks ago and felt guilty about it ever since.  His mother was banging around in the kitchen.  She must be angry.  She came to the table and put a cooking sheet on some trivets.  The twins eyed the pigs-in-a-blanket hungrily.  His mother put a hand on her hip and looked at him.  Her face was drawn up and pinched.  She was unhappy, angry, and worried, but Scott didn’t think it was because of him.

“Will you get your sister?” she asked evenly.

Scott looked at the floor.  “She may not feel like eating right now.”

“Why?” her tone was markedly harder, but still not angry.

Scott didn’t even try to think of an excuse.  He just shrugged and moved to sit at his spot at the table.  His mother sighed in annoyance and returned to the kitchen to pour the boys some soda.  She was really going low effort with dinner tonight.  Something was wrong with her too.  Had the twins confessed to her that they had an Oedipus complex?  They started without Joanna or his father.  Scott and his mother ate in strained silence while the twins remained blissfully oblivious.  Scott couldn’t eat more than a couple bites.  He couldn’t taste anything and he was afraid he might not be able to keep it down.  His mother’s tension was infecting his body.  Then the garage door opened.  Scott paused in mid-sip of his soda as he saw his mother’s face contort to rage and despair.  It was only for a moment.  And Scott wasn’t even sure he really saw it; her features were back under control in an instant.  They heard his father shuffle around in the foyer, and then he came into the kitchen.  He smiled at them.

“How is everyone?”

“Fine!” the twins chorused.

“We found a frog today,” said Drake.

“And we raced him against our car,” said Ferris.

“Wow, that sounds very exciting.  Did you do anything exciting today, Scott?”

Scott shook his head.  His father sat down at the table and started to serve himself a croissant-wrapped hotdog.

“Where’s Joanna?”

“In her room,” his mother said.

“Is she in trouble or something?”

“No.  She’s just locked herself in her room for no good reason.  Unless,” his mother looked pointedly at his father, “she _has_ a good reason for being in her room.  Do you know what it might be?”

Scott’s brow creased as he looked back and forth between his parents.  It didn’t seem like she knew what had happened between him and Joanna, so what was she talking about?  His father didn’t look at her; he just squeezed some ketchup onto his plate.

“I have no idea how the mind of a teenaged girl works.  Maybe she has last season’s shoes.”

“Oh, please!  If you knew _anything_ about your daughter you would know that would be the last problem she would ever have.”

“I was just trying to point out the triviality of middle school dramas.”

“And how do you know it’s trivial?  Maybe there really is a problem.”

His father slammed the ketchup bottle down on the table and some of the thick condiment flew out and splattered the birch colored table.  It stood out like fresh blood on the light surface.  Scott and the twins had both started at the movement.  It was enough to get the twins to stop eating.

“What sort of problem, Susan?  Constantly being nagged and bothered?”  He gave his wife an unfriendly look.  She was looking the same way back at him.  Scott was shocked.  He’d never seen his parents like this before, but this was obviously not the first time they’d had this fight.

“I’m just saying you don’t know anything about what’s gong on with your children because you’re never here.  Where do you go all the time?  Why can’t you be bothered to be at home with your family?”

“I’m out working in order to earn money so that my family, specifically my _wife_ , can spend it on lavish, extraneous crap she doesn’t even need!”

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t buy extraneous _crap_ if I had a husband who was actually around!”

“Even if I was around it certainly wouldn’t make you better able to handle the slightest problem around here!”

His mother stood up swiftly and her chair fell back onto the floor with a loud bang.  “What on earth does that mean?!”

Scott glanced at the twins; they were sitting still as statues.  Scott thought that wasn’t a bad idea and stopped moving.  His father stood up as well and threw his napkin on the table.

“It means exactly that!  I can’t be here twenty-four hours a day, and yet you can’t handle the slightest stressing matter, so you blame me for always being gone.”

He strode out of the kitchen and his wife ran after him.

“Oh, you’re going to prove it by leaving now?”

Scott stared at his untouched pig in a blanket.  He was breathing normally, but he didn’t feel like he was getting quite enough oxygen.

“I can’t handle this, Susan.  I can’t handle the neediness and the helplessness.  And the accusations.  The goddamn accusations!”

“Why do they upset you so much?  Because they’re true?!”

His mother’s voice had gotten so shrill.  He knew his father wasn’t a violent man, but if she lashed out at him, he might be upset enough to strike back without thinking.  Scott got up from the table and ran to the foyer.  His father was donning his coat and getting ready to leave out the garage door.

“Yes, you’re right, Susan.  Of course, you’re right.  Like always.  I’m a terrible husband and an even worse father.  Allow me to solve your problems for you.”

“David, wait, don’t walk out—”

His mother tried to grab his father’s arm, but he shook her off and slammed the garage door shut behind him.  His mother put a hand to her mouth and the other to the closed door.  She sobbed a couple times and then forced herself to hold it back.  She looked over her shoulder and saw Scott.  She didn’t say anything but turned away from him and ran up the stairs.  Scott watched her go and she passed Joanna who was standing at the bottom of the stairs.  Joanna watched her mother flee and then turned to Scott.  Her face was white and she looked near fainting.  But Scott couldn’t comfort her.  He couldn’t hold her.  Who knows how she might construe that action.

Scott turned and ran out the front door.  He could see the taillights of his father’s car speeding down the driveway.  He started to run for the street.  He wasn’t chasing after his father; he was just trying to put some distance between himself and his family.  What had happened?  His family had been so perfect.  What the hell had happened?

 

Julian

 

Julian sleepily opened one eye.  His face was smooshed up against his pillow, obstructing his airway.  But not enough that he needed to move.  That wasn’t what woke him up.  His arm.  He couldn’t feel his arm.  Julian turned over and freed the arm that had been trapped under his body.  It started to tingle painfully as blood rushed back to the oxygen deprived parts.   He glanced at the clock: it was a little after eight.  He didn’t want to be up this early.  He had been going to school for the past two weeks and it had been stressful.  Everyone kept looking at him and the teachers kept trying to talk to him.  He was exhausted and all he wanted to do was just sleep.  He considered rolling back over onto his pillow and suffocating himself, but decided he didn’t need that much sleep.

He sat up with a small groan.  His body ached.  He didn’t know why; he hadn’t done any strenuous activities lately.  Unless living counted.  He was hungry.  He knew that if he went downstairs he would have a great breakfast prepared for him, but the price was dealing with his Greek grandmother.  She was still here.  It was just the two of them.  And Julian didn’t have the strength to fight her on a lot of things.  He gave in to most of her requests—demands—and he wondered if it was because he still felt like this was all temporary.  That before long his life would go back to normal.  It was hard to wake up every morning and tell himself that he wasn’t going to see his parents anymore.  It didn’t seem like reality, so he ignored it most of the day.

Julian wasn’t quite sure if his grandmother would help him accept it faster or slower.  He had someone taking care of him, just in a different way.  It was like his parents had gone on a second honeymoon and left him with a long term babysitter.  But how long term was this babysitter going to be?  When he’d accepted her offer to stay with him, he hadn’t known she’d meant indefinitely.  And he certainly hadn’t been in any condition at the time to turn her down.  It had been after his parents’ funeral.

 

After the fiasco with the high priestess, his reluctant compromise with his relatives, and their grudging acceptance of it, things had progressed rapidly.  As it had turned out, the coven had already been preparing for the funeral, which would take place on private property owned by Aaliyah’s family.  They’d already been through legal channels before and had the area officially declared a private cemetery, so they had no scheduling conflicts.  They followed basic local laws, like the bodies would be at least six feet underground and 200 yards away from any potable water sources.  There would be one law they would break though.  There wouldn’t be time for his parents’ bodies to be cremated, so they would be buried in nothing but a biodegradable shroud.  Wiccans didn’t believe in boxing up a person where they couldn’t be free to be reabsorbed by nature.  But that very re-absorption was what was illegal.  Aaliyah placated Julian by telling him that since his parents hadn’t been embalmed there was nothing in their bodies that the Goddess would not welcome back into her bosom.  He’d almost rolled his eyes at that, but then he remembered that that was very similar to something his mother had said once.

The funeral took place the next day on Sunday so that his relatives would be able to attend.  The whole event was bizarre.  The coven had crowded around the grave, singing and swaying while his relatives had watched with something close to murderous hatred.  Most of them felt that the bodies were just being dumped in the ground and not being treated with respect.  And they couldn’t understand why everyone was rubbing oil on each other and kissing each other.  The Greek Orthodox priest and Mormon preacher had both almost left, but through the pleading of the relatives they stayed in order to bring some peace to the poor souls being treated like a Renaissance Fair activity.

Julian had refused to talk to anybody and wouldn’t listen to their complaints or suggestions for getting either set of people “under control.”  In fact, he didn’t even remember much of the ceremony or the burial at all.  He’d been crying too hard.  He’d finally allowed himself to cry again and the tears wouldn’t stop.  His vision was constantly blurry.

The one thing he did remember was standing beside the grave with his three best friends, looking down and seeing the lumps covered in the shroud.  His parents’ bodies didn’t look like people, they looked like lumps.  He’d wished they’d been in coffins after all.  Something had swayed in his peripheral vision and he’d managed to see Scott going white as a sheet and swooning forward.  He’d raised an arm to point, but couldn’t talk.  Will and Chris managed to catch him before he keeled into the grave.  Trust Scott to give him a memory about his parents’ funeral that he would eventually be able to laugh about.

He didn’t hear what the high priestess said or what the priest and minister said.  He didn’t hear the condolences or the fighting.  He was aware of it, but it didn’t quite seep in.  He was too focused on the hole in the ground.  And then Will had helped him walk back to Aaliyah’s house.  Chris had had to help Scott along.  Then they’d collapsed in a pile on a large, leather couch.  He and Scott had been in the middle and Will and Chris had sat on the outside, letting them both be babies.  It had been like when they were little and their parents would wind up talking longer than they intended when they came to pick them up.  The four of them would cuddle together like puppies in a litter and fall asleep.  Then one by one their parents would pick them up and carry them home.

Comfortable under the weight of his friends, Julian couldn’t quite get to that peaceful sleep.  Because he knew it wouldn’t end the same.  His parents wouldn’t be able to come pick him up and take him home.  Only Scott’s mother had been able to attend and Chris’ mother couldn’t come at all.  The most bizarre part was that the parents who should be missing were both there.  It was Will’s mother and father who had broken up the pile so they could get taken home.  Scott’s mother had taken Chris and Scott home, and Will’s father had actually picked his seventeen year old son up in his arms and carried him out to the car.  Will’s mother offered to take him to her house, and the high priestess offered to let him stay there, but he wanted to go home.  Most of his relatives were catching flights back that night, so he’d finally be alone in his home.  But that thought had scared him.  So, his grandmother had offered to stay with him.  He’d accepted out of fear-filled grief.

 

Julian heard shuffling in the hall.  His grandmother had probably been up for an hour or more already.  She’d started to help him go through his parents’ belongings, but then basically taken over the project.  He’d wanted her to.  He didn’t want to go through his parents stuff.  It would be too weird.  Though he had been sure to go through the drawers in the nightstand by the bed first.  As stomach-churning as it had been to find his parents’ sex paraphernalia, he knew it would have been worse if his grandmother had found it.

“Oh!  Ees bad doog!”

Julian grinned as he heard Cornelius romp cheerfully around his grandmother in the hallway, who he was pretty sure was cursing in Greek.  He dragged himself out of bed and opened the door.  Cornelius whined, happy to see him and jumped up on him to give him a lick on the face.  Julian was grateful one person was still the same as always.  If dogs could count as people.  His grandmother continued to babble away in Greek, and he realized she was speaking to him.  Was he supposed to understand?

She did that a lot.  She’d slip into Greek and expect him to understand.  Which most of the time he was grateful that he couldn’t understand her.  He was sure she wasn’t saying anything he particularly wanted to hear.  Usually on Sunday mornings.  She’d managed to find a Greek Orthodox Church in the next town over and wanted him to come with her.  When she would bring it up he’d just cross his arms over his chest and stare past her at the wall.  She’d give up after fifteen minutes or so, but then she would grumble at him in Greek until she left to attend the service.

At times he just wanted to tell her to pack her things and scram, but she was being so kind to him.  And cooking for him.  And washing his clothes for him.  It wasn’t good that he was being so dependent on her.  It didn’t bode well for when he gained his emancipation.  And that was another sore topic.  His grandmother didn’t want him to go through with it.  But what was he supposed to do?  Move in with her and his grandfather and marry a nice Greek virgin and have twenty kids?  That life wasn’t for him.  And the thought of leaving his friends was unbearable at the moment.

The hearing date had been set for July 5th and Julian wondered if he was going to have to fight with his grandmother over it everyday until it was over.  But would she still be around that long?  He knew he didn’t want her to be, but some of part of him was reluctant to see her go.  He’d been talking with Dr. Gorman about the emancipation and his grandmother, and as was typical of most psychologists, she wasn’t particularly useful for anything other than pointing out the obvious.  She thought that gaining his legal independence wasn’t a bad idea, but she was worried what would happen to him when he was really living all alone.

“You’re a very social person, Julian.  I think you need people around you.”

That’s what she had said.  Well, duh.

Julian was still in the hallway rubbing Cornelius’ head.  His grandmother was in his parents’ room, rooting through their belongings and mumbling to herself in Greek.  Then she poked her head out the doorway.

“There ees breakfast downstairs.”

“Thanks, _Yia-Yia._   Come on, Cornelius.”

Julian and the dog loped downstairs and his stomach grumbled pleasantly as the scents from the kitchen wafted out to meet him.  He grabbed a plate and started to pile it high with food.  It was amazing how much meat these people ate.  And even more amazing how they didn’t keel over from heart disease when they were thirty.  He was half way through his first plate and slipping sausage to Cornelius when the phone rang.  He leaned back in his chair and looked at his greasy fingers before shrugging and grabbing the phone off the wall.

“Hello?”

“Julian?  It’s Will.  How are you going to entertain me today?”

Julian grinned.  Will was possibly the only person who had gone back into normal mode with him.  Everyone else, including Chris and Scott, were still being careful.

“Will, as much as I would love to fill you in on all the dirty details of just how I would like to entertain you, I can’t today.”

Will pouted on the other end.  “Why?”

“I have an appointment.”

“With who?  That shrink?  Does she still want to meet me?  I want to meet her too.  Make sure she’s not doing anything nocuous to you.”

“No, no,” Julian laughed, “not today.  And yes, she still does want to meet you, but we’ll discuss that later.  I’m going to go see Aaliyah.”

“Who?”

“The high priestess of my coven.”

“Oh right.  She’s hot.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t ‘I guess’ me.  Spiritual leader or not she’s frickin’ hot.  Maybe she can heal your emotional wounds with a little physical ritual, eh?”

Julian was smiling, but tried to put on an offended tone.  “Hey, don’t start with the stereotypes.  Sex is not one of Wicca’s foundations.”

“Well, it should be.  What’s the point of an offensive, persecuted religion if you can’t get a little somethin’ on the side?”

“Will!”

Julian couldn’t admonish his friend because he was laughing too hard.

“Come onnnnn!” Will wheedled.  “If you don’t do something with me today, I’m holding you responsible for anything that happens to me as a result of me trying to entertain myself.”

“Well, if you blow up your basement again, I’ll feel just terrible about it.”

“That’s not exactly what I’m worried about.”

“What then?”

Will paused.  “Nothing.  Okay, fine.  Whatever.  I’m not talking to you for like, two days.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Later.”

Julian hung up and shook his head.  Will could be such a child sometimes.  Another classic abandonment issue.  He was more mature than most kids their age and yet he could be amazingly selfish and short-sighted when he wanted to be.  Just a result of being parentless.  Julian stopped in mid-bite.  Was he going to be like that now?  Is that what being parentless meant?  No, his situation was different.  He dropped his head into his hand.  Was it right to call Will parentless?  Was that fair to Mr. and Mrs. Harder?  It wasn’t like they were dead, they were just busy.  He knew they cared about their son.  In fact, considering their personalities and career choices, some might be inclined to say that they doted constantly on their son.  Julian felt an unreasonable surge of envy.  He hated Will for having such great parents. It wasn’t fair.  Cornelius whined and rubbed his head against Julian’s leg.  Julian looked down at him and sighed.

“I know, I know.  If Mom and Dad were still alive, I wouldn’t think Will was so lucky.  But, you know what?  Perspective is everything.”

Julian finished his breakfast slowly and then tiptoed quietly upstairs.  He managed to get into the shower without alerting his grandmother to his presence, but she would be waiting for him when he got out.  Maybe if he took a really long time, she’d get fed up and leave him alone.  Not likely.  The woman had the tenacity of a pit bull.

Julian fell back against the tile wall of the shower and gritted his teeth as the cold penetrated his skin.  Then he relaxed as the feeling subsided and stood motionless under the spray of hot water.  It was a little hotter than he liked it—the mirror over the sink was already fogged up—but he couldn’t be bothered to move to adjust the temperature.  He squeezed his eyes shut as the water gently burned him into numbness.  He ran his fingers lightly over the sides of his thighs, his thumbs tracing the hollow formed where leg met torso.  He was trying not to think of the things he had teased Will about.  With his grandmother in the house, he hadn’t done anything lascivious with himself out of weirdness over her presence as well as fear of getting caught.  In fact, he hadn’t done anything since the first set of grandparents had arrived three weeks ago.  Three weeks was a long time.  It was a shame he didn’t already have a girlfriend when his parents died.

Julian opened his eyes and stopped the movement of his hands.  Why did he always think stuff like that?  Why did he always focus on what would make his life better if he’d just taken care of it before they died?  Did he really believe that?  That if he’d been more prepared for their deaths it wouldn’t have mattered as much?  It wasn’t fair.  Was he wrong for thinking these things?  Or was it normal?  He just didn’t know.  Stupid Dr. Gorman would only tell him that whatever he was feeling was just what he was feeling.  And he should let himself feel it.  But that was stupid.  These weren’t all feelings, they were thoughts.  And there had to be some sort of standard of what was normal grieving and what wasn’t.  Like, if he set the school on fire, that was abnormal, right?  Couldn’t she make up a list?

Julian growled with disgust at himself.  He wanted, no, he _needed_ someone to tell him what to do.  Tell him how to get through this.  He wanted that step by step procedure.  He was tired of feeling so uneasy and unsure of himself.  He had had such a clear definition of self, and now because he didn’t know how to handle this situation, he was feeling lost.  Maybe what he really needed was to relieve some tension.  And he couldn’t very well start throwing dishes around the house anymore than he could cuss out his grandmother.  So, he did the next best thing.  He let his hands slide between his legs and fell into the corner of the shower.  He tried not to think of Will, but of some unknown faceless body that he could do things to in his head.  Male or female, it didn’t matter at this point.  The water turned scalding and Julian cried out as the heat hit him, intensifying the friction he was creating with his hand.  He knew before long the water was really going to start hurting him, but he only needed a few more seconds.

His head thumped against the wall behind him and one hand shot out to grab the faucet.  He took in a couple heaving breaths as the cooling water helped to bring him down.  Julian let his mind focus on the ebbing waves of transient pleasure.  For those few moments, he didn’t have to think of anything else.  Then there was a loud pounding on the door.

“Ju-lee in!  Hurry up in there!”

Julian groaned in unwarranted embarrassment.  There was no way his grandmother knew what he had been doing, but her voice wasn’t exactly whose he wanted hear right after doing something like that.  He knew he should have just waited until she was gone.  But how long would that be?  She really needed to go.

He deliberately took his time washing his hair and body, intending to take the longest shower humanly possible.  He might have to worry about the water bill now, but it was worth it if he could piss his grandmother off.  The hot water gave out before he did and he was forced to retreat to the sticky air of the bathroom.  The paint on one of the walls had bubbled out because it had gotten too steamy.  He pushed the air pocket around with a finger and wondered if it was going to cause a permanent blemish.  Probably.

Julian carefully dried off each individual body part, and then finally peeked his head outside the door.  His grandmother was no where to be seen.  Of course, that didn’t mean she wasn’t lurking around somewhere.  He ran quickly for his bedroom and shut the door behind him.  Then he scanned his room to make sure she hadn’t been hiding here all along.  He appeared to be safe.  He dropped his towel and flopped naked onto the bed.  He stared at his ceiling and sighed.  He knew he should probably head over to Aaliyah’s before too long.  He didn’t actually have a set time he was meeting her, but he did say around noon.

Around noon turned out to be 1:30 for her.  Julian had spent the last hour sitting on her porch when she rolled up the driveway in her Escalade.  He had fidgeted terribly.  He wasn’t one to fidget usually, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his parents’ graves.  They were only a few hundred yards behind the house.  Should he go visit them?  He hadn’t been back since the funeral, but he hadn’t brought any flowers or anything with him.  Would his mother care if he came empty handed?  Probably not since she was dead.  He had rationalized that Aaliyah would be home at any minute, but the minutes had stretched into an hour and it had grated on Julian’s nerves.  He really wasn’t in any condition to talk with anyone at the moment let alone someone he supposedly respected.  He was going to say something he didn’t mean.  He was sure of it.

The tiny woman hopped out of her huge SUV and Julian felt a little bemused that she held a Diet Coke in one hand and a bag full of chicken feet in the other.  She was wearing a flowing white skirt and a black corset over a similar white shirt.  The corset was _tight_ and she was almost spilling out of it.  Julian swallowed hard and was grateful he’d allowed himself that time in the shower that morning or he might have seriously embarrassed himself.  Aaliyah started when she spotted him on the porch.

“Julian?  What are you doing here?”

Julian refrained from making a face.  “I called you yesterday.  About meeting with you.  To talk about things.”

“Oh!  Oh, that’s right!  I’m so sorry.  Come inside, come inside.”

Aaliyah shifted the chicken feet to the hand with the Diet Coke and dug around in a large bag hanging awkwardly from her shoulder.  Julian was about to offer help, but then she managed to produce a wad of keys.  She wrestled with the three locks on the door and finally spilled inside her home.   She punched in the code on her security system with some difficulty due to the bag, but the beeping of the alarm stopped without further incident.  She made her way toward the kitchen and Julian wondered if it went against Wiccan nature to be so mistrustful of fellow human beings.

Aaliyah’s home was normal from the outside, but inside there were crystals, dried herbs and flowers, and pagan symbols all over the place.  The house always smelled very nice; either like early spring or late summer depending on which room you were in.  Julian remembered coming over when he was little and laying upstairs in one of the bedrooms, breathing in the scents.  It had been so serene and pleasant.  He wondered if doing that now might help him.

The kitchen was just down right comical.  There were jars full of weird objects and plants and an actual cauldron sitting on the stove.  But the stove was brand new and state of the art, along with all the other appliances.  Aaliyah redid her kitchen every few years to make sure she had the latest and greatest in cooking technology.  She was putting the chicken feet up in the pantry and Julian waited a few moments for her to remember that he was there.  When she remembered she herded him toward the sunroom.  It was actually his least favorite room in the house.  Aside from a few prisms hanging about, it was just an ordinary room with none of the scents of the rest of the house.  Aaliyah said that natural sun was the most cleansing and spiritual power out there; it didn’t need to be added to.  Of course today, some extra light would have been okay.  It was a nice day, but a little overcast and the room was a touch dim, making it slightly depressing.

Aaliyah sat on a wicker cushioned bench and patted the spot next to her.  Julian sat beside her and she took his hands in hers.  She leaned forward and kissed his lips.

“Blessed be, Julian.  I apologize for not greeting you properly earlier.  I’ve been so frazzled lately.  Linnea’s class is going on a field trip and they’re looking for chaperones and Mae has this project about making a cell out of candy or something.  And the coven business has just been crazy lately.  I think we’ve expanded so much that we might need to create a council to help run things rather than just relying on me and Mother.”  She broke off and looked at him.  “Well, I suppose put into perspective, my problems aren’t so bad.”  She smiled kindly at him.  “How are you doing?  We missed you at Beltane.”

Julian had completely forgotten about Beltane; it was one of the Wiccan holidays.  His parents always made plans days in advance for the Sabbats.  He hadn’t even realized it was coming up.

He thought about unloading all his concerns on her, but that’s what Dr. Gorman was for.  And he didn’t want to distract Aaliyah; he had something specific he wanted to ask her about.

“I’m doing okay.  As well as can be expected, I guess.  My friends have really been there for me.  And my friend’s mom has been taking care of a lot of the legal stuff, so I don’t really feel overwhelmed or anything.”

“That’s good.  But have you been taking time everyday to meditate and commune with the Goddess?  Let her heal you.”

“Yeah, about that.  I’m having some problems with that.  My grandmother is in the house and she’s trying to get me to go church with her.  Like, Greek Orthodox kind of church.  I don’t really have any objections to learning about other religions, but I find it hard to practice my own at home because she would be so offended by it.”

“Julian, your religion is nothing to be ashamed of.  You should feel free to conduct any rituals you like out in the open.  But, if you really do feel uncomfortable, the Goddess won’t mind if you do it in the privacy of your room, as long as you don’t feel ashamed while you do it.  You need to worship with an open heart and an open mind.”

“I know.  I know.”

“And you can always come to the Circle any time you like.”

“I know.  But, I think the main reason I’m having trouble with it isn’t because of my grandmother, but because of me.  I’m having trouble being open with the Goddess because…I think I’m mad at Her.”

Aaliyah blinked.  “Why?”

Julian pursed his lips and tried to temper his words.  He wasn’t sure if he succeeded.  “Why are my parents dead?  Why did they die?  Why would She let that happen?”

“Julian,” Aaliyah shook her head and rubbed his hands, “the Goddess doesn’t _let_ anything happen.  Things just happen.  Life goes on around us, and death is strangely enough a part of life.  It’s not an ending, Julian, it’s the next step in our journey.  It’s something that our animal selves can’t help but to fear, but we have been given the gifts of embodiment and consciousness to help us learn to accept and even appreciate death.”

Julian balked and let go of her hands.  “Appreciate it?  Maybe when I die I can, but how am I supposed to appreciate my parents’ deaths?  What sense is there in that?  And further more, my parents didn’t have a nice relaxing consciousness into death.  They were splattered across our car.  According to you guys, that means they may still be confused and haunting mile marker 38.  How is that the next step in their journey?!”

“Julian…”

“But it’s not even that, okay?  I don’t think my parents’ spirits are hanging out anywhere.  I think they’re just gone.  But how am I supposed to deal with that?  Where is the sense in that?  Why would the Goddess do that to me?!”

Aaliyah waited a moment to be certain he was through, and then she reached for his hands again.  He let her do it, but didn’t feel like being touched at the moment.

“Julian, the Goddess hasn’t done anything to you.  She hasn’t done anything to your parents.  She doesn’t meddle in people’s lives; we aren’t controlled by Her or by anyone or anything else.  Your parents’ deaths are a terrible tragedy, but they have moved on to their next life.  I’m sure they’re happy learning to live again and finding each other again.  The best thing for you to do is to open yourself up to Her for healing and rejuvenation.  It’s hard to deal with now, but day by day it will get better.  And you will learn to—”

“But I don’t want to!  I don’t want to accept that it’s just some event in my life that I have to shrug off.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what it sounds like.”

Aaliyah held back a sigh.  “Would you prefer me to say something like everything happens for a reason?”

“No, that would be worse.  What reason is there in this?”

“There is no reason.  There is no great master plan.  We all just live our lives and then transition into our deaths.  It’s the just the way it works.”

Julian searched her face for a few moments.  “Because you say so?  Because your religion says so?  _How_ do you know?”

“Because I have faith, Julian.  I feel the Goddess in me and around me everywhere I go.  I know She is there for me just like I know She’s there for you.”

“Yeah, but, is She there for me because you believe She is even though I don’t?  Is She still there?”

“Yes, Julian, She’s there.  Even when you lose your faith in Her, She doesn’t lose Her faith in you.”

“Well, that’s easy for Her then.  I obviously exist.”

Aaliyah made a concerned face of consternation.  She reached out a hand to tuck back some hair behind his ear.  He moved slightly away from her.

“Julian, I understand that you’re hurt.  And angry apparently, but don’t turn your back on your religion because your family has instilled doubts in you.”

Julian stood up and walked away.  “It’s not my family.  I have doubts because _I_ have doubts.  It’s all such crap.  All of it.  Not just Wicca, any religion.  We just make them up to make ourselves feel better about death and being tiny insignificant specks in the vastness of the universe.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Julian placed his hands on the wall and leaned his forehead against it.  He closed his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe now is a good time to figure that out.  Take some time to yourself.  Learn about some different religions, go to church with your grandmother, take some time to meditate and allow your body to be infused with a divine spirit.  Maybe then you’ll get an answer.  Above all Wicca is founded upon free will.  Nobody can force you to believe anything you don’t.  That’s what makes it faith.”

Julian turned his head slightly to look at her with one eye.  He was a little embarrassed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.  I don’t imagine I would handle this any differently than you.  Parents are something that whether intentional or not, are heavily associated with religion.  Our parents are our earthly representations of God.  When we lose them without having been able to firmly establish a link with divinity, it forces us to sharply question what we believe.”

Julian turned his face back to the wall.  Was that it?  Was he just doubting it because he needed parents there to tell him what to believe?  Possibly.  But everyday kids stopped believing what their parents believed and formed their own beliefs.  Why was he so dependent on someone else’s idea of what was right?  He could just as easily turn to the agnostic Harders and then not care at all.  Or he could follow Scott with his Methodist upbringing.  He thought maybe Chris was Episcopalian, but he was certain that aside from Scott, none of them had been to an actual church in years.  Or ever in some cases.  And Scott only went for Easter and Christmas.  Was he only searching for a religion because he was dealing with death?  Did he really need one?  Would his life be easier if he was just an atheist?  Then he wouldn’t have to care about whether there was a reason for it at all or if his parents’ souls were in mortal danger.  Wasn’t that a weird concept anyway?  Souls having mortal problems?  That’s why he could never buy into the whole Heaven and Hell thing as actual physical locations.  Even existential locations.  Because pain was physical.  Even when it was emotional, it was still physical.

“Julian?”

Julian looked at Aaliyah.  She was standing up and edging for the door.

“I have a lot to get done today, and I understand that you may need something to help take your mind off this for a little while.  Why don’t you help me make the preparations for Circle tonight?  Then you can stay for dinner with my family.”  She hesitated and then spoke softly as if to a spooked animal.  “And then maybe come to Circle if you feel like it.”

She smiled at him and he knew she did believe in the free will stance of all Wiccans, but he had a feeling if he stayed it would be like agreeing to breakfast on Sunday with a minister and his family.

“Well, actually, I think I should get back.  I didn’t exactly tell my grandmother where I was going and I don’t want her to worry.”

It occurred to him that all he had to do was call her, and he was sure the thought occurred to Aaliyah too, but she just smiled and nodded.

“Some other time then.  Any time you need help, please do stop by.  I know I’m always busy, but I’m never too busy for you.”

He walked toward the exit of the sunroom and bobbed his head in acknowledgement.  She walked him to the front of the house and opened the door.  Before he could step out, she took both his hands again and gave them a squeeze.

“Blessed be, little one.”

She leaned forward, and stood a little on tiptoe, to kiss him.  He always just accepted the kisses, but maybe what Will had said was affecting him.  His kissed her back when their lips met.  She pulled back, surprised, but not upset.  She scowled playfully at him and tapped his nose with a finger.

“Don’t you dare, Julian March.  I swear you’re as bad as your father.”

Julian smiled.  He wasn’t glad to know that his father had taken liberties with women other than his mother, but it made him feel better to know that he and his father were similar.  It felt good to hold onto that.

“Bye, Aaliyah.”

“Goodbye, Julian.”

Julian walked down the long driveway to the main road.  Aaliyah’s house was kind of like Scott’s, only her acreage was much bigger.  You needed a lot of room to have bonfires and a cemetery and conduct ceremonies “skyclad” a.k.a. naked so prying neighbors couldn’t see.  His father’s car, well, he guessed it was his now, was sitting on the side of a stretch of highway.  He’d been relieved to learn the car had been mostly paid off, but the SUV still had several months of hefty payments left on it.  He’d be able to make some of them out of his parents’ bank account, and more than likely would be able to pay it off with the profits from the house.  That’s what Mrs. Harder had said.  He didn’t know if he wanted to sell the house though.  Logically it was the best thing to do, but Julian hadn’t been raised on logic.

Julian got into the car and sat for a few moments.  It was still early afternoon.  He could call Will and see if he still needed entertainment.  He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and punched in the number from memory.  It was actually faster than scrolling through the contacts list.  He sat back with the phone to his ear and listened to it ring.  Then it beeped at him.  He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the display in sheer disbelief.  The little fucker had pushed “ignore.”  Well, fine then.  He could entertain himself.

Julian started the car and headed for home.  Halfway there, he changed his mind and drove to the local library.  It was a little dump of a building and didn’t have nearly as much material as the one in the city, or the one in his school for that matter, but it was bound to have what he needed.  He just wanted to peruse through some religious texts.  See what they had to say in the strict believing in them sense and what they had to say about living everyday life and dealing with death.  Maybe Aaliyah was right; maybe he would find his answer in a different religion.

After spending ten minutes figuring out how to use the electronic card catalogue because he refused to ask for help, he managed to locate the sections he needed.  He pulled about fifteen books from several different religions and sat down to start reading.  Well, browsing, but he would read anything he thought looked interesting.  Three hours later, Julian was even closer to being an atheist than he ever thought possible.  He had never really believed literally in the Goddess and the Horned God of the Wiccan tradition, but he had believed in a spiritual, divine power.  Now he wasn’t even sure about that.

As far as he could tell, there were four major groups of religions: Abrahamic, Dharmic, Taoic, and Other.  The Abrahamic religions were the ones that arose from the line of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  In theory they all believed in the same God, but there was some argument over that and Jews and Muslims looked down on the Christian idea of the Holy Trinity because they were strictly monotheistic.  The common factors of the religions were that they are monotheistic, given divine revelation by prophets, and people are presented with an ethical choice between right and wrong.  Of course, these same principles hold true for a religion called Zoroastrianism, but it was etymologically distinct from the Abrahamic religions.

The Dharmic religions centered on people having a fixed decree telling them what their duty is in life and the natural way to abide by those laws.  However, the religions thrown in this group ranged from Shinto—polytheistic—Sikhism—monotheistic—and Buddhism—non-theistic—so, were they really similar at all?

The Taoic religions were less religions and more philosophies.  They were just a way to live life in the flow of the universe.  And the Other category included the Chinese folk religion and primal African ones—which were just plain weird.

With the exception of the Taoic religions, most of them had some sort of rules to follow in order to live properly or to serve God, whichever one was considered more important.  They had different ideas of what happened after you died, but all were pretty certain that there was something after death.  Which made sense.  If someone was going to make up a religion—aside from being used as a way to explain natural phenomena in the ancient world—the main reason would be to ease their fear of death.  Once a creature had a concept of death, it was obvious that is was something to fear.  By creating a God that would give them eternal life in a better place, it made it easier to live a life that would only result in death.  There were a few religions that had no concept of an afterlife, but the ones that people clung to in the greatest numbers guaranteed at least a sense of perfect enlightenment if not a complete life after death.

The whole concept of religion seemed downright silly to Julian by the end of his studying.  There was no way to figure out which religion was right; you just had to hope you were born into the right one and that when your parents told you what to believe they were right.  It almost seemed like just simply believing in a divine power would be the safest course of action.  Or maybe that wasn’t the point at all.  Like in the movie he’d watched recently, _Serenity_ , the minister-like character had said, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just believe.”  But was that a good idea?  What if you believed in something that was wrong, or a lie?  Maybe that was okay.  Maybe believing in a lie and simply having faith was a way to give purpose to your life.  Whether or not it _really_ meant anything was beside the point; just as long as you believed it did.

Julian groaned and slumped into his pile of books.  This was why people didn’t study their religion.  Otherwise they might start not believing in it.  For now, he was just not going to worry about it.  Whether his parents were in heaven or hell, had been reincarnated into someone or something else, or had simply ceased to be was unimportant.  They were gone from his life.  He still had to live.  Once he had his feet on the ground and his life reasonably under control again, then he’d worry about whether or not it was important that he go through the motions of some religion’s worshipping rituals just to prove he deserved being alive.

Julian left the library and drove slowly toward his house.  He was in no mood to deal with his grandmother.  He wondered if Will was still being a prick.  He decided not to call him, but just to drop by his house.  On the way there he called his grandmother and told her he might not be home for dinner.  She didn’t fight him on it for which he grateful, but a little suspicious.

At the Harders, Will’s mother opened the door.  It was a Saturday after 5:00, but she was wearing a business suit.  A cold, navy color.  He wondered what color she’d wear at his hearing.

“Hello, Julian.  Did I ask you to stop by today?  I don’t think I currently have more documents to go over with you.”

Julian gave her a half-smile.  “I’m here to see Will.”

“Oh, right.  Of course.  I guess I’m just thinking of you as a client.  Sorry about that.  Come in.”

She let him into the house and a wonderfully rich smell filled his nostrils.  Mr. Harder was experimenting again.  And this time it might not be so bad.

“That smells amazing.”

“Hnn.  The last time something smelled amazing, it tasted horrible.  But, you’re welcome to join us for dinner tonight.  It might turn out as good as it smells.”

Julian grinned.  He didn’t know why exactly, but based on the way Mr. and Mrs. Harder talked about and to each other, he’d always imagined that they had a very healthy sex life.  Even though they both appeared too busy to bother with it.

“If it’s not an imposition,” he murmured, trying not to think about his friend’s parents in any compromising positions.

“None at all.  Will’s upstairs.  Tell him to finish his homework while you’re up there.  I know he normally does it in class, but that’s disrespectful.”

“Okay.”

Julian took the stairs two at a time, and had a sudden flash of guilt.  Would his grandmother remember to feed Cornelius?  Surely she wasn’t that heartless, was she?  Julian mulled over the possibility of Cornelius starving to death overnight and forgot to knock on Will’s door.  It was partially open anyway, so he just let himself in.  Will didn’t notice him or the door moving.  He was lying on his bed, staring at the space poster.  Actually, his eyes were kind of glazed over and not focused on anything.  One arm was raised and he was lightly touching his lips with just the tips of his fingers.  Julian stopped moving to watch him for a moment.

He’d only seen Will do that twice before.  Once had been after his third kiss.  His first had been in kindergarten, the second in third grade, but the third had been when he was a sixth grader and he had kissed a seventh grader.  He’d been a legend for the rest of the year.  And it was that kiss that Will always said was his first _real_ kiss.  What Will Harder’s definition of a “real kiss” might be was open to speculation, but knowing him it was nothing short of first base.  The second time he’d dreamily gazed at his ceiling and fingered his lips had been when he was dating Liz.  That was why Julian had felt he was falling in love with her: their kisses meant something to him.  So, why was he doing it now?  He knew Will and Liz had gone on a date a couple weeks back.  Had they secretly gotten back together?

“Hey, asswipe,” Julian announced his presence.

Will started and looked almost guiltily over at him.

“Oh, you.  How was the ‘high priestess’?”

Will didn’t change his inflection or use any hand motions, but Julian could sense the mockery of the term.

“Fine.  But non-helpful.  Kind of.  What did you do to entertain yourself?”

Will sat up Indian style on the bed and Julian sat across from him.

Will smiled.  “I got a kitten.”

Julian waited.  No further explanation appeared to be coming.  “You got a kitten?  Your mom let you get one?”

“No, my sugar daddy got it for me.”

Julian let out a noise of disgust.  “Okay, fine.  Don’t tell me what you did all day.  I thought you weren’t speaking to me for two days anyway.”

“Oh, yeah.  I forgot.  So, why don’t you do the talking?  You look like you have something on your mind.”

Julian tried not to feel pleased that Will had noticed something was wrong.  It wasn’t that Will was the one person who knew him that well; anybody would have been able to tell he was down.  But, it was nice to pretend that Will was connected to him on a different level than the rest of the world.

“It’s nothing groundbreaking,” Julian muttered as he picked at Will’s bedspread.  “I’m just having a crisis of faith.”

Will wiggled his toes.  “You’re not sure Wicca is right?”

“I’m not sure any of them are right.”

Will laughed softly.  “Welcome to the club.”

Julian groaned and flopped back onto the bed.  He looked at the space poster.  “That’s not helping me.”

“Would you prefer me to lie to you?”

Julian hesitated.  “Yes.”

“Okay.  There is one supreme God in the world.  He is the Master of all: the smartest, the strongest, the prettiest.  And he is called the Me Is!”

Julian felt the bed shift as Will stood up on it.  Then he moved into his vision, the space poster providing his backdrop.

“Now, grovel before your God, worm.  And perhaps I will answer your prayers.”

Julian laughed and hooked Will’s leg with his foot.  The god-wannabe crashed onto the bed and then bounced off onto the floor.  He shouted in disgusted protest.  His voice came muffled from the floor.

“Heretic!  How dare you treat your Lord and Savior like that?!”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  Could not the Omnipotent One see that coming?”

Will dragged himself back onto the bed with a look that stopped Julian’s heart.  No, he hadn’t popped up with the most rage-filled, evil face he could muster; he arose gracefully with the face of a heartbroken angel.

“Oh, Julian,” he wept softly, “don’t turn your back on me too.”

Julian made a face at him.  How dare he play him like one of his bitches?  He grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him on the bed.  Will was such a cool, collected guy—it bothered him to no end that he was ticklish.  Will screamed as Julian attacked him.  He twisted and turned and kicked his legs.  He nearly nailed Julian in the stomach, but Julian had had practice avoiding the flailing legs while torturing his best friend.  Julian was laughing and Will’s screams kept getting louder.  Their wrestling forced them to migrate across the bed.  They balanced precariously on the edge and then fell onto the floor with a loud thump.  The bedroom door opened.  Julian and Will looked toward the entrance.  They were tangled together, legs sticking straight up against the bed.  Mrs. Harder had her hand on the knob and was staring at them.  She shook her head and turned away.

“I’m not even going to ask,” she said as she walked toward the stairs.

They stayed still for another moment or so.  And then Will laughed.  Julian laughed too and they fell completely to the floor, giggling.  They settled down and lay quietly together.  Julian turned and buried his face in Will’s side.  He started crying and tried to keep the noises he was making to a minimum.  Will didn’t say anything.  He just raised a hand and softly stroked his head.  Julian thought he was done with crying, but the tears fell freely from his eyes, wetting Will’s shirt.  It wasn’t so much crying out of sadness as it was tiredness.  This was the kind of release he needed.  This felt good.  It felt like he was crying out all the negative energy he had been storing inside himself.

It didn’t last that long, but it made him feel monumentally better.  He sat up and turned his back on Will so he could wipe his eyes in privacy.  Then he turned around and saw Will making a face at the wet spot on his shirt.  He looked up at Julian with a slightly irritated face.

“I guess I should be grateful you didn’t feel the need to cry in my lap.”

Julian laughed.  They sat quietly and it was such a relief that they didn’t feel awkward after what had just happened between them.  If he couldn’t have a girlfriend, he was happy that he at least had a guy friend who wouldn’t be freaked out by sharing emotions with him.

“Boys!”  Mrs. Harder’s voice floated up from downstairs.  “Dinner’s ready!”

Will stood up and tapped Julian’s head as he passed him.  “Come on.”

“I’ll be there in a second.”

Will nodded and left the room.  Julian leaned back against the bed.  He needed to stop being so dependent on people.  There was a difference between accepting help and support, and letting people take care of you.  He was going to have to tell his grandmother that it was time to go.

 

Chris

 

Chris stared at his cell phone and willed it to ring.  It remained silent.  He let out an aggravated groan and flopped back against the couch.  Karen wasn’t answering his calls.  He’d been calling her all morning and left her three messages.  On her cell phone.  He didn’t dare call her home phone for fear that her father would answer.  He had been driving Karen to school and picking her up everyday so that she wouldn’t get a ride from Chris.  Chris supposed the idea was to prevent them from seeing each other, but they saw each other in school.  So he didn’t see the point of her father bothering with trying to keep them apart.  He did work in the city, so it wasn’t that far out of the way, but during rush hour, going across the city must have added an extra half hour to forty-five minutes to his commute.  But, if that’s what he wanted to do, he was welcome to it.

Chris actually found it very liberating now that he didn’t have to abide by Karen’s schedule.  From what Karen told him when they talked briefly in school, her father was bound and determined to see them break up.  Her mother didn’t really care.  She thought they were mature enough to have a physical relationship, albeit dumb as rocks to have that relationship with her parents in the house.  Karen said her mother was convinced that her father wouldn’t be able to break them up.  Chris just always smiled uneasily at that.  No, it wouldn’t be Mr. Green that broke them up, it would be Chris.

Chris glared at his cell phone again.  It remained inactive.  He tried to move his thumb toward the keypad.  His brain was resisting him.  It knew he was aiming for the first digit of Karen’s home number.  _Don’t do it_! it screamed at him.  _She’ll call eventually.  Who cares if you break up with her in the morning or the afternoon?_

The phone rang and Chris screamed and threw it away from him.  He put a hand to his chest, feeling his heart race.  And also feeling a bit like a spaz.  He leaned off the couch and grabbed his phone.  It was Will.  He was happy to answer.  It would be nice to have someone to talk to; it might help to calm his nerves.

“Hey, Will,” he answered the phone.

“Good morning, Christopher.  How are you going to entertain me today?”

“I can’t today.  I’m committing suicide.”

There was a pause.  “That better be true because that would be the only viable excuse for ditching me.”

Chris smiled.  “Well, I’m breaking up with Karen today.”

“Hmm.  That’s close enough.  I suppose I will allow myself to be ditched for this reason.”

Chris’ brow creased.  “Why?  Should breaking up with her be my number one priority?  Do you really want me to break up with her that much?  Is she that bad?”

“No, not really.  She’s certainly no worse than some of the girls I’ve dated before.  But, honestly, you just don’t seem happy when you’re around her.  In fact, you actually seem to become unhappy when she comes around.  You see, I don’t dislike her for the same reason as Scott and Julian and the girls do.  They don’t like her personality.  I don’t mind that so much.  She’s kind of like me in a lot of ways.”

 _Well, that’s true_ , thought Chris.

“I dislike her because she makes you feel like crap.  And I don’t like people who treat my friends poorly.”

“Thanks.  I guess.”

“Sure.  Do you need any tips on how to break up with her?”

Chris thought a moment.  “What if she says no?”

“What do you mean?  What if she says no she won’t break up with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then you have to give her a reason that will make her want to dump you before you can actually break up with her.”

“Like what?”

“Well, what is one thing she won’t stand for?”

Chris laughed.  “A lot of things.”

“No, I mean, like would she not be able to forgive you if you cheated on her?  Some girls don’t really care about that.”

“I think that would be a problem for her.”

“Right.  She’s very prideful.  So, use that.”

“But, I don’t want to lie to her.  And besides, you know I can’t lie.”

“So, go cheat on her, and then tell her.”

Chris rolled his eyes.  “You’re no longer being helpful.”

“Well.  Think of your own reason.  Sometimes using the old cliché lines like ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ is so irritating that they don’t want you anymore.  Although, I suppose you could just tell her, ‘it’s not me, it’s you.’  Then you won’t be lying and you might insult her enough that she wouldn’t want to keep you.”

Chris groaned and fell face first into the couch cushion.  “This sucks.”

“I feel your pain, my brother.”

“Do you?  I mean, have you ever cared when you broke up with someone before?”

Will was silent on the other end of the line.  Chris sat up partially.

“Ah, Will.  I didn’t mean anything by that.  I just—”

“No, it’s okay.  I get it.  You’re right.  I don’t usually care.  But, when I broke up with Liz—that was hard.  You can _not_ tell Julian I said that, got it?”

Chris thought that was weird.  He thought Will and Julian told each other everything.  “Sure.  I won’t say a word.”

“Okay.  So, you obviously can’t entertain me today, so I’ll have to find someone else.  That punk Scott better not let me down or I will be very displeased.”

“Worse yet you’ll be bored.  And we all know that it’s never a good thing when you get bored.  You might blow up your basement.”

“Why does everyone remember that?”

Chris grinned and shook his head.  “Bye, Will.”

“Bye, loser.”

Before Will could hang up on him, his phone beeped to inform him he had an incoming call.  He switched over to the caller.

“Who were you talking to?”

It was Karen.  There was no “hello” or “hi, it’s me.”  Just, “Who were you talking to?”

“Just a friend, Karen.”

“What friend?  Who was it?”

“It was _Will_.  Why are you so suspicious?”

“Well, I have good reason to be.  You’ve been distant since ‘the incident.’  And like you’re uninterested in me or something.  Is it because you’ve found someone else to be interested in?”

“No, not at all.”

“So, what, you’re worried about the paternal unit?”

Chris got the arm of the couch in a death grip.  “What?” he squeaked.  He cleared his throat.  “No!  No, of course not!  Why would I be?!”

“Geez, Chris, spastic much?  I just meant ‘cause he was so mean and stuff.”

Chris relaxed.  She had been talking about _her_ father.  Of course.

“Oh, no.  No, I’m not worried about him.  Much.”  Chris forced back his sigh.  “We need to talk, Karen.  Can you go out today?”

“Yeah, I’d love to go out.  It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other not in school.  Pick me up at my house at six tonight.”

“Six?  Why not now?”

“I have a mani-pedi at twelve and my mom is taking me shopping afterwards.  It’s something we set up on Monday.  I can’t back out.”

“All right, fine,” Chris grumbled.  “But I’m not picking you up at your house.”

“Why not?”

“Um, because your father might see me and then attempt to kill me.”

“Look, my dad is just going to have to get over it.  Pick me up at my house.  I am not walking to the corner of the street like I’m sneaking around, got it?”

“Well, can’t your Mom just leave you at the mall or something?”

“Chris, sweetheart, do you think we’re shopping in this town’s mall?  We’re going into the city.”

“Fine, fine.  Six.  Your house.  Wear something black and bring flowers.”

Karen giggled.  “Don’t worry, baby.  I’d protect you from him.”

Chris smiled.  That was sweet.  He actually believed her when she said she would stand up to her father for him.  But so what?  He straightened himself up.  He was still going to dump her.

“I’ll see you then.  Have fun with your mom.”

“Bye, babe.  I love you.”

She waited for a reciprocation of sentiments.  Chris couldn’t reply, so he just hung up.  Maybe that would at least give her a clue as to what tonight would be about.  He put a hand to his forehead.  He waited for the headache.  He was relieved when one didn’t form.  All he had to do was get through this one night and then a huge weight would be off his shoulders.  And more than likely his life wouldn’t get too much worse.  Karen had a lot of friends who might try to make him miserable for breaking their friend’s heart, but it’s not like he would be ostracized by the whole school.  He still had his own friends.  And as much as it sucked to rely on someone else’s popularity, as long as Will was still friends with him, there weren’t too many people who would turn on him for Karen’s sake.

At a quarter ‘til six, Chris was sitting on the hood of his car outside Karen’s house.  He had been antsy all day and unable to keep himself from coming over early.  Maybe she would be ready and they could just go and get this over with.  It was dangerous to be in full view of the house for so long.  Who knew if her father didn’t make routine checks out the window to see if some errant, lovesick caller was skulking about trying to get in his daughter’s pants?

Chris glanced toward the setting sun.  It was still pretty high in the sky.  The days were much longer now and it didn’t even start to get dark until almost 7:30.  That would mean if you wanted to break into someone’s house you would have to wait until at least eight or nine.  Chris smiled wryly and shook his head.  Why was he even thinking about that?  He was not going to help his father with his harebrain idea.  Even if they could wait until it was dark out, it would be way too risky.  And only an idiot would attempt to do it in daylight.

Chris glanced toward the house in question.  A shadowy figure was slinking around the side.  Chris stared blank-faced.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he muttered and slid off his car.  He looked at Karen’s front door as he ran toward the back of the house.  There was no movement in the Green household.  Chris sprinted around the back and came upon the door to the walkout basement.  His father was trying to pick the lock.

“ _Dad_!” Chris hissed.

His father started and dropped his tool.  “Jesus, Chris.  Don’t just sneak up on people.”

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re trying to break into someone’s house in broad daylight!”

“Well,” his father said, looking around, “I wouldn’t call this _broad_ daylight—”

“Dad!”

“Shh!”

Chris and his father shut their mouths and glanced around to see if anyone was looking at them.  The evening was still and there was no movement in the sparse woods behind the house.  Chris glanced over at Karen’s house.  He couldn’t see the front, but it was still five minutes before six.  She probably hadn’t come out yet.  His father had picked up his tool and started at the door again.  Chris grabbed his wrist.

“Dad!” he whisper-shouted.  “I told you these homes have security systems.”

“And I told you I learned how to disable them in jail.”

“But the controls will be at the front entrance!”

His dad cocked an eyebrow.  “That’s a good point.”

“Oh my God,” Chris moaned, burying his face in his hands.  His father wasn’t that big of an idiot, was he?

“Well, then let’s go to the front of the house.”

“The sun is still up!”

“So?  People expect people to break in at night.  Not in ‘broad daylight.’  The neighbors won’t know that I’m not just using a key.”

“Well, I think the owners of the house might notice!”

“Relax.  There’s no one even here.”

A light in the basement flipped on and a yellow square filled the wooden deck they stood on, highlighting their legs and feet.  They stared at the light and then glanced inside the glass door.  A shadow was moving down the stairs.  Chris’ father spoke.

“Um.  Hide.”

They dove toward the woodpile stacked under the elevated deck.  His father squeezed in and Chris only got halfway in.

“Move, Dad!”

“I can’t!  The logs have pushed out back here.  I can’t go any further.  We need to find somewhere else.”

“No.  You stay here!  Don’t move.”

Chris turned and bolted back across the lower deck.  The basement door opened.

“Who are you?” a shrill voice shouted.

If Chris had been smart, he would have just kept running.  But he turned back to see who had shouted at him.  He couldn’t believe his bad luck.  What were the odds that someone from Calverton lived in this house?  And someone not wearing a whole lot of clothes.  She had on short shorts and a capped sleeve T-shirt both made out of soft cotton.  It kind of looked like what Karen used for pajamas sometimes.  Chris couldn’t believe that even in this situation he still managed to check her out.  But, she was hot, which meant she was really popular.  So, maybe she was popular enough that she had no idea who he was.

Antoinette Bixby stared at him in surprise, and then recognition passed over her features.  She stood with her weight on one foot and pointed at him.

“Don’t I know you?”

“Uh…yeah.”  Chris rubbed the back of his head with a hand.  “I, uh, go to Calverton.”

“Right.”  She continued to stare at him suspiciously.

“Why are you here?”

Chris went blank.  Didn’t he have a legitimate reason for being in the area?  His girlfriend.  Right.  But what was he doing in Antoinette’s backyard?  Why had he lost his new found ability to lie?!

“Oh, wait,” Antoinette said, her features going softer, “you’re Scott’s friend, right?”

Chris tilted his head in question.  Was there a soccer player named Scott that she was thinking of?  Surely she didn’t mean _his_ Scott.

“Uh, yeah.  I’m friends with Scott.  But, Scott Ramsey.”

“I know his last name,” she said defensively.

“Oh.  Well then.  Yeah.  I am friends with him.”

Antoinette took a couple steps toward him.  “Did he send you here?” she asked nervously.

Chris opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t have a clue what to say.  He saw his father slink out from behind the woodpile.  He held his breath, nearly blacking out as his father did _not_ go around the front of the house, but slipped inside the open basement door.  Antoinette looked at him funny.  She could tell he was staring behind her.  She started to turn her head to look.

“Yes!” he shouted to get her attention back.

“Yes what?”

“Scott sent me.”

“Why?”

Well, that was naturally going to be the next question.  Why didn’t he think that far ahead?  Why would Scott send someone to talk to Antoinette Bixby?  Or, more importantly, why would Antoinette _expect_ that Scott would send someone to talk to her?  He commanded himself to think.  It didn’t help.  What on earth should he say?  Did they have classes together?  Was it a history project?  Math help?

“Chris?”

Chris’ eyes darted toward the top of the hill.  That was Karen.  She was calling for him from the front of the house.  He felt lightheaded.  He knew he was going to faint any second now.  He couldn’t let Karen know he was back here but he couldn’t just leave his bonehead father inside Antoinette’s house.

“Chris?  Where are you?”

There wasn’t really anything he could do about his father, but he could keep Karen from getting involved.  And maybe he could lead Antoinette to the front so that his father would be able to sneak out.

“Uh,” began Chris, “that’s my girlfriend.  I need to…”  He trailed off and started for the front of the house.

He didn’t get two steps before Antoinette grabbed his arm and made him stop.

“Chris, wait.  What did Scott want you to tell me?”

“I—”

“If he wants to apologize,” she said acidly, “he should have come himself.”  She crossed her arms and looked disdainful.  “And if he sent you to break it off, then he’s just a total wuss.”  Chris started as Antoinette suddenly clutched at his arm.  “He doesn’t really want to break it off, does he?”  She looked very upset that this could be a possibility.

Karen called his name again.  Well, shouted it in mounting anger.  His father was no where to be seen.  He looked up at the sky; it was turning orange.  He just needed to make something up so Antoinette would leave him alone.  It wouldn’t really be his place to break something off that Scott was doing.  Though if Scott was doing what it seemed like he was doing—which seemed like an impossibility—it might be a good idea to get him out of potential beating by a large soccer team captain.  And he certainly didn’t want to apologize.  What if Scott wasn’t sorry?  And what if it wasn’t even his fault?  Antoinette seemed a little high strung.  More than likely the offense was imagined.  He couldn’t imagine Scott doing anything to hurt anyone.  Well, not intentionally anyway.  The seconds ticked by and Antoinette waited patiently, but with an arched eyebrow.

“Uh, I’m not here to apologize or break it off.  It’s just that…well…the situation has him worried.”

Chris nodded.  That was a good, generic, simple explanation.  And she could interpret that to mean whatever she wanted.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah.  That’s it.”

Antoinette was back to looking suspicious again.  “Scott sent you here…to tell me he’s worried about the situation?”

Chris felt nauseous.  Why was he stuck in this situation?

“Yeah.  That’s what he said.”

Antoinette grabbed his arm again.  “Well, which part?” she demanded.

“What the hell is this?”

Chris and Antoinette looked to the side of the house.  Karen had just rounded the corner.  She wore a cute purple halter-top dress.  She had apparently been expecting them to be going on a date.  She really had no clue what was coming tonight.  Her face wasn’t cute though.  She looked angry.

“What is this Chris?  What are you doing with her?”

Her who?  Then Chris turned and looked at Antoinette again.  It was bad enough that he was somewhere he shouldn’t be talking to someone he shouldn’t be, but why did Antoinette have to be wearing so little clothes?

Karen pulled out the one black expression she could make convincingly: the “Oh no he di’nt” one.  She put one hand in the air and waved it around, closer to a Latina than a black girl, and said, “Are you cheating on me?”

“No!”

Chris was surprised.  The forceful denial had come from Antoinette.

“I’m not cheating on anyone!”

Chris looked at her.  She was obviously cheating on Jake.  With Scott.  Scott Ramsey.  _His_ Scott Ramsey.  It was beyond bizarre.  Even Karen seemed to think it was weird that Antoinette was being so belligerent.  Chris turned to his girlfriend.

“Karen, calm down.  Nothing is going on here.  I was out front waiting for you, and I was pacing.  Right?”

Karen crossed her arms and pursed her lips.  She settled her weight on one foot and waited for him to continue.  Antoinette was looking at him too, wondering what he would come up with.

“Right, so I was pacing and walking around.  And I wandered into your yard and looked toward the back.  And…and…I thought I saw a deer,” he said lamely.

Karen and Antoinette exchanged looks and then focused on him again.

“So, I came back to look at it.  And then Antoinette came out because she thought I was some creepy guy sneaking around her house.  I was just explaining the situation when you found us.”

“Why didn’t you answer me when I called?”

“Because I was going to come right up.  And, now I can.  So, let’s go.”

He reached for Karen’s arm to lead her away.  If his father was still stuck in the house it wouldn’t do any good for Karen to find out about it too.  Antoinette stopped him again.

“Wait, this deer, you saw.  Did it, like, inspire you with any thoughts or something?”

She gave him a pointed look.  Huh?

Antoinette continued to look at him.  “The _deer_.  You know?  Does it make you want to give some sort of _message_?  Like about the world or something?”

It dawned on Chris that Antoinette was still trying to get Scott’s message out of him.  He’d already told her.  The situation was difficult.  What more could he tell her?  Well, now that he was convinced Scott and Antoinette had some weird relationship going on, he said what he felt was closest to the truth.

“Well, it seems to me that the deer was looking over at all this developed land and was thinking, ‘I’m not ready for all this.’”

Antoinette let the air of her lungs and looked a little sad.  Then she smiled dryly.  “Well, that’s obvious.”

“What are you two talking about?’ Karen butted in.

“Nothing, princess.  You know how white people get about nature and stuff.”

Antoinette rolled her lips in to hide her smile.  Karen looked away from him with an annoyed expression.  Then a window on the back of the house opened and a man stuck his head out.  Antoinette leapt forward and shoved Chris against the side of the house.  He let out a small noise at the impact and Antoinette covered his mouth with a hand.  Karen marched forward ready to start yelling, but the man at the window said.

“Antoinette, is there a man outside?”

Antoinette dug a finger in Chris’ chest and whispered menacingly, “Don’t move.”  Then she stepped out so that her father could see her.

“What do you mean?”

“Your little sister says she saw a man in the house.”

Chris clutched his left arm as a sharp pain shot through the limb and into his chest.  He was having a heart attack.  He just knew it.

“Antoinette Marie Bixby, is Jake out there?”

“No, _Dad_!  He’s not.”  Antoinette grabbed Karen and pulled her into view.  “It’s just Karen Green.  Our next door neighbor.  There’s definitely no man out here.  And if there’s one in the house, I’m sure someone else would have seen him by now.”

Karen smiled sweetly and waved at him.  Mr. Bixby harrumphed and closed the window.  Karen shook herself loose from Antoinette’s grasp and shot Chris a poisonous glare.

“What the hell is going on here?”  She turned the look on Antoinette.  “ _What_ are you doing with my _boyfriend_?”

Antoinette gave her a scathing look.  “Nothing.  Don’t be so jealous.  Only an insecure woman is _that_ possessive.”

Karen threw her purse on the ground.  “Oh no you di’nt—!”

Karen started for Antoinette and the blonde backed up in surprise.  Chris jumped away from the wall and wrapped his arms around Karen’s waist.

“Karen, sweetheart, calm down.  You’ll ruin your dress.”

She continued to pull against him.  “It’s not like I haven’t ruined a dress over you before.”

Chris couldn’t help but to smile.  “Sweetheart, please—”

Now that Chris had Karen reasonably restrained, Antoinette had stepped forward and was taunting her.

“What?  You worried you’re not enough for him?  You think he wants me?”  She ran her hands down her figure.  “Can’t say that I blame him.”

Karen let out an infuriated noise and lunged for the girl.  Chris struggled to keep her back and was about to tell Antoinette to shut-up when he noticed his dad sliding out the door and slinking against the side of the house.  Maybe he should let the girls fight.  He held his breath as the girls yelled and waited until his father was safely around the corner.  He wanted them to shut-up.  They were making so much racket Antoinette’s father was probably going to come back out.

“KAREN!”

The booming voice caused all three of the teenagers to freeze.  Even Antoinette had turned glacial at the threatening shout.  They turned to look at the adjacent yard, shivering in apprehension.  Mr. Green was holding a watering hose and missing the azalea bush he was supposed to be tending to.  Chris was glad the man was some yards away so that he couldn’t _exactly_ see what the expression on his face was.  He immediately let go of Karen.

“Karen!  Get over here _now_.  You’re grounded!”

Chris looked at her incredulously.  “I thought you said you could go out!”

Karen shrugged sheepishly.  “My mom said I could go out.”

Chris rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.  Karen picked up her purse, straightened her dress, and shot Antoinette a dirty look as she trudged across her yard.  Her father watched to make sure she made it all the way in the house.  Then he clenched his fist and started ruining the azalea bush by spraying it too hard with the water hose.

Antoinette laughed softly and Chris turned a look on her.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing.”  She laughed again.  “And I thought _my_ father didn’t like my boyfriend.”

Chris opened his mouth to snap at her.  Something mean like, did her father like the guy she was cheating on her boyfriend with?  But he thought better of it.  Instead he said, “Antoinette Marie?  Why didn’t they just name you Marie Antoinette?”

“Uh!  That’s not it.  I was named after my grandmothers.  They thought Antoinette Marie would be better than Marie Antoinette.”

“Unh-huh, if you say so.  You’re a princess too.”

“I’m not like Karen.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re any better.”

Antoinette snapped her mouth shut and her lips turned white from the pressure.  She walked into her basement and paused before slamming the door shut.

“Tell Scott that if he wants to talk to me to come himself.”

Chris winced as the glass in the door rattled when the door hit the frame.  He grabbed his hair with his hands and pulled as hard as he could.  He let out a yell.  Not only had his father nearly gotten into serious trouble, but he hadn’t broken up with Karen.  Chris took in deep, calming breaths as he walked up the hill toward the street.  His father was partially hidden on the ground behind his car.  He considered kicking him when he walked by him, but kept himself in check.  There was no need for violence.  He unlocked his car and his father climbed in.  Chris drove off and gripped the steering wheel tightly.  His father was leaning on one arm, hiding his mouth behind his hand.  He was probably smiling.  He probably thought this whole thing was fun.

“Dad—”

Chris broke off.  Where did he begin?

“I had to get in there, Chris.  I can’t just go in once and break into the wall and get it.  I had to make sure the wall hadn’t already been destroyed.  Or built over.  I needed to see what kind of tools I’d need and also what color paint to buy.  Fortunately it’s still a builder’s beige.”

Chris mildly accepted that answer.  At least his father had a sensible reason for doing something so completely retarded.  He drove him to the cheap motel he was staying at on the edge of town.  He was doing day labor with the Mexican illegals to earn some money.  He blended in because apparently he was fluent in Spanish.  Chris never knew that.  Why hadn’t he started to teach him Spanish when he was younger?  Maybe his mother hadn’t let him.

“Dad,” Chris said as his father started to get out, “don’t do anything stupid like that again, okay?  Call me first.”

“Why?  So you can help or so you can talk me out of it?”

Chris sighed.  “Whichever.”

His father leaned back into the car and ruffled his hair.  “It’ll be okay, _mijo_.  I promise everything will be okay.”

His father shut the door and walked across the parking lot.  Chris sat still, feeling the car vibrate around him.  Something had sparked in his memory.  His father had used to call him that: _mijo_.  He had forgotten it.  In Spanish it was an affectionate way for a father to address his son.  _Mijo_.  My son.  Chris closed his eyes and bit his lip.  Why couldn’t his father be more careful?  He didn’t want to lose him again.  The time he’d been spending with him the last few weeks had reminded him of how much he had loved his father when he was little.

Chris shook his head and put the car in gear.  He pulled out onto the street and his cell phone rang.  He looked at the display as he turned onto a small highway that bypassed most of the lights in town.  It was Karen.  He turned the phone off and threw it on the floor with disgust.  The miles passed by uneventfully.  He recognized the entrance into Scott’s neighborhood as he passed it.  He wondered if he should go razz his friend about the whole Antoinette thing.  Maybe not tonight.  He slowed down at a stoplight and saw a person leaning against the pole of a street light on the corner.  His face was buried in his hands, but Chris recognized him.  The platinum hair helped too.  He rolled down his window.

“Scott?”

Scott looked up and spotted Chris.  He immediately turned his face away, but Chris could tell he was wiping his cheeks with his hands.  Chris glanced at the light, it was still red.

“Scott, come here.  Get in.”

Scott shook his head and put on a fake smile.  “I’m fine.”  He waved him to go on.

A car honked behind him.  The light had turned green.

“Scott, get in here now before I piss everyone off!”

Scott ran forward.  If nothing else the boy was obedient.  He got into the car quickly and Chris accelerated before more than one car joined in the honking.  Scott slumped down in the seat and didn’t put on his seatbelt.  Chris didn’t really feel like telling him what to do, so he turned at the next intersection and drove down an empty, secluded road.  He pulled off on a patch of dirt that had been worn down by many a state trooper cars lying in wait for speeders.  He turned the car off and sat back in his seat.  He glanced at Scott.  Scott got out of the car, but left the door open.  Chris took that to mean that he wasn’t trying to get away from him, so he got out too.  He walked around to the front of the car and hopped up onto the hood.  His mother hated it when he sat on the car.  She kept worrying that he’d dent the hood.  If he had been a girl he might have obsessed about that comment, thinking it meant he was fat.  He could feel the heat of the engine through his jeans as he slid up to the top.  He leaned against the windshield and watched as the sun finally began to slip beneath the horizon.  The car shifted as Scott climbed up next to him.  They watched the sun set without speaking.  Normally Chris would just wait him out; Scott couldn’t go long without talking.  But the silence was palpable this evening.

“So, what’s the matter?” Chris asked carefully.

“Nothing,” Scott grumbled.  “Everything.  My family is falling apart.”

Chris looked over at him.  When he had changed his hair, his skin appeared to have changed its tone slightly too; it had become a healthier tan.  Now he just looked washed out and pale.

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Chris faced forward again.  He could understand that.  Maybe he should help him take his mind off it for a little while.

“Then, do you want to talk about Antoinette Bixby?”

Scott remained silent and Chris thought that maybe he was just ignoring him.  Then Scott looked at him a little startled.

“What did you say?”

Chris turned to him and grinned.  “I asked if you wanted to talk about Antoinette Bixby.”

“How—how do you—why would you think—”  Scott huffed and Chris realized he was trying to figure out how to ask his question without giving anything away.  Finally he gave up.  “How do you know about that?”

“It’s a long story.  But I’m wondering if yours is even longer.  What’s up with this whole thing?  Is Will right?  Is she the one you changed your hair for?”

“Yeah, kind of.  She influenced it, but she wasn’t the reason.”

Scott turned to look at the horizon again.  It was a thick bright orange band in a dark world.

“Well, part of the long story is that she thought I was talking to her because you sent me.  So, I had to make up a message.  All I could come up with was that you weren’t ready for the situation.  She smiled and said that was obvious.  Why?  What did she mean?”

Scott groaned and crossed his arms over his eyes.

“Oh, my God.  How on earth did you two even start talking?”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll fill you in later so when Antoinette brings it up you won’t be all clueless.  But first, tell me what she meant.”

“Chris!  It’s obviously too embarrassing!  Leave me alone.”

“Oh, come on!  What is it?  It can’t be that bad.  What aren’t you ready for?”

Scott left his arms over his eyes.  “I won’t have sex with her.”

Chris stared at his friend.  Chris knew why Julian and Will felt different to him.  Why they were special to him.  Now he realized why Scott was.  He was truly innocent.  He was one of the few teenagers on the planet that hadn’t grown up too fast.

“Go ahead and laugh!” Scott moaned.  “Tell me how retarded and immature I am.”

“No.  That’s not it.  It’s—it’s cute!”

Scott flew upright.  He gave Chris an extremely offended death glare.  “Don’t you dare call me cute.  Don’t you _dare_ call one of your male friends not wanting to have sex with a girl cute!”

Chris laughed.  “I can’t help it!  It is!”  He laughed harder and couldn’t stop.

“Shut-up!  I will push you off this car!”

Chris laughed even harder and rolled to his side.  Tears sprang to his eyes.  He tried to sit up so he could wipe them away, but then he caught a glimpse of Scott.  He looked so totally _personally_ offended.  The only person he’d known who could pull off that look better was Will.  He started laughing all over again.  And Scott made good on his threat.  He pushed him over the side of the car.  Chris grunted in pain, but the laughter still prevailed.  He giggled in the dirt for a moment and then managed to get himself reasonably under control.  He stood up and leaned on the hood of the car.  Scott was sitting with his legs pulled tightly to his chest and an unpleasant scowl on his face.

“You want me to give you a tutorial?” Chris offered.

“Well, I’ll have to check to make sure my girlfriend’s father’s schedule is clear first.”

Chris snickered.  “Okay.  Okay.  Truce.”

Scott rested his head on his arms.  His white-blond hair burned red for a few seconds, and then went dark as the sun set.  Chris hopped back onto the car and rubbed the back of his friend’s head.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Scott mumbled.  “But I don’t want to deal with it right now.  Not tonight anyway.  You have any good stories?  Did you actually have sex in front of Karen’s parents today?”

“Oh.  So you _can_ say her name.”

“Blow me.”

Chris settled beside him and leaned back against the windshield.

“Well, I do have some news that might make you feel better.”

“Oh yeah?  And what’s that?”

“I’m going to break up with Karen.”

Scott lifted his head.  “Really?  Why?”

“Why he asks.”

“Well, I know why I would.  But, why are you?”

Chris chewed on the inside of his cheek.  “Various reasons.  But, that’s why I had a talk with Antoinette.  It’s a terrible story, but I’m sure you’ll find it amusing.”

Scott leaned back, a small smile finally touching his lips.  “Do tell,” he said softly.

Chris started an abridged version of the night’s events.  Basically anything involving his father had to be edited out.  But he was glad to see that his personal torture was making Scott feel better.  Or at least helping him to forget his problems for a while.  After the story was finished, they continued to talk for another hour.  That was a good sign.  Scott was talking again.  It felt good for the two of them to spend time together.  Things had been so off lately.  What they really needed was for all four of them to get together.

 _Yeah_ , Chris thought, _the four of us need to talk._


	5. Chapter 5

Friday, June 10, 2005

 

Scott

 

It wasn’t fair.  It was the last day of school, his last few minutes of math analysis with Mr. Lockhart, and Scott couldn’t enjoy any of it.  He leaned on one arm, his hand scrunching his face on one side.  Everyone else was half-heartedly completing the “fun” logic problems they had been given while talking and gossiping away.  Usually Scott would be the one talking the most (and the loudest) but he found that he had nothing say.  Nothing he wanted to these people to know about anyway.  Things had not gotten better at home.

After his parents’ fight and his father had stormed out, he hadn’t returned.  And it had been three weeks.  Joanna told him that he stopped by once to pick up some personal items and some clothes while they’d been in school.  She’d stayed home sick that day and heard him come in and saw him leave with a packed bag.  Scott let himself assume his father had a business trip to go on.  Once he was back from that, his parents would talk and work things out.  They needed to do it soon.  The house was in a very weird state of affairs.

His mother was down right frigid.  She did her best to hide it from the twins, but they could pick up on it.  And they obviously noticed their father was missing.  They were very subdued and quiet, which was very unnatural for them.  And Scott was certain that they probably noticed that their mother wasn’t particularly nice to him.  He wasn’t sure why she was taking it out on him, but he just took it.  He didn’t want to make things harder for her.  And Joanna had been a whole other plane of weirdness.  Because of the tense situation, he wanted to be there for her, and he was, but sometimes she would deliberately misconstrue his intentions.  For the most part she accepted his consoling as that of a big brother.  But occasionally she’d want it to be more the way a boyfriend would console his distraught girlfriend.  It usually came in the form of hugging onto him too tightly or pressing herself against him in awkward ways, but just the other night she’d tried to kiss him.  He’d thrown her off so hard she’d hit her head on a wall.  He hadn’t known what to do.  Stand his ground or run to her side to see if she was okay.  He’d wound up standing still like an idiot.  She’d picked herself up and wandered quietly away.  It had gotten so bad he considered telling his mother so that Joanna could get some help for her feelings.  What had stopped him was the fear that his mother wouldn’t believe him and then would be mad at him for trying to cause more problems when they already had enough.

To escape the situation in the house, he found a lot of excuses to stay away from home.  He would stay after school and participate in the clubs he’d joined in the beginning of the year but hadn’t been to since then.  He went to after school study sessions for end of the year exams even though he didn’t need to.  He spent one night hanging out with Chris while he worked at Abercrombie & Fitch in the mall.  He helped Julian take Cornelius on a walk a couple nights.  He even went with Will to one of his summer league soccer practices.  As much as he tried to fill his schedule, he still found time to see Antoinette a couple times a week.

That was his best distraction from home.  He’d finally gotten to the point where he could stop thinking when he was with her.  He still worried about the situation and obsessed about it constantly, but at last, when he was physically with her, she became his whole world.  She had noticed the change in him and seemed much happier with him.  But he wasn’t doing it to be focused on her; he was doing it to forget everything else.  When he left her, he felt guilty because of that.  She felt that he was more committed to her or something, which wasn’t the case at all.  And because of this new belief that he was more serious about their relationship, she would get a little pushy sometimes.  He knew more than ever that he didn’t want to add sex to his list of problems.  Even if the act itself didn’t bother him that much, the panic and worry that he would get her pregnant would be the end of him.

Besides, he felt guilty enough when he saw Jake in the halls.  What would he do if he was actually banging the guy’s girlfriend?  He felt miserable around his friends because he felt like he was lying to them all the time.  And he knew it wasn’t true, but he felt like Chris was looking down on him whenever they were together.  He knew he was bringing all of this down on himself, but that certainly didn’t make him feel any better.

Scott started when the bell rang.  Everyone else already had their bags packed and were running out the door to lunch.  Scott slowly put his notebook in his backpack and saw that Mr. Lockhart was looking at him with a little bit of concern.  He could tell the surly math teacher was debating over whether or not to get involved with Scott’s problem.  Scott stood up quickly and waved goodbye.  He ran out of the classroom before the man could decide he should attempt to be a mentor.  The hallways were clearing out and by the time he got to his locker, they were empty.  He was going to be late to lunch.  As usual.  He opened his locker door.  One corner of his lunch bag was dark.  Something had leaked again.  He didn’t have his math analysis book to drop on the floor this time; he’d had to turn it in.  Scott took his lunch bag out of the locker, shut the door, and started to trudge toward the cafeteria.

Even if she was late, he wouldn’t meet up with Anna in the hall.  They hadn’t made up since their fight.  They hadn’t even tried.  He wasn’t even sure which part of the whole thing hurt him the most.  All he knew was that he felt like a part of himself had been forcibly removed.  A part that he needed to function properly.  It almost felt like he was slowly dying because something vital had been taken away from him.  He at least had figured out that was why he couldn’t break it off with Antoinette.  He was worried that even if the pain wasn’t the same as losing Anna, it would still be too much for him to take at the moment.  Maybe if his family was okay…but it wasn’t.

The cafeteria was extra loud today.  As he made his way through the tables, he scratched his head.  He probably could have gone another week or so before it started to look really bad, but he’d decided to bleach his hair again last night.  While he’d been waiting on the timer to go off, his mother had pounded on the door and demanded to know what he was doing.  She said she could smell the chemicals.  After he’d opened the door she had exploded when she’d found out what he’d been doing.  But not because she was worried he might bleach one of her good towels; she’d ranted about the color of his hair.  She’d demanded to know why everyone loved that color so much.  Then she’d yelled at him not to make a mess and left him alone.  He’d started crying and had to huddle on the floor for a while.  He couldn’t figure out why his mother was so mad at _him_.  Why was _he_ her punching bag?  He hadn’t done anything to her.   He’d been so miserable he hadn’t heard the timer go off.  His hair had gotten a little over-treated and made his scalp itch.  Fortunately the color had still come out right.

He spotted Julian and Riley at their table.  He knew he was late enough that no one else would be joining them.  He plopped down across from Julian and let his head fall onto his lunch bag.  His sandwich squished under the weight.  He looked at Riley and Julian.

“Where is everyone?”

“Well,” said Riley, “that good for nothing punk, Chris, is skipping lunch because his witch wanted him to hang out with her while she skips class.”

“Laney told me she wanted to eat with her tenth grade friends,” Julian said.

“Anna is still eating lunch with those girls from the drama club.”

“And Will got caught by Mr. Kilgore to do some chemistry stuff.”  Julian smiled sardonically.  “Liz volunteered to stay behind with him.”

Scott rolled his eyes in time with Julian and Riley laughed at them.

“Oh, come on, guys.  Her hopes aren’t completely in vain, are they?”

“I think so,” said Scott.

Julian shrugged.  “I wouldn’t try to predict who Will Harder ends up falling in love with.”

Not much was said after that.  It wasn’t entirely awkward, but it was different from usual.  Scott felt responsible for it all.  Which was ridiculous.  He had no control over what any of the others had chosen to do for lunch with the possible exception of Anna.  But, that was her fault too, not just his.  And the silence at lunch wasn’t his fault either.  Of the eight friends, the three of them had the least in common.  At times it seemed that the three of them were only friends because they were friends of each other’s friends.  Well, maybe not Julian.  Scott felt they were close, but Riley threw off the dynamic.  Then Scott wondered if Julian felt that lunch was awkward because of him.  Maybe he thought they were trying to be careful around him.  He laughed to himself.  He wondered if everybody always felt that awkward silences were their own fault.  Like there was something inherently wrong with them that put a stop to all conversation.  That any normal person would have been able to ease the tension.  Scott scowled.  Why should he and Julian have to worry about it?  Why couldn’t Riley fill the silence?  They were the ones with the problems.  Scott glanced at Riley.  Did _she_ have a problem?

“Julian,” Scott said.

Julian leaned down and looked him the eyes.  His eyes were such a rich brown that the eyeliner only made the color seem truer.  Julian smiled sympathetically at him.

“What’s up, Scott?”

“Do you think they’ll remember?” he asked weakly.

Julian laughed and reached forward to ruffle his hair with both hands.  Scott batted his hands away and sat back with what he hoped was an irritated expression.  Julian had never gone near his hair before the accident.  Now he took every opportunity to muss it up.

“I’m positive they will,” Julian reassured him.

 

After school Scott didn’t head for the metro.  He walked toward the elementary school wing of Calverton.  Sandwiched between the ugly brick building and a major road with speeding and honking cars was the playground.  He’d always hated playing there as a kid.  It was a tiny space to begin with and he’d always imagined a truck going flying off the road and crashing through the fence.  The equipment closest to the school building and furthest from the road was a set of springy rockers.  Four tiny, metal and plastic animals faced each other in a circle.  The bases were thick springs that even grown-ups would have trouble making move.  It was the least popular item on the playground, which was why the four of them had always hung out on it.  It had always been available.

As Scott stepped onto the mulch of the playground he noticed that he was the last one.  Just like every year.  The four of them would meet on the playground on the last day of school and ruminate on the past year.  He’d never been so grateful that his friends had remembered to come as he was this year.  He knew he needed to come clean about everything.  Not only tell them about Antoinette, but about his family and Anna as well.  He couldn’t—didn’t _want_ to deal with this alone.  Scott straddled the bumble bee.  He always got the lamest one.

“Hey guys.”

“Hey, Scotty,” Will said.

Scott twisted the useless handlebars under his hands.  Everyone in his family had stopped calling him that.  Even the twins.  He was just Scott now.

“What’s wrong?” Chris asked.  “Is it about—you know what?”

“Know what?” Will and Julian asked together.

Chris glanced at them and looked like he was trying to apologize for mentioning it.  Scott waved a hand.

“It’s all right, Chris.  I’m going to tell them.  I’m going to tell all of you.  About everything.”

“Ooo?  What, what?” Will asked, bouncing on his pink pony.  “It’s a girl, right?  I knew it.  That hair is because of some chick.”

Scott waffled a hand in the air.  “Kind of.”  He sighed.  “It all started—on that day.  On the day of the accident.”

He glanced at Julian.  He didn’t seem upset.  Should he start at the Pizza Dome?  That seemed about when his life had taken a sudden turn in direction.  He told them about the girl who had quite literally thrown herself at him, but he wouldn’t say who it was.  He was careful not to let anything slip like mentioning her soccer team captain boyfriend, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Julian and Will especially figured it out.  He blushed and jabbed the top of the bee’s head while he explained his trouble with consummating the relationship.  Then he talked about his initial trouble with Anna and how it had just gotten worse and worse.  By the time he got to the day of the big fight, he was slumped in between the bee’s antennas, staring at the ground.  He couldn’t make eye contact while he told the next bit.  It was embarrassing to admit that his heart had been ripped out by some stupid girl who wasn’t even his girlfriend, but the words almost wouldn’t leave his throat when he told them about Joanna.  It was so mortifying he was almost glad to tell them about the fight his parents’ had just to change subjects.

When he was done he dropped his forehead to the hard metal and waited for their reactions.  During the telling they had remained mostly quiet, occasionally asking a question to clarify something.  Now the quiet was a tangible wall between them.  Chris broke through the wall first.

“Jesus, Scott.  Why didn’t you tell us you were going through all this?”

“Because!”  Scott sat up.  “It didn’t seem like that big a deal when it all started.  It just snowballed.  And besides, Julian was going through something much worse.  I didn’t want to be all like, look at my problems.”

“Dude,” Julian said, “I’m honestly not sure what I’m going through is worse than what you’re dealing with right now.”

Scott groaned and slumped forward again.

“So, what are we going to do?” asked Will.

The three of them elapsed into thought.  Scott smiled.  He took in a breath and let it out easily.  It felt good to get everything off his chest, but it felt even better to have his friends on his side.  They didn’t think that he was overreacting or had inadvertently been a jerk to Anna or scorned him for helping someone cheat.  He was also grateful that they didn’t think his family was totally fucked up.  Or, if they did, they at least weren’t holding it against him.

“Maybe I should date your sister,” Will said.

“No!”

Will crossed his arms, offended.  The shout had come from all three of them.

“Maybe you should date the chick he’s cheating with, so then she’ll stop begging him for sex,” said Chris.

Scott gave him a look.

“Honestly, Scott, I don’t see that as a problem,” said Will.

“Don’t act all high and mighty,” Julian scoffed.  “I know you’re still a virgin.”

Will opened his mouth to protest and then snapped it shut.  Scott raised an eyebrow.  He could have sworn Will would have had had sex by now.

“Well,” said Julian, “I can’t do anything to help with the parent situation except be an asshole and say at least be grateful they’re still alive.”

He smiled at him and Scott let out a snarky noise in reply.

“I wonder if we can do anything about Anna,” said Chris.

Scott shook his head.  “No, it’s between the two of us.  It’s something I’m going to have to deal with eventually.”

The other three nodded in acceptance and then exchanged looks with each other.  Scott quirked an eyebrow.  There was something behind that look.  He shook his head.  He felt so lucky.  Yes, his life still sucked pretty hard at the moment, but he had his friends.  And not only were they willing to listen, they didn’t judge him and only offered support and help.  Scott’s feelings overwhelmed him.

“Man,” he said, sniffing back his emotions, “I love you guys.”

There was an awkward pause.  Chris had a look on his face liked he’d smelled something unpleasant.  Will was biting his lip to keep from laughing and Julian was openly grinning at him.  Scott blanched at their looks.

“Oh, come on guys.  You know what I mean.”

They all burst out laughing.  Loud, irritating laughter punctuated by high-pitched declarations of their love for their precious Scotty.  His shouts for them to shut-up were barely audible above all the racket they were making.

 

Scott stepped off the bus feeling better than he had in days.  Friends were one of the greatest inventions ever.  He hoped whoever had thought of them won a prize or something.  He knew he still had a lot of issues to deal with, but he felt like he could do it now that he had his friends’ support.  He turned into his neighborhood and noticed something sitting in his driveway.  It was his father’s car.  Scott stopped.  His father had come back.  Scott’s face broke into a smile and he ran for his house.  He was out of breath by the time he made it down his driveway and slammed into the door when it didn’t open for him.  He pulled out his keys and nearly snapped one off in the lock in his haste to get the door open.  He stood in his foyer with his hand on the knob, staring at the mess before him.  He couldn’t quite understand what was going on.

There were big brown boxes everywhere, filled with dishes and books and various knickknacks from the living and dining rooms.  There were dark spaces on the walls where pictures used to hang and furniture had been moved around, some of it pushed toward the door.  There were a couple of suitcases sitting at the bottom of the staircase.  He looked around.  Where was everybody and what was going on?  He looked to his left and saw his father sitting in the kitchen.  He was leaning heavily on one arm and didn’t seem to have noticed that Scott had come in.  Scott was about to call out to him when he saw movement on the stairs.

His brothers ran down the stairs holding onto their favorite stuffed animals.  They were crying and ran straight to him.  Scott managed to catch them and keep them from falling to the floor, but his eyes were on the stairs.  Joanna was lugging her large traveling suitcase down to the foyer.  She looked much too pale, even for her.  Their mother was right behind her.  She was bringing down a suitcase of her own with a very stony expression.  A noise behind him made Scott turn and look outside.  A large truck rumbled into their driveway.  He couldn’t see the logo, but it looked like a moving van.

Scott felt a little dizzy as explanations whirled around in his head.  Had his father gotten a transfer?  No, no one seemed too happy.  Maybe he’d gotten laid off?  Had they been avoiding paying their taxes and now everything was being repossessed?  The twins were clutching his legs, but they weren’t wailing loudly.  This process must have started early in the afternoon if they weren’t still screaming about it.  His mother spotted him and pursed her lips.  Before Scott could ask what was going on, she spoke.

“Scott.  I want you to go upstairs and pack your clothes and some other necessary items.  Immediately.  We’re leaving very shortly.  We can come back later for the rest of your belongings.  Just pack what you need.  If you’d gotten home when you were supposed to we might have had more time to get some of your larger items down here for the movers.  But, now you’ll have to come back later.”

“Wait,” Scott shook the twins off and started to follow her into the den.  “Why?  What—”

“We’re going to be moving in with Grandma for a little while.”

Scott was floored.  “Wh—what?  Grandma lives 300 miles from here!”

“It’s only a three hour drive by car.  We need to get on the road before long though.  I don’t want to keep her up too late.  Hurry up and pack.”

“But, why are we moving?”

She looked at him icily.  “Go ask your father.”

She walked into the den and left him standing there with his jaw hanging open.  He turned, in a daze, and walked toward the kitchen.  The twins were clinging to Joanna.  Something was _very_ wrong if those three were relying on each other.  He walked up to the kitchen table and lowered himself unsteadily in the seat next to his father.  His father ran a hand over his face and then looked at him.  Scott stared back.

“What’s going on?” Scott asked.

His father took in a breath and then let it out very slowly.  He strummed his fingers over his lips as he contemplated what he was going to say.  Or maybe he was just stalling.  Scott rubbed his forehead in resignation.

“Is it a woman?” he asked.

His father didn’t respond.  Then he simply said, “Yeah.”

“Jesus, Dad.”

“I know.”

“Couldn’t you have tried harder not to get caught?”

His father smiled wryly.  “I did try.”  He laughed self-deprecatingly.  “I even bought the soap we use here at the house and left it at her place.”

Scott groaned.  “What the fuck, Dad?”

“I know.  I’m sorry.”  He gave a shake of his head.  “I’m just a sucker for blondes.  I couldn’t control myself.”

“Oh, yeah?” Scott said scathingly.  “Does that mean you want to screw me too?”  Scott dropped his head and missed his father’s reaction.  He laid his cheek on the warm wood of the table.  “Would that help?” he asked softly.  “If you screwed me so you didn’t have to be with some other woman?”

His father laughed harshly.  “Your mother would do a lot more than divorce me if I was having sex with my son.”

Scott raised his head.  “You’re getting divorced?”

His father waved a hand toward the foyer.  “What do you think all this is?”

Scott shrugged miserably.  “I don’t know.  Maybe she just needs some time to cool down.”

His father slid a large manila envelope across the table to him.  “In three weeks she got a lawyer and had the papers drawn up.  If I signed them now it would be over today.”

Scott finally felt angry.  “So why don’t you then?”

“The terms are unacceptable.”

“Why?  Does she want too much money?” Scott spat out.

“That.  And she didn’t even offer any visitation rights let alone partial custody.  _That’s_ bullshit.”

Scott looked at his father.  Well, at least he didn’t want a divorce from the entire family.  Or did he want one at all?  Was his mother forcing this on him?

“Isn’t there some law that you have to be separated for a year before you can actually get divorced?”

“Not in this state.”

Scott went quiet.  He tried to think of something else pertinent to say or ask, but nothing came to mind.  He and his father just watched the movers pick up furniture and boxes and take them out to the truck.  Scott was confused.  There wasn’t room for all this extra furniture at Grandma’s.  Was his mother that determined never to see his father again?  Were they going to be one of those divorced couples that had to talk through their children?  That meant it would fall on Scott.  He would have to be the intermediary to arrange pick ups and drop offs and deliver complaints about late payments and what an asshole the other one was being.

“Joanna, take your suitcase out to the car and help the boys with theirs.”  His mother strode across the foyer and spotted him.  “Scott Walker…I told you to go upstairs and pack.”

Scott chewed on his lip as he looked at his mother.  He did not want to be around her right now.  Not because she wanted to divorce his father, that was her decision to make.  But she was taking her anger out on him.  And that was not pleasant or fair.

“I think I’m going to stay here,” he said calmly.

“What?” Joanna cried.

The twins didn’t quite understand what was going on, but they figured out that something else was wrong.  Their faces screwed up and tears started falling again.  His mother stared at him.

“Joanna.  Take your brothers out to the car.”

Joanna took the twins by the hands and followed one of the movers who had picked up her suitcase.  His mother walked into the kitchen and crossed her arms over her chest.  She was looking at him like he was the only one in the room.

“I’m not going to ask you to repeat yourself, but there had better be a reason why you’re making things even more difficult.  Just go pack some clothes and get in the car.  I’m not leaving you here.”

“Mom, I’m not moving to Grandma’s.  It’ll be crowded enough with the four of you.  And my friends are here.  I’m not leaving my friends right now.  I can’t.  And if this move is permanent, I’m not starting a brand new school my senior year.  Plus, I’ll lose in-state preference to the college I want to go to.”  _And it would be good for Joanna and me to be apart_ , he added silently.

It might help the situation to be away from his sister, but the thought of being away from his brothers was killing him.  He wasn’t going to let it show though.  He needed his mother to see that he was resolute in his decision.  She took in a breath and looked a little betrayed.  He wasn’t going to let her guilt him into doing anything.  She opened her mouth to say something, and then stopped.  Scott was fairly certain she had been about to say something very mean.  Her face softened and she nodded.

“Okay.  You’re old enough to make this decision.  I want you to come see us next weekend.”

“Okay.”

Scott stood up and walked her outside.  The movers were securing the back door of the truck.  His siblings were standing by his mother’s car.  Relief flooded Joanna’s face.  She must have thought their mother had forced him to come.

“Okay, get in,” their mother said.

Scott bent down to hug his brothers.

“Hey, come on.  You guys need to stop crying.  You like Grandma, right?”

“She smells funny,” Drake sniffed.

“And she makes us dress alike,” Ferris pouted.

Scott laughed.  “Aw, come on.  You guys look cute when you dress alike.  Besides, when you do, we can’t tell you two apart.  And you know how much it irritates Grandma when you fool her like that.”

They managed a couple of small smiles.  He stood up and ruffled their hair.  Then he hugged Joanna.  She went stiff.

“Wait, aren’t you coming?”

“No, I’m going to stay here.”  He pulled back and held her shoulders with his hands.  “I think this will be good for us,” he said softly.

Her lips pinched together and she looked away from him.  He let go of her and stood in front of his mother.  He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels.

“Are you going to start hating me too?  Like him?  For staying behind?”

His mother stepped forward and hugged him.   “I’m sorry, Scott.  I’ve been unfair to you.  And no, I will never hate you.  You’re my son and I love you.  And I understand that you need to do what is best for you.”

Scott didn’t hug her back.  She stepped away from him and looked anywhere but at him.  Her speech didn’t seem real convincing now.  His mother herded her other three children into the car and then got in the driver’s seat.  She waited for the moving truck to rumble down the driveway and then backed out.  It was dark enough that he couldn’t really see any figures in the car, so he couldn’t tell if anyone waved.  He waved anyway.  The moving truck followed his mother out of the neighborhood.  Once the banging from the truck faded the night was much quieter than Scott thought it should have been.  He turned and walked back into his house.

His father had watched them leave from the foyer.  Scott stood awkwardly in front of him, not sure if he should say or do anything.  He knew he couldn’t be angry with his father and treat him like crap if he was going to have to live with him alone from now on.  So, he just stood still, trying not to look judgmental.  Besides, who was he to cast stones at another?

His father reached for him and pulled him into a hug.  His father hadn’t really hugged him since he’d been about ten, so he was a little startled by it and not quite sure what to do.  But it wasn’t a normal father-son hug, it was desperate clinging.  This wasn’t how he wanted his father to hug him.

“I’m not staying because I’m on your side,” said Scott.

“I know,” his father murmured.

Even if it wasn’t the way he wanted it, this opportunity might never come again in his life.  Scott hugged his father back.  He felt like he should console him somehow, but did his father deserve to be consoled?  Maybe he should wallow in his own misery for a while.  Scott sighed.  He hoped the other guys weren’t having as bad a night as he was.

 

Chris

 

                There was a sound like a stomach eating itself.  Chris looked down at his belly and apologized to it.  He was starving.  He’d skipped breakfast this morning and now he was skipping lunch to hang out with Karen because she didn’t want to go to her last class of American history.  And why was he expected to just drop everything and entertain her?  Because he still hadn’t managed to break up with her.  It seemed like every time he was about to dump her, something prevented him from being able to do it.  Maybe the Universe was trying to tell him something.  Maybe they were _supposed_ to be together.  Or maybe the Universe was simply testing him and he was failing miserably.

Another test from the Universe was his father.  They hadn’t had anymore fiascos like three weeks ago, but he had suggested on more than one occasion that Chris go with him to Columbia once they had the money.  Chris had laughed at the idea, thinking his father had been joking.  It would be just the thing he needed on his college application: fleeing the country with a wanted fugitive.  His father said it could just be a summer vacation.  No one would have to know where or with whom he was going.  Chris thought his mother would like to know.  His father pressed on saying that even if people found out who he was with, he could say he’d been “kidnapped” and no one would blame him for anything.  Chris had nearly exploded at that.  That’s just what his father needed, a kidnapping charge added onto his record.  The cops definitely would not let him go with that hanging over his head.  They’d hunt him down if not just out of principle but because his mother would demand it.

Chris would argue with his father, but let him have just enough hope that he would spend his energy trying to convince him to go.  This kept him from thinking about the money.  As much as Chris was hesitant to attempt the caper for simple legal reasons, he knew that when his father had the money, he would leave.  And he would have to be gone forever.  He’d never be able to come back into the States.  Chris wasn’t ready for that.  He didn’t want to lose his father again.  But he also knew that he couldn’t force him to stay in America.  He wouldn’t have a life here; he’d always be on the run.  And more than likely he’d eventually be caught and sent back to jail.

“CHRIS!”

Chris started violently.  He stopped himself from putting his hand to his chest.  That would be a little girly.  He looked at his girlfriend.

“What?”

“I said your name, like, three times.”

“Sorry.  I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“About lunch.  I’m starving, Karen.  You’re skipping class anyway, can’t we go to the cafeteria?”

“No, I want to be alone with you.”

“Well, here we are.  Alone.”

They were sitting on a bench out by one of the back fire exits.  An ugly chain-link fence partially blocked their beautiful view of a dirty alleyway with a homeless guy peeing on the corner of a garbage dumpster.

“Yes, we are alone, and you’re not taking advantage of it at all.  I mean, we don’t get to see each other outside of school anymore.  This summer is not going to be fun.  I’m sure my dad is going to demand to know where I’m going every time I step foot outside of the house.”

Chris shrugged.  He tilted his head and wondered if the homeless guy was really urinating and not doing something else.

“Chris!”

“What?!” he yelled back.

“What’s wrong?  Why are you not paying attention to me?”

“Good God, Karen, has it ever occurred to you that someone other than you has problems?”

Her brows creased and she looked a little hurt.  “Yes, I know that.  I’m not an idiot.  But, how am I supposed to know what those problems are if you never tell me?”  She turned to him and grabbed his hand.  When her skin was next to his it always made her seem darker than she really was.  “Why won’t you open up to me, Chris?”

Chris took his hand back and looked away from her.  “It’s not something I can talk about, Karen.”

“Why not?” she demanded.  “If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t feel like you need to hide anything from me.”

“And if you really cared about me you would accept that I can’t tell you and just let it go.”

“Couples shouldn’t have secrets.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Chris cursed.  “Even if people are frickin’ ‘soul mates’ the other person doesn’t need to know _everything_ about the other one.  There’s nothing wrong with having something that’s just for yourself.  Something you keep as completely part of yourself.”

“It is a problem when it hurts you,” Karen said, real concern coloring her voice.

“It’s not hurting me.”

Karen let out a disbelieving laugh and shook her head.  “Yes, it is, Chris.  You may think I’m a self-centered, shallow little princess, and I may be.  But I can tell that you’re hurting.”

Chris looked at his feet.  She was right, and they both knew it.  But he didn’t want to talk to her about it.  He needed to talk to his friends.  It was time he came clean with them.

 

Chris scuffed his toes on the playground mulch.  He walked slowly toward the springy riders.  Will was talking on his cell phone.  He didn’t want to interrupt him.  Will hung up and tried to get his pony to rock.  It wouldn’t move.  Chris smiled at him and sat on the blue whale.  He managed to get it to bounce a little bit.  They pretended to be jockeys until the other two showed up.  Will declared that he had won the stationary race.  Chris let him have his victory.  Then he wondered why he was always so obliging.  Was he nothing but a doormat?  Or was he just smart and always knew how to pick his battles?  If that was the case, he’d yet to pick a single battle to fight.  He shrugged internally.  Oh, well.

“So,” said Chris, “I think I need to tell you guys about…my father.”

The three of them looked at each other and then back at Chris.

“What about him?” asked Scott.

“Well, I guess some people might still call him a deadbeat dad, but it wasn’t because he just left and we didn’t know where he was.  We kind of knew exactly where he was.”

Julian and Scott looked confused, but Will had let out a noise of amused surprise.  He’d obviously figured out what he meant.  Chris took in a breath.

“He was in jail.”

He ran his finger around the whale’s blow hole.  Then he glanced up at his friends.  He could tell Scott was trying to hold back, but couldn’t.

“For what?” he asked.

“Drugs.”

“Was he like, a dealer or something?” Julian asked.

“Not exactly.”

“He was part of a drug cartel, wasn’t he?” asked Will.

“How did you know?”

“Well, the guy’s been in jail for, what, nine years now?  That’s a pretty hefty sentence for someone who just pushes drugs on the street.”

“It could have been his third strike,” said Julian.

“They don’t have three strikes in Chicago,” said Chris.  “That’s where we used to live.”

“Wait, wait,” said Scott.  “Didn’t you say he _was_ in jail?”

Chris rubbed the back of his head and made a face.  “Uh, yeah, I did.”

“So…?”  This prompt came from Will.

“Well, he got out on parole.  And we got a phone call.  On the day of the accident actually.  They said he’d skipped town.  He’s gone and hasn’t checked in since.  He’s kind of a wanted man.”

“Oh, cool,” Scott laughed behind his hand, trying not to laugh.

Julian gave him a look and Will made a ridiculous face in his attempt not to laugh too.  Chris couldn’t help but to smile.  It was kind of funny when he said it out loud.

“How come you never told us?” asked Julian.

Chris shrugged.  “I dunno.  My mom would never talk about him, so I thought that I wasn’t supposed to.  And when I got older, it was just like, I didn’t want people to know.  I thought people might look at me differently if they knew.”

“Yeah, we’d know not to mess with you anymore,” Scott chortled.  He was nearing a cackle and Will was losing it too.  Julian was the only one who remained unaffected.

“You know that we wouldn’t treat you any differently, right?  That we wouldn’t think that his life had anything to do with you.”

Chris nodded.  “Yeah, I figured as much.  But, it was just something that I couldn’t help but be embarrassed by.”

“And you’re not anymore?” asked Scott who had managed to calm down some.

Chris chewed his bottom lip.  No, he wasn’t.  But how did he explain that without explaining why?

“Has he tried to contact you?” Julian asked.

Chris froze.  That was the question he’d been hoping to avoid.  He didn’t want them to know.  He didn’t want them to get involved.  It wouldn’t be fair to them if he asked them to keep a secret that big.  But, he couldn’t lie outright to them.  Not today.  Not on the playground.

“Well, we didn’t keep in contact with him when we moved away from Chicago.  My mom changed our name and didn’t tell him where we were going.”

That was all true, so it was up to them to interpret what he meant by that.  They all nodded.

“Would you want to try to see him again?” Will asked.

Chris smiled.  “Yeah, I would.  He was a great father.  I remember that I loved him a lot.  He just had a slightly illegal job.”

Scott and Will looked at each other.  Then they burst out laughing again.  Julian got dragged into it this time.  Chris laughed with them.  Nothing had changed between them.  As disturbing as it might be, Chris was certain that one of them could commit murder and it would still never change the way they felt about each other.

“Well,” said Chris over the snickering, “I do have some other news that will make you guys happy.  Though Will and Scott already know.”  He took in a breath and let it out confidently.  “I’m going to break up with Karen.”

They looked at him a moment and then broke into a chorus of “unh-hunhs, sures, and yeah rights.”

“No!  I mean it.”

“Dude, you told me you were breaking up with her _three weeks_ ago,” Will pointed out.

“I know.  It’s just—stuff kept happening and I couldn’t do it.”

“Maybe it’s just ‘cause you don’t really want to,” said Julian.

“Yeah,” agreed Scott.  “You must have liked her for some reason.  Maybe you still do.”

“If you have doubts,” Will chimed in, “you shouldn’t break up with her just because of us.  We’re not going to stop being friends with you just because your girlfriend is a little irritating.”

“A little?” Scott grumbled.

Julian shot him a look.  Chris slumped forward onto the whale’s head.

“I appreciate that.  But, I want this.  I need it.  I’m just so tired.  I feel… _old_.  Worn down.  I need a break from her.  I need a break from being responsible.  I feel like there’s this huge weight on my chest from her and my mother and so many other things.  It would just really help if I could get rid of one of those weights.  Take a deeper breath for once.”

“I know that feeling,” Scott said empathetically.  He gave Chris a small smile.  “And don’t worry about letting the weight go.  We’ll be here.  We won’t let you float away.”

Chris raised his head and looked at the fake blond.  The other two had similar looks on their faces.  Will was the first to crack.  His laugh was nearly a scream and he half-fell off his pony.

“Has all that peroxide gone to your head?” he laughed.

“Of course it has,” laughed Julian, “where else would it go?”

The two of them laughed at their own joke and Scott crossed his arms in a huff.

“Geez, Scott, you’re just the sweetest thing,” said Chris.  “I just don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Will doubled over with laughter again and this time fell off the pony.  Julian was laughing so hard his comment was mostly unintelligible noise, but Chris managed to pick out the words “cute” and “puppy.”  Scott was seething.

“Will you guys shut-up?!  It’s not that funny!  Besides!  I don’t mean a word of it.  I hate all of you.”

“But you already told us you loved us!” Will wailed from the mulch.

“No take-backs!” Chris yelled.

Julian was still unable to make a coherent sentence.  Even above their laughter they could hear Scott’s embarrassed denials.

 

Chris was still smiling as he drove his car back into town.  He really did have the greatest friends in the world.  He drove past his turn off and continued on to the other side of town.  He’d go see his father and make sure he wasn’t dressed in a black leather catsuit and planning a heist of the Bixby’s house.  Chris made a face at the thought of his father in a black leather catsuit.

He pulled into the motel parking lot and twirled his keys as he made his way to his father’s room.  He never called first before coming over and as long as it was after dark, his father was always there.  And he never had any company over.  He hoped that tradition would hold.  He had some weird anxiety about interrupting his father with a prostitute.  He banged loudly on the door.  In case they were making so much noise and wouldn’t be able to hear a soft knock.  His father opened the door.  He was fully dressed and no one was in the room with him.

“Why do you always knock so loud?”

Chris smiled.  “No reason.”

Chris stepped into the room and saw that it was littered with pizza boxes and old Chinese food containers.  He piled a couple together and tied them up in a plastic bag.

“Dad, you need to eat some real food.”

“I’ll be okay for a couple more weeks.  I shouldn’t be here too much longer.”

Chris stopped what he was doing.  He played with the plastic handles of the bags.

“So, you’re really going to do it?  You’re going to get the money and go to Columbia.”

“Well, that’s been the plan all along.  Why do you seem surprised?”

“Right, right.”  Chris turned to face his father.  “I can’t go with you, you know.  To Columbia.  Not right now.  It just won’t work out.”

His father sighed and started piling the pizza boxes and beer bottles together.  “I know.  I didn’t really believe you would be able to come with me.  Just wishful thinking.”

“I don’t want you to go.”  His father looked at him.  “I don’t want you to leave.  I’m not ready for that.”

“Well, what should I do?  Turn myself in and go back to jail for breaking parole?  Just hope I get let out in time for your graduation?  Chris, if I go back, I’m probably not going to get slapped with a simple six to nine months for breaking parole.  They’ll probably make me finish serving my twenty year sentence.”

“Twenty years?!”  Chris gaped.  “Was it really that long?”

“Yes.  I was really surprised when they granted me parole this early.  That’s why I had to come see you.  I still had a chance to find you before you completely hated me.”

“I never hated you.  Not even a little.”  Chris flopped into one of the uncomfortable chairs by the window.  He picked at the cuticle on his left index finger.  “Well, if you go to Columbia I’ll never see you again.  At least if you’re in jail, I’ll be able to visit you.”

His father chuckled.  “That’s true.”

They were quiet for several minutes.  Then his father sat on the corner of the bed and lightly bumped Chris’ knee to get his attention.

“Regardless what I decide to do, I still want to get that money.  I want you to have your college fund back.”

Chris smiled.  “Dad.  Come on.  Even if we do get the money, which will be virtually impossible without getting arrested, don’t you think someone will notice that all of a sudden I have gobs of money?”

“Don’t worry about it,” his father grinned.  “I know a guy.  He can open an account just for you and even take taxes out of it so the government won’t come looking for it later.  Your mother won’t ever have to know about it.”

Chris shook his head.  “I don’t know, Dad.  Sounds pretty sketchy to me.”

“Well…yeah.”

They laughed.  Chris looked at his watch.

“Oh,” he said standing up, “I gotta run.  Mom has a closing tonight and I said I’d be home before she had to leave for it.”

His father stood up too.  “Okay.  Well.  Drive safely then.  Oh, today was your last day of school, right?”

“Yeah.  I’m free for the summer.”

“So, you wanna go fishing tomorrow?”

Chris could feel his face splitting into a goofy grin.  “Yeah, I’d love to.”

“Great.  Pick me up at five.”

The smile vanished.  “Five.  As in five in the morning?”

“Yeah.  I know you’ve heard the expression the early bird catches the worm.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Besides, the gear shop opens at 5:30.  We’ll need to buy some new tackle and poles since I’m willing to bet your mother threw away all my stuff.”

“ _Everything_ ,” Chris groaned, remembering it all very vividly.  “She even threw out _my_ pole.”

His father laughed and slapped him on the back.  “Five o’clock, _mijo_.”

“Yes, sir.  And eat something green, will you?”

“All right already.  Get going.”

Chris was happy.  The day had started off so bad, and now everything was turning out okay.  He still had to worry about his father and the great upcoming money caper, but it didn’t seem as daunting as before.  Not that he wanted to do it now, but maybe there was a chance if his father turned himself in and he pleaded for him on his behalf, they might let him off without a harsh punishment.  Who could punish someone who was only trying to be with his son?  And what if it worked?  What if they managed to get the money without getting caught?  Chris could really use it to ease the burden on his mother’s finances.  And now that Scott was fooling around with Antoinette, maybe they would be able to get into the house easier.  Chris immediately rejected the idea.  No.  He was not going to get Scott involved in all this.  That wouldn’t be fair.  Plus the goober would probably find some way to muck it up.

When he pulled into his parking space at home he saw his mother rushing down the stairs.

“Oh, Chris!  Thank goodness.  I thought I wouldn’t be able to see you before I left.”

“Yeah, sorry I’m late.”

“It’s okay.  Everything will be okay after tonight.  We’ll be all set.”

“That’s great, Mom.  I’m glad to hear the deal worked out.”

“Well, we haven’t signed the last papers yet, but that’s tonight.  So, it’s practically done.  Okay, there’s some dinner on the stove for you.  Make sure you do your homework.”

“Mom.  It’s Friday.  And the last day of school was today.”

“Oh, right.  Well, why don’t you get the lawn mower from the community shed and take care of the back yard tomorrow?”

“Mom!”

“I’m just kidding.  Gracious.”

She kissed him on the cheek and then hopped into her car.  Chris rolled his eyes and headed into the house.  He had a feeling that his parents probably first liked each other because they had a similar sense of humor: a bad one.  Chris found his dinner on the stove.  Despite how busy she was she really did try to take care of him.  The guilt he always felt around her was there now, but only a twinge.  Yes, he’d lied to her everyday, but it wasn’t a harmful lie, right?  Especially if she never found out about it.

Chris ate his dinner at the kitchen table and didn’t turn any lights on as the sun set.  Once the house was dark, he felt ready.  He’d made up his mind.  Tonight was the night.  It had to end.  And he didn’t want to be able to see himself while he did it.  He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open.  The LED screen and glowing keys made him squint for a moment.  Then he dialed the number.  He put the phone to his ear and grabbed onto the table.  He was not going to chicken out.  He was not going to chicken out.  He was not going to—

The phone switched to voicemail.  He groaned.  He wouldn’t be able to work up the nerve to do this again.  He only had the confidence now because of the talk he’d had with his friends.  He needed to do it tonight.  Now.  This second.  But, could he do it over voicemail?  Could he just leave a message?  Wasn’t that kind of an asshole thing to do?  The phone beeped.

“Karen, it’s Chris.  I’m really, _really_ sorry to do it this way.  But I have to do it now.  I want to break up.  And not like take a break or something, I want to end our relationship.  For good.  Please don’t call me back or try to see me.  I’ve made up my mind.  And this is really what I want.  In fact, I’ve been trying to break up with you for weeks.  So, this isn’t just some spur of the moment decision.  I’m sorry I didn’t handle it better, but I’m positive this is what I want.  Please…just leave me alone.”

He flicked the phone shut and let his head fall to the table.  That had been the harshest thing he’d ever done in his life.  And Karen didn’t really deserve it.  Well, maybe a little bit.  But not all of it.  But so what?  She wasn’t his girlfriend anymore.  He didn’t have to care if she hated his guts and was really pissed off.  He didn’t have to deal with her anymore.  He didn’t have to see her anymore.  School was over.  Though, when the summer ended, he’d see her in school.  He really hopped senior year wouldn’t suck too hard because of this.  Maybe two and a half months would be enough time for her to simmer down.

Chris rubbed his forehead.  Today had been so good too.  Now he felt like big steaming pile of dookie.  Why couldn’t he have waited until she picked up?  Couldn’t he have written her a note?  Or at least planned out what he meant to say so that it didn’t come out so…mean.  Chris ran his hand through his short hair.  The hair Karen had wanted him to have.  He frowned at the wood grain in front of his face.  He hoped the other guys’ nights hadn’t turned out as badly as his.

 

Will

 

“Oh!  Mr. Harder!  What perfect timing!”

 _Perfect timing my ass_ , Will grumbled internally.  He should have known better than to take this hall on his way to lunch.  Mr. Kilgore had obviously figured out his schedule earlier in the year and had often accosted him after fourth period.  He just didn’t think he’d do it to him on the last day of school.  It’s not like he wouldn’t be back in the fall.

“Hi, Mr. Kilgore,” he droned.  Maybe if he made it obvious he wasn’t in the mood today, he’d let him go.

“Would you mind coming with me to the chemistry lab today?  I know it’s your lunch, but it is the last day of school and I won’t be able to pick your brain all summer.”

He smiled and rubbed hands in a way that was reminiscent of a fly.  Will hated that expression: pick your brain.  He used his gum to blow a bubble and let it pop.  Mr. Kilgore smiled hopefully at him.  Will sighed.

“Sure, fine.”

“Excellent.  Come with me.”

Will started to follow the over enthusiastic chemistry teacher and saw Julian and Liz come around the corner.  He pointed to Mr. Kilgore’s back and mimed hanging himself.  Julian grinned at him and kept going to lunch.  Liz said something to him and then left him to join Will.  She wore her short, blonde hair pulled back in two clips with flowers on them.  It was the most decoration girls were allowed to wear to school.  It made her look cute.  And Liz was definitely one of those girls who looked cute in a school uniform.

“Mind if I tag along?” she asked, smiling.

“Not at all.  But it’ll be boring.”

“That’s all right.  I’m not going to see you as much when school lets out you know.”

Liz didn’t have to commute with the rest of them.  She and her family lived in an apartment in a nice area of the city, but about two blocks from where it started to get nasty.  She was walking close enough beside him that their arms were brushing.  When they had been dating, that had been his cue to take her hand.  He couldn’t make up his mind if he should reach out for it or not.  Fortunately the walk to the chemistry lab wasn’t that long.

“Okay, Mr. Harder, what I was thinking of—oh.  Ms. Holloway.  I didn’t see you there.  Can I help you?”

“No.  I’m just here to bug Will while he works.”

Mr. Kilgore looked consternated for a moment, like he believed that was truly her intent.  Then he shook himself.  “Well, that’s fine.  Mr. Harder, would you mind continuing working on the equation I gave you on Monday?  If you think you can get it worked out, I might start some experiments on it over the summer.”

“Sure.”

Will hopped up onto one of the stools at the tall lab benches and Mr. Kilgore continued talking as he disappeared into the back room.  Will pulled out his notebook and couldn’t help but notice Liz’s legs as she sat on the stool and crossed them at the knee.  The Calverton skirts were a little short to begin with and now the gray fabric rose up to nearly mid-thigh.  Liz said something.  Will forced his attention up to her eyes.

“Hmm?”

“Does he always call people by their last name?”

“Yeah.  I think he likes to keep the formality between students and teachers.  Like if we think of teachers as friends we might not take our work as seriously.”

Liz chuckled.  “Well, I don’t take it seriously anyway.”

“Don’t I know it.  I used to help you with your homework.”

“Help me with my homework?  You would come over, do it for me, and then make out with me until my mom got home.”

Will smiled.  “Good times.”

She hit him lightly on the arm and blushed.  She leaned on one arm on the bench, looking at him adoringly.  She still had it bad.  Up until a couple months ago, he had been the same way.  They hadn’t dated for almost a year now, but Will had been very infatuated with her.  He wouldn’t quite say he’d been in love with her, but he’d cared enough about her to dump her.  Lately though, he’d noticed that his feelings for her had dissipated.  He still had some lingering affection for her, but it wasn’t as scary as it had been.

He’d read once that “love” was merely a chemical reaction in the brain and generally wore off between 24 and 36 months later.  Maybe since his brain chemistry was different from everyone else’s, he just managed to shake it off sooner than most people.  The fact that his intense feelings for Liz had worn off some gave him hope for the whole Ken trauma.  That’s all it was.  He was still traumatized from that terrible “date.”  He was certain now that those feelings would eventually abate and disappear all together.  At least he was pretty certain.  It wouldn’t hurt to be sure.  So, when Liz leaned forward slightly on her stool, Will did more than meet her halfway.

It had been eighteen months and six days since he last kissed Liz.  He remembered the day perfectly because he’d known all along it would be the last time he kissed her.  He knew he was going to break up with her and never be with her again.  He hadn’t known at the time that she would wind up joining his group of friends and he would have to talk to her everyday for the next year and a half.  He couldn’t believe she’d burned a torch for him for that long.  Then again, hadn’t he done the same until recently?

Will reached a hand up and remembered her hair clips, so he buried his fingers in her hair behind her neck.  He slid his other hand across the smooth, black surface of the bench top until he found her hand.  He twined their fingers together and mimicked the motion with their tongues.  She hadn’t been a good kisser when they first started dating, but he had trained her well.  She hadn’t forgotten any of her lessons he discovered.  It still felt good to kiss her, but it wasn’t nearly as scary.  His feelings for her had definitely changed, and hers obviously hadn’t.  It was wrong of him to use her like this to sort out his own hang-ups.

He intended to pull back, but she ran her fingers through his hair, her nails skimming across his scalp.  It sent tingles all through his body.  She held him to her and he decided to go on kissing her for a minute more.  She was soft and receptive, and completely willing to let him take the lead.  It was very different from the kissing he had been doing lately.  Will would have rolled his eyes at himself if he wasn’t already busy.  He couldn’t believe he was thinking of Ken at a time like this.  It was scary when he kissed Ken, but because of the extreme circumstances surrounding it—not because he was in love with him.  Will could finally admit to himself that he had some sort of feelings for Ken, but he knew he wasn’t in love with him.  The feelings he had were weird, confusing, and twisted, but they were there nonetheless.

“Et-hmm.”

Liz and Will pulled apart.  Liz wiped a corner of her mouth with a finger.  Mr. Kilgore was standing awkwardly half-in and half-out of the supply closet.

“Sorry,” he said, his face red, “I didn’t want to interrupt, but I was standing here a while.  Not that I was watching!  I wasn’t—I, uh, well, I mean I obviously had to look to see that you two were, uh, well, you were—”

“Mr. Kilgore,” Will interrupted the man’s stammering.

“Yes?”  He rubbed his hands again and looked like he was trying to look disinterested in them.

“I got bored on Wednesday night, and I actually already looked over the equation you gave me.”  He pulled a folder out of his bag and crossed the room to hand it to the teacher.  “I also fussed around with it a bit and came up with some alternative formulations.  And actually,” Will rubbed the back of his head, feigning modesty, “I kind of figured out what you were trying to do and wrote a different equation using a different catalyst and reduced the number of steps involved to reduce a chance for error.  So, you can look over that.  And I think we’ll just get out of your hair.”

Will turned and picked up his bag.  He nodded to Liz and she hopped off the stool.  Mr. Kilgore called to him when they reached the door.

“Will?”

Will turned around.  Mr. Kilgore had scanned a couple of the pages and was now looking at him over the top of his reading glasses.

“You’re not supposed to be in high school, are you?”

Will smiled.  “I’ll see you next year, Mr. Kilgore.”

Will turned and left.  Liz slipped her hand into his and they walked down the hall together.

“What did he mean?” Liz asked.

Will shook his head.  “I’ve no clue.  The man is weird.”

“That’s for sure.  So,” she said coyly, giving him a playful look, “do you want your gum back?”

She popped a bubble and Will laughed.

“No, that’s okay.”  He looked away from her.  _Think of it as a parting gift_.

“Soooo, you wanna go on a date tomorrow?”

Will refrained from making a face.  Did she think they were back together now?  “I can’t.  I have a game tomorrow.  You can come if you like.”  Will regretted saying it even as the words left his mouth.  Ken was supposed to come to his game tomorrow.  Did he really want them there at the same time?  How would he explain Liz to Ken?  He shook his head.  Wait.  How would he explain Ken to Liz was what he meant.

“Wellll, I actually have to um, well.  I’m kind of busy in the morning.  And afternoon.  I meant a date, like at night…”

She didn’t want to go to his game.  Surprise, surprise.  He was a little hurt by that.  If she really liked him that much shouldn’t she want to go to his match even if she was bored to tears?  How many band concerts had he suffered through while they were dating?  But why should he be hurt that she didn’t care?  Besides, Ken was going anyway.  It worked out better this way.

“It’s cool,” he said.  “I think I’ll be tired after my game.  How about Sunday instead?”

“Sure!  Great!  Should I just call you on Sunday afternoon?”

“Yeah.  That’ll be fine.”

“Great!”

She seemed so happy.  She was holding onto his hand with both of hers.  Will had a feeling that if he didn’t do something right now to correct her understanding of the situation, he was going to start something he really didn’t mean to.  It might ease his distress and confusion to date a girl again, but it shouldn’t be Liz.  He shouldn’t do that to her.  But she was just so convenient.

 

Will’s last period teacher let them all out early, so he was first to the playground.  He claimed the pink pony.  Yeah it was pink, but it was the least goofy of all the animals.  His other choices were a whale, a bee, and a toucan.  The pony was also the most logical choice.  Whales were not land animals, a bee was too small for a human to ride on, and birds were gross.  This reminded him of another weird animal.  They were probably going to be here a while, so he should call Ken and make sure he went home on time to feed Joyce Greene.  He pulled out his cell phone and searched through all the numbers he had for Ken.  Why he had Ken’s home, personal cell, work cell, and work numbers didn’t have a satisfactory answer, but he decided to go with his personal cell.  He was more likely to answer that one.  The phone rang four times and almost went to voicemail before Ken answered.

“Hello, Will.”

“Hey.  I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be late tonight.  So, don’t work late.  Go home and feed Joyce Greene.”

Ken laughed.  “Don’t worry about it.  I’ll take care of her.”

“I mean it.  She has a schedule.  Don’t mess it up.”

“Will.  Don’t worry.  I have already rearranged my life to accommodate her.”

“Okay.  I’ll come over later.”

There was clanging on the other end of the line.  “Ah.  Crap.  Don’t worry about it, Will.  You don’t have to come over.  It was the last day of school, right?  Why don’t you go out with your friends?”

“Well, I am.  That’s why I’ll be late.  But, I can’t stay out late tonight.  I have a game tomorrow.”

It was more or less the truth.  His game wasn’t until noon, but he wanted to see if Ken remembered and if he still planned on going.

“Oh, yes, I remember.”

He didn’t say anything about attending.  Will ran his tongue over his teeth.  Maybe he should have forced Liz into going.  Maybe he still could.

“Well, anyway, I’m still going to come over.  You’ll probably stay late like you do every Friday night and forget all about her.”

“Will, I promise I won’t.  In fact, I’m already at home.”

“You are?”  Will was surprised.  Ken always worked extra late on Fridays because it would be two whole days before he could work again.  Though he usually did on Saturdays and Sundays anyway.  The freak.

“Yeah, I took the day off.”

Will pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it.  Then he put it back to his head so he could talk.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?  I thought I heard you say you did something normal.”

“Ha, ha.  Yes, I take days off every now and then.”

“What’s the occasion?”

He hesitated.  It was only for a second, but Will caught it.  “No reason.  Just thought I’d been working too hard lately.  So, I took the day off.  As such, Joyce Greene has had company all day and will get dinner on time tonight.  So, don’t worry about coming over.  I’m sure you have better things to do with your time than hang out with an old man.”

Will was about to protest—Ken’s behavior was suspicious—but he saw Chris entering the playground.

“You’re right, I do.  I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.  Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

Will hung up and put the phone away.  He wondered if Chris would ask about who he’d been on the phone with.

Today was going to be a dilemma.  It was the playground after all, should he tell them about who had been on the phone?  But that was one huge eff-ing can of worms to open.

Explaining accidentally meeting Ken would be okay.  He was supposed to meet Scott’s cousin and they mistook each other for their respective dates.  But, why would Ken be looking for a young boy?  He was going to come out seeming sketchy no matter what Will said.  And it wasn’t the fact that he _knew_ Ken.  That wasn’t the problem.  The other three had all opened up and shared some serious issues they were dealing with.  They trusted each other enough with this information.  Could he tell them about the incident?  He was certain they would all view it as rape and probably want him to go to the police.  But he wasn’t going to do that to Ken.  And that wasn’t the problem either.  He had come to terms with what had happened that night.  He had dealt with it.  He was okay with it.  Sort of.  His problem was the feelings he was having for Ken now.

For instance, why was he so adamant about not turning Ken into the police?  Why was he okay with spending time with him even though he knew sometimes it would end in some very intimate physical contact?  Those were the issues that confused him.  But how could he explain this problem without explaining the incident?  But most of all could he bear for them to know that it was a _man_ he was having these feelings for?  Quite possibly Julian would kill him if he found out he’d been experimenting with the same gender and hadn’t asked him for help.  Maybe he could just say it was a woman.  An older woman that necessitated the relationship being a secret.  But dating an older woman wouldn’t be a problem for him.  And the others would know that.

How much could he tell them without having to tell them everything?  Didn’t he owe them some honesty?  Well, maybe not.  While Chris and Scott had revealed very personal problems they had been dealing with, they hadn’t been completely honest with them.  Scott wouldn’t reveal who he was fooling around with though Will had figured it out.  A couple weeks back he had seen Scott have a brief conversation with Antoinette Bixby.  It was so random that they would talk that he had almost asked Scott what she had wanted.  Now he knew.  She was cheating on Jake with Scott.  And while Chris hadn’t lied outright, he had talked around the point.  It’s what he did when he didn’t or couldn’t lie.  When Julian had asked him if his father had contacted him, he hadn’t actually given them an answer to the question.  His father must have contacted him.  Will hoped Chris knew what he was doing and hadn’t gotten in over his head.   And Julian was also dealing with something other than what he had talked about.  There was something he was hiding, but he’d spent enough time around Will to know that he had to be very careful about what he said or else he would figure it out like he had Scott and Chris’ secrets.

Will sighed.  It was his turn.  He had to tell them something.  All four of them were dealing with problems way over their heads.  Including him.  But he couldn’t do it.  He couldn’t talk about Ken with them.  So he fell back on an old standard; he complained about his parents.  About how they were never home and treated him like he was a fully mature and self-sufficient adult.  The funny part being that he didn’t need that much supervision and would have viewed it as smothering if his parents were any more involved in his life.  And they did take care of him and do things for him when they were home.  He actually didn’t think they were that bad of parents.  But complaining about them was better than telling his friends he was…having “feelings” for his male rapist.

By the time they parted ways Will could tell the other three were feeling much better after their talk.  Will was feeling worse.  Not only had he not been able to tell _someone_ about what he was dealing with, but he felt like he was now purposefully hiding it and lying about it.  He had made the decision to never tell anyone.  And that was a daunting prospect.  But he realized that he had to keep it completely to himself.  Ken’s life was on the line.  If this got out at all, his life would be ruined.  It would be all over the news and there was a good chance he would go to prison.  And what would his family do?  Would they shun him?  Would they disown him?  That wasn’t fair.  Not for one mistake.  Granted, it was a huge mistake, but it hadn’t been all Ken’s fault.  Will had inadvertently contributed greatly to the confusion.

Will was walking down the sidewalk next to the café he’d met Ken at the day after the accident.  He realized he was heading to Ken’s apartment without even thinking.  Ken had told him he didn’t have to come over; he was home and taking care of the kitten.  It had also seemed like he had been trying to convince Will not to come over.  Did he have plans?  That asocial loser?  No way.  Besides.  Who cares if he didn’t want him to come over?  He was stopping by to see the kitten.  Then he’d be on his way.

 _What if he has “company” over_ , Will wondered as he rode the elevator up.  Well, he had a peephole.  He could see who it was and not answer.  Or he could just ignore it all together.  Just because someone knocked at your door didn’t mean you had to answer.  Ken was a grown man; he could make that decision for himself.  Will strode confidently down the hall and rapped sharply on door 1703.  A few moments passed and then Ken opened the door.  He was dressed in black pants and a rich royal blue shirt.  Over it he had a green chef’s apron that said “BAM!”  He had his cell phone to his ear and seemed mildly surprised to see Will.  He smiled to himself.

“There’s been a change of plans,” Ken said into the phone.  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He hung up on the other person’s loud protests.  Ken leaned on the door.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I just dropped by to see the kitten,” Will said uneasily.  He didn’t like the way Ken was looking at him.

Ken stepped back and waved an arm.  “Come on in.  She’s on the couch.”

Will stepped inside and removed his shoes.  “Who was on the phone?”

“Just a friend.”

Will looked into the kitchen as he walked to the couch.  There were pots on the stove and dishes all over the island.  There was also a strong smell of spices.  He sat on the couch and rubbed the kitten under her chin.  She opened one eye and stretched a paw out toward him.  Will frowned.  Whenever Ken came home she ran to meet him.  When he came over she could barely acknowledge him.  She loved Ken more.

“What’s all this?” Will asked as he dragged the kitten into his lap.

“Dinner,” said Ken as he stirred something in a pot.  “Sometimes I like to experiment with cooking.”

Will laughed softly.  “My dad’s like that too.”

“You wanna help?”

Will scratched the kitten behind her ears and she started to purr.  “Sure.”  He put Joyce Greene back on the couch and she looked startled and offended at being abandoned.  Will walked into the kitchen and looked into one of the pots.  There was a whole chicken boiling in it.  Ken was digging around in the pantry.  He produced a black apron that had “Back Away from the Stove” embroidered on it.  Will shook his head.

“Unh-uh.  I’ll be fine without it.”

“What about your uniform?”

“It’s washable,” he said.

He pulled off the sweater vest and necktie and then tossed both toward the couch.  They landed about half-on the couch.  Ken stared at the garments for a moment, but fought against his nature and let it go.

“What’s with the sweater vest anyway?  I like the jackets better.”

“Jackets are for the winter term.  And don’t even pretend you don’t like the sweater vest.  You probably get all hot and bothered seeing some poor boy in his school uniform.”

Ken smiled at him as he took a sip from a glass of red wine.  “Is that why you always wear it when you come over here?”

Will made a show of inspecting the open wine bottle and concentrated on the label.  He was _not_ going to react to that comment.  He started to get another wine glass down from the cabinet and Ken took the bottle away from him.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to try some.”

“I hardly think that I need to be the one to remind anyone that he’s only seventeen.”

“Really.  Is there any point in worrying about contributing to the delinquency of a minor at this point?”

“I think so.  I needn’t add more charges to my rap.”

“You’re not.”  Will took the bottle back and poured the glass half full.  “You’ve already plied me with alcohol before.”

“Ah.  How could I have forgotten?”

Will took a tiny sip to get a taste for it.  It wasn’t as good as the one they’d had at the hotel restaurant, but it wasn’t bad.  Of course, it was probably just as potent.  He was going to drink this _very_ slowly.  The last thing he needed was to lose his inhibitions.  He already went too far with Ken when he was sober.

The main preparations for the meal had already been done, but there was still a lot to do to make sure nothing went awry.  They coordinated the remaining tasks and made a quick timeline to make sure everything was finished at the same time.  There was a short burst of panicked activity as the chicken almost boiled over.  They laughed and talked and worked around the kitchen like it was something they did every night.  They went all out setting the table, putting out fancy plates, two forks, a knife, a spoon, and candles.  Will thought it was weird for two guys to eat a meal together by candlelight, but Ken _was_ gay.  When they sat down to eat, Ken opened a bottle of white wine.

“You’re opening a second one?” Will asked.

“Yeah.  That other one was just for while we were cooking.  You drink white wine with chicken.  Besides, the other one’s empty.”

“Empty?  You drank the whole bottle?”

“You had some.”

“Not that much.”

“It was a small bottle.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Will had some of the white wine with his dinner, but he was careful to keep track of the way he was feeling.  At the first hint of a buzz he was going to make himself puke in the bathroom.  Which would have been a waste because the meal was fantastic.  The conversation they’d had while preparing it continued as they consumed it.  It was easy to find something to talk about and it was fun to discuss serious topics and then laugh over silly things like how one of the guards downstairs was obviously trying to figure out if Ken was gay.  It was the best Will had felt all day; possibly all month.  He wanted to be concerned about how much he was enjoying having dinner with Ken, but he just wasn’t.  They were friends.  Friends could have fun like this.

After they finished eating, they remained at the table talking while Ken finished off the bottle of wine.  At last they realized they were going to have to clean up.  Will rolled up his sleeves and began attacking the pots and pans and dishes that covered the center island.  The kitchen had a double sink so Ken rinsed off the dishes they’d eaten on and put them in the dishwasher.  He finished before Will and began to poke around in his refrigerator.

“Are you still hungry?” Will asked as he stared gloomily at the chicken pot.

“Well, there’s always room for dessert.”

Ken produced a chocolate and whipped cream concoction from the large refrigerator.  Will turned off the water and inspected the clear bowl.  He could see there were several layers to it.

“I spent all day working on this,” said Ken.  “It’s why I had to take the day off.  One of the layers, the chocolate mousse took, like, three hours to make.”

“Hmm.  Looks good.”

Ken grabbed a spoon from a drawer and dug straight down to get all the layers.  It came up with what would be a very large bite even for a person with a huge mouth.

“Here, try some.”

Ken held his hand under the spoon and offered it to Will.

“No way!  I’m not going to eat it like that.  Just give it to me.”

“That’s what chef’s do when they offer up their masterpiece for a taste test.”

“They do not.”

“Oh, come on.  Do you want it or not?”

Will frowned but gave in.  He did his best to get most of the dessert off the spoon.  It melted inside his mouth.  He closed his eyes but forced himself to hold back a moan of pleasure.  Girls weren’t the only ones who got to enjoy chocolate, but he wasn’t going to be weird about it.  He licked his lips and looked at Ken.

“That is really fucking good.”

Ken laughed.  “I’m glad you like it.”  He smiled at him.  “You have some whipped cream there.”  He indicated the place on Will’s face by touching the corner of his own mouth.

Will tried to get it off and gave Ken a look.  “You probably gave me a bite that big just so this would happen so you could lick it off.  Pervert.”

Ken dropped the spoon back in the bowl.  “Well, if you insist.”

He grabbed Will around the waist and leaned down.  He kiss-licked the spot away.  Will rolled his eyes to the ceiling.  Unbelievable.  The man really was too much.  Then Ken moved to put his lips fully over Will’s.  Will put his hands on the man’s biceps and closed his eyes as Ken got his taste of the dessert from his mouth.  Will was vaguely aware that they were moving and then he bumped against the island.  He started in surprise as Ken grabbed him by the ass and hauled him up onto the countertop.  It was the perfect height for Ken to stand comfortably and be pressed right in between his legs.  The kiss intensified and Will knew he had to slow things down.  He pushed back on Ken and managed to gasp out a few weak protests.  Ken ignored him.

“I mean it,” Will said unconvincingly.  “Let me go.”

Ken pulled back enough to pant into his mouth.  “I can’t.  You’re holding onto me.”

Will flushed hot with embarrassment as he realized he’d wrapped his legs around Ken.  It took every ounce of strength he had to force his legs to drop to the side.  Ken had moved to his jaw, his lips trailing an electrifying line of heat toward his neck.  It was the first time he’d kissed him somewhere other than his mouth.  Well, since that night anyway.  Which reminded Will of all the places Ken had kissed him that night.  He twisted in Ken’s grasp, trying to escape the embarrassment.  Ken took the movement as a way of getting away from him.  He pushed back on Will and they landed with a hard thump on the wide expanse of the island.

Something different settled in the pit of Will’s stomach.  It was fear.  Something felt wrong.  It wasn’t the first time Ken had pushed him down, but he’d never been so aggressive about it.  One hand was pinning his wrist immobile to the countertop.  The other was trapped between their bodies.  Then he felt skin brush against his clavicle.  The feeling moved further down his chest.  He was unbuttoning his shirt.  Will turned his head and tried to push against Ken.

“Ken—”

Will couldn’t get out the rest.  The man’s tongue flicked across his earlobe and his hand freed another button from his white dress shirt.  His mouth found Will’s again and the boy let him in because he didn’t how to stop him.  And here was what made all the other actions all the more frightening.  He didn’t taste like the wine they had been drinking; he just tasted like alcohol.  Will managed to turn his head to the side but Ken continued to kiss the place where jaw met neck.

“Ken, stop.  Stop!”

“Why?” the man groaned.  Will could hear the smile in his voice.  “You’re obviously enjoying it.”

Ken gave a thrust of his hips.  Will tensed at the feeling and a wave of shame rushed through him.  It wasn’t because a man was pushing an erection between his legs, but because he was responding in kind.

“Please stop,” Will said pitifully, struggling to stop the hand that had finished with the buttons of his shirt and was starting on the one on his trousers.  “I’m scared.  You’re drunk.”

All movement stopped.  Except Will’s chest, which continued to heave from drawing in trembling breaths caused by a combination of fear and arousal.  Will closed his eyes and put his arm over them.  He realized it was the arm that had been pinned.  Ken had released him.  This also led to the realization that he was alone on top of the island.  He moved his arm off his eyes and opened them slightly to look around.  Ken had stumbled back to the wall where the kitchen tile met the carpet.  He slid shakily to the floor, nearly sitting in Joyce Greene’s water bowl as he did so.  He drew his knees up and hid his face in his arms.

Will sat up and forced himself to calm down.  He attempted to button his shirt back up, but his fingers were trembling so much he could only get a couple done.  That was enough.  He hopped off the island and walked around the far side.  He had to gently move the kitten off his sweater vest.  She let out a small noise of complaint, but remained asleep.  He tucked his tie in his pocket and stared at his shoes.  They were near the door and next to Ken.  He walked quickly over and picked them up.  He’d put them on in the hallway.  He got the door partially open and Ken suddenly grabbed the cuff of his pants.  Will turned to him, expecting an apology.  But Ken didn’t look at him and all he said was, “I can’t take it, Will.  I can’t do this anymore.”

Will didn’t have a response for him, so he stepped gently away from him and Ken let the fabric slide through his fingers.  He entered the hall and closed the door behind him.  He leaned against it for a moment, but was too nervous about someone seeing him in this state.  He hurried for the elevator and put on his shoes while he waited for it.  What was he going to do?  What had Ken meant by that?  Could he not see him anymore?  Why would he even want to?  He should be furious with him.  He’d gotten drunk and pushed too far.  But had Will ever done anything to really discourage him?  Would this event irrevocably change their relationship?

The elevator dinged and the doors opened for him.  He stepped inside with a harsh, self-deprecating laugh.  And what exactly was their relationship?  Will struggled into his sweater vest and fell against the back wall of the elevator utterly exhausted.  He hoped the other guys weren’t having as bad a night as he was.

 

Julian

 

Julian refrained from shrugging the hand off his shoulder.  He clenched his teeth together and tried to keep a neutral expression as he accepted condolences, _again_ , from his English teacher.  He was so grateful it was the last day of school.  Now he would be able to get away from his teachers and classmates.  They all just kept looking at him weird.  Which was something he was more or less used to, but it was the pity in their eyes that bugged him.  They all just shook their heads and tried so hard not to say anything that might upset him.  And it was driving him crazy.  He managed to reassure the concerned woman that he would be fine over the summer and escaped her caring clutches.

As he walked down the emptying halls, he wondered if that was true.  The summer was going to bring about a huge change in his life.  He was less than a month away from his hearing date.  In about three weeks time he would be an emancipated minor and completely responsible for himself.  That is if everything went according to plan.  Mrs. Harder seemed convinced that everything would go smoothly, but Julian wasn’t so sure.  His grandmother was _still_ living with him at his house and intending to contest the petition at the hearing.  Mrs. Harder reassured him that she had no standing in the case and no matter what argument she made it wasn’t going to convince a judge to turn him over to her.

Julian was impressed with Mrs. Harder’s confidence.  She had met his grandmother on numerous occasions and still remained undaunted.  Julian, on the other hand, was giving way more and more to her persistence.  He had strongly hinted a couple times that it would be best if she went home, but she had flat out refused to leave him.  In her opinion she thought she would be abandoning him.  And she also wanted the opportunity to correct his errant ways.  And was having marginal success at it.  He’d accompanied her to church twice already and would probably be going again this Sunday.  He really didn’t mind it so much.  The service was mostly in Greek.  Or maybe it was Latin.  He wasn’t sure.  All he knew was that he didn’t understand most of it.  He could just sit in the pew and soak in the solemnity of the proceedings and the piety of the attendees.  It was kind of a bizarre feeling, but it was nice.  All the people around him had this faith, and it was almost tangible.  It felt nice to sit amongst a group of people who could be moved by their beliefs; it made him feel surer of himself.  He wondered if he’d be able to get the same feeling if he went to a Wiccan Circle.  He should probably attend one again soon.  Just as long as all the coven members wouldn’t try to get too touchy-feely with him.  He hadn’t been in the mood for that lately.

Julian stopped by his locker one last time.  For his junior year anyway.  They kept the same lockers at Calverton every year starting at sixth grade.  He always thought it was stupid that they made them clean them out every year, but in Scott’s case that might be a good thing.  He tended to leave his leaky lunches over the weekend and come Monday there was often quite a funky smell emanating from the depths of his locker.  Somehow Scott managed to make the shallow, metal locker give off an aura of an unexplored jungle.

Julian looked in the magnetic mirror hanging on the inside of his locker.  He turned his head side to side to make sure his eyeliner hadn’t smudged.  Then he stared hard at his bland, brown eyes.  He wished he had eyes like Scott’s.  The permanent shade of green of Will’s eyes was too unnatural and Chris had boring brown eyes like him, albeit a prettier color.  But Scott’s eyes were that bright, deep blue, like the waters of the Caribbean.  They were even more amazing now with the change in his hair color.  Julian wondered if he might give molesting Scott another shot.  In his head, of course.  In real life Scott would be too clingy to date.  And right now he obviously couldn’t handle anything more confusing.  He had looked so sad at lunch this afternoon.  He apparently had a lot on his mind.  It was a good thing they would have their playground meeting today.  Which he better get to or Scott might beat him there.

Julian pulled the mirror off the locker door and dropped it into his messenger bag.  As he shut the door he saw someone duck back behind the corner of the hall.  He thought nothing of it and started for the back of the building.  As he approached the corner, he sensed that someone was still there and when he passed it, Laney popped out at him.

“Oh, Julian!  What a surprise.  I was just heading this way to uh…”

She trailed off and appeared to be thinking of a reason.  Julian waited and slowed his gait so her short legs could keep up with him.  If she didn’t have a reason to be in this wing of the building, she didn’t need to make one up.  It’s not like she was in trouble or anything.

“Well, I, uh…how are you doing?  I hope you haven’t thought that I didn’t care.  I was just worried that everyone would be bothering you so much that I didn’t want to add onto the problem.  But, I want you to know I have been thinking of you.”

Julian smiled at her.  She apparently knew him better than most people.  “I’m doing okay.  It’s just really…weird, you know?  I don’t know how to describe it.  It’s like, I know I’m sad that my parents are gone, and I _know_ that they’re gone, but sometimes it feels like they’re just temporarily going to be gone.”

“Wow.  That sounds…confusing.”

She turned away to make a face at herself.  He almost laughed.  She didn’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing.  He would know she would never mean to say anything intentionally hurtful.  They were passing by the door to the elementary wing, so he stopped walking.

“Are you worried about the hearing?” she asked, stopping with him and playing with her shoulder-length, chocolate brown hair.

“Yeah, a little.  But Will’s mom is taking care of everything, and you know how she can be.”

Laney laughed.  “Yeah, I do.”  She laughed again.  A little more than the comment warranted.  Julian just chalked it up to Laney being her usual weird self.

“Look, Laney, I actually have to get going.  I have…an appointment.”

“Oh.  Oh, okay.  Um, we can see each other this summer, right?”

“Yeah.  We do every summer.”

“But, I mean, like…we always hang out in a group.  I meant, like, maybe we could, well, uh…”

She continued to stammer around her point and Julian waited a little impatiently.  He didn’t understand why she was capable of speaking like a normal human being, and then sometimes seemed to revert back to the grammar of a three year old.

“Laney,” Julian interrupted her, “we’ll see each other this summer.  No worries.”

“Like, alone?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure.  Look, I’ve really got to get going.  See you later.”

Julian pushed through the doors to the elementary wing and hurried toward the playground.  He wondered what Laney would want to do with him alone.  They didn’t have that much in common.  It would be better if they hung out as a group.  By the time he got to the playground, Will and Chris were already there and Scott came only two minutes later.  Julian slid onto the toucan and put his feet on the stirrups.  His knees came up nearly to his chest.  He wondered what the other three would have to report for this year, and if they would be sick and tired of hearing about his drama.

When the time came for him to talk, he couldn’t help but rehash everything he’d gone through the last month and a half.  He knew he missed his parents and it was very upsetting, but it didn’t feel as upsetting as he thought it should.  Did that mean there was something wrong with him?  Did that mean he really was still stuck in denial?  His friends didn’t try to give sympathetic, cajoling responses, they just listened to him question himself.

Which was very different from what Dr. Gorman did to him.  She always tried to give him an answer.  He thought shrinks we just supposed to nod their heads and scribble things down in their notepads.  But, _she_ had to get… _involved_.  And it was starting to become dangerous.  He was _letting_ her get involved.  In fact, he _enjoyed_ her involvement.  He really wanted them to become even more…involved.  He needed to stop thinking that word.  It was starting to sound like a fake word.  And he couldn’t bring this up with his friends.  He couldn’t switch from a serious topic and then gush about the woman he had a crush on.  Would they think it was wrong of him to be having feelings like this so soon after his parents’ deaths?  It wasn’t like his wife had died or anything.  But maybe they would just say he was feeling this way because she was the first person he’d really talked to about this.  That he was projecting onto her or something.  That might actually be the case, and he definitely didn’t want to hear it.

He moved on to the emancipation instead.  He realized now it scared the shit out of him and he told his friends as much.  He wasn’t worried it wouldn’t be granted or even that the new responsibilities would be overwhelming; he was just worried that he would spend a lot of time alone in a big empty house.  That scared him most of all.  Being alone.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he admitted.  “I don’t think I’ll be able to go a whole day and not see somebody.”

“We’re gonna come see you,” Will stated like it was obvious.

“And you can stay with us anytime,” said Scott.

“If for the next few weeks, or months even, you need someone 24/7,” Chris said, “we’ll take care of it.”

“Yeah, it’s not like we have lives or anything,” Scott grinned.  “We can dedicate our whole summer to you.”

Julian knew they meant it, but that they were also joking a little.  He didn’t want them to be joking.

“You mean it?” he asked.  “You’ll be there 24/7 when I need you?”

“Of course,” said Will.

“Can we make a schedule?”

“What, like Will gets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Scott takes Tuesday and Thursdays, and I take the weekends?” Chris asked.

“Yeah, something like that,” he mumbled, a little embarrassed.

“But maybe better would be to alternate every third day and then all share the weekends,” Will said.

Scott laughed.  “It’s like we’re planning visitation rights for a child.  I want all the Christian and Jewish holidays, Will can have the Wiccan ones, and Chris can have Kwanza.”

“What?  Why do I get Kwanza?”

“Because, you’re in that whole culture.  With your girlfriend and all.”

“I told you, I’m going to break up with her.”

“Unh-huh.”

“Oh, shut it, Marilyn.”

“Marilyn?”

“Yeah, with your pretty, platinum hair.”

“Whatever!  At least call me Billy Idol or something!”

“You are so not cool enough to pull that off,” said Will.

Julian smiled.  This was great.  He was so happy.  He had the best friends ever.  “I love you guys.”  He just blurted it out.  They all looked at him.  Will glanced at Scott and Chris voiced his thoughts.

“Man, you’re as cheesy as Scott.”

“Hey!” Scott yelled.

Julian made a face at them.  “Oh, shut-up.  I am not _that_ bad.”

“It’s not bad!” Scott wailed.

 

Julian closed his eyes as he felt the whoosh of cool air from the automatic doors blow over his face.  He opened his eyes and walked inside the clean, white hospital entrance.  He had initially been upset that morning that he was going to have to see Dr. Gorman today.  She’d had to cancel on Wednesday and insisted that they still see each other this week.  Yeah he had a crush on her, but it was still therapy on a Friday night on the last day of school.  Now, he didn’t mind so much.  He felt better now that he and his friends had managed to finally get together and discuss things openly.  More or less.  And they were all better for it.  Though Will had seemed a little down.  Maybe that was just because he didn’t have _as_ serious of an issue to deal with as the rest of them.  Maybe he felt left out.  He also didn’t mind coming to the appointment now because all of them had ditched him.  After promising to stay with him 24/7, they all ran off to do their own thing.  Well, perhaps the 24/7 clause didn’t officially start until tomorrow.

The city’s hospital—well this one anyway, there were three in the city—made up with height what it lacked in width.  Dr. Gorman’s office was on the 22nd floor here.  The elevator ride always made his stomach drop.  He made his way toward her office and wondered which secretary would be here tonight.  There was a pretty one and a plain one, but even the plain one was better than the ugly one at the local hospital.  Julian shuddered just thinking about her.

The office looked pretty dim and there was no secretary inside.  He glanced at his watch.  It was only a couple minutes after five.  He was about an hour late.  He wondered if Dr. Gorman had even stuck around.

“Julian March.  I have been waiting here over an hour for you.”

Julian turned at the sound of her voice.  She was wearing a puffy purple shirt over a purple and magenta plaid skirt.  And it was a bad length.  Not short enough to be hot and not long enough to be fashionable.  Where on earth did she find these clothes?  She pushed her glasses up her nose and gave him a sour look.

“What’s your excuse?  It had better be good.”

“I’m hungry,” he stated, pulling his sweater vest over his head.  He stuffed it into his bag and waited for her to sort through her confusion.

“That’s why you’re late?” she asked.

“No.  It’s not.  But I am hungry.  Is there a rule that says you can’t shrink me while I eat?”

She looked like she was about to give him a lengthy lecture on punctuality, but changed her mind.  “Well, no, there’s not.  I’m actually hungry too.  We can get something from the cafeteria and then bring it up—”

“Nope.  No way.”  Julian turned to leave the office.  “I’m not eating hospital food.”

“But, it’s really not that bad here.”

“Forget it.  There’s like, three restaurants around the corner from here.  Let’s go to one of those.”

“Well,” she sputtered and then hurried after him as he waited for the elevator to return.  “We can’t just go out.”

“Why not?  I’ll pay for it.”  He gave her a look.  “Cheap,” he muttered.

“Uh!  That’s not it!”

The elevator opened and they got on.  His stomach lurched again as the elevator dropped.  She continued to protest all the way to the lobby, but followed him outside to the sidewalk.  Julian was a little embarrassed to be seen in public with her.  She really looked like the before shot of a makeover show.  The city was busy on a Friday night and the weather was nice.  They could walk around some to find a good restaurant, but if he was really going to have to pay, he’d better find some place cheap.  And it wouldn’t hurt to cut back the time they spent out on the public sidewalks.  He walked into a low key, family style restaurant and Dr. Gorman followed him, having given up her futile efforts to dissuade him from “meticulously tearing down the crucial doctor-patient formality necessary for them to have a successful session.”  Since it was still early, they didn’t have to wait on a table and Julian put his menu between them so that she wouldn’t start asking questions right away.  Couldn’t she take one night off?

“Julian, I really would like to discuss the emancipation.  It’s only three weeks away.”

He flopped his menu down.  “I _know_ that, Dr. Gorman.  You give me the countdown every week.”

“I’m just trying to—”

“Oh, I know what you’re trying to do,” he said, feigning paranoia, “but what exactly are your qualifications?  Why should I allow you to shrink my brain?”

She laced her fingers together on the table.  “Haven’t you ever noticed my diplomas on the wall?” she asked dryly.

“No, not really.”

She let out a little irritated snort.  “Well, I went to Arizona State for my undergraduate work and I got my MD at Case Western University.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Cleveland.”

Hmm.  Those are pretty far apart.”

“Yeah…” she trailed off.  “Yeah, they are.”

“Was it just because it was the only medical school you could get into?”

“What?  No!  You’re so rude.  I went to Case because it was closer to my home.”

“So, you went to Arizona to…follow a guy or something?”

She smiled.  “No.  Just to…to get away from my family.  After being away for four years, I realized they weren’t so bad after all.  That’s why I decided to go to medical school really close to home.  I grew up in Cleveland.”

The waitress came by and took their order.  Julian thought Dr. Gorman was lucky.  She got to figure out her family was a good thing the easy way.

“So,” he said, swirling his straw in his Coke.  His mother never let him drink things with high fructose corn syrup.  “You’ve got a nice family, then?  Is it big?”

“No.  It’s a regular one.  A mom, a dad, and an older brother.”

Julian looked up at her.  “Did you have a crush on your older brother when you were little?”

She sort of laughed at the question and then pushed her glasses up her nose.  “No, not a crush.  I did admire him though.  Compared every guy I ever dated to him.  I still do, I think.”

“So, it’s weird or not weird to have a crush on your older brother?”

She raised an eyebrow.  “Define crush.”

“Like, you tried to kiss him.”

“If I didn’t know you were an only child and had never met any of your cousins, I would be worried right now.”

“So, it’s a bad thing?”

“Well, it’s not _bad_ as in evil or demented.  Though it is psychologically irregular.”

“Psychologically irregular.  Nice.”

“Well.”  She seemed to be thinking of a nicer way to phrase it.

“Did you know your extended family?” Julian changed subjects.

“Huh?  Oh, yes, I did.  Aunts, uncles, cousins.  The whole shebang.  I even knew all four of my grandparents.  And I loved my Gram-Gram.  She was my mother’s mother.  I was really close with her.  She died when I was in college.”  Dr. Gorman turned thoughtful.  “I guess that’s why I had my epiphany about my family.”

Julian sat back and studied her face.  It was her pretty face, the one she made when she thought she’d made a break through.

“Do you ever find yourself shrinking yourself?”

She laughed and for once it sounded completely natural.  “Well, sometimes I find myself rationalizing and explaining away my emotions rather than just _feeling_ them.”

“Do your friends feel weird around you?  Like, are they worried to talk to you in case you to start to psychoanalyze them?”

“You know, I never thought of that before.  But honestly, it seems like they talk to me more about their problems.”  She chuckled.  “Like they’re trying to get free advice, you know?”

“Do you do it to your boyfriends?”  His teenaged mind couldn’t help but laugh at “do it.”

Her smile faded around the edges.  “No.  I don’t.  I tend not to really find out what they’re feeling or thinking.  I usually keep them at a distance.  It just…”  She broke off and looked at her napkin.  “It just seems weird to be physically and emotionally intimate with someone.”

Julian couldn’t help but to laugh.  She looked up and then seemed startled as if she remembered she was talking to her seventeen year old patient.

“That’s how you know it’s right,” Julian said.  “That’s how you know you’re supposed to be with someone when that much intimacy doesn’t scare you.”  He gave Dr. Gorman a teasing smile.  “You sound like a commitment-phobe to me.”

“I am not!  Who’s the psychiatrist here anyway?  We shouldn’t be discussing _me_.”

“Why not?  How can I be open and honest with you if I don’t trust you?  I need to _know you_ to trust you.”

Dr. Gorman’s glasses had slid down her nose again, but she didn’t push them up.  She stared at him over the frames and he could see he was having an effect on her.  Julian smiled lazily.  It was nice to be the one being obsessed about for once.  He felt a little sorry for her; he knew how he felt when he pined over Will.  But, he wasn’t sorry enough to try to alleviate her discomfort.  The waitress did it for him when she delivered their food.  Her glasses were back in place and she was sitting ramrod straight in her chair.

“Well,” she said coolly, laying her napkin across her lap, “I think that’s enough knowing for one night.  Tell me how you feel about the upcoming hearing date.”

Julian sighed but played along.  They actually managed to have a regular session over dinner and that seemed to make her feel better. More in control of the situation perhaps.  She refused to let him pay for her dinner, but he refused to let her pay for his.  When they were standing in the warm night outside on the sidewalk, Julian could tell she wouldn’t mind if he offered to spend a little more time with her.  But he had to do it in such a way as to not make her overanalyze his intentions.  Which would be difficult since she was a shrink.

“So, where do you live?” Julian asked, moving out of the way of a couple strolling down the sidewalk.

“In a condo downtown.”

Julian let out a low whistle.  “Wow.  Must be nice.  I guess this whole shrink thing is working out for you.”

He couldn’t tell due to the neon lights and flashing car headlights, but he thought she blushed.

“Uh, yeah.  It is a little embarrassing.”

“Let me walk you home.  There’s a metro stop over that way that’s probably just as close as the one I came in on.”

She hesitated, knowing she should say no.

“You never know.  Maybe I’ll drop my guard and reveal something really insightful.”

She smiled and shook her head.  “Okay.  Let’s go.”

The ten block walk was one of the most pleasant of Julian’s life.  He realized he liked the city at night.  It was always moving and making noise.  Maybe he would like to move into an apartment here.  Of course, he would have to live in a little dump in the scary part of town.  Maybe just visiting was good enough.  They chatted idly the whole way, no deep, dark secrets were revealed, but he did learn a lot more about Dr. Gorman.  Most importantly he realized that when she stopped being a doctor, she vaguely resembled a normal human being.

When they reached her building, there were people on the sidewalk, so he couldn’t get his intimate goodbye.  He watched her punch in the code to let herself in the building and decided he’d walk her to her door too.  She turned around to say goodnight to him, but he was following her up the stairs.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

“I’m walking you to your door.  I need to make sure you get safely home.  It’s what my father always said to do.”  He gave her a “my father’s dead and you should let me do this for him” look.  She pursed her lips.

“Well, chivalry lives.”

Julian grinned and followed her inside the building.  It was a nice building.  The lobby looked more like the entrance to a hotel than a set of apartments.  There was also a desk where a guard sat watching old reruns of _The Jeffersons_.  As they waited—not speaking—for the elevator, the door opened and another guard came in carrying a brown paper bag.  He spotted Dr. Gorman and approached her.

“Evening, ma’am.”

“Hello.”

“I hate to be a bother, but you do live on the 17th floor, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Would you mind dropping this off at number 1703?”

“Rodney,” the second guard warned half-heartedly as he watched his show.  The other guard looked like he didn’t want to miss this episode.  Dr. Gorman smiled.

“Of course.  It’s no problem.”

The elevator dinged and Dr. Gorman took the bag from him.  She and Julian got on the elevator and he took the bag away from her.  He started to open it and she lightly slapped his hand.

“What are you doing?”

“What are _you_ doing?  You could be making a drug drop for someone.”

“In this building?”

“Especially in this building.”  Julian opened the bag and drew out a green bottle of pills.  “Ah ha!  See?”

He handed the bottle to Dr. Gorman and she examined the label.  “Oh.  It’s just vitamin B6.  And considering it was bought over the counter at a vitamin store, I’m willing to bet it’s not for a B6 deficiency.”  She put the bottle back in the bag and whispered conspiratorially to Julian.  “It’s probably to help with a hangover in the morning.”

“Does that really work?”

“Well, there have been some studies that have suggested it, but I have no personal experience testing it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Julian muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

They got off on the 17th floor and walked up to door 1703.  Dr. Gorman knocked softly.  Julian gave her a look.

“Who would hear that?”

“Well, if he’s drunk I don’t want to antagonize him.”

Julian rolled his eyes and knocked harder on the door.  The door opened and a man leaned on the frame, looking at them through red, bleary eyes.  Despite his disheveled appearance, he was still very handsome.  Tall too.  Julian gave him a once over, and then glanced at Dr. Gorman to see if she was checking him out too.  She was.  She cleared her throat and held out the brown bag.

“The guards downstairs asked me to give this to you.”

He blinked in confusion, like he didn’t understand English.  And for a moment Julian thought maybe he didn’t.  Then he reached for the bag.

“Oh, thank you.”

He looked in the bag and didn’t quite seem to know what to do with it.  Dr. Gorman mumbled a goodbye and turned to leave.

“Wait,” the man said.  He stared at Julian, and then turned a desperate look on Dr. Gorman.  “Is it okay nowadays to date high schoolers?”

Dr. Gorman went stiff as a board and flushed pink.  “I am not dating him!  That’s not the relationship we have here!”

The man smiled bitterly.  “I’ll take that as a no.”

He stepped back inside his apartment and shut the door.  Dr. Gorman was still riled up from the man’s question.  She turned and marched huffily down the hall to her own apartment.

“I can’t believe it,” she declared.  “I always thought of him as a nice man.  A straight-laced, responsible guy.  I always liked him.  I had no idea he was just a miserable drunk.”

She began to fuss with her keys and Julian leaned against the wall and watched her.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “He seemed more sad than drunk to me.”

She got her door unlocked and turned to him.  Her eyes worked back and forth as she stared at him.  She swallowed with a little difficulty.

“Well, thank you for walking me home.”

“Sure.  I had a nice time.”

She smiled her pretty smile.  “Me too.”

It was so date-like.  He really wanted to kiss her, and had an inkling the feeling was mutual, but knew it would be pushing too far too fast.

“So, I’ll see you Wednesday?” he asked.

“Yes.  Be careful on your way home.”

“I will.  Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

She went inside and closed the door firmly behind her.  Julian laughed softly and almost skipped back to the elevator.  He hoped the other guys were having as good a night as he was.


	6. Chapter 6

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

 

Anna

 

Anna growled at her hair and pulled the pick out of it.  She pulled hard enough to snap it.  She sighed heavily and threw it in the trash.  That was the second one this month.  She grabbed her frizzing hair and pulled it back, forcing the top to lay down smooth.  She fought a fierce battle to get a rubber band around the fluff of hair and it puffed up behind her head like a tail.  She scowled.  Stupid hair.  She leaned forward to look closely in the mirror and inspected her make-up.  The foundation had smoothed over her pores, making her skin look clearer.  She had to dab on some cover-up on a pesky pimple that had popped up last night, but it was high on her forehead, almost in her hairline.  The blush she chose today was more of a bronze than a pink and made her skin tone seem richer.  The light touches of eyeliner and then dramatic smoky eye shadow made her hazel eyes look fierce.  She leaned back and smiled at herself.  She did look lovely even if she did say so herself.  She should try out for America’s Next Top Model.  Let Tyra do something with her hair.

Anna gave herself one more look in the mirror to make sure her skirt and top were in place.  She hated wearing bright colors, but she was playing tennis.  And the white shirt and skirt with green trimming looked very good on her.  She bounced down the stairs and stopped off in the kitchen to fill up a water bottle.  Her little sisters were sitting at the kitchen table, scowling into their cereal.  Their mother was as perky as ever, rushing around and telling them to hurry.

“Didn’t you have to work today?” Anna asked her mother as she put some carrots in a plastic baggy.

“Yes, but your sisters have a gymnastics meet today.  And I don’t know why they don’t want to go.  They’re the ones who begged for lessons in the first place.”

She glanced at her sisters and they slumped further in their chairs.  She held back her smile and put her water and snack in her bag.

“Where are you off to?” her mother asked.

“To play tennis with Melissa.”

“Oh.  Well, have fun.”

Anna started to leave but her mother called her back.  She glanced at her other daughters and then led Anna out into the foyer.

“Anna, is everything okay?”

Anna smiled and shook her head.  “What do you mean?  Do I seem sad or upset?”

“No, you seem fine.  Most of the time.  But, I haven’t seen Scott in ages.  Nor heard you talk about him.  Is everything okay between you two?  Did something happen between you?”

Anna swallowed and felt her good mood leak away.  Just the thought of Scott nowadays made her depressed.  “No, Mom.  Nothing terrible.  But, sometimes, friends grow apart.  Honestly, I’m surprised we stayed friends as long as we did.  You know, when boys and girls are friends when they’re little, it’s hard to keep that going when you grow up.”

Her mother nodded thoughtfully and then put a hand on Anna’s shoulder as she had an epiphany.

“Oh, no.  Was it sex?  Did he stop seeing you as a friend and start thinking of you as a woman?”

Anna laughed.  “What?  No.”

Her mother was still serious.  “Did he do something to you?”

Anna stepped away from her mother.  “No, Mom, not at all.  Scott has never done anything inappropriate with me.”  She turned toward the door.  “Not even close,” she grumbled.

“Oh.  Well.  Have fun!”

“Bye, Mom.  Good luck, Adrielle, Arielle!”

Anna went out the door and shut it behind her.  She dug around in her bag for her keys and walked down the driveway toward her 2004 Pontiac Sunfire.  She looked up as she approached the vehicle and dropped her keys in surprise.  Sitting on the hood of her car and leaning against it were Chris, Will, and Julian.  She glanced around to see if Scott was present.  He wasn’t.  Anna gulped.  She had a feeling this might happen.  She had just thought it would happen sooner.  The boys advanced on her and she took a couple steps back.

“Hey guys,” she said nervously, “what brings you here?”

“What indeed?” mused Will.

He circled to her left.  She knew that Chris was the most protective of Scott, but she was more afraid of Will.  Julian was on her right and she backed away to keep herself from getting blocked in.  Chris strode right toward her and she found herself trapped by her own car.  How had they gotten her all turned around?  She sighed and sat on the hood.  The boys stood in a semi-circle in front of her with their arms crossed.  It would have been more intimidating if Will hadn’t been shorter than the other two.  As a result the effect was kind of comical.  She put her hands in the air and shrugged.

“What?  What do you want from me?  Don’t you even want to hear my side of the story?”

“Not really,” said Will.

Chris put out a calming hand.  “Now, now.  Let’s give her a chance to explain why she would destroy such a sensitive, impressionable, and gentle soul like Scott.”

Anna gave him a look.  “Okay, we don’t need to induct the boy into sainthood.  He’s been part of the problem, though I’ll admit that I started it and continued it.”

“What’s up, Anna?” Julian asked.  “What’s wrong?  Did Scott do something?  You know he didn’t mean to.  It’s killing him, you know.”

“And he’s going through a lot of shit right now,” Will glared at her.

Anna felt her stomach clench.  “Like what?  What’s wrong?”

“Apparently you lost the right to know,” Chris said cruelly.

Anna balled her hands into fists.  “This isn’t fair!  Don’t treat me like I’m the bad guy!  You don’t even know.”

“Know what?” asked Julian.

“I can’t be around him anymore.  It hurts too much!”

“Why?” Chris asked, his face softening for the first time.

“Because—because I’m having a full on Dawson’s Creek drama!”

The boys cocked their head in thought.  Will looked like he was thinking the hardest.  Then he spoke.

“Like, when Joey figures out she’s in love with her best friend or when Joey figures out she’s in love with her best friend’s best friend?”  He discreetly pointed a finger at Chris, then at Julian.  Then he turned it on himself with a smile.  Will wasn’t really Anna’s type.  The pale skin, black hair, and green eyes were just too exotic for her.  But when he smiled like that, she understood why girls went weak in the knees around him.

“No, Will, the former.”

Chris looked the most startled.  “You’re in love with Scott?”

Anna put her hands to her face to hide.  “Yes!” she moaned miserably.  “It came on so gradually I didn’t understand that it was more than just loving him as a friend.  I’ve _wanted_ him for so long now, I can’t even tell you when it happened.  And he’s _so_ not into me.  I’ve given him so many opportunities to even acknowledge that he thinks of me in any sort of romantic or even sexual way, and nothing.  I mean, I know I’m hot, and friend or not he should recognize that!”  She peeked between her fingers.  “He’s not gay is he?”

Julian and Will looked at Chris.  He shrugged and said, “You have the same information I have.”

“That’s why I’m wondering now,” said Will.

“No, he’s straight,” said Julian.  “He’s not even bicurious.”

They turned their attention back to Anna.

“Well,” said Will, “I’m sorry you’re caught in this imbroglio, but we can’t have you treating Scott—”

“Wait, what?” asked Julian.

“Are you making up words again?” asked Chris.

Anna was wondering the same thing.  Will put on his petulant ten-year-old face.

“I’m not making anything up.  Which word confused you?  Sorry?” he snipped.

“No, whatever you said about Natalie Imbruglia,” said Julian.

“Does she still make music?” asked Chris.

“I said ‘imbroglio.’  It means a complicated and embarrassing state of affairs.  Look it up.”  He made a face at his friends and they put their hands up in surrender.  He turned back to Anna.  “Look, just stop treating Scott like trash.  If you love him, suck it up.  Make him happy even if it makes you miserable.  That’s what love is.”

“I don’t think so,” said Julian.  “Shouldn’t love be, like, happy?”

“Well,” Chris started, but was cut off.

“We don’t need your opinion,” said Julian.  “You definitely subscribe to the love is pain philosophy.”

“Oh, blow me,” he muttered.

“Hold on,” Anna distracted them, “can we not forget that this is _my_ life?  And I’m sorry that it’s affecting Scott so much, but I have to deal with this the best way I know how.  I mean, aren’t you guys my friends too?”

The three of them stepped closer to her and she shrank back.

“Yes, Anna, you are our friend and we do care about your dilemma,” said Julian.

“But don’t forget that we care about Scott a hell of a lot more than we care about you,” said Will.

Chris leaned down right in her face.  “Make up with Scott,” he said.  “Make him happy in this one regard at least and maybe you’ll be able to help him with his other problems too.”

He pulled back and the boys stepped away from her.

“Remember, we can make your life as miserable as we think you deserve,” Chris said as they walked toward his car.

Anna glared at them.  “You guys are jerks!” she yelled at them.  “You’re very mean.”

“No,” said Will, “we’re just very protective friends.”

“Well how about being protective of me?!”

“We are, Anna,” Julian said.

The three turds got in the car and drove off.  Anna clenched her hands into fists and stomped her foot.  It wasn’t fair.  She forced her body to relax and then slumped against her car.  In a way they were right.  It was her problem, why was she making Scott pay for it?  But what on earth was she going to do?  Just apologize to him and hope everything went back to normal?  Including her feelings for him?  Maybe before she had a chance at them passing, but now that he’d changed his hair and appearance, he was so hot now.  She had loved him before, but she really _wanted_ him now.

What should she do?  Suffer through her unrequited love?  Or maybe be a little more blatant with her interest?  No matter which way she chose to handle it, it was going to have to be done.  The boys had made that clear enough.  And did they mean it?  Were they really looking out for her too?  Maybe they knew that being apart from him was killing her almost as much as being with him but not having him had been.  But they weren’t that bright.  Were they?

Anna glanced at her watch.  She needed to go or she would be late meeting Melissa.  Anna got into her car, formulating different ways of apologizing to Scott.  Yeah, she was sorry, but she didn’t want to give the stinker too much of the upper hand.


	7. Chapter 7

Julian

 

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

 

Julian awoke.  He let his eyes focus on his ceiling, and then turned his head toward his alarm.  It hadn’t gone off.  Why was he awake at 6:30 in the morning?  He turned his head toward the calendar that hung on the wall next to his door.  It was a year of flowers and herbs useful to the modern witch.  His mother had picked it out.  A day was circled in black.  July 5th.  That was today.  His hearing was today.  He was going to have to stand in front of a judge and convince him that he was mature enough to take care of himself.  He put a hand to his head and chuckled.  Yeah right.  He better hope Mrs. Harder was in top form today.  The start time wasn’t until 10:00 and Mrs. Harder had only suggested showing up an hour early, but he figured he might as well get up now.  He felt wide awake; there was no way he was going back to sleep now.

He took his time showering and getting ready.  It still didn’t take as long as usual; he couldn’t put any make-up on today.  Well, _shouldn’t_ put any on, so he didn’t.  He took his new suit out of his closet and pulled the plastic off.  It was a plain black suit that was only saved from looking cheap by the fact that it hadn’t been worn before.  He hadn’t worn a suit to his parents’ funeral, and he’d never had an occasion beforehand to wear one.  Mrs. Harder had taken him shopping.  She had tried to take him to some nice, upscale stores, but he refused to let her pay for it.  So, she’d conceded to his wishes and taken him to a department store.  Even then the suit wasn’t all that inexpensive, but it was more or less in his price range.

Mrs. Harder had picked out the colors and cuts and stayed with him while he tried them all on.  It had been kind of fun to have her fuss over him and run her hands over his shoulders and down his chest as she straightened the fabric.  He’d never had a true MILF moment with Will’s mother before, but the suit fitting came mighty close.  It might have actually reached completion had not Will been tagging along and scowled every time Julian smiled when his mother’s hands brushed over his body.  Julian had behaved himself and in the end picked out the plain, lifeless suit he was now struggling into.  He figured it would be best to look as conservative as possible since he was certain his grandmother was going to bring up the whole Wicca thing.

He had the shirt and pants on, now he had to struggle with his tie.  A dull, bland thing that Mrs. Harder said was necessary and yet wouldn’t allow him to buy a clip on.  It wasn’t like he didn’t know how to tie a necktie, he wore one to school everyday, but they were such useless inventions.  It just made it easier for people to grab you.  He adjusted the knot and pulled on the jacket.  He stood in front of his mirror and was appalled.  He looked so…ordinary.  It was a good thing he was attractive.  If he had an ordinary face to match the suit he might go the whole day without anybody actually seeing him.

Julian tripped over Cornelius as he left his bedroom.  The dog was lying outside his door.  He’d taken to doing that lately.  Maybe when his grandmother was gone he’d let him sleep with him at night.  But, what if his grandmother didn’t go?  What if she was awarded custody?  Would she let him take Cornelius with him back to Iowa?  Would he be able to survive living in Iowa?  What were a bunch of Greek transplants doing living in Iowa anyway?  He tromped down the stairs, not bothering to be quiet since he was certain his grandmother was already up.  It was still before 8:00, but sure enough, she was in the kitchen.  Cooking him breakfast.  Was this a bribe?  Make him become addicted to her cooking and then offer to let him eat her food for the rest of his life?

“Morning, _Yia-Yia_.”

“Gud morning, Ju-lee-in.  You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

He sat down and accepted his more than generous serving of trehana porridge and koulourakia, which were sweet breads flavored this morning with cinnamon, cloves, and orange.  He wondered if he would be an absolute asshole to ask her to make some extra for him before she left.  Probably.  Besides.  He might end up being able to eat it everyday in Iowa.  Would he live with his grandparents?  Or would he live with an aunt and uncle and suddenly acquire siblings in the form of cousins?  He had to win this hearing.  It would be one thing to move to a boring state and start public school.  But like hell if he was going to stop being an only child.

“Ju-lee-in.”  Julian looked at his grandmother.  She was twisting her fingers together nervously.  “Are you sure you steel vant to do dis?  Eez not too late to come home wee-th mee.”

Julian squished the thick porridge around in his mouth and then swallowed.  “I think this is best for everyone, _Yia-Yia_.”

 

They were two hours early getting to the courthouse.  It was a new building that the justice department had just moved into.  It still had a shiny, new, unused look about it.  The wood floors were hardly scuffed and the skylights were still unclouded by dirt and bird poop.  The sun was up and shining in brightly through the many windows.  The main foyer felt spacious, if a tad closed off from the outside world.  It wasn’t ominous by any means.  That was a good sign.

Mrs. Harder was the first to show up.  Will and Scott came along with her.  Shortly thereafter, Laney made an appearance.  Then Riley, Anna, Chris, and Liz all trickled in.  With each face, Julian felt his nerves calm down.  He felt better knowing he had this much support behind him.  Plus, Mrs. Harder was wearing her red skirt suit.  She looked ready to kick ass and take some names.  Then Ms. Blake showed up.  She had been his social worker since the beginning.  He’d seen her maybe once.  He hoped that was just because he was considered “taken care of” and that’s not how bad the system was.  They waited for their turn in the courtroom, listening to a couple of disputed traffic tickets and a DUI charge.  Apparently traffic court was taken care of first thing in the morning.  There was a brief recess while the court changed gears and a new judge took his place on the throne-like seat.  Julian’s case was first on the docket.  He wanted to fidget, but refrained.

“Will case number 43385745, petition for emancipation, please enter the court?”

Mrs. Harder stood up and strode toward the prosecutor’s table.  She didn’t seem much concerned if Julian followed her.  His friends gave him various versions of thumbs up and other encouraging hand gestures.  He stood up and quickly followed his lawyer.  She was already set up and declaring her intention in front of the judge.

“Wait, wait,” the judge interrupted her.  “Are you _Marilyn_ Harder?”

“Yes, your honor.”

Mrs. Harder didn’t exactly look like she meant the “your honor” part.

“I thought I recognized you.  It’s been a while.”

“Yes, it has.”

Everyone in the courthouse waited for more.  When nothing happened, Mrs. Harder continued pulling out documents and explaining why Julian would be fully capable of taking care of himself.  As he listened he felt that either Mrs. Harder didn’t quite have a firm grasp on the reality of the situation, or she was fudging facts a bit.  Knowing her, it was the latter.  Quite sometime later the judge hushed up her explanations.

“Thank you very much, Ms. Harder.  I appreciate all the hard work you’ve put into this, finding evidence and documentation for topics that aren’t even relevant.  The boy is obviously self-sustaining as long as he has you to watch over him.”

“And I will continue to do so,” Mrs. Harder said coolly.

“Why do you take so much interest in this client?  It rather seems against your nature.”

“Because he’s like a son to me.  I’m just taking care of him.”

“And if you had a son would he be up here too?  Two for one kind of thing?”

There was some scuffling behind them.  Julian turned his head slightly and saw that Chris was restraining Will and Scott had a hand over his mouth.  He turned back around and gave the judge a glare.

“Your honor,” Mrs. Harder said, unruffled, “I hardly think our previous encounter really warrants such hostility on your part.  I hope I needn’t ask you to recuse yourself.”

“No, no.  Everything sounds in order.  I suppose I have to ask if there are any objections to this petition?”

Julian’s grandmother stood up.  “I have one.”

The judge nearly rolled his eyes.  “All right then.  We’ll take a brief recess and then you may document your protest.”

“A recess, your honor?” Mrs. Harder asked, eyebrow arched.  Julian was feeling the same way.  He’d been on the bench for about thirty minutes.

“Yes, a recess.  I think you’ll find me more agreeable if you allow it, _madam_.”

“By all means,” Mrs. Harder smiled indulgently.

The judge banged his gavel and took off at a fast trot for his chambers.  Julian wondered if he had to pee or something.  He turned to walk back toward his friends and wouldn’t talk to his grandmother.  They’d already said everything they needed to.  It was just now up to the judge to decide if his grandmother had a point.  Laney was saying something to him, but he wasn’t really paying attention.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mrs. Harder soothing Will.  He smiled.  He really did look like a fluffed up kitty when he got upset over something.  In about twenty minutes the judge returned.  Julian scrambled back to the table; he didn’t want to get on this judge’s bad side.  He banged his gavel extra loud.

“Okay.  Julian March, petition for emancipation, everything in order…oh yes.  An objection.  May I ask who is making the objection?”

“I am,” said Julian’s grandmother, stepping forward.  “I am Diane Stamatelopoulos.  He eez my son’s boy.  It vas very hard when I find out my son die.  I did not know Ju-lee-in vell.  But, now I can.  And he eez steel just a boy.  He needs pee-pull to look ahf-ter heem.  He has no fam-i-ly here.  And he has difficult raising.  His mother led him a-stray wee-th her weird religions…”

Julian opened his mouth to object to that statement, but Mrs. Harder put a hand on his arm.  He stayed quiet.

“I am vorried for heem.  I am vorried for heem to be a-lone.  He needs fam-i-ly.  He needs love.  He is steel young boy.  He is hurt from losing parents.  He needs to be taken care of.  I take him wee-th me.  My fam-i-ly loves him.”

The judge studied the woman for a moment and then turned his eyes to Julian.  Julian was surprised to find that his gaze wasn’t sharp or cold.  It was very kind and made him seem genuinely concerned for Julian’s wellbeing.

“Son, this isn’t a typical emancipation case.  In most instances this comes about because a child cannot get along with his parents.  Or they are not acting like parents should act.  You have _lost_ your parents.  And from what I’ve gathered, your parents were all you had.  I don’t know the particulars of who isolated who from whom, but this would be a good chance to make a connection with your family.  Being independent is not an easy thing.  The law system is not kind.  It will not be lenient with you if you become involved in a ‘youthful indiscretion’ or even for something simple like making a mistake on your taxes.  Once you take full responsibility for your life, that’s it.  It’s all on you.  It is a huge burden even for those who come about it in a natural course of time.  I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.”

Julian took a deep breath very slowly to try to disguise the fact that he was doing so.  He let it out just as slow as he used the arm rests on his chair to help him stand up.  He knew that this was a big responsibility, everyone had been telling him that, but now it was real.  Now the decision was upon him.  Could he stand up for the choice he had made and be convincing about it?  He better be honest if nothing else.  That was the only way he’d be able to get through this.  He started to speak but his mouth was too dry.  Mrs. Harder poured him a glass of water from the pitcher sitting on the table and slid it over to him.  He took a couple quick gulps and then looked the judge in the eye.

“This has all happened very quickly.  One second I have parents, and the next I don’t.  One day I have no relatives, and the next I have two sets fighting over me.  The two months since my parents’ deaths has felt like a second that took too long to pass.  And yet, at the same time, I feel like the world has ended and started all over again in the time it took me to be standing here.

“I’ll admit that at first I felt the emancipation would be a good way to get me away from my squabbling relatives.  And I didn’t really worry or care about what that would mean or how heavy the responsibilities would be.  But I’m very aware now of how serious it is and just how difficult it will be.  I am fully confident that I can handle it and will probably thrive under the circumstances.  My parents gave me that strength.

“What I’m worried about now is simply being alone.  I was worried that ‘emancipation’ meant that I had to cut all ties to everyone.  That in order to strike out on my own, I have to be unattached and unfettered.  But it was silly of me to ever have that fear. I have three very close friends, and nothing would ever come between us, least of all some legal terms.”

He glanced back at his friends.  Will popped a gum bubble.  He gave him a look.  The little turd was ruining his serious moment.  He faced the judge again.

“I mean, I know that even though emancipation means being free, they would never let me…float away.”

There were a couple snickers and an offended huff behind him.

“I know that I can do this alone.  That if it comes down to it, I can survive perfectly fine by myself.  And how I know this is because I know that I don’t have to.  I’ll have support every step of the way.”  He gave Mrs. Harder a friendly glance.  “I won’t really be on my own.  I never will be.  And that’s how I know that I can do this.  That I can stand on my own two feet.”  He looked at his grandmother.  “And how I know that that’s really what is best for me.”

“Well son,” the judge got his attention, “I must admit, I’m very impressed with you.  Compared to the other kids who have petitioned for emancipation and even those to whom it was granted, you display an astounding level of maturity, and more importantly a firm grasp on reality.  It’s important for you to know that you’re not _supposed_ to do this alone.  Financially and circumstantially you are more than capable of sustaining yourself.  And most importantly, you have the wisdom and sophistication to do it.  Ms. Stama—Stamokop—Ms.—Mr. March’s grandmother, I understand your concerns and anxieties, but I don’t share them.  Julian March, I hereby grant your petition for emancipation.”

He banged his gavel on the desk.  The court burst into activity and a court clerk began to call out the next case number.  Mrs. Harder had gathered all her documents and was ushering him out of the plaintiff’s box.  That was it?  It was over?  Mrs. Harder was saying something about getting copies of the documents and his friends were gathering around him, but not quite sure what to say.  He understood the feeling.  It was weird.  It seemed like maybe they should celebrate.  And yet the reason they were here was because of a tragic event.  Not to mention the fact he didn’t want to cheer and jump up and down in front of his dejected grandmother.

Will patted him on the back.  “We’ll be waiting outside, okay?”

He nodded and watched his herd of friends shuffle toward the exit.  He wasn’t sure but he thought they we discussing the merits of snow cones versus slurpies.  Good to know his huge, traumatizing problem hadn’t affected their lives too much.  He told himself not to be snide and turned to face his grandmother.  She was still sitting down and fastidiously messing with a tissue in her hand.  He wondered if she was crying.

“ _Yia-Yia_ ,” he said softly.

Then he felt a hand on his back.  He turned to see which of friends had returned.  He was astonished to see his grandfather.

“ _Pappous_ ,” he said.

His grandmother turned around at the word and seemed just as surprised to see her husband.  His grandfather smiled at him and rubbed his back.  Then he stepped forward to help his wife to her feet.  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him.  Julian picked at a fingernail and had a little trouble meeting his grandfather’s eyes.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he said.

He bobbed his head.  “I didn’t tell either of you actually.  But, I had a feeling she was going to need me when this was over.”

Julian looked at his grandmother.  “I didn’t do this to hurt you,” he said, hoping that she would believe him.

She put out a hand and patted his arm.  “I know.  I know.”

They stood silently for a couple minutes while the courtroom buzzed with the activity of the next case.  Finally his grandfather started to guide his grandmother out the door and Julian fell into step with them.

“I also came today,” said his grandfather, “to take her back home.  We’ll go back to the house now and pack her things.  We have a four o’clock flight, so we’re going to need to get ready pretty quickly if we’re going to make it back into the city in time.”

Julian felt his jaw drop and reached out to stop his grandparents.  “You’re leaving so soon?” he asked.  Then he had to smile at himself.  So soon?  He’d been trying to get rid of his grandmother for weeks.

“Well, I think she’s been here long enough,” said his grandfather.  “We run a restaurant back in Iowa and it’s kind of falling apart without her there to keep us all on track.  Besides, I think you have good people here who will take care of you.”

Julian smiled.  “I really do.”

His grandmother held his hand.  “Don’t let thees be de end, Ju-lee-in.  You stay in touch.”

“I will.  I promise.”

“And come visit us anytime,” said his grandfather.

“Yeah, now that school’s out, I can definitely plan a trip.”

“And go to church!” his grandmother declared.

Julian smiled and shook his head.  “I’ll think about it,” he said, mostly meaning it.

They had reached the courthouse exit and Julian could see his friends clustered around Chris’ car.  He turned back to his grandfather and offered the key to his father’s car.

“Why don’t you drive it back to the house?  My friend will drive me home.  You can drive it to the airport if you want.  I can take the metro in and pick it up in the parking lot later.”

“Okay.  Thank you.  Goodbye, Julian.

“Goodbye, _Pappous_ , _Yia-Yia_.”

They squeezed into a three-way hug, and for once it felt good to hold them.  Probably because they weren’t some strangers trying to control his life anymore.  They stepped away from each other and his grandfather led his grandmother away by the hand.  Julian watched to make sure they found his car okay and then walked slowly toward his friends.  Scott and Chris pretended to hide something behind their backs and Will put his hands in his pockets and looked at the sky, whistling.

“Shh, shh,” said Scott.  “Here comes an adult.”

“Oh, hardy har har,” Julian said sarcastically and glared at them.  The girls were laughing and doing nothing to temper the boys’ bad behavior.  He noticed that Scott and Anna were standing next to each other.  Hmm.  That was a good sign.  Maybe she’d taken their heart to heart to…heart.  “So,” he said, standing in front of them, “what do we do now?”

They looked around at each other.  It would be weird to celebrate.  Yes, he was an emancipated minor, but only because his parents had died.  And that was certainly nothing to celebrate.

“We should drink,” said Scott.

“Drink?” Chris questioned.

“Yes, drink.  That way we can celebrate and mourn at the same time.”

Julian nodded.  “I like that.  Drown our sorrows to the point where we’re so drunk we’re having fun.”

“Exactly.”

“Well then.  Party at my house.”

It took a while for the party to start, however.  First they stopped by all three grocery stores in town looking for a specific kind of salsa that Chris wanted.  It wasn’t enough to have chips and candy and microwavable hamburgers.  No, he had to have chips and salsa.  Then they had to drop Laney off at home because she had to pack to go to her father’s house for the next three weeks.  She was already two days late going because she wanted to attend Julian’s trial.  Her mother refused her request for one more night to participate in the celebration.

Once they were on the far side of town from Julian’s house, there seemed no point in rushing anymore.  They took a meandering path around the town, stopping at everybody’s houses so they could collect different kinds and unnoticeable amounts of alcohol from their parents’ collections.  Scott produced the biggest stock, saying that his father wouldn’t question him on it even if he noticed it was missing.  They also had quite a nice selection at Julian’s house.  It wasn’t as if his parents were going to miss any of it.  And by the time they got there, his grandparents had already come and gone.  It made Julian sad.  Yeah his grandmother was annoying, but it just seemed wrong for them to slink away so quickly when they didn’t get what they wanted.

They started out making mixed fruity drinks because that’s what the girls wanted.  Chris advised Scott and Julian to start with beer and work their way to the liquor because going the other way round was never pleasant.  Will sat on the counter and drank very slowly from a bottle of very expensive wine he had found hidden in the basement.  He wondered what his parents had been saving it for.  He figured now was as good a time as any.  It was being drunk in remembrance of them.

At eleven o’clock, Liz announced she had to leave or wouldn’t be able to take the metro home.  Anna and Riley decided they better leave as well.  Julian, Chris, and Scott volunteered to escort them all to the bus stop and Will followed along and made sure the six of them, who were fairly tipsy at this point, didn’t wander into the street or attract any unnecessary attention.  Once the girls were safely onboard the bus—as safe as public transportation could be—they walked (well, Will walked, the others weaved) back to Julian’s house.

“Are you leaving me?” he asked once he was staring in the keyhole to his front door, trying to figure out how to get the key inside.

“No way!” Scott declared.  “Now that the girls are gone, we can _really_ do some drinking!”

“Yeah,” Chris agreed excitedly.  “Besides, I can’t drive my car home like this.”

Will took the key from Julian and let them all inside the house.  “Are you sure you want to drink more?” he asked.

“Yep,” Julian nodded.  “Very slure.  Shh-urr.  Rrrrr.”

He and the other two laughed.

“All right.  Do what you want.  But if you die of alcohol poisoning I’m going to be pissed.”

“Oh!  We’re not that drunk!” Scott declared.  “Not near it.  We still got time before we’re totally smashed.”

“Why aren’t you drinking?” Chris asked Will as he poured himself a shot of tequila.

“Wait, where’s the lime?” Scott asked, staring at the fruit bowl.

“Lemon,” said Julian.  Lime is for Corona.”

“I bet you can do either.”

“Oh.”  Chris stared at the lime Scott put in his hand, not quite sure what to do with it.  “Wait, what did I ask you?”

“I’m not drinking,” said Will, “because I have a game tomorrow.  Trust me, I would be as drunk as the rest of you, but I can’t be hungover tomorrow.  Sorry.”

“Pshaw!” Scott spit across the counter.

“We’re not gonna be hungover,” said Chris.

Julian shook his head and giggled.  “Nope.  We’ll be fine.  Give me that tequila.”

 

 

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

 

There was an ocean in his head.  Not a nice pleasant tropical vacation ocean, but a roaring, tumbling, crashing against rocks and destroying small fishing boats kind of ocean.  When he moved to one side, the ocean fell with him, making one half of his skull heavy, and then the other.  The bad news was that the ocean wasn’t only noise, it was excruciating pain.  The worse news was that the light squeezing in between his tightly closed eyelids was making the ocean seem pleasant.  He rolled onto his back and the ocean crashed against the back of his skull.

“Oh.  My.  God.”

“Morning, sunshine,” a chipper voice called out.

Julian turned away from the cacophonous sound of Will’s overly sweet voice.  “What’s good about it?” he grumbled.

“I didn’t say good morning, I was just stating that it is morning.”

“Right,” he muttered.  “And since we passed out when it was morning why aren’t we waking up in the afternoon?”

“Well, I didn’t mean to disturb you all, but I’ve got to run.  My game starts at noon.”

Julian could kind of process this conversation, but nothing was sticking.  What on earth had happened last night?  He’d gotten emancipated and then drank away his memories of why he had.  Oh, yes.  Now it was coming back in pieces.  Very small pieces.  He had a vague memory that he probably did something perverted to Will, but decided he might let that one slide from his memory in case it was too embarrassing.  It was kind of funny.  It had been his first night as an independent responsible adult and he had drunk himself into oblivion.  Now, was that something immature college co-eds did, or miserable adults who hated their lives?  And what if they’d gotten caught?  He wondered if the judge would simply be able to reverse his decision as opposed to sending him to jail as an adult.  He rolled over again and this time the ocean was in his stomach.

“Oh, no,” he mumbled.

He tried so hard to stand up, but his limbs wouldn’t obey.  Then Will was at his side holding his arm.

“What is it?”

“Bathroom,” he gagged.

Will forced him to his feet and pushed him forward.  The motion was too much.  Fortunately Will hadn’t aimed for the bathroom, but simply the kitchen sink.  Where on earth had he passed out if he was only a few steps away from the kitchen?  He grabbed the edge of the counter and puked into the sink.  Several uncontrollable heaves wracked his stomach and the contents burned his throat and mouth.  He leaned over too far and some dribbled up his sinuses and into his nose.  Will turned on the water and Julian stood shakily, listening to the soft thrum of the water hitting the metal sink.  Most of his weight was being supported by Will.  He heaved a couple more times, but nothing came up.  Then Will rinsed off his face and rubbed a towel over it.  Finally he let him slump exhausted to the floor, leaning against the cabinets under the sink.

“Anyone else need help puking before I leave?” Will asked.

“Maybe,” Scott called out.

Will’s shoes walked away from him.  He drew his legs up and put his elbows on his knees.  Then he let his head fall into his hands.  He tried to stay very, very still.  How long was this going to take?  What could he do to help?  What had he and Dr. Gorman taken to that guy in the apartment?  Vitamin B6.  What foods had Vitamin B6 in it?  Maybe he could ask Will to look it up before he left.

“All right.  Later guys!”

The front door slammed shut.  Julian raised his head.  Will had just left.  Crap.  What a useless friend.  And while he was on the subject of useless friends, he looked out the kitchen and saw an arm hanging over the end of the couch in the den.  That was Chris.  He slid slowly to the floor so that he could peek around the corner of the kitchen and down the hall.  There were feet coming out of the bathroom.  Those would be Scott.  He felt grit under his cheek.  The kitchen floor wasn’t that clean.  He thought his grandmother had been cleaning the house.  Had they gotten it that dirty in just one night?

He must have fallen asleep again.  When he woke up there was a small puddle of drool on the floor.  The arm was still on the couch and the feet were still sticking out of the bathroom, but the shadows in the kitchen were different.  He struggled to sit up and was relieved to find that the oceans in his head and stomach had settled down some.  He walked over to the couch and nudged Chris awake.

“Hmm?  Wha—?”

“Rise and shine.”

“Ugh.  What time is it?”

Julian looked for a clock.  “Good grief.  It’s only 11:00.  What the hell time did Will leave this morning?”

“That punk,” Scott gurgled from the bathroom.  “Next time we drink, he’s doing shooters until he passes out.”

Julian walked to the bathroom, afraid of what he might find.  It was surprisingly clean and Scott wasn’t lying in a pile of his own vomit.  He reached out a hand and helped Scott to his feet.  The blond swayed into him and then steadied himself.  He didn’t seem to be quite as bad off as Julian had feared.  The three boys shuffled into the kitchen, each one looking through the refrigerator, the cabinets, and the pantry for food.

“What works for hangovers?” asked Scott.  “Isn’t there like some home remedy?”

“Bloody Marys, right?” suggested Chris.

“Greh.  I’m not ingesting anymore alcohol.”

“Well, we could do the lemon juice and Worchester sauce and tomato juice and just leave out the other stuff.”

“Oh.”  Julian put a hand to his stomach.  “That sounds gross.”

He headed for the bathroom and crouched down beside the toilet.  He didn’t really feel like he was going to puke again, but just in case he better stay near.  He might have actually fallen asleep again, leaning against the bathroom wall, but he heard the front door open and shut.  Had Will come back?  He stood up and went back to the kitchen.  Something crunched under his feet.  He picked up his foot and saw smashed Cheerios.  Chris was by himself eating dry cereal.

“Where’s Scott?”

“He said he had to meet Antoinette at like, noon or something.  And he wanted to shower first.  He decided he’d better run and catch the 11:05 bus.”

“Hmm.”  Julian sat down at the table and took the box of cereal Chris proffered him.  “Didn’t he say something last night about ending it?  Or did I imagine that?”

“No.  He did.  And this morning too.  He said he’s going to end it today.”

“Right.  If she doesn’t rape him first.”

They snickered and then stopped as pain lanced through their skulls.

“Oh, this sucks,” Chris laughed pitifully.  “We are not ready for college at all.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing we’ve got all of senior year to practice.  Though I imagine if I get caught drinking underage I’m going to be in a world of trouble.”

“Oh, yeah.”  They munched loudly on their cereal.  “How does it feel?”

“Honestly?  No different.  I’m relieved I don’t have to go live in Iowa with my grandparents, but I kind of enjoyed being taken care of.  I’m probably going to bug Mrs. Harder to death with all my problems.”

“Eh.  You heard her little speech.  You’re like a son to her.”

“Yeah, and look how much attention she pays to her real son.”

“True.  But Will is different from you.  I bet she’d be willing to give you more attention if you needed it.”

“You think so?  You know, it’s strange.  The more I’ve dealt with her these last couple months, the more I wonder if it wasn’t really that his parents abandoned him so much as he just didn’t need them.”

Chris shrugged and took another handful of cereal.  Then he stood up and stretched.

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?  I want to get a little cleaned up, but I’m willing to bet my mom will still know that I’ve been drinking.”

“Sure.  You can shower if you want upstairs and borrow some clothes.”

Chris walked behind him and massaged his shoulders with his hands.  “Do you want me to stay a while?”

Julian let his body relax and grimaced in enjoyable pain as Chris’ hands worked out some knots.

“No, it’s okay.  I’ll be all right.  I’m not afraid of being alone for a day or two.  I guess.  Besides.  I need to take care of some stuff like cleaning out my parents’ bedroom finally.  It would probably be boring for you, and if I’m going to cry again I would just as soon have you not here to see it.”

Chris chuckled and patted his back.  “Okay.”  He ruffled his hair with a hand and then left the room.

Julian picked at the cereal a piece at a time.  Did he mean that?  Could he handle a day or two alone?  It would be better for him to find out sooner rather than later.  And he didn’t doubt that if he called any one of them they would be back in a heartbeat.

Once Chris located the keys to his car—which took them a good thirty minutes of searching before finally finding them in the freezer with a note from Will saying “just in case”—he was on his way and Julian was alone.  For the first time since being stuck in the SUV.  Every moment from then on there had been someone with him at his house, at school, at his therapy appointments.  He’d been alone in a room of course, but the house had never been empty.  It had never just been him and the remnants of his former life.  A small whine reminded him he wasn’t alone.  Julian looked at the backdoor.  Cornelius was dancing beside it, looking a little stressed.  He let the dog out and then went to the pantry to get him a very late breakfast.  A note on the food container informed him that Will had already fed Cornelius and let him out.  So, why was he so desperate to go out again?  He shook his head.  Will was such a good friend.  Well, if he’d been a really good friend he would have not cared about his game and drank with them anyway.  He was a responsible friend.  The dork.

After he let Cornelius back inside, Julian forced himself to go upstairs.  He paused in the hall and looked at the partially open door to his parents’ room.  He decided to go into his own room and crash on the bed.  He would take a little nap and then take care of stuff.  A couple hours later Julian woke up feeling almost normal again.  He showered and dressed and most importantly brushed his teeth.  The film that had coated his tongue must have been a new species of slime mold.  He was glad when it was gone.  Now he could really get down to business.

He entered his parents’ bedroom for the first time in three weeks and saw that most of their belongings were packed up in garbage bags and brown boxes.  The sheets had been taken off the bed and the pictures had been taken down off the walls.  He wondered why his grandmother had done all that.  All she really needed to do was go through their clothing.  He was grateful at least that she hadn’t already thrown it away or given it to the Salvation Army.  There were couple things he wanted to pull out.  One was a red silk scarf his mother loved.  He wanted to keep that for himself.  He also wanted to keep some of his dad’s clothes.  They had almost been the same size and Julian was pretty certain he would grow into the clothes.  He located the items he wanted and set them aside.  Then he found a box set apart from the others.  There was a note from his grandmother.

“I thought you might want some of these things.  If you can forgive me, I took with me a picture of you, Miranda, and Nik.  Love, _Yia-Yia_.”

Julian looked in the box.  Some of his baby clothes were inside along with family photo albums.  He put the box with the other things he had set aside and then started to move the rest downstairs to the car (it was the driveway, his grandparents must have taken a cab).  He would donate them to charity or something.  There wasn’t much point in hanging onto them.  And he should probably also sell some of the furniture on Craig’s List.  The mortgage on the house was higher than he thought it would be and it would be a huge help to sell the property and pocket the profit.  Or use it for rent.  Mrs. Harder had warned him that inheritance taxes were a bitch even when the inheritance was small.  Of course, his wasn’t going to be that small.  His parents had built up quite a bit in equity on the house and their savings account had hit six figures.  He had no idea his father was making that much money.  He knew they lived in a nice neighborhood and could afford a lot of luxuries, but his mother’s natural balm venture was more of a hobby than a job.  For a man who felt more at home buck-naked in the woods with a whole coven of other spiritually weird people, he sure did know a lot about computers.  At least, that’s what Julian thought he did at work.  He’d never really been all that sure.  His father also had a life insurance policy, which wasn’t that much, but it was going to be a big help.  More than likely he wasn’t going to have to work while he finished his senior year.  Especially if he could cut back on some of his expenses, like the gas bill.  His mother kept the house at a toasty eighty-two degrees during the winter.  Julian wouldn’t mind letting it be a little cooler.

As Julian was lugging the last bag of clothes to the car, he saw the mailman drive away.  He got the mail and wondered if there would be anything other than junk mail.  There will bills.  Lovely.  They were still in his father’s name.  He was probably going to have to change that.  And he was going to have to go to the bank with Mrs. Harder to put the checking account in his name.  He’d forged the check for last month, but he knew it would be risky to try that again.  Then he saw a letter from the lending company that provided the loan for the SUV.  He made a face.  It sucked paying for something he didn’t even have.  He plopped onto the couch and opened it up, wondering how much the monthly payment was.  He hadn’t seen a bill for it yet.  Then he wondered if he’d missed a payment and this was a nasty reminder letter.  He pulled out the letter and unfolded it.  It wasn’t a bill, but a short note.

_Dear Mr. March,_

_We have recently become aware of the tragic events that have affected you and your family.  We were contacted by your lawyer to inform us that there may be some difficulty making payments while your finances are transferred to your name.  It saddened all of us here at Capital Loans to learn of the terrible circumstances that resulted in these necessary adjustments.  We have decided to erase your debt of the loan for the 2003 Lexus RX300 that was involved in the accidental death of your parents.  You have our deepest condolences and sympathies._

_Your friends at Capital Loans,_

_Michael Boone_

Julian blinked and re-read the letter.  “Sweet.”  Then he winced.  That was not a proper reaction.  But it certainly was a relief to have one of his bills go away.  His stomach grumbled and he sighed.  He was going to have to make his own lunch.  It wasn’t as if his mother had always prepared his meals for him, but the thought of doing it for himself the rest of his life was discouraging.  He was going to have to marry young.  He slapped together some meat and bread in what barely qualified as a sandwich.  He was really hurting for his grandmother’s cooking right now.  He let Cornelius out one more time before he got into his car and headed for the local Salvation Army drop off site.

He sat in his car for twenty minutes in the parking lot before he finally pulled up to the docking bay where two large men and a small woman were collecting the donations.  He took a deep breath and found that it was a lot harder than he thought it would be to give away his parents’ belongings.  What if he gave something away he actually really wanted?  He ignored that thought and accepted the receipt for his donation.  Mrs. Harder had told him $500 was the maximum amount one could claim for a single donation of personal items.  What he had brought probably wasn’t worth that much, so he asked for $300.  That was all his parents’ possessions were worth: $300 for a tax break.

He got back in his car and drove directly to the metro.  He had his regular appointment with Dr. Gorman this afternoon.  He was going to have to request that during the summer he see her at the local hospital.  It just wasn’t worth going into the city once a week for an hour long session.  Or maybe he should cancel the sessions all together.  They were very expensive and he didn’t really need her anymore.  Well, at least not as a therapist.  Maybe he really should stop seeing her as a therapist.  He was emancipated now.  Their relationship could change in a very drastic and pleasant way.

The pretty secretary was working this afternoon.  That would be the one thing that would suck about changing his appointments to the local hospital: he’d have to see that ugly secretary again.  But, he should be positive.  Maybe he wouldn’t have to see her anymore.  He could just start dating Dr. Gorman.  Would he still call her Dr. Gorman once they were dating?  What was her first name again?  Camellia.  It didn’t really fit her.  Dr. Gorman called him into her office and he was glad she was wearing her grey skirt suit.  It was practically the only thing she owned that looked like it had been at least somewhat fashionable within the last decade.  It would make it easier to seduce her if he was actually attracted to her.

He sat down on the couch and watched her cross her slender legs.  Why was he so intent on seducing her?  Why did he feel the need to have her?  Maybe he should ask his shrink.  He smiled at the thought.

“What?” Dr. Gorman asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.

Julian stared at her.  She actually looked very nice today.  She was wearing make-up and her up-hairdo was slightly more casual than usual.  He pointed an accusatory finger at her.

“Why are you so dressed up?”

She blushed.  “What?  I’m not!”

“Yes, you are.  Why?”  He smiled at her.  “Is it for me?”

She pinched her lips together and took in a quick breath.  Then she feigned nonchalance and wrote something down in her notebook.  “No, it’s not for you.”  She adjusted her glasses.  “I have a date after my last session tonight.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.”

She wouldn’t look at him but continued to write in her pad.  Their session hadn’t even started yet, what could she be writing about?  Nothing.  What a terrible ploy.  Julian grinned.

“Who’s the lucky guy?”

“No one you know.”

“Another patient?”

Her reply was as sharp as her look.  “No.”

“Is it that ‘nice, straight-laced’ guy who lives on your hall?”

She smiled and shook her head.  “I wish.  But, no.  Just one of my colleagues I met again recently at a conference.”

“Ohhh.  Another shrink.  That could be dangerous.”

“Are we going to have another wasted session today, Mr. March?”

“Maybe.  And you know, you’re right.  A lot of these sessions are wasted.  That’s a lot of money down the drain.”

“And whose fault do you think that is?”

“I’m not blaming you.  I’m just thinking, maybe we should stop seeing each other.”  She started to protest.  “Professionally anyway.”

Her words died on her lips.  She looked at him for a few moments and then shook her head.  She looked away from him.  “Julian, just because I’m not your therapist anymore doesn’t mean we could have a different type of relationship.”

“Why not?  Yesterday was the big day.  I’m emancipated.”

“Yes, the full term would be an emancipated minor.  The key word being minor.  You’re still underage and all the same laws apply to you as they did before.”

Julian stood up and he saw her stiffen with anticipation.  He crossed the room and knelt in front of her.  She kept her eyes focused on her notepad.

“My birthday is in November.  You can still be my shrink until then.  Then we’ll reevaluate this.”

“Julian!”

She looked up and slapped her notebook into his face.  He sat back with a cry of pain and held his nose.  When he looked at her she had her hand over her mouth in embarrassed shock.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!  I didn’t mean to hit you!”

“Weld, you didd.”

She knelt in front of him and made him move his hand.  He wrinkled his nose and the pain eased some.  Nothing dripped down, so he assumed it wasn’t bleeding.  Dr. Gorman sighed.

“Julian, don’t be so pushy.  Or insane.”

“Can shrinks call their patients insane?”

“It will never happen,” she declared, standing up.

Julian laughed.  “I’ll put money down that it will.”

“Ooo!  You’re in one of your moods.  Go on, go home.”

“Um, I still have fifty-three minutes left in my session.”

He walked back to the couch and sat down.  He touched his nose again and gave her a glare.  She stayed standing in the middle of the room.  Finally she bent over and picked up her notebook and pen from the floor.  She took her seat and crossed her legs.  As she did so, she hesitated in the movement.  Julian was pleased to know that she was very aware of how much attention he paid to her.  She started to write something down in her notepad.

“I really would like to see your friends sometime.  Have you talked to them yet about joining us for a session?”

“Yeah, they said they’d be up for it.”

“Okay, that’s good to hear.”

The rest of the session she didn’t make eye contact with him.  He felt a little bad that she was that uncomfortable around him, but it had been worth it to find out that she really did have more than just doctoral concern for him.  He still didn’t know why he was so intent on having her, but her presence made him happier.  Well, maybe not happier, but less sad.  And that was a start.

When their time was up, she strode to the door and held it open for him.  He walked slowly across the room and then stood very close to her.  He was taller than her by several inches and leaned down to murmur in her ear, “Have fun on your date.”  She remained stiff as a board as he passed her and then slammed the door shut behind him.  He turned back and saw her silhouette fall heavily against the door.  Julian grinned.  She really had it for him.  It would be fun teasing her until his 18th birthday and she’d finally be able to give in to him.  He waved goodbye to the secretary and left the office.

While he was in the elevator, his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but decided to answer anyway since he was in a good mood.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Julian,” a woman’s voice answered.

“Yes.  Hi.  Who is this?”

“This is your grandmother.”

Julian was confused.  Her voice was completely unaccented.  “ _Yia-Yia_?” he asked.

“What?”

“Oh.  Mrs. Lowell,” he said, realizing it was his _other_ grandmother.

“Yes, it’s me.  Bob is on the phone too.”

“Hello, Mr. Lowell.”

“Hello, Julian,” his grandfather’s voice answered him.

Julian was pleasantly surprised to realize that his voice sounded familiar to him.  Especially since he had heard so little of it while all the others had been shouting.

“We heard from the Stama-Stamo…” his grandmother heaved a sigh.  “We heard from Nik’s parents today.  They said your petition was granted.  That you’re emancipated.”

“Yeah, I am.”  Julian got off the elevator in the lobby and walked to a quiet corner rather than going outside on the busy street.

“Are you okay?” asked his grandfather.

“Yeah.  Yeah, I’m doing all right.  My friends and Mrs. Harder have all been very supportive.  Ah, Mrs. Harder is my friend’s mom.  And my lawyer.”

“Oh, yes,” said his grandfather, “we remember her.”

Julian smiled.

“We just wanted you to know that we’re thinking about you,” said his grandmother.  “And we want to be a part of your life.  We do love you very much.”

Julian picked at the wall.  “I know.  I would like to see all of you again too.  And hopefully since everything will be calmer, it will be easier for us to get to know each other.”

“I think that would be good,” said his grandfather.  “We’d all like to see you again too.”

Julian laughed.  “You know what?”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t even mind seeing Aunt Kathy again.”

 

Will

 

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

 

Will was dreaming about bunnies driving race cars when his mother woke him up.  He grumbled and flopped around in bed until he found another comfortable spot.  Then he started to drift off again, car engines already rumbling in his ears.

“William Wright.  Wake up.”

Will rolled over on his arm, his shoulders were twisted around and his legs were tangled in the sheet.

“What?”

“Would you like to come to court with me today?”

Will pushed up as much as his torqued body would allow.  He glared at his mother.  “Have I ever?”

His mother shrugged and left the room.  Will fell back onto his bed.  It had been a long time since his mother had tried to get him to go to court with her.  She’d had hopes that he would want to be a lawyer, but he had squashed those dreams when he was ten and had dissected his pet goldfish.  Well, it had turned into a dissection.  It had started as a vivisection.  So, why would his mother want him to go to court?  His foggy brain began to clear up.

“Oh!”

Will jumped out of bed and ran around the room trying to get ready.  Did he have to wear a suit?  No, but he should look nice.  Where were his khakis?  He rustled around in his closest and couldn’t find any.  He cursed and ran downstairs to look around the laundry room.  He saw his mother calmly sipping coffee at the kitchen table.  His father was in Boston for the week.

“How long do I have?” Will shouted as he ran into the dark laundry room. He stubbed his toe on the washer and let out a string of swear words that he had hoped his mother would never find out he knew.  He found his pants and hopped back into the kitchen holding his throbbing foot.  He looked at his mother and she was still sipping her coffee and turning a page of the morning paper.

“Mom!” he shouted.

She glanced at her ridiculously expensive wristwatch.  “About an hour and a half.”

Will twisted the pants in his hands so that he wouldn’t twist his mother’s neck.  He nodded and left the room.  At least now he would have time for a shower.

Will went about his normal routine and tried to concentrate on Julian.  His friend was going to need him regardless of the judge’s decision and he needed to make sure he was prepared for the fallout.  Julian’s whole life was hinging on one man’s decision, and depending on which way it swung would determine if he just needed to help Julian learn how to do laundry or hide him away in the basement so that his evil grandparents couldn’t get their hands on him.  He knew he needed to focus on Julian’s issue, but he kept thinking about Ken.

Will hadn’t seen or spoken to him since the last day of school, and he was worried about the man.  He was worried that he was beating himself up over what had happened between them.  He had little doubt that Ken was completely blaming himself and possibly looking up local AA support groups.  Will wanted to reassure him and let him know that he didn’t need to shoulder all the blame; Will certainly hadn’t been doing much to discourage him in the beginning.  He just wanted to make sure that Ken knew he wasn’t a bad person for letting himself get carried away.  But Will wasn’t sure if he should contact him.  He still didn’t know how to interpret Ken’s last two sentences to him.  Had he meant that he never wanted to see or hear from Will again?  For some reason, that upset him more than the events of the night itself.

Will shook his head and slapped his cheeks lightly.  He wasn’t going to think about that stupid man anymore.  He was going to focus on Julian.  And he was so focused on Julian that he only peripherally took in how depressed Scott was when he and his mother picked him up.  He could deal with Scott later; first they had to make it through this hearing.

When they arrived at the courthouse Julian and his grandmother were sitting stiffly side by side.  This was going to be a pleasantly awkward hour of waiting.  Fortunately his mother distracted Julian by going over last minute details with him, which she probably already had about five times.  As the others showed up it became easier to ignore the stoic Greek woman clutching her handbag.  Liz showed up with Chris and he couldn’t help but to notice how cute she looked.  She wasn’t dressed for court, she was dressed for him.  It was almost flattering, but also dauntingly irritating.  He didn’t want to be someone’s whole world.  Well, not hers anyway.  Before she could say anything to him, Scott tilted his head in question at Chris’ appearance.

“Did you eat a lollipop?” he asked him.

“Huh?  No.  Why?”

“Your lips are kind of pinkish.”

“Yeah,” Will said, leaning closer.

Chris wiped his lips with his fingers.  “It’s nothing.”

Then his mother told them it was time to head into the courtroom.  As usual, Will was very impressed with his mother when she was in lawyer mode—which was basically all the time—but when she was in court, she was just amazing.  Maybe he _should_ reconsider law school.  And when the judge got snippy with her, Will most definitely would have been tossed out of the courtroom if Chris and Scott hadn’t jumped on him.  How dare that smarmy judge make judgments on his mother?  Just because you were a judge didn’t mean you had to be so judgmental.  During the recess he asked his mother if he could go key the asshole’s car.  She petted his head and laughed.

“Well, to be honest, darling, he does have a right to be a tad upset with me.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well, it’s a long story but it has to do with the fact that I kind of dated his son in law school.”

Will chewed on the inside of his cheek as he looked at his mother.  She could deliver any line without batting an eyelash.

“Um, weren’t you married to Dad when you were in law school?”

She smiled.  “Now you can see where some of the trouble might have come in.”

Will put a hand between his brows.  “I don’t wanna know.  But, he still shouldn’t be so unprofessional.”

“You’re right, sweetie.”

When the judge returned Will tried to bore a hole in the back of Julian’s grandmother’s head with his glare.  Then she wouldn’t be able to voice her protest.  And then Julian stood up and delivered his speech.  Will was very impressed, but of course it put a lot of pressure on him.  He was determined to live up to Julian’s expectations and always be there for him when he needed him.  He made the promise to himself.  That was a promise he was a lot less likely to break.  He was also impressed with Julian’s bravery.  He should try to have even a modicum of that himself and call Ken.  They had to deal with it even if it meant the end of their relationship.

Will clenched his hands into fists as he left Julian to talk to his grandmother.  Why did he keep defining their relationship as a relationship?  Well, what else would it be?  Good or bad, a relationship was just a connection, association, or involvement.  That was the simplest definition.  Of course, caveats to that definition were the implications of family ties, emotional connections, or even sexual relations.  Why did he know all the specifics of that definition?  What was wrong with his head that he felt the need to store that kind of information?

“Will!”  Scott nudged him.  “Look out.  There’s an adult coming.”

Will looked up and found himself in the courthouse parking lot next to Chris’ car.  Julian was walking towards them.  He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the sky, trying to look innocent.  Julian was not pleased with their reaction to him.  While they were discussing what to do, Liz leaned against him.  He let her; it wouldn’t do any good to cause a ruckus now.  Especially since Anna and Scott seemed to be getting along better.  He was aware that Scott was the one who suggested the drinking.  He hoped the dumb blond stereotype only applied to natural blondes and the twerp wasn’t planning on going crazy tonight.  Maybe he should have dealt with his depression earlier in the morning.  Though, he did seem much better now.  Maybe Anna had made up with him.  Well, she better have.  He wasn’t going to put up with much more of a sad Scott.  It just wasn’t natural.

After winding their way around town for a couple hours, they managed to make it back to Julian’s house.  Will had already told his mother he intended to spend the night at Julian’s before the hearing, so he didn’t think he needed to call her.  He would just ride the bus home in the morning and be ready for Jake to pick him up for their game.  It actually didn’t really matter if he told his mother.  She was leaving for San Francisco that night and wouldn’t know if he came home or not.

Will hung back by the kitchen entrance and watched the gang rummage through the March’s liquor cabinet and look through the bar book.  Liz declared she wanted a Sex on the Beach and Scott volunteered to help her out with it.  Everyone laughed raucously and it made Will worry.  They were already rowdy and they hadn’t even cracked open a bottle yet.  He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get away with drinking nothing, but he needed to be in top form for tomorrow’s game.  It was supposed to be a tough one.

“Hey Julian,” he called out to his friend—who was trying to win the beer chugging contest that had suddenly sprung up.

“Yeah?” he laughed, beer spilling to the floor.

“Do you have wine or something?”

“Wine?!” Everyone shouted at him.

“Drink something real,” Riley scoffed.

“I can’t go crazy tonight.  I have a game tomorrow.”

They all booed him.

“I think there’s a bottle somewhere in the basement,” said Julian.

Will went off by himself to the basement.  He was as familiar with it as he was his own.  It was where Mr. and Mrs. March had always sent him and Julian to play when they were younger.  And if he remembered correctly, the place where they hid things that they didn’t want the boys to find was in a box in between some Wiccan holiday decorations and the perpetually broken anti-squirrel birdfeeder.  Will pulled the box out and sure enough, there were some questionably shaped rubber objects that Will was going to pretend he didn’t know what they were for, a bag of candy, and two bottles of wine.  Will pulled one out and read the label.  He really didn’t know anything about wine, but if it was nice enough for the Marches to have wanted to hide, it was probably okay.  But compared to what standards?  His experience with wines had been of those at the very high end of the spectrum.  Even forgetting the one had he’d had at the hotel, he was willing to bet that Ken didn’t keep anything too shabby in his own stock.  Will had a feeling that if this was simply above average wine, he’d be able to tell.  Well, that might be a good thing.  If he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t be tempted to drink it.

As he headed back for the stairs he told himself to be sure to behave and pay attention to how much he drank.  Even if he didn’t have a game the next day to worry about, people acted weird when they got drunk.  They got sappy or sometimes mean.  Often times horny.  Will froze with his foot on the first step.  He was suddenly terrified of what Julian might do to him when he was drunk.  But, how bad could it be?  He’d already made out with a guy before; how much worse could it be to be molested by his male friend?

When he was back in the kitchen he found his friends had set up an assembly line.  They were attempting to make three different kinds of drinks for all of them at once.  There were already several empty beer cans on the counter.  Will wandered through the chaos and found a wine glass and a bottle opener.  Then he made room for himself on the counter and hopped up.  By the times the girls felt ready to leave at 11:00, he’d only had one and a half glasses of wine.  His friends were all totally trashed.  It would be so easy to convince any one of the girls to get naked, even Riley.  Fortunately there was no real unresolved sexual tension among the friends.  Although Anna did try to make Scott take his shirt off and had halfway succeeded until Scott thought he saw a mouse on the floor and went chasing after Cornelius’ tail.  After that the dog had hidden upstairs.

When he helped all the boys “escort” the girls to the bus stop, he hoped that the walk would tire them out.  It didn’t.  They were ready to drink even more when they got back to Julian’s house.  Will was worried that they might really end up drinking too much to the point of him having to call 911, but he didn’t think he’d really be able to stop them.  So, he just decided to watch over them and make sure no one suddenly passed out and hit their head or puked while they were sleeping and thus drown in their own vomit.  And now that the girls were gone, the boys’ inhibitions really vanished.

“I don’t get it,” Scott slurred as Will moved Julian’s hand away from his crotch again.  “I mean, I’ma boy.  I like sexsh.  Why can’t I do her?”

“Her who?” Julian asked, running his fingers through Will’s hair.

“Antoinette.”

“Shhh!”  Chris shouted from the kitchen table (he was sprawled on top of it, not sitting at it).  “You’re not supposed to tell!”

“Oh yeah.  Crap.  Forget you heard that name.”

“Will,” Julian purred up at him.  “Can I touch your…clavicle?”

“If you can define what a clavicle is first so that I know we’re on the same page.”

“The bone under you collar.  Or above it.  Or the collar isn’t a body part, is it?  So why is it called a collar bone?”

“Yes, you may touch it.”

Julian trailed a finger lightly across Will’s left collar bone and he focused on what Scott was saying.  His suspicions had just been confirmed, and now he wanted to know what Scott was going to do about it.

“But who caresh!” Scott waved an arm around and his Mai Tai sloshed to the floor.  “I’m shcrewing around with Antwuhnet Bixshby.  It’sh out now.  And thatsh okay cause I’m gonna end it.”

“Yeah, right,” Chris drawled.  “You can’t even—can’t even—have sex with her.”  He sat up.  “Why not?  Sex is good.  I mean, I’m glad I broke up with what’s her name, but at the same time I’m almost ready to go crawling back on my knees just to have the sex again.  Celebrity sucks.  Uh, celery.  No…”

“I know!” said Julian.  He faced Will.  “Doesn’t it suck, pretty?”

“Maybe _it_ does, but I’m sure not going to,” Will muttered and pushed his friend’s groping hands away.

“I mean it!” Scott yelled.  “I’m through with it.  I’ve got too much to worry about with my…shishter.”

Will let out a yelp as Julian licked his earlobe.  “Julian, sweetheart, we need to settle down.”

“You think that sucks?” Chris asked, sliding off the table.  “I have to steal money.”  He snickered.  “A heist!  A money heist!”  He collapsed into a fit of giggles and went all the way to the floor.  Scott was staring at Will and Julian.

“Is it like, boy on boy night?” he asked.

Will had slid off the counter to get away from Julian, but was now caught from behind in a very affectionate hug.  Julian was nuzzling the back of his head.

“I like you, Will.”

“Thank you, Julian.  Okay, who needs water?”  He asked in the same way he might ask Cornelius if he wanted to go outside.  The boys got excited by his tone.

“Meeee!” they called out and raised their hands.

Will slipped away from Julian and filled up three glasses of water.  He forced them all to sit down and drink and then began clearing away some of the cans and bottles.  While the boys were comparing thumbnail sizes he wiped up the floor and counter as best he could.  It would still be sticky, but Julian would have to clean that up.  And after having his crotch grabbed five times in less than an hour, he wasn’t feeling too sorry for the owner of the sticky floor.  Then he took Chris’ keys out of his back pocket (at which point Julian protested Chris getting felt up and not him) and hid them in the freezer with a note explaining his reasoning.  He didn’t need him getting up in the middle of the night and running around.

At last it seemed like they might be winding down.  He took them all to the couch in the den and sat them on it.  Julian crawled off and headed somewhere, but Will couldn’t be bothered with him at the moment; Scott was looking green.  He helped his friend to the bathroom and held his head out of the water as he puked into the toilet.  When he was done, he took him back to the couch and laid him beside Chris.  He wondered what Chris had been babbling about when he’d been talking about a money heist.  He shrugged and turned the boys on their sides.  And since they were spooning each other, they wouldn’t roll onto their backs.  They might not be happy when they woke up, but at least they wouldn’t die on him in the middle of the night.  Then he went looking for Julian.  He was curled up on the rug in the hallway between the kitchen and the den.  That was probably good enough.  Will tried to clean up a bit more, but it was getting to be near three o’clock in the morning and he really needed to get _some_ sleep.  He went upstairs and found Cornelius snoozing in Julian’s bed.  He set the alarm clock and joined the dog.  Even if nobody else did, he was going to have a nice comfy night’s sleep.

 

 

 

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

 

Will rolled over.  He was trying to get away from that irritating beeping.  It would stop eventually right?  He snuggled into the strange, yet familiar smelling sheets.  The buzzing wasn’t going away.  Finally he sat up and got a face full of fur as Cornelius wagged his tail.  He sat up higher and petted the dog’s rump.  Had he slept next to the dog’s ass all night?  Was that why it had smelled funny?  He leaned back down to sniff the sheets.  No, it didn’t smell bad, just different.  They smelled like Julian and Will was familiar with his scent.  Will sighed and sat up again.  Julian’s wasn’t the only man’s scent he was familiar with.  He blushed at his own thought and turned his attention back to the buzzing.  It was Julian’s alarm clock.  He turned it off and noticed the time.  It had been going off for twelve minutes.  Julian’s alarm just wasn’t jarring enough for him.  His own alarm clock could wake the dead, which was usually about the state he was in when he slept.

He took the dog downstairs and fed him and let him out.  Then he checked on his friends.  Chris had his arm wrapped around Scott’s stomach and they were sleeping peacefully.  Will got out his cell phone and took a picture of them.  Blackmail for later.  He let the dog back in and his nails clicking on the tile floor caused Julian to stir.  Will could hear him groaning and he walked back into the hallway to check on him.  He was struggling to his feet and looked as bad as Scott had last night.  He caught him by the arm and forced him to his feet.  The taller boy lurched forward and Will did his best to direct him toward the kitchen sink.  He petted his friend’s head as he vomited and felt sorry for him.  He was probably going to have one killer headache.  He remembered what his own hangover had felt like and knew that all three of theirs would be even worse.  And they wouldn’t have the shock of having slept with a thirty year old man to jolt their senses into functioning again.

Will looked at the microwave clock.  He really needed to get going.  But apparently Scott might need to throw up again.  He sighed and wandered back into the den.  Scott was on the floor and Chris was groping for a throw pillow.  Will handed him one and he used it to cover his groin and used a hand to cover his red face.  Will grinned and helped Scott stumble to the bathroom.  He swayed in the small space for a moment and then began to sit down.  Will helped spread him out so he could lay down.  He probably wasn’t going to throw up again and had already fallen back asleep.  He checked on the other two: sleeping.  Will gave Cornelius a sympathetic look and then announced that he was leaving.  He wondered if anybody heard him.

The bus ride home was uneventful.  He got dressed for his game and decided not to pack a change of clothes since he would just come straight home afterwards and then shower.  He ate some cereal and a grapefruit for breakfast.  He’d looked all over the kitchen but had found no note from his mother.  He hadn’t seen her since the hearing and she was going to be gone for a week and she couldn’t even bother to leave him a note.  He left his bowl in the sink without rinsing it out.  That would show his mother.  Of course he would have cleaned it up by the time she got back, but whatever.

Jake picked him up in his Jaguar.  Why couldn’t his own parents spoil him?  He was demanding a car for his 18th birthday.  They owed it to him with all the chauffeuring they made him do.

“What’s up, Big Willy?  Anything going down?” Jake asked as they sped for the highway with the windows down and Sublime blaring from the speakers.  Will hated it when Jake called him Big Willy, but he was driving, so he should probably not do anything to distract him.

“Nothing much.  My friend got emancipated yesterday.”  _And my other friend admitted to fooling around with your girlfriend._

“Whoa.  That’s crazy.  Oh, Julian, right?  Yeah, how is he?  I didn’t talk to him much once he stopped coming to soccer practice.”

“Ah, he’s doing all right.  The summer will be rough, but I think he’s dealing with it.”

“Right.  Crazy.  I hope he’ll play again next year.  I mean, he shoots for shit, but you really notice he’s missing from the team.  He’s like, the other one that can actually play at school.”

Will laughed.  “I know.”

“And man.  We suck so hard at school, I forget how good you really are sometimes.  It’s gonna suck having to play against you today.”

“Yes, it will, my friend.  I will beat you until you’re battered and bruised.”

Jake scoffed.  “Go ahead and try little man.  And even if you do, it’s all right.  I’ve got a cute girlfriend who can nurse me back to health.  Her parents and siblings will be gone from the house today, and you know what that means.  Yeah!”

Jake grinned and tore onto the entry ramp for the highway.  Will hung onto the side of the car and wondered if Scott had meant what he said yesterday about breaking it off with Antoinette today.  He’d better call him and tell him he should do it before their game ended.

He’d had every intention of making that phone call, but once he was out on the field, he lost all thoughts but those directly linked to the game.  This was how he really liked to play soccer: on a good team against another good team when everybody was trying their hardest to win the game they all loved.  Why didn’t more Americans like soccer?  It was the greatest sport.

Shortly after the halftime break, Will had been pulled off the striker position and was guarding the backfield.  They were up four to one, so the coach decided to give some other players the opportunity to try scoring.  Lame.  There was nothing wrong with embarrassing the other team until they were quivering piles of goo that used to be proud teenaged boys.  He knew what it felt like.  It wasn’t all that bad.  The ball got stuck at the other end of the field and wasn’t making it past midfield.  He started a conversation with a striker from the opposing team.  He was a senior at a public school in a town on the other side of the city.  He mentioned his girlfriend had come to the game and pointed her out in the stands.

Will never really looked at the stands during a game because he was usually too busy playing, and he never had anyone to look for anyway.  So he wasn’t looking very hard when he tried to pick out which of the three girls sitting beside each other was the guy’s girlfriend.  But then he saw him.  He was in the middle left of the stands and sitting high enough up that Will couldn’t really make out his features.  But he recognized him.  Ken had come to his game.

Will shook his head.  That couldn’t be.  He wouldn’t know when the game was or where it was.  It was on a different field from their first game, and he never told him about it.  He said he couldn’t do it anymore.  He couldn’t see him.  So why would he come all the way out here to see him?  He wouldn’t.

Someone tapped Will on the shoulder.  “Uh, I’m probably going to regret this, but I thought I’d let you know the ball is coming back this way.”

Will turned to see the kid from the other team that he had befriended.  Then he turned to look up field.  His first instinct should have been to bend his knees to get under the ball so that he could head it back in the other direction.  In reality his first instinct when he saw the ball flying toward his face was to duck.  Jake ran past him laughing and trying to catch up with the ball.

“What the hell was that Harder?!”

Jake easily avoided the other defender and placed a beautiful shot right past the goalie’s hands in the top left corner of the net.  He whooped and ran toward his teammates with his arms outspread.  Two of them picked him up and ran with him for a few yards.  Will’s teammates looked at him with disbelief.  They’d probably never seen him not totally focused on the game before.  He looked to the sideline and saw the coach throwing his clipboard on the ground.  He gesticulated wildly and yelled something unintelligible.  Will just hoped he wouldn’t pull him out of the game.

The ball was reset at the center line and his team kicked off.  It stayed at the far end for a while, but when it came back, Will was ready.  He stole the ball from an advancing striker and danced his way back toward midfield.  He was doing a lot of unnecessary fancy footwork.  He was showing off.

 _I wonder what brought this on_ , Will mused sardonically as he kicked the ball in a perfect arch over a defender’s head and placed it perfectly at his teammate’s feet.  The game went smoothly from there.  The other team put so much effort in keeping the ball away from him when they had it, that they never focused on the other defenders.  As a result, the ball spent a good portion of its time in their territory and they were forced to play a lot of defense.  Will wondered how much trouble he would get in if he took the ball and ran it all the way up field for another shot at scoring.  It was only the second game of the season.  He’d better not.

The game ended at a score of four to two.  He cut short some of the celebrations with his teammates so that he could get the obligatory hand slapping and murmuring of “goodgamegoodgamegoodgame” to the other team started.  As soon as he reached the last kid he took off for the stands.  The stands weren’t big and hadn’t been full by any means, but for a weekday afternoon game they had been crowded.  And now the spectators for the succeeding girls game were mixing in.  He hadn’t really seen him the rest of the game, and now as he searched vainly through the crowd he felt a little silly.  Had he just imagined it?  Had he just _wanted_ to see him?

A big soccer dad stepped out of the way and standing by the end of the bleachers was a man in light colored pants and a casual shirt.  Will laughed softly.  He’d tried so hard to blend in, but it was still rather obvious that his shoes alone cost more than the nearby five people’s complete outfits combined.  Will walked slowly through the milling crowd and stopped in front of Ken.  He deliberately met his eyes; he wanted to see what he feeling.  His cobalt eyes were a deep well of conflicting emotion, but happiness at seeing Will was foremost among them.

They stood silently for a few moments, and then Will said, “Hi.”

Ken smiled weakly.  “Hi,” he replied.

“Can we—can we talk?”

“I think we should.”

“Okay.  Let me go get my bag.”  He started back for the field and then turned around to say, “Just wait here.  I’ll be right back.”  He took off in a sprint for the benches, which were on the other side of the field, and found the coach giving the end of the game pep talk.  He started throwing his towel and water bottle into his bag and everyone looked over at him.

“Harder,” the coach growled, “where the hell did you go?  It’s pep talk time!”

“Sorry, coach.  My ride is here and I need to go before it does.”

“Well the next game is this Thursday on this field.  Three o’clock!”

“Got it!”  Will was already heading back for the bleachers.  He spotted Jake shouldering his bag on the other sideline and slowed down to talk to him.

“Hey, Jake.”

“Oh, hey, Will.  I thought your coach normally made you guys stay after for one his infamous pep talks.”

“Yeah, I got out of it because my ride has to go.  I wanted to let you know I found another way home.”

“Oh, okay.  Cool.”  Jake smiled at him.  “Some chick, right?  Man you can pick anybody up anywhere.”

Will didn’t entirely disagree.  “Yeah, are you going to go over to your girlfriend’s today?  Like, definitely?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

“Um.  No reason.  Gotta run.”

Will ran away.  It was always a bad idea to ask someone an unusual question and then say you had no reason for it.  But Jake would never suspect Scott of doing anything with his girlfriend.  Though he might suspect Will of it.  He couldn’t worry about that now; he’d take the fall for that later if he had to.  He stumbled a bit as his bag bumped against the back of his knees.  He slung it around to hold it in front of his arms and ran faster.  Ken was waiting right where he’d left him.  When he reached him, he was slightly out of breath.  Ken looked questioningly at him.

“You didn’t have to run so fast, I don’t mind waiting.  I don’t really have anywhere I need to be.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  I was just.  I thought you might leave.”

Ken smiled.  “I wouldn’t leave you, Will.”

“Right,” he muttered, looking away to hide the color he could feel spreading across his cheeks.  He kept his eyes on the ground and followed Ken’s legs to his car.  He’d brought the silver Lexus.  Will took his cleats off and banged them together to shake most of the dirt free and then stuffed them into his bag.  Ken seemed happy that he wasn’t going to totally dirty up his car.  He was still kind of raunchy from running around for an hour and a half and he had been knocked to the ground a few times.  His blue uniform was covered in green and brown.  Ken managed to get out of the designated parking area and onto the highway without too much trouble, and once they were cruising along in the quiet luxury car, the silence started to turn palpable.  Will decided he’d be the one to at least get the conversation started.  He’d leave it up to Ken to bring up the big fat pink elephant.

“So, uh, how did you know about my game?  I mean, I’m not accusing you of stalking or anything.  I was just wondering, how you knew…”

Ken was very focused on his driving.  “They announced it at your first game.”

“You went to my first game?”

“Yeah…I did.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I figured you didn’t want to see me.  So, I stayed out of sight as best I could.”  He laughed softly.  “It was like you’re always saying.  I was hiding under the bleachers like some dirty pervert.”

Will laughed.  “I always knew it.”

They lapsed into silence again.  Will couldn’t take it anymore.

“I don’t blame you,” he blurted out.

Ken turned to look at him.  “What?”

“I don’t blame you for what happened.  That night.”  Will pointed out the windshield.  “Road.”

Ken returned his attention to driving.  He flexed his grip on the steering wheel.  “Why not?” he asked.

Will searched his brain for an answer.  Not only could he not come up with one that made sense, he couldn’t come up with one at all.  So, he moved on to avoidance tactics.

“Um, sorry. I forgot.  I have to make a phone call.”

He dug around in his bag and pulled out his cell phone.  He put in Scott’s number and listened to the French people telling him to hold on, they were coming.  Scott had discovered that it was possible to purchase outgoing ring tones.  So, instead of the soft whirr of the standard ringing indicator, people calling Scott were subjugated to the Frenchies.  It made it impossible to count how many times the phone was actually ringing, so he never knew if he was going to get Scott or his voicemail.

“Come on, pick up,” he muttered.

The phone clicked on.  “Will.”

Will put a hand out but didn’t know what to do with it.  He couldn’t reach Scott from here.  He was left momentarily speechless by the heartbroken voice that had answered the phone.  Maybe he’d managed to do it.  Maybe he’d broken up with her, but hadn’t realized until now how much he had actually liked her.

“Scott?  Are you okay?”

Scott didn’t reply.

“Look, Scott, where are you right now?”

“At Antoinette’s.”

Will’s brow creased.  If he was still there, what was going on?  “Scott, I saw Jake and he said he’s going over to Antoinette’s today after our game.  It ended about ten minutes ago, so he could be there in as little as half an hour.”

“Oh.  Oh, okay.  Thanks.”

“Scott?”  He didn’t respond.  “Scott!”  Will realized he was talking to dead air.  “Damn it.”

“Is something wrong?” Ken asked.

“I don’t know, I—” Will noticed Ken was heading for his exit.  They still needed to talk.  “Can we go to your place?”  Ken glanced at him for a moment but then returned his eyes to the road.  “I want to see Joyce Greene.”

“Um.  Sure.”

Ken stayed on the highway and Will called Scott back.  He didn’t answer, so Will hung up and tried again.  This time he answered with an aggravated “What?!” that sounded more like him.

“Don’t ‘what’ me!  I’m worried about you, you dick!”

“Oh, right.  Sorry.  Don’t panic.  Nobody died.  I’ll talk to you later though, okay?”

Will didn’t want to talk later, he wanted to talk now.  But how long would this talk take?  And he still had to deal with Ken.  And Scott sounded okay now.  He wasn’t very good at hiding his emotions.  At least, Will didn’t think he was.  Hopefully he would survive until later that night.

“Okay.  Fine.  But later means later today, got it?”

“Okay, Dr. Phil.  Later.”

Will searched through all the expletives in his vocabulary and went with one in German.  Stupid Scott.  Making him worry.

“Did you just curse in German?”

“Yes.  I can do it in fourteen languages actually.”

“Can you speak fourteen languages?”

“Nope.  Just the swear words.  My genius is for math and logic based thinking.  I have no talent for languages.”

“I bet you’re better than the average person though.”

Will gave Ken a smug smile.  “I’m better than the average person at a lot of things.”

Ken fought back a smile and a comment.  Will could guess what he was thinking, but it would probably be better for them both if he kept it to himself.  The pervert.  They didn’t really talk the rest of the way to Ken’s condo, but it wasn’t uncomfortable between them.  Will was surprised to find how strange it was to walk down the 17th floor hallway.  It was familiar to him, and yet he felt like he hadn’t been there in a very long time.  Ken hesitated while he was unlocking the door, but he didn’t say anything.  He just opened the door and stepped inside.  Will dropped his grungy bag off on the kitchen floor and bent down to greet Joyce Greene.  She had woken up from her nap and approached the door when they came in, probably looking for Ken, but she meowed when she saw him.  He was happy that she had missed him.  When she got close she stopped mid motion of rubbing against his leg and turned her nose to his skin.  She sniffed a couple times and then backed up.  Then she sniffed some more.

Will laughed.  “Yeah, I guess I am a little funky smelling.”  He looked at Ken who had gotten a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.  “Do you mind if I take a shower?”

Ken waved a hand.  “Go ahead.  I just got a bonus at work.  I might actually be able to afford it.”

“Ha, ha.  Smartass,” he muttered.  He started for the bedroom.  “And don’t give her bottled water.”

“I don’t!”

Will turned back and saw Ken pouring the bottled water into Joyce Greene’s bowl.  He rolled his eyes and smiled.  He would make a terrible father.  He would spoil his child until it was a monstrous angel.

“One more thing.  I didn’t bring a change of clothes.  Can I borrow some of yours and wash my kit?”

“Sure.  You want to put your name on the lease while we’re at it?”

Will turned back and gave him a look as he disappeared into the bedroom.  “Don’t be snotty.”

Will was excited to get into that shower again.  It really was the most decadent thing he’d ever experienced.  He stripped quickly and then threw his kit out into the main room.  He heard Ken shout in dismay and smiled as he ran for the bathroom.  Standing under the hot spray he felt monumentally better.  Not just from washing the dirt and grit from his game away, but he felt relieved that Ken didn’t want him to stay away.  It was a good sign that their normal interaction was more or less intact.  They would probably still have to talk about that night, but hopefully they would be able to brush it under rug and forget about it.  Until they tripped over it later.

When he was done with his shower—well, he wasn’t done, but he didn’t want any more snide comments from Ken so he got out—he wrapped himself in a towel and peeked into the bedroom.  It was empty and the door was shut.  Ken hadn’t left any clothes in the bathroom or in the bedroom as far as he could tell, so he was just going to have to go through Ken’s closet himself.  He snickered wondering if he would find Ken hiding in it.

He opened the large walk in closet and flipped on the light.  Then he gasped in horror.  Will backed away from the atrocity staring him down.  He considered himself an organized person, but this was just sickening.  Pants hung on one side and shirts on the other, sorted from formal to casual and color coordinated.  His shoes were in perfect lines and sorted from formal to casual and color coordinated.  In the back of the closet hung belts and ties, sorted from formal to casual and color coordinated.  Will turned the light off, shut the door, and backed away from the closet.  He was certain if he moved one thing even a millimeter out place Ken might rupture a vessel.

He decided to search through the dresser drawers instead.  He wouldn’t be able to wear any of Ken’s pants without looking ridiculous anyway.  He wasn’t going to wander around with his feet lost in yards of fabric because someone had to be freakishly tall.  In the top drawer was an assortment of personal items that Will was severely tempted to snoop through, but he would save that for a day when he was in the condo alone.  The second drawer housed the undergarments.  He paused as he looked in it.  He couldn’t remember from their one night together, but he wasn’t surprised to learn that he wore mostly tightie-whities.  Well, they weren’t exactly white or the same style that little boys wore, but they were briefs.  At least he wasn’t so pretentious that he had to wear boxer briefs.  Will laughed to himself.  Pretentious?  _He_ wore boxer briefs.  But anyway, he couldn’t prance around in those or even the white under shirts, so he moved on to the next drawer.  In there were the traumatizing sweatpants along with other workout clothes.  He didn’t really want to dredge up the memories, but he might be forced to put those on.  He still had one more drawer to look through.  In the fourth drawer he found what he was hoping Ken might own.  There were some boxers and regular T-shirts.  He rooted through the boxers: most of them were satiny with hearts and lips on them.  One pair had a skull and cross bones on them.  Those would be a bad idea.  The silky material slid up too easily and he didn’t want any jokes about butt pirates.  Fortunately there were a couple pairs of cotton boxers.  He pulled on a pair with a green plaid design and then found an old T-shirt that read, “Dartmouth University, Class of ’94.”

Will ran a finger over the 94.  He had been six years old.  Ken had been graduating from college, and he’d just finished first grade.  That was a disturbing thought.  Will left the bedroom and found Ken exactly where he thought he’d be: on the couch, legs propped on the coffee table, laptop in front of him on a tray table.  He was wearing his glasses and had a pen in his mouth.  He turned his head when he heard Will, and then just stared.  The pen dropped out of his mouth.  There was a disgruntled meow.  Will walked around to the front of the couch saw Joyce Greene stretching in annoyance and then settling back into Ken’s lap.  Will laughed.

“I guess she’s learned that if she can’t get you to stop working, she might as well join you.”

Ken finally blinked and looked down at the kitten.  “Ah, yeah.  I tried to keep her off the furniture, but that was a futile effort.  Probably because my cat sitter lets her up all the time.”

Will looked away as he sat on the couch.  “So?  I keep her out of the bedroom, like you want.”

Ken grunted skeptically.  He picked the pen up and placed it on the tray table.  Will turned toward him and looked down at the T-shirt he was wearing as he tugged on it.

“Did you go here?”

“Yeah.  For undergraduate.”

Will looked up and raised an eyebrow at Ken.  “Is it just a coincidence that you went to a school that’s nickname is ‘The Big Green?’”

Ken laughed.  “Yes, I swear!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why do you even know that?”

“I’ve been researching colleges for years.  Of course I’ve looked at all the Ivy Leagues.  Did you like Dartmouth?”

“Mm-hmm.  There’s not a lot to do there, but it’s a great school.  Where did you find those boxers?  I didn’t know I owned a pair like that.”

“Well, they were under all the silky heart-covered ones.”  Will gave him a questioning look.

“Oh.  Right.  Those are all gifts from girlfriends.”

“You keep them?”

“Well, yeah.  I might date one of them again.”

“You remember which ones came from which girl?”

He took his glasses off as he thought about it.  “No, not really.  Maybe I shouldn’t keep them.”

Will flopped forward and petted the kitten—very carefully considering her location.  “Are you dating someone now?”

“No.  I broke up with my last girlfriend a couple months before I met you.  Well, more precisely, she dumped me.”

“Why?  Did she find out you like to kiss boys?”

“No.  I wouldn’t propose to her.”

Will looked up.  “Will you ever?”

“Ever what?”

“Get married?”

Ken sighed and leaned back into the couch.  “I don’t know.  I always thought I would.  My mother wants grandchildren.  My father wants a grandson specifically.  But the last few years, I’ve been thinking that I don’t know if I can go through with it.  Not only would it be monstrously unfair to the woman, but I would be miserable.  Even if I found a woman I really liked as a friend.”

“Jesus.  So, come out already.”

Ken shook his head.  “It’s too late for that.  Maybe if I had in college or right after.  But now, I’ve been deliberately lying to them for too long.  It would destroy my family.”

“Do you really believe that?  That your family would hate you for it?”

“You don’t know my family, Will.”

Will frowned.  That didn’t seem right, but he knew it happened.  Parents rejected their children everyday simply because of who they were.  It just didn’t seem to fit with the image he had of Ken’s family.  Ken would have turned out differently if he’d been raised by people that cold.  Will sat up and pinched the back cushion of the couch.  He started slightly when Ken gently rubbed his thumb between his eyes and up to his brow.

“Stop frowning,” the man said.  “You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

He moved his head away from the soft touch even though it had felt good.  “Did you take the day off work to go to my game?”

“Kind of.  I’ve been working close to eighty hours a week and my boss said I needed to take some time off.”

“Your boss?”

“My father.”

“So, you got yelled at by your dad?”

“Yeah, I guess I did.  Plus this month has been a little crazy and everyone’s getting on my nerves.  So, your game was a good excuse to get away.”  He ran his finger over the mouse pad and frowned at it.  “Or maybe I used that as an excuse to go see you.”

Ken looked uncomfortable.  Will thought he must be feeling the way he usually did when he admitted to feeling something he thought he shouldn’t.  Now, it was his turn to save Ken from the scary thoughts.

“So, why do you work so much anyway?  I hardly think you need the extra money.  Though you do have a lot of cars.”

“I don’t know.  I guess I just feel like I have to prove myself.  You know, that I got the job because I can do it and not because I’m the boss’ son.  Or maybe it’s just a way of distracting myself from my other problems.”

“What, are you that horny?”

He gave Ken a smile to let him know he was okay with joking around with him.  Ken gave him an offended look and put his glasses back on.  Will started as the phone rang.  Ken reached for the phone that was on the end table next to the couch.  The cradle was empty.  He quickly displaced the kitten and the tray table and ran for the kitchen.  Will leaned back down to comfort Joyce Greene.  He heard Ken start talking about numbers and quarters and other boring topics, so he lay down on the couch and put the kitten on his chest.  She was more awake now and batted at his hand as he made it scuttle past her.  After fifteen minutes, Ken hung up and went into the laundry room.

“Do these go in the dryer?”

“It’s nylon, dude.  Just hang it up.”

“Here’s a thought.  Why don’t you hang up your own laundry?”

“I’m busy.”

Ken returned and stood in front of him.

“Up.  Move.  I still have some work to do.”

Will sighed dramatically and sat up to scoot forward a little bit.  Ken sat in his favorite corner and Will stretched his legs out over the armrest of the couch.  He leaned back so that the kitten could settle on his stomach.  He found that he hadn’t scooted far enough forward.  His head settled on Ken’s thigh.  He tensed up a little, but the kitten was already circling, trying to find a nice spot to lie down.  And he could feel his exertions from the game catching up with him.  He was really tired and Ken’s leg was just at the perfect height for him to feel completely comfortable.  He was already moving past the momentary panic and giving into the drowsiness.

He was playing soccer.  But there wasn’t anyone he recognized on the field.  Then he kicked the ball and was in a forest.  A very strange looking forest.  The trees were more like blades of grass and there was a giant mushroom growing near him.  Everything had gotten freakishly bigger because he certainly hadn’t shrunk.  He took a couple steps forward and saw Liz to his left.  She was wearing a blue, wispy thing that more or less covered her personal areas.  She was watering some purple flowers.  The flowers were crying.  Then he saw Julian, Chris, and Scott.  They were dressed strangely and sitting in a row with their legs crossed.  They were sipping tea and whispering to each other as they looked at him.  He was going to ask them what they were talking about, but there was a very loud thumping sound.  He turned his head and saw a tiny rabbit hopping up and down.  Every time it hit the ground, a loud banging filled the air.  Then it landed with a very loud crash and pulled Will out of his slumber.  He was disoriented, but he felt comfortable and therefore safe.  He rubbed a hand over his eye and realized he was on Ken’s couch with his head in the man’s lap.  He looked up and saw Ken looking just as confused.  He must have just woken up too.  But what had woken them up?  Ken glanced toward the end of the couch and suddenly became very alert.

“Ryan!” he shouted.

Will looked at the end of the couch and saw a stranger.  He was a tall, very handsome man with dark features and a scowl.  Will became very aware that he was wearing little clothing, lying on a couch with his head in a man’s lap, with that man’s hand on his chest, and his own hand covering that hand.  He bolted upright and then quickly reached out to catch the tumbling kitten that was rolling down his torso toward his lap.  He looked back up at the man and was irked to find that he was looking him over very disapprovingly.  The man looked at Ken.

“This is what you keep blowing me off for?”

“Ryan!”  Ken jumped off the couch and ran for the door, which was wide open.  Will wondered if he was worried about people seeing him inside his apartment.  But then he looked behind the door and there was a doorknob shaped hole in the wall.  He turned a glare on the stranger.

“What the hell did you do?”

The man pulled out a pack of cigarettes and placed one between his lips.  “Well, why did you give me a key if you’re just going to keep the chain on the door?”

Ken slammed the door shut and marched over to the man.  He snatched the cigarette out of his mouth before he could light it.

“You kicked the door open?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah, sorry.  I’ll pay for it.”

“No shit,” Ken muttered and walked into the kitchen to throw away the cigarette.

“I did knock,” the man said as he put the cigarettes away.

Will was still on the couch and growing angrier the longer the stranger continued to stare at him.

“Well, he is pretty.  I’ll give you that.  But hardly worth the risk of jail time.”

Will felt his body grow hot and he struggled off the couch, clutching Joyce Greene to his chest.  “You told him about us?” Will cried.  “I mean, about it,” he corrected himself.

“Well,” Ken said uneasily, coming back into the living room, “he kind of already knew half of it.  He called to apologize for my ‘date’ never showing up.  Then he asked why I didn’t call when he didn’t show up.  And I just—”

“Wait, _why_ would you call _him_ about it?”

Ken and the man exchanged looks.  Ken gestured toward the stranger and said, “He, um, he owns Blue Boy.”

Will raised his eyebrows and then looked at the dark man.  He was smiling in a very irritating way.  Will decided he wasn’t going to let his temper show.

“Oh!  You’re a pimp.”

“According to every possible definition,” the man grinned.

Will let his temper go.  The man wasn’t playing fair.  “Why did you tell him _everything_?” Will demanded.

“I was freaked out,” Ken said defensively.  “I didn’t know what to do.  I needed to talk to someone.”

“So, you told your whore supplier?”

Ken put his hands on his waist and gave a little sigh as he looked at him.  “He’s a _friend_ , Will.  We went to college together.”

“We used to fuck,” the man added, leaning forward slightly and waving a hand between himself and Ken.

Will actually felt something in him snap.  “I don’t give a shit _who_ he is.  Don’t fucking talk about me to anyone!”

The man looked at Ken.  “Seriously, you’re infatuated with this?”  He used a hand to indicate that Will was the “this.”  “He has the body of a twelve year old and the personality of an eight year old.”

Will tossed the kitten onto the couch and let out a string of swear words in several languages as he stomped into the utility room.  He ripped his soccer uniform off the hangers and then began to stomp back across the room to the bedroom.  Ken tried to speak to him as he passed.

“I’m not putting up with this!” Will barked.  “I’m going home.”

“Good,” said the man and moved Joyce Greene aside to sit on the couch.

Will went into the bedroom and slammed the door as hard as he could, but kept his hand on the knob so that he could pull it back open slightly.  He sat on the floor and peeked through the crack.  The man was reaching for a piece of candy from the dish on the coffee table and Ken was looking at the ceiling.

“Well, he’s got a temper,” the man said.

“You have no idea,” Ken laughed humorlessly as he moved to sit on the couch.  The kitten had jumped off and headed for the bay window.  She liked to watch the fish swim in the tank against the wall.  Ken let his head drop back against the couch.  “What’s wrong with me?  No matter how wrong and messed up I know this is, I just can’t send him away.  And worse yet, I can’t _stay_ away.”  He sat up and fidgeted though Will couldn’t see exactly what he was doing.  “I don’t want to,” he murmured.

The man tossed his wrapper on the table and turned to partially face Ken.  “You just need a new man,” he said unhelpfully.  “Or a distraction at least.  I recently acquired a new employee.  You could test drive him for me.”

Ken shook his head.  “No thanks.  I need to deal with this first.  I feel responsible.”

“You should.”

“I feel awful.  Terrible.”

“I would think so.”

“I mean, he obviously has no one he can talk to about this.  As little good as it does me, I at least have you.  I doubt he can even tell his best friends.  He’s _straight_ for crying out loud.  I’ve completely destroyed his psyche, and he can’t tell anyone what happened or talk to them about it.  It must be eating him up inside.”

The man seemed bored.  “Look, I get it.  It’s a tough break for him, but he’s kind of contributing to his own mess.  And he’s taking you down with him.  You care too goddamn much, Ken.  About everybody.”

He reached out a hand and gently stroked Ken’s hair.  Ken looked over at him and Will couldn’t stand to look on for a second longer.  He stood up and changed back into his uniform.  The kit was dry, but his underwear was still a tad damp and cold.  It was a little unpleasant, which only contributed to his foul mood.  To retaliate against Ken he wadded up the boxers and T-shirt and threw them in the middle of his bed.  He noisily made his way back into the room.  The two men were still on the couch, but they weren’t touching.  They looked over the back of the couch at him.  Will feigned surprise at seeing the stranger.

“Oh, is Ryan still here?  I thought you would have a bitch to go slap or something.”

The man looked a little peeved, but he smiled maliciously at Will.  “Come a little closer and maybe I will.”

Will gave him a look that clearly stated he was not amused.

“Not only are you irritating,” the man said, “you also have poor hearing.  My name is Ry-lan.  Not, Ryan.”

“Well, my hearing’s good enough that I heard that you’re a fucking faggot like him,” he snarled, indicating Ken.

Ken looked appalled by his outburst, but Rylan just seemed amused.

“You jealous that someone else put their hands on your man?”

“Not remotely,” Will said icily.

Rylan wasn’t looking amused anymore.  He continued to stare him down—without much success—and said, “Ken, I need that book I loaned you.”

“Um, okay.”

Will and Rylan glared at each other.  Ken did a double take to Rylan.

“What, you mean now?”

“Yes, now.”

Ken started to get up, but seemed nervous about leaving the two of them alone together.

“It’s fine,” Will said.  “I was just leaving.”

Ken moved to walk to the door with him and then he darted for his bedroom.  “Will!” he shouted and the teenager turned from picking up his bag to see Joyce Greene’s tail disappearing inside the bedroom.  He’d left the door open by accident.

“Sorry,” he called out unapologetically.

He opened the door, but a hand above his head slammed it shut.  Will turned to glare at Rylan, but was staring at his chest.  He looked up.  He was even taller than Ken.  And as if his height wasn’t enough, his expression was extremely menacing.

“Look, kid,” Rylan began, “I know you’ve got some terrible sob story, but I don’t give a fuck about you.  I care about Ken.  So leave him alone.  If you’re trying to make him suffer because you did, you better reevaluate that plan.  Because I can _really_ make you suffer.”

Will involuntarily shrank back a little.  Now he knew what Anna must have felt like when they yelled at her for being mean to Scott.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“No?  Then what _are_ you doing?”

Like he could answer that question.  He could barely acknowledge to himself what he was doing.  And even if he could, he sure as hell wouldn’t tell Rylan.  He pushed up on Rylan’s arm and the man stumbled forward into the door as Will opened it.  He managed to squeeze out through the small opening and let the door bang shut behind him.

“Fuck,” he hissed.

“Oh, my.”

Will looked up and saw Autumn Rose.  He forced his whole body to go rigid so he wouldn’t lash out at something.  His afternoon just kept getting better.  He forced his body to relax and saw that the woman was wearing a sexy dress, too much make-up, and carrying a pie.  Where the hell did she think she was going?

“Hi,” she smiled carefully at Will.  “I guess since you’re here, he’s not back yet?  Do you remember me?  I live across the hall…”

“Yes,” Will said calmly.  “Autumn Rose.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, thoroughly delighted.  “What was your name again?”

“Will.”

“Right.  Will.  Well, I guess he’s still at the hospital.”

“Who?”

“Ken.  Well, Mr. West,” she corrected herself and gave Will a wink.  Like he wouldn’t know “Mr. West’s” first name.

“Why would he be at the hospital?” Will demanded.

“To visit his sister.”  Autumn Rose looked confused.  “Didn’t you know?  Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Oh, yeah.  Right of course,” Will said, having no clue what she was talking about.  “For some reason I thought you meant for something else.”

“Ah.  Well, I just felt sorry for him.  So, I wanted to give him this pie I baked.”  She tossed a loose tendril of hair back and Will could tell she wanted to use one of her hands to do it.  “I was just baking today and went a little overboard.  So, I thought I’d drop by with an extra one.  See how he’s doing.”

Will wasn’t sure if he kept the disbelief off his face, but she didn’t appear to become offended.  It was clear Autumn Rose was not the type of person who “just baked” by looking through the plastic wrap at the overdone crust.  It was obviously a ploy to flirt with Ken.  The lying whore.

“Well,” Will said, “if you give it to me, I can go put it on his counter with a note from you.”

“Oh.  Well,” she turned slightly away as if to guard the pie from him.  “I’d rather give it to him myself.  It’s more personal that way.”

“He might not get home until very late.  Too late to bother him.  But, it would make him feel better if he had a present waiting for him.”

“Oh.  You’re right!  Let me go write a note.  I’ll be right back.”

Will seethed in the hall while he waited for her to write the “perfect” note.  It took her longer than it should have and when she came back he didn’t try to hide his impatience very well.

“Here you go,” she said handing him the pie and note.  “Sorry about that.  I guess you have other things to do with your summer vacation.”

She gave him a friendly smile and Will tried to mirror it.  He turned away from her.  Stupid bitch.  He dug his key out of his pocket and fake unlocked the door—it was still open.  He slipped inside quickly in case someone was in line with the door and she would be able to see him.

Inside he found Ken and Rylan standing in the kitchen sampling a bottle of wine.  They looked mildly surprised to see him.

“Are you back?” Ken asked.

“You’re right,” Rylan said, “he is impossible to get rid of.”

Will gave Rylan a bored look and tossed the pie onto the island.  It slid in the pan and collapsed on one side.

“What’s that?” Ken asked.

“It’s from that stupid Autumn Rose.”

Ken quirked an eyebrow.  “Why?”

“For your sister.  She’s in the hospital?”

“Oh.  Yes.  Well, that was nice of her.  Why didn’t you just tell her I was here?”

“Why didn’t you tell me your sister was in the hospital?!”  Will forced himself to calm down.  His voice had been a little shrill.

Rylan and Ken stared at him, and then they exchanged looks again.  Will was getting sick of that.  Ken cleared his throat and set his glass on the island.

“It’s, uh, it’s just appendicitis.  It’s an outpatient surgery nowadays.  She’s perfectly fine and already convalescing at home.  I guess I just didn’t think to tell you.”

“Why should he anyway?” Rylan asked.  “What are you to him?”

“I’m—”  He broke off and looked to Ken for help.

“What?” Rylan demanded sharply.  “I’ll tell you what you are.  You’re a jailbait cock-tease looking to get even for some hang-up you have about liking having sex with men.”

“No, I’m not!” Will shouted.  “That’s not it at all!”

“Then what?” Rylan persisted in getting his answer.  “What is this whole thing?”

“We’re friends,” Will declared.

Ken gave a small smile.  Rylan put his glass down and advanced on Will.  He held his ground.  The man stood directly in front of him and leaned forward with a hand on the island.

“Thirty-two year old men aren’t ‘friends’ with seventeen year old boys.”

 

Chris

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

 

Chris rolled over to his stomach and grunted as he felt the mild discomfort in his groin.  He sighed.  He really wasn’t in the mood for it this morning, but there it was.  He wondered if this happened to him more often than it did to other teenage boys; he certainly felt like it did.  And he also wondered if he’d ever grow out of it.  How irritated would his future wife be if he didn’t?  Maybe he should just try peeing.  He’d heard that helped sometimes.  He shifted against the mattress and the stimulation didn’t contribute to his resolve to get out of bed and go to the bathroom.  He snaked a hand from out of the mess of sheets and slid it slowly up his leg.  The house phone rang and he stopped moving.  After ringing twice, his mother must have picked it up.  He waited a few moments, but she didn’t call for him.  He resumed the movement of his hand and eased it under the weight of his body.  He shifted one leg to give his hand a little better access and buried his face in his pillow.

“Chris?”

Chris jerked upright and made sure the sheets were pulled up over his body.  He looked at his door, and his mother, as usual, had just come right on in.  She was covering one end of the portable kitchen phone with her hand.

“Chris, are you awake?”

“I am now,” he said evenly, keeping the sheets tented out from his body.

“Well, your girlfriend has called.  _Again_.”

Chris slumped against his headboard.  “Ex-girlfriend, Mom.”

“Whatever.  She’s on the phone.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to her.”

“You want me to tell her that?”

“If you have to.  Or tell her that I was still sleeping.  Or that I’m already in the shower or something.  Julian’s hearing is today.”

“Alright, alright.  But, I’m not going to keep this up forever.  You need to talk to her at some point.  If nothing else to simply tell her to stop calling the house phone before eight o’clock in the morning or after ten o’clock at night.”

“Okay.  I’ll get right on that.”

“I mean it, Christopher.  I get precious little sleep as it is.”

“So turn the phone off.”

“I can’t!  It could be work calling.  You know that deal suddenly hit the rocks.  I’ve got to be ready to do whatever it takes to get it back on track whenever I need to.  And all I ask of you is to tell your friends to call during decent hours.  You do very little around here anyway.  I ask you to do a couple chores a week and you can barely manage to get those done.  You don’t even have school as an excuse anymore.  I know you’re working more at your job, but maybe if you spent less time flitting from girl to girl you might be able to—”

“Okay, okay!  I get it, Mom.  I’m sorry.  I promise I’ll take care of the clog in the bathroom, like, tomorrow.  I just can’t today.  It’s Julian’s hearing.”

“It’s in the morning, not all day.”

“And you don’t think he’s going to be freaked out whatever the decision is?”

She sighed wearily.  He knew she worked too hard, and all he ever did was contribute to her problems, but couldn’t she understand just this once?  Then he noticed the phone in her hand.

“Mom.  The phone.  Can you…?”

“Fine.”  She turned away and closed his door.

Chris took in a deep breath and glared at the crack in the plaster of his ceiling.  No matter how much repairing he did in the townhouse, there was always something wrong with it.  The building was old and the first owners hadn’t taken care of it at all.  It was impossible to keep up with.  And why did he have to anyway?  His mother was in real estate; she should be able to find a better location for a comparable price.  Maybe corporate real estate was different from residential, but she still had the know-how.  At least one good thing had come out of his mother dumping all over him: his morning wood was gone.

Chris was tired, but he was more than happy to get out of bed and get ready.  He planned on spending the whole day away from his mother, his house, his ex-girlfriend, and anything else that felt like bothering him today.  He might even ask Julian if he could spend the night at his house.  His grandmother was still around and could be a little cantankerous, but she _was_ a very good cook.

On the way to the courthouse he had to pick Liz up from the metro station and felt a little bad for noticing just how great her legs were.  But it wasn’t his fault.  She was wearing a short, white skirt that emphasized how tan she was.  How she managed to be that tan when July had just started was a mystery, but it made her look damn good.  And it was good to be feeling guilty about checking out a girl for a different reason for once.  He wasn’t still thinking of Karen as his girlfriend; he felt bad for checking Liz out because she was his friend’s girl.  Well, not really.  It was so strange.  Liz was acting like she and Will were dating again, but Chris would bet his life that Will didn’t feel the same way.

“So, how long is this going to take, do you think?” Liz asked.

She pulled the visor down to look in the mirror and carefully touched up her lipstick.

“I really have no clue.  But, why are you bothering to get all dressed up for him?”

Liz put the cap back on her lipstick and slammed the visor back up.  Then she scowled at him.

“Look.  I know that things aren’t back to the way they were two years ago.  And they may never be that way between us again.  But that doesn’t mean that I can’t try to make it into something new.  And I _enjoy_ looking good for the person I care about.  Besides, it makes me feel good about myself when I look nice.  Don’t you have any pride?”

“Yeah, I have pride, but I don’t need to put on lipstick to prove it.”

“Oh yeah?”

Liz leaned over and began applying her pink lipstick to his lips.  He sputtered for her to stop, but couldn’t turn away from her because he was driving.  Finally a red light stopped them and he turned and wrested the tube away from her.  She giggled and then let out a catcall.

“Ooo, you look so hot, Chris.  And you _are_ available now, right?”

She gave him a wink and Chris looked in his own visor mirror to try to wipe some of the offending pink goop off his face.  She hadn’t quite gotten it all on his lips.  A car honked behind him and he had to pay attention to driving again.  He glanced at the bottom of the tube and then tossed it back to Liz.

“Pearl Pink Princess?  I really think I’m more of a caramel or a mocha.”

“Oh, definitely.  It would go with your coloring better.  But, you know who _would_ look good in this?”

Chris grinned.  “Scott?”

“Yes!”

Liz dissolved into a fit of laughter and Chris just shook his head.  Poor Scott.  They were always picking on him.

Even though Chris thought they were early, they were the last ones there.  Even Anna had managed to get there before them.  Scott would have definitely been late, but he’d come with Will and his mother, so he’d had no choice but to be on time.  He’d also noticed the remnants of the Pearl Pink Princess lipstick on his lips.  Chris gave Liz a look and she just shrugged in amusement.

As they waited for Julian’s court time, he noticed that Anna and Scott were not standing near each other or looking at each other at all.  Chris crossed his arms.  Maybe they would have to have another chat with her.  He caught her eye and gave her a mild glare.  She stuck her tongue out at him and gave the hand gesture for jerking off.  He held back his smile.  He supposed he could give her a little bit longer.

The courtroom was bigger than he thought it would be.  The vaulted ceilings had to be at least five stories or more and there was almost enough seating for the place to be a movie theater.  A lot of the seats were filled with people awaiting their court times and Chris wondered if they were all minor violations or if there were any serious criminals in the room.  Probably not, right?

The group settled into the hard, uncomfortable benches and waited for Julian’s turn.  As the traffic tickets were handled, Chris was lulled into a semi-trance state listening to the banging of the gavel and the monotonous readings of the charges.  Every now and then an outburst from an angry defendant would pull him out of the haze, but for the most part the words blended together and lost their meaning.  He didn’t even really pay attention to what his friends were whispering about.  Then a loud shout made him sit up.

He was in a different courtroom.  It was about the same size, but with lower ceilings and dingier walls.  There were a whole bunch of people shouting and screaming, the judge was banging his gavel, and the bailiffs were restraining people.  Suddenly his mother grabbed him by the hand and began to drag him away.  He looked around, confused.  He saw his father, looking much younger, sitting in the defendant’s chair.  He was laughing at a person who was sitting in the witness stand.  His laughter carried above all the noise: cold, maniacal, and echoing in Chris’ head.

“Chris.”

Chris started awake.  He’d fallen asleep and Will was nudging him.

“Huh, what?”

“Julian’s been called.”

He turned quickly and gave Julian a thumbs up.  A stupid gesture, but it was all he could manage at the moment.  He was still trying to suss out what he’d just dreamed about.  Had that only been a dream?  Or had that been a memory?  The remnants of whatever it was were already slipping through his fingers.  He could feel it drain out of him like water over a grate.  That had been bizarre.  He shook himself and focused on what was going on in this courtroom.

The judge was kind of an ass.  And then he became an asshole.  Chris’ eyes went wide when he essentially made a personal attack on Mrs. Harder.  Chris didn’t even check to see if Will was reacting; he simply leaned over and grabbed him to hold him down.  Scott was on their friend’s other side and clamped a hand over his mouth.  Fortunately Mrs. Harder knew how to handle the judge and he settled down a bit after that.  More or less.  He apparently needed a pee break.

Julian came over to talk with them during the recess.  Well, fidget nervously while pretending to listen to them anyway.  Will was asking his mother if he could do terrible things to the judge’s children late, late at night, and Scott excused himself to get some water.  Anna looked forlornly after him.  Chris caught her eye, gave her a stern look, and nodded after Scott.  She sighed and got up to follow him.  The rest of the girls somehow managed to find something to talk about.  Laney was trying to empathize with Julian by relating her own experiences in court when her parents got divorced, but Chris didn’t think he was paying attention.

Just before the judge returned, Scott and Anna came back.  Chris was pleased that they had come back together and became even happier when he saw Scott give Anna’s hand a small squeeze before taking his seat next to Will.  At least one thing was working itself out.  Now they just had to see what happened with Julian.  Chris put a hand over his mouth to hide his smile.  Will was about to do some serious damage to the back of Julian’s grandmother’s head with that glare.  Then the judge asked Julian to make a statement.  Chris was half expecting him to bring up the forces of the Universe and the “come what may” attitude of his parents, but he didn’t.  He was completely unguarded and honest about his expectations and fears and worries.  Julian had always been an honest guy, but this was different.  He didn’t seem like himself anymore.  He felt better when Julian made fun of Scott, but the person who stood before the court was definitely a different person from the one he’d seen playing soccer two months ago.  He was stronger and braver than Chris could ever be.

After the judge’s decision to grant Julian’s petition—and after that speech, who could deny it to him?—they congregated out by Chris’ car to give Julian a chance to talk with his grandmother.  Liz was leaning against Will, but Chris didn’t think he knew she was there.  Anna and Scott were standing beside each other, like they always used to do.  It was good because Scott was visibly less depressed than he had been that morning, but he knew Anna must be suffering.  Unrequited love sucked hard.  He wished Scott would open up his eyes and see her.  They would be good together.  Maybe.  Possibly.  If they didn’t kill each other.

“Look out,” Scott said, “There’s an adult coming.”

Chris quickly put his hands behind his back like he was hiding something.  Everyone tried to look innocent.  Julian was not amused.  Chris hung back while they decided what to do.  As cliché at it seemed for rowdy high school students to get together and drink cheap beer, it didn’t seem like that bad of an idea.  Chris was tired of being reasonable.  He didn’t even mind all the gas—and money—they wasted by driving all over town.  He felt sorry for Laney that she couldn’t play with them.  Julian seemed quite certain that he was going to get drunk tonight and that would be the girl’s best chance of taking advantage of him.  Oh well.  Maybe Anna could get Scott to fool around with her.  Then he had to wonder if Julian would try to get Will to fool around with him.  Probably.  Will’s only choices were to stay sober or get drunk enough himself that he wouldn’t remember what they did in the morning.  He chose sobriety.  The lucky bastard.

It wasn’t until 11:00 and Liz said she had to go home before Chris remembered that he needed to call his mother.  And that was going to be an interesting phone call now that he was a little tipsy.  He called her on the way back from the bus stop since once they got back to the house Scott’s shouting would start to reverberate off the walls.

“Hey, Mommy.”

“Chris, is that you?”

“Yes.  I am going to stay at Julian’s.  We are having a sleepover.”

“Well, I wish you would have called me sooner.  I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell phone.”

“I am sorry.”

“Fortunately Mrs. Harder filled me in…”

His mother droned on and Chris nearly ran into a light pole.  Will guided him back onto the sidewalk.  He listened to the buzzing in his ear.  What was all that?

“…that clog really needs to get taken care of.  I want you home at a reasonable hour tomorrow morning.”

“Okay.  I will be home tomorrow morning.”

“All right.  Have fun.  And don’t get too rowdy.  I don’t want you disturbing Julian’s grandmother.”

“Oh, Julian’s grandmother.  I think she went—”

Will grabbed the phone from him.  “She went to bed already so we’re being quiet.  Goodnight, Ms. Pelletier.”

Will hung up and Chris looked at him blankly.  “Why did you call her Ms. Pelletier?  Her name’s Mom.”

Back at the house Chris found five different kinds of liquor and decided to make a Long Island iced tea, without the iced tea.  Scott was singing Disney songs and Will was about to lose his virginity to Julian if he didn’t put up a better fight.  Then Scott started spilling the beans about Antoinette.  Stupid drunk.  He would never spill the beans about something important.  Like the money heist.  Chris giggled.  How funny.  A money heist.  He sat up, a little confused.  Why was he on the floor?  Something helped him stand up and then he was sitting on something much softer.  He fell to his side and snuggled into the softness.  Mmm.  Nice couch.

 

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

 

Chris heard the back door open and then someone walking around in the kitchen.  But he shouldn’t be able to hear those sounds if he was in his bedroom.  He moved a little and realized he was trapped between two things.  One was soft and the other wasn’t hard exactly, but it was solid.  He recognized that kind of thing.  It was a person.  He moved an arm and felt the person beside him shift back against him.  He’d never technically woken up with someone before, but it wasn’t so bad.  He tightened his arm around the person’s middle and snuggled closer to the warmth.  He moved his head and felt soft skin beneath his lips and pressed against it without really kissing it.  The person let out a noise and pushed back against him again.  For once, his morning wood might come in handy.  That thought occurred simultaneously with the thought that the voice he heard was familiar…but not quite…right.

The sound of someone retching pulled him off of his fluffy cloud.  He tried to open his eyes, but they were crusted together with eye boogers.  The person in his arms arched against him and the friction did wonders for his nether region.  He forced his eyes open and then quickly shut them.  It was very, very bright out there.  He tried again and saw nothing but white.  He’d gone blind.  Plus his mouth was dry and his head hurt.  He pulled back a little.  No, he hadn’t gone blind.  He was just staring at the back of a platinum blonde’s head.  So, that was good news.  Of course, his head still hurt like the devil.

“Anyone else need help puking before I leave?” he heard Will call out.

If that was Will, then more than likely the platinum blonde was…Chris shoved Scott off the couch.  The blond made an unpleasant noise and then called out “Maybe,” in response to Will’s question.  Chris heard feet coming.  He could not let Will see him like this.  He tried to reach for a pillow that was at the end of the couch.  It wasn’t coming closer to him.  Then it was in his hand.  He used it to cover his erection and tried to hide his face.  He couldn’t quite feel anything yet, but he was pretty sure he was blushing.  His best friend had given him a boner.  Just…don’t think about it.  He left the pillow where it was and let his arm flop over the side of the couch.  He fell asleep and wasn’t aware of a single thing until Julian nudged him awake.

He could barely form the words necessary to hold a short conversation with Julian.  He felt really heavy, like gravity had suddenly tripled its pull on him.  His body ached when he got off the couch.  Not in the way his muscles felt after a day of exercise, but like when he had the flu.  His stomach grumbled at him.  At least one part of him was behaving as usual.  He wearily followed his friends toward the kitchen.  Chris couldn’t quite look at Scott while the three of them rummaged for food in the cabinets.  Did Scott know what had happened earlier in the morning?  Maybe he shouldn’t make such a big deal out of it.  It happened all the time, right?  Getting intoxicated and waking up next to someone you didn’t mean to was a part of life.  Simple as that.  Once Julian ran for the bathroom and left Scott and Chris alone, he felt that maybe it was a bit more complicated.

“Ugh.”  Scott slammed a box of cereal on the table.  “None of these cereals have marshmallows in them.  I need to go home and eat.  Plus I should get cleaned up before I go over to Antoinette’s.”

Chris reached for the box of plain Cheerio’s and had difficulty opening the top because his fingers felt thick.

“You’re going to go see her?  I thought you said last night you were going to dump her.”

“Well, I am.  I feel so shitty today I could be mean to anybody.  And her family will all be out of the house today, so it’ll be a good time to do it.  I mean, I obviously can’t take her out to a public place so she won’t make a scene.  We can’t go anywhere together in public.”

Scott bent over to pick up a shoe.  “Is this mine?” he asked.

Chris nodded.  “I think so.”

Scott sat down in a chair to put his shoes on.

“You’re going to leave right now?”

“Yeah.  I’m supposed to meet her at noon.  I can probably catch the 11:05 bus if I run.”

Chris fidgeted with the cereal in his hand as his friend finished tying his shoes.

“Hey, how much do you remember from last night?”

“Um.  Pretty much everything, but it’s really hazy.  Like it happened a long time ago.  Though one thing is strange.  I definitely remember falling asleep on the couch last night, but I woke up in the bathroom this morning.  I can’t remember how I got from one to the other.”

Chris sighed in relief.  He must not have been awake when he’d been squirming around so much.

“Oh, I think Will took you in there.  He thought you might throw up.”

“Ah.”

Scott started to leave, but Chris couldn’t let it go.

“Hey, Scott, like, you know weird stuff happens when you drink, right?  And sometimes stuff happens that wouldn’t ordinarily happen.”  He started tracing circles on top of the table and stared at his finger until it blurred.  “But, like, if it did, it wouldn’t be something to obsess or worry about and you’d just want to forget it, right?  I mean _if_ something weird happened.”

Chris looked up.  Scott was grinning at his discomfort.

“What?  You mean, like, waking up with your friend’s rod rubbing against your ass?  Don’t worry.  It’s something I’d quickly put out of my head as a case of mistaken identity.  Though, I could understand why he might be so excited to be pressed up against me.  I am really hot after all.”

Chris threw a handful of Cheerios at him.  “Go break up with your two-timing skank, you jerk.”

Scott laughed and left the kitchen.  The front door opened and closed and Chris fumed at the table.  He thought about getting a bowl and some milk to eat his cereal with, but then had an image of curdled milk.  His stomach turned over and he clutched the cardboard box in his hands.  The bag and cereal crunched under the pressure.  He released the box once the feeling passed and then reached inside to eat more of the stuff dry.  Julian returned from the bathroom looking confused.

“Where’s Scott?”

“He said he had to meet Antoinette at like, noon or something.  And he wanted to shower first.  He decided he’d better run and catch the 11:05 bus.”

They ate their breakfast and talked about their absent friends.  That’s what they got for running off.  Chris had been hoping Julian would want him to stay longer; he didn’t want to go home.  But, he knew how embarrassing it was to be emotional in front of your guy friends.  Besides, he’d already been as close to one of his friends as he cared to be for one day.  And as such, he was in desperate need of a shower.  He did want to get the buildup of dirt and oil off his body plus the alcohol smell that had soaked into his skin, but the heavy feeling he was experiencing was causing all other sensations to linger.  And he could still feel Scott on him.  That was just gross.  Not as gross as it should have been, but it was a relief to know that it did make him feel a little icky.

The shower momentarily made his head hurt worse, but he turned the temperature down and soon the aches in his body and head eased away.  When he got out he felt zestfully clean.  And he hadn’t even used that brand of soap.  He searched around in Julian’s bathroom and found an extra unopened toothbrush.  He hoped Julian hadn’t been planning on switching his old one out anytime soon.  He felt a little weird running quickly across the hall from the bathroom to Julian’s bedroom—because he was naked.  He didn’t even wrap a towel around himself, but who would see him?

Julian was a little bit taller than he was, but his clothes fit him pretty well.  He picked out jeans because Julian was least likely to wear those and a greenish T-shirt that looked a little too ordinary for him to care about missing for a couple days.  He put his own socks and shoes on and then wadded up the clothes he’d worn yesterday.  He felt around the wad as he walked downstairs.  Then he searched through the pockets of his pants.  He found his wallet, but his car keys were missing.  He searched around the kitchen and living room and enlisted Julian’s help.  After twenty minutes of looking in every reasonable location, Julian suggested looking in places you wouldn’t expect to find keys.  They had been pretty drunk last night.  Sure enough, ten minutes later, his keys were located in the freezer.  Thankfully not due to a drunken stupor, but a concerned friend with a vicious personality.  Yes, Will loved them and would take care of them, but not without making their lives difficult for making him go through the effort of being caring and thoughtful.

At last he was finally on his way home and could feel the dread build up in his stomach like it was physically there.  No matter how clean and alert he was now, his mother would definitely know he had been drinking.  And he only had chores waiting for him when he got there.  Where else could he go?  Julian didn’t want him, Will had a game, and Scott was “breaking up” with Antoinette.  He needed more friends.  What were the girls doing?  It wouldn’t matter; he wouldn’t want to be doing it himself.  He was still in the mood to just lie around and recuperate.  Then the thought occurred to him that he could go to his father’s.  It wasn’t like _he_ was going to yell at him for drinking.  More than likely.  And even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to punish him.

Not too much later Chris pulled into the motel parking lot.  There was a woman hanging out by room 123.  She’d been there longer than his dad had.  He couldn’t believe people really just lived in motels.  He couldn’t imagine it being cheaper than just renting an apartment.  Though he guessed it was technically like getting free maid service.  The woman gave him a leer.

“Who do you keep servicing, little boy?  I see you here all the time.  You feel like expanding your clientele?”

Chris felt sick again.  She was dressed in a dirty pink robe and was missing a tooth.

“Um.  I come here to see my dad.”

“Mmm.  Kinky.”

Chris rolled his eyes and ran around the corner to get away from her.  His father’s room was number 146.  He pounded loudly on the door and glanced back to make sure the woman hadn’t followed him.  The door opened.  Chris looked at his father; he had his eyes closed.

“Let me guess.  Just based on that knock alone, it must be my son.”  He peeked an eye open.  “Ah, I was right.  Come on in.”  He slapped Chris on the back to knock the scowl off his face.  “What brings you here?”

Chris walked to the unmade bed and flopped ungracefully onto it.  He’d sat on the bed before, he knew it was uncomfortable, but right now it felt like a satin, down feather-filled pillow.  His father sat in one of the chairs and raised an eyebrow at him.

“You been drinking?”

“You can tell?”

“Well, it was either that or drugs, but I figured alcohol was a safer bet.”

“Yeah.  My friends and I kind of went overboard last night.”

“Any special reason?”

“Celebratory mourning.  Like, mourning with a u.”

“What happened?”

“My friend whose parents died a couple months back—the day you first came to see me actually—got emancipated yesterday.  So, he was happy that he could take care of himself and not live with these grandparents that are strangers to him, but it seemed weird to celebrate it because it only happened because his parents died.”

“Huh.  That’s pretty messed up.”

“Right?”  Chris sat partially up on his elbows and looked at his dad.  He only shaved once a week or so, and right now he was close to having a full beard.  He wore the jeans and T-shirt Chris had bought him and both the clothes and his body appeared to be clean.    Chris always wondered why he expected his father to be dirty or unkempt.  He didn’t really fit the image of a convict on the run.  But…he didn’t really look like a father either.  Whenever he’d seen Will’s or Scott’s fathers, they had almost always been in suits.  And Julian’s father had always had that “easygoing dad” look.  His father looked like a man down on his luck.  Or one that had never tried to make anything of his life.  It was disheartening.

His father slapped his knees and stood up.  “Well, today’s the day.”

Chris stayed half propped up on the bed and stared blankly.  The day for what?  “Oh!”  Chris bolted upright.  “You’re gonna—you’re gonna break into that house today?”  His voice was hoarse.

“Yep.  I think it’s time and I think I’m ready.  So,” he said bending down to pat Chris’ knee, “you gonna come along?  Make sure I don’t get into any trouble?”

Chris sighed heavily.  “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”

“Um…no.”

“Alright.  I’ll go.”

His father laughed.  “I was just kidding, Chris.  You’re not coming.  I’m not risking you getting in trouble.”

Chris jumped off the bed.  “Fuck that!  I’m involved now.  And I’m going to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.  Which based on our past reconnaissance missions, seems rather likely.”

“Okay, okay.  I’m not going to tell you what to do with your life.  But you do realize that if we get caught, being a minor isn’t going to save you from all the laws you’ve broken.”

Chris worked his jaw.  “I know.  I’m making this decision fully aware of how retarded it is.”

His father smiled.  “All right then.  I guess it gets dark around, what, 8:00 now?”

“Yeah…”  Chris trailed off as he thought about what Scott had said earlier.  “I think we should go in the middle of the day.  Like, now even.  I know for a fact that all the people who live there will be out for the day.”

“And how do you know that?”

Chris gave his father a smug smile.  “I know a guy.”

His father laughed.  “Alright, alright.  Protect your sources.  Well.  Let’s get the supplies and head on over.”

As soon as Chris stood up from the bed to help his father grab the tools and paint, his stomach dropped out from underneath him.  And it stayed somewhere low in his body, rolling and sloshing around as they walked out into the parking lot, got into Chris’ car, and headed for the Bixby’s house.  It was a feeling of nausea, but not like he was going to throw up.  Just like he was stuck at the top of a roller coaster and couldn’t have the release of rushing down the track.  The feeling was so distracting he’d made his father drive.  Probably not a good idea since he didn’t have a license, but the man at least had enough sense to carefully obey all the traffic laws.  Which in a way was just as conspicuous.

As they drew closer to the neighborhood, Chris gnawed on his thumb and tried to remember what exactly Scott had said.  He’d said that her family would be gone, but that he couldn’t take her out anywhere.  So, was he going to break up with her in her house?  Was he really that dumb?  Well, maybe it wasn’t all that bad.  Then he could just leave and she’d be able to run to her room crying.  Crap.  That meant they were probably there.  Unless he’d already done it.  He checked his watch.  It was a little past noon.  He hadn’t planned on meeting her until noon, and Scott was incapable of making a point in less than twenty minutes.

Chris pulled out his phone and called Scott.  He answered halfway through the first ring.

“Yeah?”

“Scott, it’s Chris.”

“Yeah, hi.  What’s up?  Do you need me to, like, leave and go somewhere?”

“Well, yeah.  And take Antoinette with you.”

“Huh?”

“Are you in the middle of dumping her?”

“No.  I just got to her house.  I haven’t gone in yet.  I was just hoping someone would get me out of having to go through with it.”

“Oh, sorry.  I’m not gonna do that.  I think you should still do it.”

Scott sighed melodramatically.  “Okay.”

“Are you going to take her somewhere to do it?”

“No, I’m just going to do it here.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take her somewhere?”

“Like where?  I can’t go out any place in public with her, and if she’s going to be all upset it would be better if we were someplace that I could just leave her and she’d be okay by herself.”

“Yeah, I know.  It’s not a bad idea.”

“Okay.  Well, I’m going to do it now before I chicken out.  I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.  Uh, wait, Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“One more thing.  If, like, you’re over there.  And you hear any weird sounds.  Just ignore them, okay?”

“What?  I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get.  Just, ignore any weird sounds you might hear.”

“Um.  Okay.  Sure.  But, weird like when my Aunt Jaclyn eats pudding or like an alien having trouble breathing our atmosphere?”

“Either, you goober.”

“Hey!  Shut-up!  I’m just trying to fully understand your instructions.”

“Look, just never mind.  Good luck.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he grumbled and hung up.

Chris let his head fallback against the headrest.  This was going to be a disaster.  Not only would they get caught after Antoinette flipped out and called the police, Scott would never forgive him for lying to him about meeting his father or preventing him from dumping Antoinette.  This sucked.  Why was this money so important?  It’s not like it was a million dollars in the wall.  And more than likely, the construction crew already found it and made off with it years ago.

His father pulled into the entrance of the gated community.  The guard bent over to make sure Chris was also in his car and then opened the door for them.  At least the Green’s hadn’t called them up and told them to ban him from the property.  Then Chris had to wonder if Karen had told her parents what had happened.  Maybe she was keeping it to herself.  He wouldn’t blame her if she did.  More than likely there would be a few choice words about how stupid she had been to date a white boy in the first place.

“Hey, Dad, I kind of broke up with my girlfriend, so we shouldn’t park on her street.”

“Oh, really?” his father mused and turned into a cul-de-sac with an empty lot at the end.  “Why did you dump her?  She seemed like she offered everything a teenaged boy really wants in a girlfriend.”

“Believe it or not, Dad, not all teenaged boys only care about sex.”

His father pulled up against the curb and looked at him.  “I don’t believe it.”

Chris crossed his arms in a huff and slouched into the bucket seat.  He wasn’t angry with his father for thinking that way, he was angry with himself for knowing that it was partly true.  How many times had he reconsidered calling Karen and begging for forgiveness in the last three weeks?  About ten; all of which had been when he’d been alone in his room at night.  Lame.

“Okay,” his father got his attention, “we can cut through these woods here.”  He ran a hand over his beard and the scratching sound was foreign to Chris’ ears.  “The only real problem will be getting from the car to the tree line.  Once we’re in it’ll be easy to make our way over to the house undetected and once we’re behind the house it’s pretty difficult for neighbors to just look out a window and see what’s going on in the back.”

“You want to go in through the back?”

“I think it would be best.”

“What about the alarm?”

“Well, if judging from that phone conversation someone actually _will_ be in the house…”

Chris flushed.

“…more than likely it will be turned off.  Most people leave their alarms off during the day if they’re at home so they don’t have to put the code in every time they let the dog out or go for the paper.  And if it is on, you usually have about thirty to sixty seconds to deactivate it.  I saw where it was on the wall the first time I was in there, so if I can make it to the basement and upstairs quickly enough, I should be able to get it off in time.”

“There were a lot of subjunctives in those sentences.”

“I’m not quite sure what that means, but don’t worry.”

They got out of the car, looking casual, like they did this everyday.  They gathered their supplies and walked meaningfully, but not pointedly toward the woods.  Once they were far enough inside, they glanced back out to see if anyone was on the street or peeking through their windows.  It looked clear.  They struggled through the tangled woods.  It wasn’t so much trees as really tall brush.  Bushes and bramble and fallen tree trunks littered the floor and the evergreen trees were young enough that their branches were more or less at the same level as their faces.  They got a few scratches, but it wasn’t nearly bad enough to deter even Chris.  He realized that this might be the first time he’d ever been in the forest with his father.

“You know, Dad,” he said, making a face as a branch ripped a small hole in Julian’s shirt, “I just realized that you never took me camping before.”

“I didn’t?  Well, this is so much better, isn’t it?”

Chris smiled as he avoided what had to have been some woodland creature’s excrement and said, “Kind of.”

Before long they were behind the Bixby’s house.  They crouched at the edge of the woods and examined the house.  Chris wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be examining it for, but his father looked intent, so he tried to do the same.  His father opened the backpack he brought along and dug out an electronic device with some electrodes attached to it.

“I’ve changed my mind.  I’m going to go in around the front and then come down and let you in.  That way if something goes wrong, you won’t actually be in the house or anything.  If you hear an alarm, I want you to go back through the woods, get your car, and get out of here.  Don’t wait for me.  I’ll make my own way out, okay?”

“Well, I’ll just wait at my car—”

“No.”

Chris started at his father’s forceful voice.  The man grabbed his son by the shoulders and gave him a little shake as he made firm eye contact.

“You will listen to me, Chris.  You stay here until I come get you.  If the alarm goes off or I don’t come for you in ten minutes, you will go back to your car and get out of here.  Are we clear?”

Chris swallowed.  “Yeah, Dad, I got it.  I promise.”

“Good boy.”  He leaned forward and kissed Chris on the top of his head and then took the device with him as he snuck out of the woods.  Now Chris was feeling nervous again.  His father had scared him.  He picked up a stick and broke it into little tiny pieces as he waited.  The seconds felt like hours.  How long had his father been gone?  When did the ten minutes start?  From the time he left the woods or from the time he disappeared around the front of the house?  Chris looked at this watch.  He couldn’t remember when exactly his father had left.  What if this was a test?  What if he didn’t leave in ten minutes?  Would his father come back and tell him to just leave because he couldn’t be trusted to follow orders?  He looked at his watch again.  Had only thirty seconds really passed?  Or had he missed it going around?  How long had it been?!

The basement door started to slide open.  Chris started violently and backed into the woods, afraid that he would be seen.  His father stepped outside and waved him over.  He sat still and took in a few breaths.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to support himself if he stood up right now.  After a couple calming breathes, he used a tree to help him stand very slowly.  He didn’t want to upset what was left of the balance in his body.  He picked up the rest of the supplies and walked shakily out of the woods.  He made it onto the lower deck and his father wrapped an arm around him and ruffled his hair.

“Relax, Chris.  You have terrible nerves.  You’d make a God awful criminal.”

“I know, Dad.”

They slipped inside the basement and shut the door behind them.  Chris felt weird being in some stranger’s house.

“So, I guess you really do know how to pick locks and disable alarms.”

His father smiled sheepishly.  “Actually, the door was unlocked and the alarm was off.”

“Really?  That’s not very safe.”

“I know.  Anybody could just waltz right in.  So, are you sure there’s no one here?  Or just whoever you were talking to earlier?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure, but I don’t know where they’d be.  So, we need to be careful.”

“All right.  Check around down here and on the main floor.  Make sure there’s no one around.  I’m going to go get started upstairs.  The place is in the hall, so I won’t have to go in anyone’s room.  But if they’re wandering around…”

He didn’t finish the sentence and Chris was more than capable of filling in a dozen or so scenarios for what would happen if Scott and/or Antoinette found them.  His father took their gear and headed back up the carpeted stairs.  Chris slunk around in the basement.  It was huge.  There was a pool table, a foosball table, a dartboard, a big screen TV, two computers, and small home theater in the back.  Spoiled little rich kids.  Not even Scott’s basement was this bad.  Then he made his way upstairs.  This looked more like Scott’s and Will’s houses.  The rooms were big, the ceilings were high, and all the rooms were perfectly coordinated like an interior designer had been hired to take care of everything.  Both the floors were empty.  And it was so quiet in the house.  Maybe Scott had decided to take her out after all.  Or maybe Antoinette had bullied him into taking her somewhere.  That seemed more likely.  He didn’t know Antoinette that well but based on what little he’d heard from Scott, she was the one calling all the shots.

Chris made his way the foyer.  He felt a little bad for snooping around in someone’s house, but it was kind of fun; like he was in a spy movie.  He peeked out one of the front windows.  The neighborhood seemed quiet.  He couldn’t really see Karen’s house from the angle he was at.  He turned around to start up the stairs and saw Scott’s shoes sitting at the base.  His wallet and keys had been dropped off on a nearby table.  Chris launched himself up the stairs and turned the corner to the hallway.  His father was kneeling on a piece canvas and holding a large hammer in his hand.  Chris put out a hand to prevent him from swinging the tool into the wall.

“I don’t think anyone’s here,” his father said in a normal voice, which seemed deafening to Chris.

“Shhhhhh!  They are here,” he whispered.  “Hang on.”

He turned and looked inside the master bedroom behind him.  It was empty.  He closed the door when he left and walked down the hall.  The only place they could be was on the other side of his father from the stairs.  No one should be able to sneak up on them.  He just had to make sure that nobody came out of one of these bedrooms.  He tiptoed down the hallway and peeked into the rooms as he passed.  Three bedrooms and a bathroom were empty.  He closed the doors.  He crept past a Little Mermaid nightlight and toward the last room.  It was open a crack and a sliver of light fell into the dim hallway.  He didn’t have to get much closer before he heard the murmur of voices.  Shit.  They were _so_ here.  He looked back at his father and gave him the signal to go ahead, but to be _very_ quiet about it.

Chris sat down next to the door and leaned against the wall.  He strained his ears to try to make out what they were saying.  He knew he shouldn’t be spying on them, but he was way too curious about this whole situation.  Scott and Antoinette were a very random pairing.  He leaned closer to the door, but couldn’t make out distinct words.  They were talking too softly.  Or maybe it was because they weren’t talking.  Maybe they were just making noises.  Chris’ mouth dropped open at the thought.  He wouldn’t…would he?

Chris winced as the hammer thunked into the wall.  He should have known there would be no way to keep that quiet.  Then he heard the words he was dreading come from inside the bedroom.

“Did you hear something?”

There was a pause.  Chris held his breath.  Then Scott spoke.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

Chris exhaled as quietly as he could.

“No, I’m sure I did.”

“So what?” Scott retorted.

Chris listened carefully to hear her response or some clue that there was movement toward the door.  There was none.  His father made an even louder noise.  He looked down the hall at his father with a “Will you knock that off?” look, but his father was too busy making a hole in the wall.  He turned back to the room.  Antoinette didn’t ask about the sound.  That was strange.  The last two bangs had definitely been louder than the first.  She obviously hadn’t noticed them.  What was Scott doing to keep her occupied?  Then he heard a feminine moan.  One of the choked off kinds that girls made when they didn’t want to make noises.  It was followed by more noises that caused heat to rise in Chris’ body.  He felt like such a pervert listening to it through the partially open door.  His fingers itched as he stared at the crack in the door.  Then he couldn’t take it anymore.  He reached out a hand and pushed gently on the door.  It opened a centimeter at a time.  Once it was a couple inches open, Chris leaned forward to look inside.

He was a little alarmed at first.  There were unicorns and Carebears and a white canopy bed.  Scott wasn’t actually fooling around with one of her little sisters, was he?  Then he saw them on the bed.  And it was definitely Antoinette.  He saw her face clearly as she sat back and pulled her shirt off.  Scott was lying on the bed and Antoinette straddled him.  Her ample bosom jiggled nicely in her bra as she tossed the shirt aside.  Scott’s hands were on her hips, but had gotten there by sliding her skirt up and out of the way, leaving her tanned, shapely legs fully exposed.  Chris bit his lip.  Antoinette really was gorgeous.  How on earth had Scott landed her?  And did Anna have any idea just how stiff her competition was?  Anna was cute, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Antoinette.  Or maybe he was just biased because he was seeing the blonde with very little clothes on.

He finally managed to look away from Antoinette to Scott and put a hand over his mouth to hold back the laughter.  The poor boy looked scared out of his wits.  He felt bad.  Was Scott doing this because he thought he was following Chris’ request?  He hoped they wouldn’t end up going too far, but from the determined look in Antoinette’s eyes, Chris had a feeling Scott was about to lose his status as an unmolested drop of dew on a newly opened rosebud too.

Antoinette had been unbuttoning his shirt and now that she was done, she yanked him up so that she could kiss him as she pushed the fabric off his shoulders.  Chris’ jaw dropped.  What activity did Scott do that would give him those kind of muscles?  He wasn’t even flexing and yet his biceps and deltoids could easily be seen rippling through his skin.  His abs were well defined too.  Chris frowned.  He was certain that Scott was even lazier than he was.  It wasn’t fair.  How had he gotten such a toned body?

“Mmm,” Antoinette moaned around Scott’s mouth.  “You are so hot, Scott.”

Chris shifted uncomfortably.  That noise had gotten to him.  He could only imagine what it had done to Scott.  He was starting to feel really uncomfortable in general by watching them as things started to get a little intense.  He hooked his fingers in the small opening on the hinge side of the door and started to close the door again.  He glanced inside one more time and saw Antoinette shove Scott back onto the bed.  She ran her hands up his chest and her fingers found his dark nipples.  Chris cringed when he saw how hard she twisted them.  Then he raised an eyebrow as he saw Scott arch his back and open his mouth in a soundless cry of ecstasy from the sensation.  He definitely hadn’t been as turned off by it as Chris had been.  Chris shook his head.  For some reason it only mildly surprised him to learn that Scott was into pain.

Chris got the door closed back to the point where it had been before and crawled quietly away from the room.  He really didn’t want to hear his friend grunting and groaning in pleasure underneath some hot cheerleader.  Well, Antoinette wasn’t a cheerleader, but if Calverton had cheerleaders, he was pretty sure she would be one.

In the short time he’d been peeping—no, being lookout—his father had managed to break through the drywall and create a hole about five inches in diameter.  It looked absolutely huge in the blank wall.  He squatted on the canvas sheet beside his father and watched him stick his arm into the hole.  The money better not be too far in because there was no way his father’s arm would fit in the hole past the elbow.  Even Chris’ arm wouldn’t fit.  They’d either have to make it bigger or ask Antoinette for help.  Chris chewed a nail as he watched his father grope around.  What would happen if the money wasn’t there?  Would his father go crazy and start tearing up the entire wall?

“Ah, ha!” his father said triumphantly.  He pulled his arm out and then worked a plastic bag and its contents out through the hole.  He had to tug on it a bit and one side of the hole collapsed outward.  He made a “whoops” face, and Chris just looked at the ceiling.  Hands down this was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever done in his life.  And he was including the time he’d put on a Black Panther outfit for Karen.

“Taa-daa!” his father whispered and handed the bag to Chris.  Then he opened the small container of plaster he’d brought and began to apply it to the hole.  Chris held the grocery bag in his hands.  He could tell there were stacks of money-shaped objects in it, but it only weighed about five pounds or so.  Chris couldn’t believe they’d done something this crazy for five pounds of money.  There was hardly anything in the bag.

“Dad, are you serious?” he whispered.  “We went through all this, for this?  Is it really worth this?”

“Well, that’s not chump change in there, Chris.  It’s about $200,000.”

Chris’ eyebrows shot up.  “Seriously?  There’s $200,000 in here?  It doesn’t seem like a lot.”

“Well, it’s one hundred dollar bills, son.  A single bill doesn’t weigh that much.  Think about how much is in your hands.  Of course nowadays it’s best to use the Euro.  The Euro comes in an even higher denomination, so it’s easier to ship cash around.  Do you have any idea how much a million dollars weighs?”

“No,” Chris said dryly, “I don’t.”

His father grinned and smoothed the plaster out.  It had covered up the hole pretty well.  “What do they teach kids in schools these days?”

His father began to open the small canister of paint and Chris glanced at the plaster.

“Is that dry?  And will that really hold over a hole that big?”

“It’ll be all right.  I mean, if anyone bumps into it with any real force it’ll fall away, but no one will really notice it or bother it down here.  Besides, the less time we spend here the better.  I’m surprised you didn’t tell me to try to dye the plaster or something to speed things up.”

Chris made a face at him.  Jerk.

“Hey, go make sure they’re still busy.  The paint fumes aren’t going to be that strong, but they may hear me packing up if they’re already listening for sounds.”

Chris squeezed the money in his hands.  His face up to the tips of his ears had gone red.  Did his father know exactly how they were keeping themselves busy?  He couldn’t go back down that hallway.  His father waved him off with the brush.

“Go on.”

Chris stood up and clutched the money to his chest as he walked slowly and quietly down the hall.  It hadn’t been that long; there was no way they were done yet, right?  Of course, this was Scott’s first time.  It might be over before it even started.  His own first time had gone by a little more quickly than he’d intended.  Fortunately Karen had been understanding.  Sort of.  He got within a couple feet of the door and could clearly hear the bed squeaking.  Then Antoinette gasped out Scott’s name.  Chris turned tail and fairly ran back to his father.  He might never get that sound out of his ears.  It was weird and bizarre.  It was also very wrong.  Chris actually felt guilty.  Scott wasn’t a sexual being.  He just wasn’t supposed to be.  Had this happened because of him?  Had he pushed his friend into doing this?  But, Scott was a normal teenage boy.  It wasn’t that strange for him to want and then have sex.  Chris crouched down beside his father as the man folded all his supplies up in the canvas sheet and then stuffed them into the backpack.  Chris felt like he was going to cry.  It was so stupid.  Why did he feel so protective of Scott?  Why did he feel like he’d just raped his friend?  It had to be the guilt of breaking into the house.  It was compounding the guilt of getting Scott involved.

“Chris?”  He looked up at his father.  “Chris, are you okay?”

Chris shook his head.  “We need to go.”

They stood up and started for the stairs.  Chris glanced back at the wall.  The paint didn’t exactly match the rest of the wall.  Maybe it would look better when it dried.  It wasn’t too bad though.  It was low enough on the wall that someone would have to purposely take the time to look at it in order to notice something.  Hopefully.  He and his father hurried down the stairs and then continued on to the basement.  They went out the back door and slipped into the woods.  This time Chris had a much harder time fighting his way through the tangle.  He was jumpy from the adrenaline rushing through his body and his thoughts were a jumble.  He couldn’t believe he’d just broken into someone’s house to retrieve some drug money and witnessed his best friend losing his virginity.  He felt like screaming but knew that would be a bad idea while they were still in a position to get caught.

When they made it back to the street where his car was waiting, his father made him hold still while he looked around.  Chris thought his body might vibrate out of his skin.  He gripped the money like it would help keep him in place if he suddenly started to quiver away.  Then his father pulled on his arm and they walked swiftly toward his car.  He told his father he couldn’t drive and got into the passenger seat.  They drove off down the street, checking review and side mirrors the whole way back to the main entrance.  Then they were outside and making their way safely back toward the motel.  His father let out a shaky laugh and Chris could finally breathe again.  They laughed nervously together, and then laughed to release all the tension in their bodies.

Chris relaxed into his seat.  Now that he could breathe easier, he could think more clearly.  The guilt he’d felt over Scott eased somewhat.  He felt silly for the reaction he’d had at the house.  He’d actually felt like he himself and held Scott down and forced him into sex.  Now he knew that wasn’t really the case.  Maybe Scott wouldn’t have gone all the way with her today, but he’d obviously not been in the process of breaking up with her when he showed up.  Besides, it was possible Scott hadn’t really heard anything and simply initiated it himself.  It was possible.  He’d call him later that night and find out how he was doing.  He doubted that he’d have to prompt Scott into talking about it, so he wouldn’t have to give himself away about how he knew Scott had something to talk about.  He wondered if he’d bring up the nipple twisting.  Chris let out a disgusted laughed and covered his face with his hands.  He _should not_ know that about his friend.

“What?” his father asked, smiling.

“Nothing.  It’s too gross to even think about.”

When they arrived back at the motel, only about an hour had passed.  To Chris it felt like days had gone by.  He must have lost at least a week off his life during this little escapade.  Once they were inside his father’s room, the man popped open a beer and offered one to Chris.  He shook his head and put out a hand to ward off the alcohol.

“No thanks.  I had enough last night.”

His father laughed and sat on the bed.  Chris plopped cross-legged into one the chairs and opened the bag with the money.  He pulled out a stack of 100s and fanned them with a thumb.

“Wow.  That’s a lot of money,” Chris said.

“Well.  It’s enough to get you all set up.  I’ll get my guy to set an account up for you.  Until then, you’re just going to have to hold onto it.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Chris said as he poked around the bag and counted the stacks, “Mom does like to snoop around my room sometimes.”

“Well, find someplace else to hide it.  Even one of your friend’s houses.  I won’t be here to keep it.”

Chris looked up.  “What do you mean?”

His father took a sip of his beer and then stared at the bottle’s label very intently.  “I’m going to turn myself in.”

Chris couldn’t feel the money in his hands or the chair under his body.  He forced his brain to find another way to interpret that sentence, but only one meaning made any sense.  He shook his head in disbelief, his eyes never straying from his father’s face.

“What?!”

 

Scott

 

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

 

Scott woke up to the sound of silence.  He lay very still and strained his ears to hear anything.  His mother should be shouting at him to hurry up, his sister should be screeching her head off as his brothers ran in circles around her screaming at the tops of their lungs.  But there was nothing.  Not even the sounds of his father moving around.  His father was at work.  Scott was alone in the house.  He still hadn’t quite gotten used to waking up in an empty house.  He’d seen his family three times since his mother had moved them out.  One weekend his mother had met him in the city and two weekends she’d made him drive out to his grandmother’s.  Both times she’d tried to convince him to stay, but as much as he missed his brothers and hated living alone with his father, he knew it was better that way.

He almost never saw his father.  Scott realized that neither of them had changed their schedules, they had just never seen all that much of each other.  It was only apparent now because Scott would go days without seeing a family member except for the twenty minutes it took them to eat their dinner in silence.  Scott had never had to prepare his own meals before, they had always just been ready, but even he managed to figure out that his father wouldn’t think about it.  So, he had gotten in the habit of stopping by various restaurants and getting takeout before he went home.  His father must have noticed because he started leaving money on the counter for him.  It was probably the wrong analogy, but seeing the money on the counter in the mornings made him feel like a whore.

Scott went through his new routine.  He got up, took a shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to eat a bowl of Lucky Charms—not seeing anyone, or speaking to anyone, or hearing any sounds in the house.  He felt like one of those people on a Sci-Fi show who just woke up one morning and realized they were the only person left on the planet.

In the midst of eating his last bite of Lucky Charms, he glanced at his watch.  He choked on the chalky marshmallows and ran upstairs to brush his teeth.  Then he darted into his bedroom to retrieve his wallet and phone and put on his shoes.  He bypassed most of the stairs as he jumped down to the foyer and the momentum caused him to slam into the front door.  He opened it quickly and found Will standing on the stoop with his hand poised in mid-air about to ring the doorbell.  The pretty boy gave him an irritating smile.

“Not bad, Mr. Tardy.  Though we are five minutes late.”

“Bite me.”

“Where?”

Scott blushed and locked the front door on his way out.  They walked quietly toward Will’s mother’s car.  Usually he would get all upset and shout back at his friend, but this morning he just didn’t feel like it.  The silence of the house was finally getting to him.  All the way to the courthouse Will kept glancing at him in the rearview mirror.  He seemed distracted and Scott hoped that whatever it was would be enough to keep him from trying to find out what was wrong with him.  He didn’t want to discuss it in front of Will’s mother.  And besides, today was about Julian.  His problems—and Will’s and Chris’ for that matter—needed to be pushed aside until Julian was taken care of.  He wondered what it would be like if Julian got emancipated.  Would it really be that big of a change?  It seemed that the big change came from losing his parents; the hearing was just a formality now.  Then Scott wondered if he should try to get emancipated so that he could get away from his parents and avoid the inevitable position of being stuck between them.  But, no, his parents should still pay for him.  He should squeeze every single penny out of them that he could.

When they arrived at the courthouse, Julian and his grandmother were already there.  They didn’t look too comfortable sitting next to each other.  Mrs. Harder helped by diverting Julian’s attention to some of the legal matters.  He and Will just sat and watched other people bustle around them in the big lobby.  Will was fidgeting, which wasn’t totally out of character, but it wasn’t common either.  And he hadn’t said anything to Scott yet about his behavior.  Will almost always got himself involved in other people’s business.  Even if he didn’t care about helping the other person out, he was pretty nosy.  Maybe that meant there was something wrong with him.  Should he ask?  But out here in the open?  He didn’t want to get into a sappy discussion about their feelings in front of strangers.  Or his friends for that matter.

Scott sat up straighter as he saw Laney, Riley, and Anna come into the courthouse.  He watched Anna as she walked through the metal detector and got buzzed for her belt.  She had to stand to the side and let the guard wave the wand over her.  Scott’s chest hurt.  He realized he hadn’t physically seen Anna since their fight.  Twenty-five days ago.  But who was counting?  When the girls approached them, there were some murmured greetings, but Scott and Anna didn’t talk.  They didn’t even look at each other.  This couldn’t be how it all ended.

Chris and Liz showed up last.  Scott smiled.  For once he and Anna weren’t the last ones to show up.  He wanted to tease Chris about it, but he got distracted.  He cocked his head as he looked at Chris.

“Did you eat a lollipop?” he asked him.

“Huh?  No.  Why?”

“Your lips are kind of pinkish.”

“Yeah,” Will said, leaning closer.

Chris wiped his lips with his fingers.  “It’s nothing.”

“Boys and girls,” Mrs. Harder called to them.  “It’s time.”

Scott thought it was funny that she was treating Julian’s peers like very young children.  Wasn’t she trying to emancipate one of them?  Well, whatever.  Maybe Julian was responsible enough for it while the rest of them weren’t.  If nothing else Mrs. Harder was ready for it.  She was such a strong, pushy, overbearing woman.  She was kind of sexy.  Scott shook his head.  He should not develop a complex for domineering women.  Though it might already be too late.  Then the judge risked his balls and got snippy with her.  Scott had a split second to decide if he should hold Will down or keep him from saying anything.  There were about 100 feet and two rows of benches between Will and the judge; Will’s words would be able to reach the crotchety old man a lot easier.  He clamped his hand over Will’s mouth and Chris went for the body.  They managed to keep him restrained reasonably well until the judge demanded a potty break.

Scott watched Will climb over the benches to get to his mother.  He had to smile.  His friend’s hair was practically standing up straight he was so offended.  Scott stretched and looked around the courtroom.  Not much was going on.  Julian looked distracted and Chris was staring pretty intently at the judge’s bench.  He decided not to make small talk with the girls and left to go get some water out in the hall.  Since the building was still new, the water fountain wasn’t nearly as gross as it would be in a couple of years.  He took several deep gulps of the cold water and then stood up wiping the corner of his mouth with his wrist.  He stopped moving when he saw Anna standing beside him, wringing her hands.

“Hey, Scott.  I know it’s a weird time, but can we talk for a minute?”

He stared at her.  She looked like a familiar stranger.

“Sure.”

Scott followed her toward the end of the hall where it was empty of people.  He leaned against the wall and waited for her to start.  He wanted to make up with her—and hoped that was why she had approached him—but didn’t really have anything to say to her at the moment, so he let her decide what to do.

“Scott, we can’t do this.  We can’t go on like this.”

His throat closed up.

“We cannot _not_ be friends.”

He let out a shaky breath in relief.

“We need to fix this.  And not just a temporary fix.  We need to be the way we were before.  I need that in my life.  I need _you_.  I mean, life without you just plain sucks.”

“More than life with me in it?”

She smiled a little sadly at him.  “Yeah.  Exactly.”

Scott laughed softly.  “Ouch.”  He smiled too.  “I agree.  I can’t stand not having you as a friend.  As much as the guys mean to me, you’re a huge part of who I am.  You’re like, part of how I define myself.”

She still looked sad.  “I totally agree.  I tried to change our relationship and it totally didn’t work.”

Scott’s brow creased.  She really didn’t look all that happy that they were making up.  Did she really mean it?  “Anna, do you really mean this?”

“What?  What do you mean?  Of course I do!  I miss you.”

“Yeah, but, you seem miserable about it.  I can read it all over your face.”

She smiled again and this time it was happier.  “Scott, you doofus.”

Now he was really confused.

“It’s so funny.  You know me so well and can read me so well that you _do_ realize that something is still off.  But you can’t figure out what it is.”

“So, then just tell me!  And I’ll do anything to fix it.”

She shook her head.  “No.  I want—I need you to figure it out for yourself.”

“That’s such crap.  That’s the way they always do things in the movies.  If the other person would just tell them, so many problems could be avoided with the same outcome.”

“See, I disagree.  It wouldn’t be the same outcome.  Going through all those problems is how you know it’s worth it and that it’s what you _really_ want.”

Scott scowled.  “I’d rather just know.”

She tapped his nose with a finger.  “Tough cookies.”  She tugged on his hand.  “Come on, we better get back so His Honorable Crankiness can make his decision.”

“He’s such a total jerk, isn’t he?”

They walked back into the courtroom and the judge was returning.  Scott decided he better still sit next to Will just in case.  He gave Anna’s hand a squeeze as they parted and felt some of the weight on his shoulders slip away.  Now that he had Anna back and had someone he could totally open up to without feeling embarrassed about expressing his emotions, he knew that he would be able to cope with his parents’ divorce easier.  Maybe he should also talk to Laney about it.  She had gone through it herself after all.

Scott’s improved mood started downhill again as he listened to Julian’s speech.  He started feeling downright sorry for himself.  How could Julian be so strong?  They were the same age, had more or less the same kind of upbringing and lifestyle.  Sort of.  So why was he so mature and confident, and Scott was so weak and [obsequious](http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/obsequious)?  Obsequious?  He glanced over at Will.  The little bugger was rubbing off on him.

Once the judge delivered his decision and they made fun of Julian for being an adult, it was time to have some fun.  Maybe Julian wasn’t sure what he wanted to do tonight, but Scott knew that he was getting trashed.  He was sick of his family and he was sick of himself.  And tonight he wanted to forget about both.  They stopped by his house first to get some alcohol.  No one would be around after all.  And his father wasn’t a big drinker anyway.  On the lazy drive through town, he decided to call his father.  Here was one good thing about this whole situation: he wouldn’t have to ask his mother for permission and explain all the particulars to her.  His father probably wouldn’t even think to ask about it.

“David Ramsey.”

“Hey, Dad.  It’s me.”

“Hello, Scott.  What can I do for you?”

He sounded like he was talking to a business colleague rather than a son.  Had he always been like that?  “Um, today was Julian’s hearing, right?  And the judge granted his petition.”

“Oh, well that’s—tell him congratu—or, _should_ I congratulate him?”

“Yeah, we’re having the same issue too.  Anyway.  We’re gonna have a sleepover at his house.”

“Okay.  That sounds fine.”

Scott shifted Laney in his lap (the car was too crowded for everyone to have their own seat) and picked a fuzzy off of Anna’s skirt where she sat squished beside him.

“Are you always going to let me do whatever I want so that you don’t lose me too?”

There was a pause.  “I think so, yes.”

“Well, I’m not some delinquent who would love that kind of freedom.  I usually ask someone so that I can be told if it’s something I shouldn’t do.”

“Ah, I see.  Well, tonight I think will be okay.  You’re going to stay in town, right?  You’ll be with your friends at Julian’s house; I know where that is.”

“Yeah, but Julian just got emancipated.  Do you think there’s going to be any adult supervision?  Did you even think to ask if there will be drinking or drugs involved?”

Everyone in the car looked at him like he was crazy.  He had a feeling they would all kill him if he ruined their night by making his father come over and break up the party.

“Well, see, here’s where it goes both ways, Scott.  No, you’re not a delinquent.  As such I trust you not to do anything magnificently stupid.”

Scott sighed.  “Oh, yeah.  I forgot about that part.”

“Don’t make my trust be misplaced.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have fun tonight.  I guess.  Are you celebrating this?”

“We have no idea.”

His father chuckled.  “Well, good luck with that.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Dad.”

Anna put a hand on his knee and gave it squeeze.  He looked over at her.  She was giving him her sympathy eyes.  He’d missed those eyes.  At least seeing them again meant he had one less thing to drink about.  Of course, he had enough other issues that it didn’t take long for him to be three sheets to the wind.  It was amazing how when you were drunk you noticed things that you never did before.  Like, Julian’s house was absolutely infested with mice.  And girls wanted boys to get naked.  And boys just wanted to kiss other boys.  And people could finally grow the cajones they needed to dump incredibly sexy future lingerie models who were dying to have sex with them.  And it made sense to want to do that.  Dumping Antoinette was a good idea.  The drunken haze helped his brain overcome his penis, strangely enough.

Scott was aware there was some walking involved.  And then there were fewer people.  And then there was a chilly, porcelain something or other followed by an unpleasant sensation and something that tasted nasty.  And then there were couches.  There were definitely at least two or three couches even though he could have sworn he was only sitting on one.  And then there was sleep.  And it was good.

 

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

 

Scott opened one eye.  Bright, stabbing death greeted him.  He went back to sleep.  When he woke up the second time, the light was a bit more bearable.  He shifted on the couch and felt someone behind him.  That someone was holding him tightly with one arm and snuggling up close to him.  He stretched a little bit to wake the person up.  It was a bad idea.  He had pushed himself against the person’s groin and discovered that the person was one: male and two: happy to be on the couch with him.  It would be a little awkward if they both got up now and he wasn’t able to walk yet, so maybe if he waited a little bit longer, the other person would settle down.  He went back to sleep.  When he woke up the third time it was because there was movement in the next room over and the person behind him was starting to wake up.  He was snuggling even closer and his happy stick was growing.  Scott sighed.  Should he let his friend continue to rub against him or move away and embarrass them both by forcing them to acknowledge the situation?  He glanced at the hand on his stomach and guessed that it was Chris.  His friend pressed his lips to the back of his neck and Scott couldn’t help but to giggle a little.  It had tickled.

Not too far away someone began to throw up.  The sounds made Scott feel a little queasy.  Now that he was awake he yawned and stretched out of habit.  Bad idea.  He rubbed up against Chris again.  And he was definitely awake now.

“Anyone else need help puking before I leave?” Will called out.

Scott thought he had his stomach under control, but then Chris shoved him off the couch.  Now he wasn’t so sure.

“Maybe,” he called out, hoping Will would hear him.  Then he went back to sleep.  When he woke up for the fourth time, he was staring at the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom in the March’s house.  Interesting.  He could hear Chris and Julian Will-bashing.  He decided to join in.  Then Julian came to help him to his feet.  He’d never felt so icky before in his life.  Not even the time he’d had the flu at the same time he’d had the chicken pox as a kid.  It messed with his temperament.  He wasn’t in a foul mood, but he was in a malicious mood.  He felt like making other people feel as gross as he did, but he wasn’t going to do that to his friends.  Now would be a good time to visit Antoinette.  No amount of boobies was going to make him obliging today.

He informed Chris as of much after he gave up hope of finding anything edible in Julian’s kitchen.  Then Chris began to talk around their awkward morning.  He gave his friend an out by saying he didn’t remember anything, but Chris just couldn’t let it go.  So, he decided to be a little mean and rub it in his face.  Once Chris was sufficiently mortified, he left the house and ran down the street to the bus stop.  He reached it at the same time the bus did.  Perfect timing.  There were a couple other people on the bus and Scott sat at the opposite end from them.  He wasn’t sure how badly he smelled.

When he got to his house he didn’t have to worry about being quiet and sneaking inside.  No one was home.  He ran through the kitchen to see if his father had left him a note.  He hadn’t.  The first thing he did once he went upstairs was rinse out his mouth and brush his teeth. Then he showered, and brushed his teeth again for good measure.  He didn’t know why.  He wouldn’t be kissing anybody today.  Well, he _shouldn’t_ be anyway.  He got dressed and looked at himself in the mirror.  He was wearing kakis and a pink and white striped button down shirt.  Had he done this subconsciously?  He remembered Antoinette telling him she really like this shirt.  Well, it wasn’t to impress her.  It was to placate her once he dumped her.  Maybe he shouldn’t phrase it that way.  They weren’t dating.  He just thought it was time to end the affair.  As he pocketed his personal effects and headed out the door he thanked his lucky stars he’d never actually seen _Fatal Attraction_ before.

He grumbled and cursed his way to the bus stop by his house.  Why was he stuck taking the bus everywhere?  He was going to milk this divorce for all it was worth.  No doubt his father would feel guilty enough to buy him a car.  And it would get him away from all the skuzzy people who were riding the bus with him.  And it would be awesome to not have to hike all the way across the gated community where Antoinette lived anymore.  He was struggling with the walk now.  This was way too much exercise after last night’s activities.  Plus his stomach was getting queasy again just thinking about breaking up with Antoinette.  It wasn’t the breaking up part that had him worried—it was her reaction.  She had a bit of a violent temper and was surprisingly strong for someone so skinny.  At least that’s how he rationalized getting physically overpowered by a girl.

His feet dragged up her driveway and he checked his watch.  He was already ten minutes late.  He wondered if she was watching for him.  Then his cell phone rang.  Hallelujah.  Maybe he could get out of it.  It was Chris.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Scott, it’s Chris.”

“Yeah, hi.  What’s up?  Do you need me to, like, leave and go somewhere?” he asked hopefully.

“Well, yeah.  And take Antoinette with you.”

Confusion set in.  “Huh?”

“Are you in the middle of dumping her?”

“No.  I just got to her house.  I haven’t gone in yet.  I was just hoping someone would get me out of having to go through with it.”

“Oh, sorry.  I’m not gonna do that.  I think you should still do it.”

Scott sighed.  Bummer.  “Okay.”

“Are you going to take her somewhere to do it?”

“No, I’m just going to do it here.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take her somewhere?”

What was Chris trying to get at?  “Like where?  I can’t go out any place in public with her, and if she’s going to be all upset it would be better if we were someplace that I could just leave her and she’d be okay by herself.”

“Yeah, I know.  It’s not a bad idea.”

Chris was being weird.  He better hang up before his weirdness spilled over onto him.  “Okay.  Well, I’m going to do it now before I chicken out.  I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.  Uh, wait, Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“One more thing.  If, like, you’re over there.  And you hear any weird sounds.  Just ignore them, okay?”

Was that a metaphor for something?  “What?  I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get.  Just, ignore any weird sounds you might hear.”

“Um.  Okay.  Sure.  But, weird like when my Aunt Jaclyn eats pudding or like an alien having trouble breathing our atmosphere?”

“Either, you goober.”

That was uncalled for.  “Hey!  Shut-up!  I’m just trying to fully understand your instructions.”

“Look, just never mind.  Good luck.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Scott grumbled and hung up.  He jammed the phone into his back pocket and took a couple deep breaths.  He raised a hand to knock on the door and it swung open.  He looked up and saw Antoinette smiling at him.  She wore a short skirt and a thin top and a bra that didn’t match either.

“Why do you always hang out on my front stoop for so long?” she asked playfully.

“You’re intimidating,” he answered truthfully as he stepped inside.

“Is that a bad thing?”  She closed the door and leaned against it, pulling the shirt tight across her chest.

Scott’s eyes were fixated on the dark peaks under her shirt.  “Not really.”

She stepped closer to him and took his face in her hands.  “Aww, your eyes look so red.  Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  We just kind of…well, Julian got emancipated yesterday.”

She looked confused for a moment, and then it cleared up.  “Oh, right.  Wow.  That’s exciting.  I guess you guys went out drinking last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you hung over?”

“Very.”

She laughed and petted his head. “Poor, Scott.  I bet it’s a new sensation for you.”

He took her wrists in his hands and gently pulled her arms away from him.  “It is.  I take it it’s familiar with you?”

She sashayed away from him and feigned being offended.  “Do you think I’m some bad girl or something?  I’ve never been hung over before.  I don’t drink.”

“What a good girl you are.”

She smiled.  “Not really.  Come with me.”

“Antoinette, I didn’t come over to fool around.  We need to talk.”

“Okay.  We can talk upstairs.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Look, I’m going upstairs.  So, you can either talk to yourself down here or come upstairs and tell me whatever it is you want to talk about.”

Scott started to follow her but she stopped him on the first stair.

“We just had the carpets cleaned.  Can you take off your shoes?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

As he started to toe his shoes off, Antoinette reached into his back pockets.

“Whoa, whoa, hey!  What’s going on here?”

She dropped his wallet and keys on the table and went back in for his phone.  He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up a couple stairs.  She squealed and grabbed onto his neck.

“Now, now.  I need some connection to the real world when I’m with you.”

She laughed and they awkwardly walked up the stirs since they were still embracing.  Antoinette gave him a couple of light kisses and he let her.  If this was the last time, couldn’t he get something out of it first?  Once they reached the hallway, she took him by the hand and led him down the long passage to her room.  He glanced behind him at the open door to the master bedroom.  He didn’t know if it would make him feel more or less comfortable if the door was completely shut.  He did know, however, that he preferred Antoinette’s door to be completely shut when they were in there together even though the house was always empty when he was over.  He just hated having the door slightly ajar.  She started to shut it for him now, but he prevented her from closing it all the way.  He needed that discomfort to keep him from doing anything stupid.

He turned away from the door and Antoinette wrapped her arms around his neck.  She kissed him sweetly and Scott was drawn into her.  It wasn’t just that she was sexy.  He liked her.  He really did.  So, kissing her always felt really nice.  He slid his hands over her back and pulled her close, his tongue playing with hers.  Then he groaned and pulled back.

“No, this isn’t what I came here for.”

Antoinette smiled and moved against him.  “Then what did you come here for?”

“I came here to stop it.”

Antoinette kissed him.  “Stop it?  But we’ve barely even started.”  She sucked his lower lip into her mouth and Scott reveled in the sensation for a moment.  Then he pulled back and pushed her gently, but firmly, away.  He needed physical distance between them to get this out.  She was way too distracting otherwise.  He crossed her room and picked up a My Little Pony from her dresser.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.  This whole ‘affair’ thing.”

She didn’t respond.

“I feel bad for using you.”

She let out a harsh, scoffing laugh.  It made Scott look at her.  She had her hands on her hips and looked more impatient than upset.  “You’re not using me.  _I’m_ using _you_.”

“Oh.”  Scott put the My Little Pony down.  Well, that made him feel a little better.  “We should still end it anyway.”

She was looking very displeased with him now.  “Why?  And don’t bring me or my issues into this.  I can handle myself.”

“Okay.  Then how about the fact that my family is completely fucked up right now?  How about the fact that I don’t feel like myself anymore because this is so messed up?”

Antoinette dropped her eyes and picked at her bedspread.  “I know you’re going through a rough time, but can’t I help you?”

“No, you can’t.  Part of my problem is that I can’t believe I’m actually doing this with you.  It’s so not me.  In fact,” he said, walking back toward the other side of the room to be closer to the door, “I haven’t been myself for about two months now.  And not just because of you.  Or even my family.  But my relationship with Anna has been so messed up.”  Antoinette’s head snapped up and she looked strangely calm.  Except he could tell she was hiding some emotion based on the lividness of her eyes.  “Anna and I have just made up.  And that is so important to me right now.  It’s really more important than anything else.  I need to concentrate on _that_ relationship right now so that I don’t do anything to screw it up.”

Scott wasn’t sure if he should pass behind her or in front of her to get to the door.  He was scared to do either.  At the moment she looked like she might tear him to shreds if he tried to move past her.  She turned to face him and he shrank back a little.  She looked furious with him.

“So,” she began, her voice darkly quiet, “you’re going to push me aside for another woman?”

Scott looked at the ceiling in thought.  He wasn’t going to start dating Anna instead.  He wasn’t trying to swap them out.  “No,” he said looking back at her.  “It’s not quite like th—”

He broke off as Antoinette advanced on him.  She moved so quickly that he didn’t have a remote possibility of keeping his balance when she shoved him onto the bed.  The force she used was so great he actually bounced on the mattress.  She was on him in a second, straddling his waist and holding him down by the shoulders.

“I don’t think so, Scott Ramsey.”

Her kiss was like liquid heat, melting him from the inside out.  She ground her hips down on him, and the spark of pain inflamed his arousal.  She was being aggressive as usual, but today it wasn’t scaring him; it was turning him on more than he thought possible.  She grabbed his arms and forced them to the sides of his head on the mattress and grazed her teeth on his lips.  He braced his feet on the bed and raised his lower half to meet hers.  She bit down on his lip to contain her noise of pleasure and the pain shot through his body to his groin.  He hated to admit it, but he loved it when she was rough.  He really was going to miss this when they stopped seeing each other.

But were they really going to stop this?  Her hands were roaming his body and their kisses were migrating from lips to other body parts.  At the moment it didn’t seem likely to end anytime soon.  But what could one last romp really hurt?  It was probably pretty rare to find someone who was on your wavelength when it came to sexual aberrations.  He knew sadomasochism wasn’t that rare, but it wasn’t like he could go advertising his need for a domineering girlfriend around Calverton.  He’d use this one time to get it out of his system for a while, but he wouldn’t go too far.  He was good at crying wolf with her.  She always let him go.  He could stop her today too.

They stopped as there was a loud thunk out in the hallway.  They both looked toward the door.  It wasn’t closed, but they couldn’t see out into the hall at all.

“Did you hear that?” Antoinette asked.

Had he heard a sound?  What had Chris said about hearing sounds?  Is that what he meant?  Why would Chris know there would be sounds at Antoinette’s house?  Well, that was unimportant.  If Chris asked him to ignore any sounds he might hear, that was good enough for him.

“I didn’t hear anything,” he said, trying to get Antoinette’s attention back on him.

“No, I’m sure I did,” she said and started to move.

He slapped his hands against her thighs and pushed her skirt up to her waist.  “So what?”

He hoped the look he was giving her was that of a sexy beast and not a frightened puppy.  It must have been close enough because she raised an eyebrow in mild surprise, and then leaned down to kiss him.  Scott used his hands to pull her down.  He loved feeling her grind against him.  She must have liked it too.  She let out a small sound and Scott could tell it was an effort on her part not to just scream outright.  She sat up suddenly and pulled her shirt off.  Scott stared.  He’d seen them before.  Heck, he’d even felt them before, but they never ceased to amaze him.  How immature was he?  She had a look of triumph on her face and Scott was a little worried it might be fitting.  If he stopped them now, she might go into the hall.  But what exactly would happen if she did?  She started to unbutton his shirt and he glanced toward the door.  It was slightly ajar.  Yes, he hadn’t closed it all the way, but he hadn’t left it open either.  Now the door was _slightly_ open.  He was sure of it.

Antoinette yanked him up and kissed him.  Her hands pushed the shirt off his shoulders and he felt her breasts brush against his bare skin.  He helped her take off his shirt and then reached up to hold her.  It was so much different without all those clothes in the way.  It felt so much better to actually feel _her_.

“Mmm,” Antoinette hummed against his lips.  “You are so hot, Scott.”

Scott could feel that he was already at full attention, and her erotic moan only made it twitch painfully in its confinement.  Of course, the pain made it feel even better.  She pulled back and pushed him roughly down onto the bed.  He ran his tongue over his lip and tasted blood.  She slid her hands slowly up his torso and delicate, angelic-looking fingers found his nipples.  She pushed down with her hips as she twisted the nubs.  It was excruciating.  He was forced to use every ounce of his will power to keep from embarrassing himself by blowing his wad right then and there.  He loved it.  He wanted her to do it again.  He wanted her to do it harder.

But like hell if he was going to tell her that.  Now might be a good time to slow things down.  He glanced toward the door again.  It was back where it had been before.  There was definitely someone if not some _thing_ in the house.  All he could do was trust Chris.  But if he ended up getting murdered, he was totally going to haunt his ass.

Before he could decide whether or not to stop Antoinette, she went for his nipples again.  Then she raised herself up a little and placed her knee on top of his throbbing erection.  He met her eyes and swallowed nervously.  She had obviously figured out on her own what he liked.  All he could do was grab onto the sheets as she pushed her knee into him.  The sensations were fogging up his mind. He couldn’t even remember when the rest of their clothes came off, though he was thrilled to discover what Antoinette really felt like.  His one lucid moment in the act came when she leaned over to open a drawer in her nightstand.  It was a white, childish piece of furniture with a unicorn lamp on it.  She produced a whole string of condoms from the drawer.  The dichotomy of the child-like room with the adult object almost made him laugh.  But he didn’t.  He knew laughing would be a bad idea because then it would pave the way for other noises.  At the moment he was keeping himself in check.  He wasn’t making very much noise at all for which he was thankful.  Antoinette on the other hand seemed less in control of herself.  He wondered if it was from what he was actually doing to her or from what she was doing to herself by using him.  It might have been a weird thought, but he kind of felt like she was masturbating and just using him as a tool.  Not that he minded.  Not until afterwards anyway.

He lay on her bed, still trying to catch his breath and find a position that wouldn’t just cause his body to ache.  Antoinette was beside him, half on his chest and her leg swung across him possessively.  She looked happy, peaceful, and content.

“That was really, _really_ good, Scott.  And I don’t just mean for your first time.  You’re better than Jake on his good days.”

Scott didn’t thank her for the complement.  He didn’t feel flattered.  She’d probably been thinking about Jake the whole time they were doing it.  Thinking about how she was cheating on him.  Or maybe she’d been thinking about her father.  That would be even worse.  Now she was snuggling closer to him and nearing sleep.  How could she be so relaxed after what they had just done?  It wasn’t the sex.  If they’d just had sex, he could understand.  But what they’d done had been weird.  He was bruised and scratched and bleeding in places.  Her teeth marks were all over his body and though he had enjoyed it at the time, he was now in a lot of pain.  And not the arousing kind.

He carefully slid out from under her and put her head on the pillow.  She nestled into it and seemed to be completely asleep now.  He didn’t blame her.  She’d exerted a lot of energy into abusing him.  He got on his stomach and leaned over the side of the bed.  He pulled up short as his body protested the movement.  But he knew he needed to get up; he felt sick.  Not sick like he had last night when he puked or when he’d woken up this morning, he felt dirty.  Perverted.  Sick in the head.  What was wrong with him?  Why had he let her do those things to him?  Why had he liked it so much?  This was a sign.  There was something wrong with him.  He wasn’t… _right_.

His pants rang.  He looked at the poor khakis.  They had come in on a normal person and they would be leaving on a sexual deviant.  Would they mind?  Antoinette nudged him with her leg.

“Can you turn that off?”

He reached for his pants and pulled his phone out.  He wasn’t going to turn it off.  He was going to answer it.  He didn’t do everything she told him to.  He saw that it was Will.  He wished that it was Chris or Julian.  He felt like they would understand more.  Or, maybe he just didn’t want Will to know because it would hurt the most to lose face in front of him.  He was a sick freak.  Was that something Will could forgive?  Probably.  But it wasn’t something he would ever forget about.  Shame rushed around him now.  Anyone but Will.  He didn’t want Will to know what he had done.  He had to sound normal when he answered the phone.

“Will,” he said into the phone.  He was unable to disguise his distress.  And Will must have noticed it because he didn’t respond for several seconds.  When he did, his voice was almost as stricken as Scott felt.

“Scott?  Are you okay?”

No, he was very not okay.  But how could he tell that to Will?

“Look, Scott, where are you right now?”

“At Antoinette’s,” he said quietly, ashamed of the fact.

“Scott, I saw Jake and he said he’s going over to Antoinette’s today after our game.  It ended about ten minutes ago, so he could be there in as little as half an hour.”

Maybe Will hadn’t noticed he wasn’t okay.  “Oh.  Oh, okay.  Thanks.”  He hung up before he stayed on the line too long and gave himself away.  He collapsed weakly on the bed and let his arms hang over the side.  He stared at the pink carpet.  Antoinette rubbed one of her smooth legs over his back.  He should probably tell her what Will said about Jake.  The last thing he needed was to get caught while he was still feeling so weird.  But he couldn’t get himself to move.  He couldn’t make himself feel concerned about that.  He was too depressed.

“What have I done?” he whispered to the carpet.


	8. Chapter 8

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

 

Chris

 

Chris ran his tongue over his teeth in annoyance.  This was so embarrassing.  He and his asshole friends were at the country club to go swimming in the pool.  And they had to argue over who had to pay the ten dollar guest fee for him to come in.  Even Julian’s parents had been members, so he was the only poor kid whose family couldn’t afford to be a part of the supper elite life of the fabulously wealthy.

“Oh for crying out loud!” Chris shouted.  “I’ll pay for myself!”

His cheapskate friends didn’t argue with him, but fidgeted guilty as they watched him pull out his wallet.

“Here, let me pay,” Will said and started to dig around in his bag.

“No, let me,” said Scott.  “My dad keeps giving me guilt money.”

“Well, I can do it,” Julian said.  “It’s not like I’m that bad off.”

Chris sighed and shifted his weight to one foot.  Now his friends started arguing over who got to pay for him.  He looked at the girl manning the check in counter.  She grinned at him over his friends’ heads and gave him a wink.  He smiled back.  Nice.  She had to be in college.

At long last the guest fee was settled, though he had no idea who actually paid it, and they staggered out to the poolside.  The sun was about ten feet from the earth that day and everyone was melting onto the concrete like human popsicles.  Mmm.  Popsicles.  Chris wanted one.  They dropped their stuff off by a table with some chairs and then jumped into the pool.  Well, he and Will did.  They had to harass Scott about his hair first and bully Julian into getting out of the shade.  But before long, all four of them were splashing around in the pool like they had done when they were little.  Heck, it’s what they had done last summer too.  It was good to horse around and let his brain take a mini vacation.

He hadn’t heard from his father.  It had been a month and a half, and he hadn’t heard a damn thing.  No phone call from him or from the police informing him he had been captured.  Chris wondered if his father had lied to him as a way to escape down to Mexico without having to deal with Chris trying talk him out of it.  What if his father was already in Columbia?  Or what if he had pocketed the money Chris had given him for bus fare and tried to hitchhike back to Chicago?  What if he’d been kidnapped and killed by some shady, serial killer trucker?

But that’s what today was for.  He’d been worrying and worrying and stressing everyday for a month.  He could have sworn he found a grey hair in the mirror yesterday.  He needed to just say, “Screw it,” and get back to worrying about it tomorrow.  Of course, he couldn’t completely relax here either.  Karen might be here.  He hadn’t seen her since the day he broke up with her.  He was actually surprised she hadn’t just shown up at his door considering how persistent she had been with the phone calls, but even those had finally stopped.  He knew he was going to have to eventually see her in school, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do it today.  Or worse yet, he might run into her parents here.  It wasn’t very likely though.  The country club had three pools: a kiddie pool, an over eighteen only pool, and a general pool.  The general pool tended to only be populated by middle and high school aged kids.  And aside from the lifeguards, the area was pretty much adult free.

“Hey!”

Chris started to turn his head and then a huge weight fell on him and he was dunked underwater.  He struggled to get away from his attacker and came up sputtering for air.  He shook his head and looked at his three friends.  Which one of them had done it?

“Why are you so down?” Will asked.  “Are you not having fun?”

“No, I am.”

“So, what’s wrong?” Scott asked, paddling around in a circle.

He knew he couldn’t tell them he was worried about whether or not his father had been caught.  Well, he could.  He’d told them he’d skipped off on parole.  He could still be worried about that.  But he was worried he might accidentally let something slip about meeting his father.  The other two might let it go, but Will wouldn’t.  He decided to go with the Karen issue.

“I’m just worried that I might run into Karen.”

“Do you still have feelings for her?” Julian asked.

“Or are you worried she might rip off your balls?” Scott asked.

Chris smiled.  “A little of both, I guess.”

“Well, then let’s help you forget about her,” said Will.  “We’ll find you someone else to think about.”

“Yeah!” Scott shouted.  “Let’s find you a new girl!”

“No, I don’t know about that.”

“No, it’s a good idea,” said Julian.

Chris blinked at him.  “What, you too?”

“Dude, we’ve been trying to get you a new girlfriend since sophomore year,” Scott said.

“Oh, really?” Chris glared at him.  Karen wasn’t that bad.  “Okay, so then who?  Should I go after the lifeguard or something?”

“Actually,” Julian said gliding toward him, “I know a couple people who have a _thang_ for you.”

“Who?” Will and Scott asked together.  They appeared the most excited about this venture.  Chris shook his head as he looked at their eager faces.  He would never say that Scott and Will were alike, but they were the more childish of the four of them.  And when they got silly together, things started to depreciate very rapidly.

“Ooo, there’s one now,” Julian said.

They all turned and Scott and Will shouted, “Where?!”  Chris and Julian grabbed one apiece and shoved them underwater to keep them quiet.  They came back up coughing.

“Shut-up,” Julian ordered them.  “Over there.  Those three girls wearing bikinis by the towel station.  I don’t know the other two, but the one in the red bikini is a freshman at Calverton.  Or, I guess she’ll be a sophomore this year.  She once told me that she liked you and if I knew if you would be breaking up with your girlfriend anytime soon.”

“When was this?” Chris asked.

“About a year ago.”

“Well.  She probably doesn’t still like me then.”

“No, you should go for it,” said Scott.  “I would be thrilled if an old crush of mine would come up and start talking to me.  I mean, you never really get over a crush.  They just kind of get pushed down.  You know?”

“Yeah, I do know,” said Will.  “And no, Ginger Fugger will never just appear out of nowhere and randomly start to talk to you.”

“You don’t know!  She could!”

“Not in a million years!”

They continued to argue and Julian gave Chris a push.  He floated a couple feet toward the edge of the pool.

“Just go get a towel and say hi to her.”

“Yeah, go, go!” Will and Scott stopped bickering to egg him on.

“Okay, okay.  I’ll do it.  But you can’t watch every move I make, all right?”

“Okaaaaay!” Will and Scott replied, sounding very unconvincing.

Julian smiled at him.  “I’ll keep them distracted for you.”

“Thanks.”

Chris pulled himself out of the pool and then turned around to make sure his friends weren’t following him or being too obvious about their staring.  Julian looked to be doing his job reasonably well.  Then he had to take a moment to un-stick his swimming trunks from his legs and vigorously rub his hands over his hair to get some water out.  He considered running over to his bag to get a T-shirt because it would be awkward to walk up to a girl half-naked.  But, Karen had always said he had nice abs, so maybe he should lead with his best feature.

He started to approach the group of girls and then had to wonder what he would do when he got there.  He wasn’t good at flirting.  He hadn’t done it in nearly two years.  And when he’d first started seeing Karen, she’d always been the one doing all the work.  Maybe he should have asked Will for some pointers first.  Of course the little turd probably would have just told him to look at beautiful as he did and then his problems would be solved.  Jerk.  Hopefully Julian was right and the girl did like him.  Then she would be the one who wanted to flirt and he could put as little effort into it as possible.

He looked her up and down a couple times.  She was cute and had a body that was okay for her to be wearing a bikini, but she wasn’t a knockout or anything.  Not like Antoinette.  Why was he thinking of Antoinette?  Maybe because he still saw her breasts when he closed his eyes.  Now that he looked at the girl again, and realized he didn’t even know her name, he was a little disappointed with her cleavage.  Compared to Karen she really didn’t have much to offer.  He felt kind of like a jerk for thinking it, but she was just a girl to take his mind off of Karen, right?  It’s not like he was trying to screen girls for a potential soul mate.

As he got closer, one of the girls spotted him and then elbowed the girl in the red bikini.  She looked over her shoulder, saw him, and then all three girls turned their backs on him and twittered for a moment.  Then they suddenly looked cool and collected and were laughing about something hilarious the girl in the red bikini must have just said.  Chris smiled.  Yeah, right, like he was falling for that.  This was going to be so easy.  He was a _senior_ after all.  He was prime material.

“Hi,” he said as he stood next to them.  There was a soft chorus of “hi’s” back and then some whispering.  He pretended like he had only come over for a towel and asked the guy working the station for one.  Once he had the towel in hand, he feigned leaving, and then turned back.  He leaned on the counter of the towel stand.

“You look familiar,” Chris said to the girl in the red bikini.  Her dark hair was wet from the pool and pulled back in a ponytail.  She had pretty, blue eyes and a dimple in her left cheek when she smiled.  “Do I know you?”

“Um,” the girl blushed and licked her lips.  Chris noticed the movement.  She had thin lips.  Then again, maybe he was just comparing them to Karen’s, which had been her most ethnic feature.  “I go to Calverton too.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Chris pretended like he recognized her.  “You were in my English class, right?”  He knew that she hadn’t been.

“Oh.  Um.”  She laughed nervously.  “No.  I’m a sophomore.”

She looked at him from under her eyelashes, trying to see if he was turned off now that he knew she was younger.  It just made her look innocently sexy.  Chris smiled at her and he could see her skin change colors again as she flushed even darker.

“Ah.  Just wishful thinking on my part, I think.  So, we won’t have any classes together this year.  I guess we’ll just have to see each other outside of school.”

Her friends were about to explode on either side of her and he worried for a moment that the girl might faint.  He stuck his hand out.

“I’m Chris.”

“Sophia,” she said.

She shook his hand and seemed to gain a little confidence from the contact.  She pointed a finger at him and smiled playfully.

“You know, I remember seeing you in school, but there’s something different about you now.”

“What?  Is it my awesome new haircut?”  He’d buzzed his hair off to about an inch in length a couple weeks back.

“No, not that.”

“Is it my lack of clothing?” he asked with a playful leer.

She almost giggled, but controlled herself.  “No.  Not that.  Oh!  I know.  You’ve had something removed.”

He titled his head in confusion.  “I did?  What?”

“That thing that was always on you and dragging you down all the time.”

Chris blinked.  If she was referring to Karen that was a bit vicious.  He’d thought she was all sweet and innocent.

“You know, I really did think you were cute before, but you’re so much more attractive now that I know I can have you.”

Chris felt a little embarrassed.  Now he felt like the one being picked up.

“Have who, bitch?”

Chris, Sophia, and the other two girls turned.  Karen stood a couple feet away with a whole posse of her friends.  Her arms were crossed over her flat stomach and she had her lips pursed out in displeasure.  Chris couldn’t help but to notice how much better she filled out her bikini top than Sophia did hers.

“I know you’re not talking about _my_ man,” she continued.  “For one thing, you too ugly to even tempt him.  So why don’t you take your little cellulite ass and go find a training bra to put those baby tits in.”

Her friends laughed behind her and Sophia and her friends gasped in offended outrage.  Chris was still stuck on the “my man” part.  Sophia took a step forward.  She was about the same height as Karen.

“Look.  I don’t know what it’s like in that crazy head of yours, but last I heard, he dumped you.  Like over the phone.”  Chris looked at her.  How did she know that?  “So apparently you’re too ugly to even look at when he’s trying to get rid of you.”

Karen’s eyes went wide.  Chris knew that look.  She reached forward to grab the girl’s hair and Sophia fought back.  They got into a bit of shoving match and their friends started shouting.  Chris was still leaning on the counter to the towel station.  Completely in shock.  He looked at the towel guy.  He was grinning at him.

“What should I do?” Chris asked.

“Find a mud pit for them,” he laughed and slapped Chris on the back.

Chris straightened up and started to grab Karen’s shoulder, but then the lifeguard blew his whistle.

“Break it up,” he yelled.  “If you want to fight go to the playground like everyone else.”  The girls stopped fighting but they continued to glare at each other.  “I mean it.  Break it up.  Move away.”

Karen gave Sophia a condescending look and settled her weight back on one foot.  She clearly wasn’t going anywhere.  Sophia took stock of the situation: four of Karen’s friends to her two.  She decided to give up for now.  She rolled her eyes and walked away.  As she passed Chris she trailed a hand down his arm.

“We’ll have to discuss those outside of school meetings some other time.”

He didn’t know what to say.  And he even wondered if he should just go with Sophia.  It’s not like he wanted to stay with Karen or she had won rights to talk to him.  Though maybe he did need to clear up this whole “my man” situation.  He watched Sophia mosey to the other side of the pool and then turned to look at Karen.  She was watching the sophomore with irritation, but not really anger.  Chris didn’t believe that she really felt threatened by the girl.  And based on the way they looked in their bathing suits, she might be right in her belief.  Before an awkward silence could start, Karen’s friends started to walk away, one informing her that they’d catch up with her later.  All but one of them gave him dirty looks as they passed.  Now he was alone with Karen.  Even though there were people all around them and the towel guy was pretending to fold towels nearby so he could eavesdrop, Chris felt like he was trapped in a small room with her.  He glanced at her nails.  They looked freshly manicured and a little on the sharp side.  He gulped.  Just how angry with him was she?

“Hi, Chris,” she said softly.

He leaned forward a little in response to her quiet tone, and then leaned back.  Maybe that had been her ploy.  To get him to lean forward so that she could scratch his eyes out.

“Hi, Karen.”

“How’ve you been?”

Chris felt his brow crease.  “Fine.  How about you?”

She shrugged.  “Okay.  It hasn’t been the best summer.  Certainly not like the one I’d planned, but I’m doing all right.”

“I see.”  He looked her over.  She didn’t seem about to flay him alive.  “What’s up, Karen?  What’s with this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you being nice to me?  Why are you being nice to…” he trailed off.

“Someone who was so hurtful to me?” she finished for him.

Chris felt a wave a guilt wash over him.  “Yeah.”

She chewed on her bottom lip and then met his eyes.  “I was angry.  I was furious.  There was a lot of screaming involved that night.  I hope you didn’t actually listen to any of your voicemails from that night.”

Chris smiled.  He’d gotten halfway through one before deleting the rest.

“But then I sat down and starting feeling sorry for myself.  I wondered how you could do that to me.  How _you_ of all people could do that to me.  Then that made me wonder.  What had I done to make you feel that way?  What had I done to drive you to that point?  It was a valuable lesson.  I’m still a little angry with you, but I think I understand why you did it.  And why you did it that way.  I can forgive you for that because I love you.”

Chris blushed and she took his hands in hers.

“I’m going to win you back,” she said determinedly.  “I’ll make you care for me again.  And I’ll make you fall in love with me.”

Chris stared at her.  What on earth did he say to that?  Thankfully he didn’t have to think of anything.  Will came by and physically came between them.  He pushed on Chris’ chest and got his feet working enough to walk away from his ex-girlfriend.

“Come with me, Chris.  I need your help.  We’ve got a mission to accomplish.”

He was only half-listening to Will.  Karen’s words were still in his head.

“I need you to help me get Anna to make out with Scott.”

Now Will had his full attention.  “What did you say?”

“Anna and Scott need to get with the kissing.”

“What?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself a third time, Christopher.  You know I hate that.  So, come on and help.  It’s not like it’ll be that hard.  She’s dying to make out with him.”

“Yeah.  But, why?”

“Come on!  There she is!”

Chris ran after his friend.  “Will!”

 

Chris scratched his head.  Even though he didn’t have a lot of hair anymore, it was still stiff and tacky from the chlorine in the pool.  They’d stayed too late playing around so none of them had been able to shower.  They were running late for…the appointment.  Julian had managed to convince them that they should all come see his psychologist.  Apparently it had been her idea, but he couldn’t see how talking to his friends would help her understand Julian’s feelings better.  At least she had been willing to come out to her office at the local hospital rather than making them all go into the city.  And Julian was right: the secretary was one of the ugliest women he’d ever seen in his life.

The door to the office opened and the four of them turned their heads to look at the doctor.  One of Chris’ eyebrows shot up and he heard Will say softly, “Oh, my.”  The woman was wearing a purple, pink, and fuchsia plaid skirt with a puffy fuchsia shirt that was full of ruffles.  Her hair was pulled so tight against her head it made her ears appear to stick out.  Her glasses were a retro 60’s style and she wore flat purple shoes with little bows on them.  Good lord.  This woman hadn’t only missed the day, she hadn’t even been enrolled in the class that taught fashion dos and don’ts.  Julian stood up and the rest of them followed suit.  They trailed after Julian into the shrink’s office and she greeted them one by one at the door.

“Guys,” said Julian, “this is my therapist, Dr. Gorman.  Dr. Gorman, this is Chris.”

She gave him a firm handshake and smiled stonily at him.  Chris thought she was trying to be friendly.  “I’ve heard so much about you,” she said.  “Please, have a seat on the couch.”

The boys lined up on the couch with Will and Scott in the middle.  Will sat next to Julian and Scott sat next to Chris.  It was the way they almost always sat.  Dr. Gorman looked at them as she walked to her desk and picked up a notepad and pen.  Then she proceeded to write down quite a bit on the pad before finally walking back toward the couch and sitting in a strangely designed chair in front of them.  She crossed her legs and the hideous skirt could not disguise the fact that she had a very nice pair of legs.  He felt a slight nudge on his left arm.  Scott had noticed too.  He didn’t react to the gesture, but he sat back and put his hands in his lap.  That was the signal that he had noticed.  Dr. Gorman stared at them for several long minutes.

“Chris.  Let’s start with you.”

Chris felt nervous.  Was she going to try to psychoanalyze him?

“Tell me about Julian.”

“What, like, right here?  In front of everyone?”

“Aren’t all of you close enough to share your feelings and thoughts like that?  That’s what Julian told me.”

“Well, yeah.  In front of each other.  Not a stranger.”

“Oh, pretend I’m not even here.”

“But, aren’t I going to be talking _to_ you?”

“Yes, but just pretend I’m a cardboard cutout that you’re explaining yourself to.  And definitely pretend like Julian isn’t here.  I want complete honesty out of you.”

Chris glanced at Julian.  He shrugged.  Chris twiddled his thumbs and watched as Dr. Gorman uncrossed her legs and then re-crossed them.  Nice.  Scott nudged him again.  He gave the blond a look.  Scott frowned and leaned more toward Will.  Chris rolled his eyes.  Baby.

“Well,” Chris began and then stopped.  What was he supposed to say?  Where was he supposed to begin?

“I don’t need you to describe his characteristics to me,” Dr. Gorman helped him, “I just want you to tell me what you think of him.”

“Well, I like him.”

The other three made sounds.  He glared at them, but they were all staring at their hands.

“Yes, that’s a good start.  Why?”

“Well, he’s my friend.”

“Yes.  But, he’s your friend because you like him, not the other way around.  Why is he your friend?  Why do you like him?”

Chris shrugged.  “I just do.”

“Hmm.  And you like your other two friends?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like them in the same way and for the same reasons?”

“Yes.  Well.  No.”

“So, what is it about _Julian_ that you like?”

Chris thought about it.  He hadn’t had to think about why he liked his friends before; he just did.  So, why did he like to be around Julian?

“I’ve always admired and respected him.  He’s always been a unique and different person.  But not one of those people who do it just to be different.  He was one of those people who _really_ knew who he was and how to express and be himself.  I respected that because it was something I wish I could do myself.”

Dr. Gorman scratched in her notepad and then asked without looking up, “Why did you use the past tense?”

Chris was surprised.  He hadn’t realized he had.  “Oh.  I didn’t know I—I guess it’s because—he’s different now.  I still respect and like him, but he doesn’t seem like himself anymore.  Not in a drastic way.  But in small changes here and there.  I guess I’m wondering if it’s something that he will eventually recover from as he copes with his parents’ deaths, or if this has permanently changed him.”

“Good question,” Dr. Gorman murmured.

Chris let out a small scoffing sound.  “Thanks.  You’re very helpful.”

She finally stopped writing and looked up at him.  “It’s not my place to answer questions.”

“Then what are you here for?”

“Maybe you should let me do my job,” she said coolly.

“Well, maybe you should do it,” Chris said bravely.

“Maybe you should come see me too.”

“But…I—”

“Do as I say!”

“Okay!  I’ll come!”

He could feel the other three looking at him and Dr. Gorman wrote something down on her pad.

“Unh-huh.  Just as I thought.  You do have issues with overbearing women.”

“Wh—what?  How do you know—what makes you say that?  How could you figure that out from what I said?”

“Well, Julian’s been talking about you too.”

Chris turned a look on Julian.  Julian glanced toward the ceiling.

“I believe these issues stem from your mother.  And do they extend to your romantic relationships?”

“Well…”

“Yes,” his three friends said.

He made a face but wouldn’t look at them.  Backstabbing bastards.

“I’m worried for you, Chris.  I’m worried for when you meet the right girl.  If you don’t learn to stand up to your mother now, she will always force you to choose between her and your wife.”

“But, she doesn’t—”

“Why do you let her push you around?”

“Okay, look, she doesn’t push me around.  She’s just a single mom with an only child, okay?  I feel bad for her.  She works so hard for me and hardly asks for anything in return.  I just don’t want to let her down.”

“Well, there’s a difference between making someone proud and being their doormat.”

Chris’ jaw dropped open.  What kind of therapist was this blunt?

“I think what will help you would be to have a male role model in your life.”

Chris sat back against the couch and crossed his arms.  “Well, my dad’s in jail.  All right?”

“So go visit him.”

“Well.  I don’t know if he’s actually in jail at the moment.”

“Then you should find a mentor.”

Chris shook his head with a look of irritated disbelief.  “I think I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not so sure.”  She stopped writing again and uncrossed her legs to lean forward.  She tried to make eye contact with him and he couldn’t help but to look at her.  She seemed kind of pretty now.  “You know, you don’t _really_ carry the sins of the father with you.  You can’t try to atone for other people’s mistakes.  You need to be yourself and live for yourself and not be afraid that everything you do will hurt someone.”

“But what if it does?!” Chris cried, sitting forward.

“That’s a risk we all take.  We are cognizant of others’ feelings, but we have to be true to ourselves too.  You _deserve_ to be happy.  If you’re happy, it’s _not_ at someone else’s expense.  You just are.  There’s not a finite amount of happiness in the world.  Giving up your own happiness to make someone else happy won’t make them permanently happy.  In fact, in the long run, it will probably end up hurting them.”

Chris stared at Dr. Gorman.  Then he dropped his head and watched his hands fidget on top of his legs.  What she said made sense, and was probably true.  But it was so hard to believe.  He sat back into the couch and kept his gaze on his hands.  He appreciated what she’d had to say, and it was probably even going to help him, but he kind of wanted her to move on to one of his friends now.

 

Scott

 

“What do you mean it’ll turn green?”

Scott looked back and forth between his friends.  They were grinning at him and inching him closer to the pool.  He started to resist and they tightened their grip on his arms and pulled him forward.

“It even happens to natural blondes,” said Chris.

“And with peroxide in your hair…” Will trailed off.

“I’m not sure if it will be more of a booger sage or a kitten shit green,” Julian completed the thought.

“Mama nooooooooooo!” Scott wailed as his friends tossed him bodily into the pool.  He made a huge splash and came up to the sound of the lifeguard blowing his whistle and yelling at his friends.  Too little too late.  He put his hands on top of his head.  It was completely covered in water.  Would his hair really turn green?  Chris and Will jumped into the pool and splashed him.  Well, he was already wet, the damage had been done.  He might as well enjoy himself now.  And he did enjoy himself for nearly an hour, but then he spotted an entourage moving across the pool deck.  Antoinette and Jake made their appearance at the country club flanked by their friends.  The boys dropped their stuff off by a table and jumped into the pool while the girls took their time setting up their chaise lounges.  Scott wondered if the three girls with Antoinette were the three girls they’d run into on their one “date.”  When the one on the right spotted him in the pool and gave him a wink, he decided they must be the serial friends.

He was glad Jake was out of his sight.  It was the first time he’d seen him since he’d started sleeping with his girlfriend.  He felt a little guilty, but was distracted by Antoinette applying suntan lotion to her shoulders.  He was still a little confused by their first time together.  Since then in the following six weeks they’d only had sex three times, and none of those times had been like the first.  They’d been more normal and on par with what Scott thought happened in the real world.  He’d hoped that without all the kinky stuff the sex wouldn’t seem all that great and he’d be ready to dump her, or at least she would feel that way and let him go.  However, the three times they’d done it had been pretty damn good.  She’d said the same thing, but he wasn’t sure if he believed her.  And worse yet, he was starting to crave the pain again.  He wouldn’t suggest it to her, but he wanted it.  So much so that he’d had a very disturbing dream.  He’d dreamt that Jake had walked in on them while they were having sex and then started to beat him…while Antoinette still rode him.  Not good.  Very sick.  But, people didn’t have control over their dreams, right?  Besides, it had been a nice break from the nightmares.  It only happened about once a week now, but he was still having the nightmares that woke him up at night and couldn’t remember what they were about.

He finally managed to stop sneaking peeks at Antoinette because he needed to harass Chris about finding a new girlfriend.  Once he was on his way out of the pool, Scott and Will started to paddle after him.  Julian pulled them back.

“Wait, wait.  He’s definitely going to turn back and look to see if you’re watching him when he gets out of the pool.  Wait until he’s talking to her and is distracted.”

They nodded.  Good idea.  Scott paddled in a circle, trying to look busy, but he found his gaze kept being drawn back to Antoinette.  She looked like a model who had fallen straight out of a photo shoot.  She only seemed even more out of place in comparison to her three friends who actually looked like high school girls.  She was wearing sunglasses so he couldn’t see where she was looking, but she wasn’t facing him.  Not that she would care if he were around.  She had Jake, looking all ripped and manly in his board shorts to serve her an iced tea.  Scott sighed as he saw her raise her sunglasses and smile at Jake.  She seemed genuinely happy to be hanging out with him.

“Dude, stop staring.”  Scott turned and saw Will staring with him.  “You’ll give yourself away.”

“I can’t help it,” Scott groused.  “And it’s not like I stand out.  Every guy here is staring at her.  Except for the other lifeguard.  I think he’s gay.”

“So do I,” said Julian.  He gave the lifeguard a nod and a smile.

“Does it make you jealous to see her with Jake?” Will asked.

Scott patted his hands on the surface of the water.  “Not really.  No.  I just feel guilty.  Is that weird?  That I don’t feel jealous?”

“No.  It just means that you don’t care about her that much.”

“I don’t?”

“I don’t know, dude.  It’s your melodrama.  _Do_ you like her?”

“Well, as a person or…”

“No,” said Julian, “do you _like_ like her.”

Scott tried to think about it, but he couldn’t think about Antoinette in terms as simple as those.  Nothing was simple with her.  “Ugh.  I don’t know.  And it’s not fair.  Why do _I_ have to be the one obsessing about this?”

“Well, maybe she is too,” said Julian.

“Let’s test that theory,” Will said, rubbing his hands together.  “Let’s try to make her jealous.”

“How?”

“You could flirt with someone in front of her,” suggested Julian.

“No, no,” said Will.  “That would be obvious it was for her benefit.  It would give her more power in the relationship.  He needs to do something that would raise her hackles and yet seem like you didn’t care or even notice that she saw it.”

“Like what?” Scott asked.

“You need to just full on make-out with someone.”

“Yeah!” Julian agreed.

“What?!  Who?”

“How about me?” Julian asked.

Scott turned partially toward his friend and he glided toward him in the water.  Before he could figure out what Julian was going to do, the taller boy took his face in his hands and leaned forward.  Julian gave Scott a smooch on the lips, and then he let him go.  Scott wasn’t really aware of anything but the embarrassment.  He slowly let himself slip underwater.  He stayed under for as long as he could hold his breath, appreciating the cool water on his warm skin.  Then he slowly came back up and peeked out of the water.  Julian and Will were still laughing raucously and people were thankfully staring at them more than him.  He glanced toward Antoinette.  Both she and Jake were staring at him.  She didn’t exactly look jealous.  Their attention, along with everyone else’s at the pool, was drawn toward the towel stand when a fight broke out.  Two girls were in a hair-pulling and shoving match.  Scott gawked.  It was the wicked witch of Calverton and the girl Chris had gone to flirt with.  Chris was just leaning on the towel stand looking dumbfounded.  Will was laughing again.

“Oh, I love this!” he cried.  “The pool is so much fun!  So, anyway,” he turned back to Scott.  “How about Anna?”

“How about Anna for what?”

“You can make out with Anna.”

“What?!”

“Yeah,” said Julian.  “That could work.”

“We can’t do that,” Scott protested.  “We’re still not really _completely_ comfortable around each other.”

“But you made up, right?” asked Will.  “It’ll be fine.  Let me go rescue Chris and we’ll go get her.”

“Wait, Will!”  Will was already swimming for the edge of the pool.  “What will you tell her?!”

“I’ll make something up.”

Scott groaned and glanced at Chris.  He was talking civilly to his ex-girlfriend.  Why?  Why wouldn’t he tell her to buzz off?  Then he turned to look at Julian.  He was gone.  He must have left when Will did.  And that was okay.  He was still a little put off by their impromptu touching of lips.  He certainly wasn’t going to call it anything else.

He paddled around in a circle by himself.  He was beginning to consider getting out of the pool to see what his friends were up to when a loud splashing drew his attention.  Laney was doing her best to drown Julian.  He wondered what the clueless dork had done to her now.  Julian seemed to have no idea why Laney was mad at him and swam up to Scott looking confused.  Scott just gave him a mean look.

“What?” he asked innocently.  “Don’t pretend you didn’t like it.”

“I did not!”

“You closed your eyes, Scott.”

“I did not!”

“Did too.”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

They continued this argument until Will came back with Chris and Anna.

“What are you two fighting about?” Anna asked.

Scott jumped on Julian to try to prevent him from saying anything.

“He says he—ack—he didn’t—oof—he says he didn’t close his eyes when I kissed him.”

“When did you kiss him?” Chris asked.

“You did close your eyes,” Will said.  “Moving on.  Here’s Anna: ready to pucker up.”

“Even if I am I’m not doing it in front of you turds!  Go away!” she shouted.

The three of them grumbled as they swam (not too far) away.  Scott looked at Anna.  He wondered what Will had said to her to convince her to do this, but decided not to ask.  Then she might want to ask why he wanted to do it and he knew he wouldn’t be able to come up with something quickly.  He wondered if it would be terribly awkward and weird.  They’d look like uncoordinated dancers or something.  It certainly wouldn’t make Antoinette jealous.  Then he wondered if it would be like kissing his sister, and he’d already done that once.  So, he’d probably know if he really loved Anna like a sister.  How should they initiate the act?  A countdown?

Anna floated gracefully to him and wrapped an arm around his neck.  Then she pulled herself closer with the hand at his waist and brought their lips together.  He was a little stunned and let her kiss him for a moment, and then his body took over.  He circled his arms around her waist and pressed them together.  He returned her kiss and didn’t even mind the chlorine taste.  It was a slow, undemanding kiss.  They took their time finding a rhythm and exploring one of the few parts that was still a mystery between them.  Scott liked it.  It made him feel better about himself.  He did like it when kissing was calm and sweet.  He didn’t need it to be rough and aggressive all the time.

He only pulled away from her when the need for air became too strong.  They both gasped and stayed pressed close to each other, foreheads touching.  He raised a hand out of the water and passed it over her textured hair.  The lifeguard tweeted his whistle at them.

“Hey!  Get a room!”

Scott and Anna stepped away from each other, a little embarrassed.  Anna wouldn’t even look at him.  She had her fingers to her lips and was staring intently at the water.  Scott swallowed and then glanced over at Antoinette.  She wasn’t even looking in his direction.  So much for making her jealous.  And now he had probably put a strain on his relationship with Anna again.

“Anna, are you okay?  I’m sorry—”

She looked up with a smile and splashed him.  “Of course I’m okay.  I’m more than okay.  You’re actually not half bad.  You might have a shot at winning.”

Scott’s brow creased in confusion.  “Winning?  Winning what?”

“Will asked me to kiss all of you so that I could tell you which one was better.”

“What?!  What a loser.  Look.  Even if he is the best, don’t say that he wins, okay?”

Anna laughed.  “I promised to be a fair and impartial judge.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make out with your friends.”

“Hey now.  I don’t know if that’s necessary.  Anna, come back here!”

 

Scott sat up straight on the chair in the waiting room.  He wanted to make a good impression on Dr. Gorman.  First impressions are always so important.  The office door opened and Dr. Gorman appeared.  Scott’s first impression of her was that she had lost a bet and was now paying the price.  He stood up after Julian did and opened his mouth to say something, starting to point, but he felt a pinch on his bottom.  He jumped slightly and slapped his hands to his butt.  He glanced behind him.  Any one of them was standing close enough to have gotten him.  They followed Julian into Dr. Gorman’s office and he introduced them one at a time.

“Guys, this is Dr. Gorman,” said Julian.  “Dr. Gorman, this is Scott.”

“Hi!” he said cheerfully and extended his hand.  She didn’t so much shake it as squeeze it.  He bit his lip to keep from saying ouch.  He turned away from her and discreetly nursed his fingers as he walked toward the couch.  He sat down and Chris and Will took up their positions beside him.  He was excited to see what a real therapy session was like.  After all, he might make this his future career.

Scott was having second thoughts about his career after Dr. Gorman forced Chris to see that he was allowing his mother to play the role of the martyr and drowning himself in guilt.  Scott had always felt that Chris let his mother and girlfriend get away with so much shit because he felt guilty about his father, which was true.  But it was also because he was afraid that if he let himself be happy other people would suffer.  That was some messed up thinking.  It was good that Chris was finally realizing it, but he was not happy about it.  He was slumped into his corner of the couch and picking at the arm rest.  Scott knew he could do a much better job of making people see their problems.  He would be a psychiatrist, but he’d be nice about it.

Now Dr. Gorman turned her attention on him.  He was ready and excited to talk about Julian.  He’d been formulating a script in his head so that he didn’t end up saying anything embarrassing like he usually did.  He sat up straight and smiled at Dr. Gorman.  The doctor pushed her glasses up her nose and re-crossed her legs.  Such nice legs.  Then she sat back in her chair and tapped her pen against her chin.

“Tell me about your sister.”

Scott blinked.  Say what?  “Eh?” he got out.  Was she asking about…Scott whipped his head around to look at Julian.  He was looking at the ceiling.  He’d been doing that a lot this evening.  He could feel his facial features scrunch up into something very non-pleased.  He felt so betrayed.  He’d told them—and only them—about that because he needed to tell _someone_ about it.  He’d trusted them to keep it to themselves.  How could he go and talk to his shrink about it?

“Why did you tell her about that?” Scott asked.

“I didn’t tell her it was you,” Julian said.  “I just said I had a friend who had a problem.  I was trying to get you free psychological advice.”

“Oh.”  Scott thought that wasn’t a bad idea.  Though that advice had never been passed on to him.  He looked at the doctor.

“Well, how did you know it was me?” he asked.

“Aren’t you the only one who’s not an only child?”

“Oh.  Right.  Well, he has other friends.”

“Not really,” Dr. Gorman said.  “You three are really all he has.  Aside from the girls, whom he doesn’t feel really close to.”

All three of them looked at Julian.

“You really don’t have any other friends, do you?” mused Will.

“Do you?” Julian retorted.

“Well, I don’t have any friends that I’m as close to as you guys, but I certainly have other friends that I hang out with.”

“Soccer friends don’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you were really friends with them,” Chris said, “you wouldn’t help another friend hide the fact that he’s screwing his girlfriend.”

“How do you know I’m screwing her?” asked Scott.

“Umm…”  Chris looked away.

“Hey, I don’t really consider Jake a friend,” Will said defensively.  “He’s more of an acquaintance.  I was talking about some of the guys on my summer league team.  We hang out outside of practice.  That makes them friends.”

“If you say so.”

Scott inched away from Will; he hadn’t meant to say that.  All four of them began to argue about who had the least friends.

“Excuse me, _boys_ ,” the doctor sounded bored.  “Can we continue with this?  Scott, I’d like you to tell me about your sister.  How are you coping with the situation?”

Scott flopped back against the couch and crossed his arms.  He scowled at Dr. Gorman’s bowed shoes.  “I’m coping with it by being away from it.  My dad got caught cheating and my mom wants a divorce.  So, she moved out and took my sister and brothers with her.  I was hoping that by being apart she would get over it.”

“I see.  But, that’s not why you didn’t leave with your mother, is it?”

Scott remained quiet.

“Scott?” she prompted.

“No,” he conceded.  “I stayed behind because I didn’t want to be around my mother.  She was taking her anger at my father out on me.”

“So, you asked to stay behind with your father?”

“Yes.”

“And she let you?”

“Kind of.  She’s fighting for custody of me, but not because she wants me.  I think she just wants to take me away from my father.”

“Have you become closer with your father?”

“No.”

“Mm-hmm.”  She scribbled in her notepad.  “And you also had a friend you were fighting with.  Have you made up with her?”

Scott glared at Julian again.  He was looking at his nails.  Scott sighed in annoyance.

“Yes, we’ve made up.”

“Whose decision was it?”

“Both of ours.”

“Was it really mutual, or did she initiate it?”

“Well, I tried to, but she wasn’t ready.  I was willing to wait for her until she was ready.”

“So, you let her dictate the terms of your break up and your make up?”

“Umm…I—I guess.”

“And now you’re stuck in another relationship that seems to keep getting more and more serious despite your assertions that you’re ready to end it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are dating this Jake’s girlfriend, correct?  You want to end it, have wanted to end it, but now you’re sleeping with her.  That sounds like a step in the opposite direction.”

“Is there anything you haven’t told her?!” Scott shouted.

Julian leaned on his arm.  “I didn’t tell her I kissed you today.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Scott groaned and let his head fall back on the couch.

“Well, with all that’s going on with your family, Scott,” Dr. Gorman said mildly, “I think it might be best if you get out of this complicated relationship until you’re ready to deal with it.”

“You try to get out of it!” Scott snapped.  “It’s not easy to break up with her.  She’s very pushy.  And controlling.  Every time I try to break it off she pushes me into sex.”

“All you have to do is stop seeing her.”

“It’s really not as easy as that.”

“I see.”  She dotted a hard period on her pad.  She looked up, re-crossed her legs, and then pushed her glasses up her nose.

“Well, I feel sorry for you.  You have a family that is definitely in need of some therapy.  For more than one reason.  I can give you my card and you can pass it along if you like.  And on top of that, you have virtually no healthy relationships.  This so-called best friend of yours completely controls when and how you are friends.  You’re secretly dating someone who from the sound of things if the genders were reversed would essentially be raping you.  And even among your closest friends you’re coddled and taken care of, which is not a good way to learn to be stronger.  Honestly, I think you need to grow a spine.”

With each word, needles, followed by knives, and finally a sword jabbed into his chest.  He felt like the biggest loser on the planet, but that was no reason for this woman to be so mean about it.  He was perfectly calm the moment following her tirade, and then he burst into tears.  Peripherally he could see Chris still gloomily sitting in his corner, so he turned to Will and cried on him.  Will pulled him close and let him act like a total child.  Or a girl.  This is what girls did.  But he couldn’t help it.  He was sad and hurt.

“Geez, Dr. Gorman,” he heard Julian say over his wailing, “Did they not teach you anything about bedside manner in shrink school?”

“For real,” Chris said, not sounding happy.  “He’s very sensitive.”

“Exactly.  He needs to become stronger.  You three need to stop babying him.”

“But he is the baby,” Will said patting his back.  “He’s the youngest.”

“That is irrelevant.  You let him get away with too much and you try to take care of his problems for him.  He needs to learn to stand up for himself.”

“Maybe,” said Julian, “but you don’t have to be so mean about it.”

“Yes, I do.  That’s what he responds to.”

“What do you mean?”

Scott choked back his sobs to listen.

“What he needs is some tough love.  Not only will he respond to it, but he will thrive under it.  Isn’t that right, Scott?”

He peeked out from under Will’s arm and looked at her.  He sniffed back his tears.  Maybe she was right, but he wasn’t going to admit that to the mean doctor.  He burrowed further into Will and turned his face away from the doctor.  He hoped she would move onto destroying the next one of them already.

 

Will

 

Will was totally amused by his friends.  They all had such funny girl problems.  And what made them so funny was that they were borderline serious, and yet somehow remained ridiculous.  Scott’s relationship with Antoinette was bad for so many reasons, but the thought of Scott getting bossed around by a somewhat smaller and definitely skinnier girl was hilarious.  And then Chris was discovering he had dated psycho-I-won’t-let-you-go girl, but watching a real catfight break out over him was hysterical.  And nothing was funnier than watching Julian nearly get drowned in the pool.  But, he’d had that coming.

Their problems had the potential to be major catastrophes, but more than likely they would work themselves out.  Unlike _his_ girl problem.  He was pretty certain that Liz knew he had never intended for them to get back together, but she was being deliberately ignorant of that fact.  She would call him to go out several times a week and then often try to seduce him when they were alone.  That was the only word for it: seduce.  He was usually successful in keeping their relationship platonic, but sometimes he would give into her.  And that was not a good way to convince someone you weren’t interested in them anymore.  He just couldn’t quite bring himself to cut free of her for good.  She was his link back to reality and, most importantly, heterosexuality.

Lately though, things with Ken had been even more platonic than with Liz.  Which was a good thing.  What Rylan had said about their relationship had pissed him off.  He knew he could be friends with Ken, and Ken was capable of it too.  It didn’t have to be sexual between them.  And lately it really hadn’t been.  Of course, they hadn’t seen each other in almost three and a half weeks now.  Will had gone to a soccer camp and then Ken had had a business trip.  He wondered what might happen if they saw each other again now.

Fortunately today he was too busy to think about it much.  He had to save Chris from his crazy girlfriend and then convince Anna to make out with Scott, which was as easy as he thought it would be.  All he had to do was tell her that Scott was willing to do it with no questions asked and she’d jumped at the chance to get on him.  He didn’t blame her.  Explanation-free kissing of your crush was the best.  But all this work was making him thirsty.  He pulled himself out of the pool and smiled as Anna floated happily away from Scott.  Scott just looked like he was disappointed Antoinette hadn’t paid any attention to the scene.  Poor Anna.  Though Scott had seemed thoroughly engrossed with her _while_ they’d been kissing.  Maybe she still had a shot.

“Does anybody want anything from the snack stand?” he called out to his friends.

“I want a Coke,” Julian called out.

“Gummi Bears!” said Scott.

“I don’t have any money,” Chris said.

“I’ll put it on my parents’ credit,” Will said waving a dismissive hand.

“Oh, well, in that case, I’ll have some caviar and Dom Perignon.”

“Okay.  Crackers and club soda.  Got it.”

He started to walk away.

“No, no!  I want a sandwich!”

“Ooo!  Me too!” Scott shouted.  “It’s lunch time.”

“Me three!” Julian chimed in.

Will rolled his eyes and listened to his feet slap the concrete as he stomped away.  He had _not_ offered to get them all lunch.  And the worst part of it was that he didn’t even need to ask what they wanted.  He knew.  Just as he approached the line, he spotted Anna heading over.  He swept an arm out to let her get in front of him.

“Such a gentleman,” she said sarcastically.

“I really am.”

“Unh-hunh.  Is that why you’re staring at that girl’s ass?”

“Huh?”

Will looked away from the hot girl in the bikini that was leaning forward to place her order.  That wasn’t his fault.  She had definitely stuck it right out there for everyone to see.  Anna rolled her eyes and turned her back on him to order.  The girl he’d been staring at stepped back to wait on her order and Will saw that it was Antoinette.  The blonde spotted Anna and looked her over.  Will thought she was giving Anna a slightly more attentive look than he thought was normal.  Antoinette and Anna definitely did not run around in the same social circles despite both being pretty and popular.  The difference was clear in their appearance and activities at the pool.  Anna was wet from having been in the pool and had streaks of white by her hairline where she hadn’t quite blended in her suntan lotion.  Antoinette hadn’t gotten within twenty feet of the pool, leaving her hair and make-up immaculate atop a golden, shiny, tanned body.  The difference was that Anna was more like a _real_ person.  Will didn’t understand Scott.  He would definitely prefer Anna to Antoinette.  Although…he looked Antoinette over again.  She could definitely give the lesbians a run for their money for the title of prettiest/hottest girl in school.

Will was about to get Anna’s attention, to see if she would deign to talk to him again, when Antoinette turned to her.

“Hey,” said the blonde, feigning casualness.

“Hey,” Anna replied, seeming a little confused by being addressed by Antoinette.

“So, you’re dating Scott Ramsey, huh?”

Will could actually feel his ears perk up.  He waved the person behind him to go in front of him in line.

“What?  No.  Why would you think that?”

“Well, that was a pretty serious lip lock going on in the pool.”

“Oh.”  Anna looked embarrassed.  “That.  That wasn’t.  No.  It was just a game.”

“Oh, good,” Antoinette said sweetly, “You’re so pretty and popular.  You could do so much better than a loser like him.”

Will’s lips quirked up at the corner, but he waited for Anna’s reaction, which was close to explosive.

“He is _not_ a loser!  He is sweet and kind and thoughtful and funny and smart and the best friend I’ve ever had in my entire life.  So don’t you dare talk about him like you know him!”

Other people in the line turned to look at them.  Antoinette didn’t look happy.  But not because she’d been yelled at.

“Oh, so you _do_ like him.”

Anna blanched.  “What?  No.  It’s not like that.”

“Well then,” Antoinette said hostilely, “maybe you shouldn’t go around kissing people you don’t like.”

She snatched her soda and bag of Sour Patch Kids from the attendant’s hands and marched away with a toss of her hair.  Will had a hand over his mouth so he could hide his smile when Anna turned to look at him.  She looked absolutely baffled.  Not to mention suspicious as hell and totally pissed off.

“What the hell was that?” she asked.

Will shrugged.  Inside he was laughing out of control.  Apparently Operation: Make Antoinette Jealous had been a success.  He should tell Scott.  It might make him feel better.  Unless it made him worry that she had been mean to Anna.  Maybe he shouldn’t tell him.  Anna took her soda and left, grumbling to herself.  She was probably going to go tell the other girls all about it.  Will laughed to himself the whole time he waited for his monster order.  Based on the looks he was getting he wasn’t being entirely successful at keeping the laughter internal.  Once he had all the food for his friends he made his way back to their table.

“Hey, I’ve got lunch!” he called out toward the pool.  He hadn’t actually seen his friends, but he was sure they would see him eventually.  He sat down in his chair and pulled out his phone to see if he’d gotten any calls.  Maybe his parents had called from Barbados.  They had decided to take a vacation on their own.  Their excuse for not inviting him was that it was going to be like a second honeymoon.  “More like fifth,” he had groused.  They had patted his head and told him, “Next time.”  The sour expression was knocked off his face when he saw that he had a missed call from Ken.  The call had been from his home number, so he must be back from his business trip.  He hadn’t left a message, but Will decided he should call him back to see what he wanted.  His friends were starting to get out of the pool, so he pointed to his phone and they waved a hand in acknowledgement as he left the pool area.

As he headed for the little bungalow-looking structure that served as changing rooms, he could feel his heart accelerate.  He squeezed his phone and told himself to calm down.  He was just going to make a phone call.  What was the big deal?  He made his way around the back of the building and a surprising amount of the noise from the pool area was reduced.  He called Ken’s number and nervously chewed a thumb as he bounced gently off the wall with his back in time to the ringing of the phone.

“Hello, Will.”

Ken’s voice started in his ear, but it made its way all the way down his spine.  He fell against the wall and bit his lip.  He felt like such a pervert hiding behind the pool house and getting excited over simply hearing someone’s voice.  It _had_ been a while since he’d heard it, but why did it make him go all funny inside?  He collected himself and focused on a tuft of animal fur that had gotten caught in the fence in front of him.

“You called?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Oh.  Yeah.  Sorry.  It was by accident.  I hit the wrong name.  I was trying to call a colleague of mine.  You have the same first name.”

“Really?” Will asked, not believing a word of it.  He’d scrolled through Ken’s phone directory before.  He listed business colleagues by last names first and friends and family by first names only.  Ken apparently didn’t know what to say because he remained silent on the other end.  Will smiled at his discomfiture.

“So, how’s your sister?” he asked, trying to be nice.

“She’s doing very well.  Thank you.”

“That’s good.”

They both went quiet this time.  Will didn’t know what to say.  Even though they weren’t speaking, he could still hear Ken.  He could hear him breathing.  And Will was positive Ken could hear him panting over the line.  But it was hot out.  It was really, _really_ hot out.

“Do you want to come over tonight?” Ken asked.

 _God, yes_.  Will let his head fall back against the wall, feeling Ken’s voice wrap around his body again.  It was so bizarre.  He and Ken didn’t have… _that_ kind of relationship.  They were nowhere near it.  And yet they both knew exactly what would happen if Will went over to Ken’s tonight.

“I can’t,” Will almost moaned, unable to disguise his disappointment.  “I promised Julian I’d go with him to see his shrink tonight.”

“Well, maybe it’s best you don’t come over anyway.”

“You’re probably right.”  _Definitely right_.  “I’ll stop by tomorrow.  Or maybe the day after.”

“Okay.  Thanks for taking care of the place while I was gone.”

“No problem.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Will hung up and let his arm fall to his side.  What the hell had just happened?  He hadn’t seen him in a while; that was just his reaction to missing him.  But why did he miss him so much?  And why did he…physically miss him?  He rubbed a hand over his brow and let out a soft laugh.  Maybe he should be deliberately ignorant of the reason and just focus on Liz.  That would certainly make life less disturbing.

 

As much as he had wanted to see Ken, Will had to admit he was very curious about this “Dr.” Gorman.  She was privy to a very personal side of Julian and he wanted to make sure she was qualified and worthy of it.  Based on her appearance as an extra in a low production 80’s teen comedy, he wasn’t so sure he trusted her with Julian’s psyche.  He studied her from head to toe as the four of them got up from their seats in the waiting room and headed toward her office.  Her face wasn’t exactly pretty, but she wasn’t plain either.  The way her clothes hung on her was completely unflattering to her figure, which was probably only so-so no matter how it was dressed.  He could see the bottom of her slip peeking out from the backside of her skirt.  She really wasn’t much to look at, but he did notice her eyes.  They were dull and ordinary in color, but very sharp.  She was observing them as closely as he was her.  He could see the machinery whirring behind those eyes.  Whether or not her outward appearance was meant to be a guise didn’t matter.  This woman was astute and observant.  A dangerous combination.  He didn’t like her.

And she didn’t like him very much either.  When Julian introduced them she gave him a weak handshake, like she didn’t really want to touch him, and didn’t make eye contact.  She almost seemed…Will couldn’t quite place his finger on it, but she didn’t like him for a specific reason and that reason didn’t seem to actually have much to do with him.  As strange as her actions toward him were, stranger still was Julian’s reaction to her.  He seemed amused every time she got snippy with him.  Though it was hard to tell when she was being specifically snippy to him; she was being rather mean to all three of them.  Chris was slouched into a corner of the couch and while Scott had stopped crying, he was still clinging to him like cellophane.

“Is it my turn now?” Will asked with a smile as he situated Scott so that his elbow wasn’t digging into his thigh anymore.

Dr. Gorman held his gaze for several long moments before turning her attention to her beloved notepad.  Will almost got the impression that she was trying to appear bored with him though he could tell she was the most interested in him.

“Why don’t you tell me about Julian?” Dr. Gorman asked.

“There’s nothing I could say that would help you understand him better.”

She looked up at that, her notepad forgotten.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that.  The point of this session is to help you garner some insight into Julian, but I can’t help you with you that.”

“Aren’t you the best of his best friends?”

“Yes.”

“So, shouldn’t you know the most about him?”

“I do.”

“And what makes you think that wouldn’t help me work with him?  Or is it because you don’t want to volunteer the information?  Are you worried about sharing him with someone else?  Do you feel that he should completely devote himself to you even though you can be free to have other relationships?”

Will tongued the back of his teeth.  Very weird.  She almost seemed jealous.  He glanced at Julian and his friend was hiding a smile behind his hand.  Something was going on between these two.  Had they orchestrated this whole thing as a joke?  That didn’t seem likely.  What was going on here?  He hated it when he could recognize that something was going on but he couldn’t figure out what.  Not knowing things was one of his biggest pet peeves.

“I’m not worried about sharing Julian because I don’t have to.  I don’t feel threatened by any relationships he has with people other than me.  Our friendship would never be messed up by some stupid misunderstanding because we don’t have misunderstandings.  It’s never happened.  And it never will.”

“You think there are no misunderstandings between you?” Dr. Gorman asked incredulously.

“There’s not,” Julian said.  “Not knowing something and misunderstanding something are not the same thing.”

Dr. Gorman seemed kind of down to hear Julian say that.

“What don’t I know?” Will demanded.

“Nothing,” Julian grinned at him.  “I know how much it bugs you not to know something.”

“Feh.”  He crossed his arms over Scott’s head.  Julian was being cheeky.

“Okay, so what’s _your_ problem?” Dr. Gorman asked.

Hmm.  His problems covered virtually every topic under the sun, but he was not going to say anything about them in front of crazy shrink lady.

“Well, my parents are a bit distant.  They’re workaholics and always traveling.  I hardly ever see them.  And it’s been that way since as long as I can remember.  I’ve always had to take care of myself.”

“Yes, and you love that.  That’s not your problem.  Your absentee parents are not something that bothers you.”

Will thought about arguing with her, but he didn’t think she was going to buy it, so he tried something else.  “School is really boring for me.  I’m pretty smart, so it’s just a pain to have to work at other people’s pace.”

“Do you expect me to believe that that’s the biggest problem in your life?”

“Do you think this is some teen drama on the WB?  That all four of us somehow have this huge issue to deal with?  There are a lot of normal teenagers in the world.”

“That is very true.  But the thing is, the teen dramas are meant to be metaphors more than anything.  When other kids see these actors deal with huge, life-shattering problems, it makes them believe that their own life-shattering problems can be dealt with.  It’s just that the magnitude is different.  All teenagers believe that everything they are going through is the end of the world.  If forced to watch teenagers on TV deal with the same things and act all dramatic about it, they would see how silly they are, which would make them defensive and not want to watch the show and then it would be canceled.  So the producers give the TV teenagers huge, unrealistic problems so that their struggles can be entertaining, and yet still be identified with by the audience.  Everybody has something that bothers or worries them.  You’re no different.”

“Maybe not.  But at least I’m wise enough to know that my problems aren’t ‘life-shattering.’  I have amazing perspective.”

“You’re lying.”

“Excuse me?”

“You have a problem and it’s not small.  But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what it is.  No one can help you if you hide it from everyone.  Even your three closest friends can’t help you because until now they didn’t even know that you were dealing with something that is possibly bigger than what any of them are dealing with.”

Will sat frozen on the couch.  Scott moved his head slightly so he could look up at him and his other two friends gave him the same attention.  He could tell that they were thinking back over the last few months, trying to discern if he really had been different.

“What on earth makes you think I have a problem that big?” Will asked.

“Do you deny it?”

“You answer my question first.”

“Because you’ve given fake problems to cover up any oddities in your behavior.  If you really didn’t have a problem, you would just say so.  But since you’re concerned that you may be exhibiting some outward signs of your turmoil, you wanted to give your friends some explanation so that they wouldn’t try to find out what is really wrong.”

Will ground his teeth together.  He’d been too arrogant.  He’d even noticed that she was a shrewd woman and yet he’d believed he’d have no trouble keeping her snowed.  He hadn’t really even tried he’d been so confident, and now she had exposed him.  He could feel the eyes of his friends on him.  There was an odd thickness to the air; it was beginning to separate them.  He wasn’t going to let this stupid shrink cause a rift between them.

“Okay, okay.  You’re right.  There is something bigger going on.”

“What is it?” Scott practically yelled.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Chris asked.

Julian remained silent.

“I didn’t tell you not because I don’t trust you—because I do—but because it would put you guys in an awkward position.  It’s something that wouldn’t be fair to you guys if I told you you had to keep it a secret too.  I’m sure you can understand that, right?”

He gave Chris a pointed look.  Chris averted his eyes.

“Yeah, I think I understand,” he said.

“It’s something that could cause trouble for you, and that’s not fair to you guys to get you involved in it.  But you have to trust me when I say that I have it under control.  I promise.”

They were all quiet.  Then Julian spoke.

“Okay, Will.  We trust you when you say that you know what you’re doing and can believe you when you say its best that we don’t know.  However.”  Julian grabbed him under the chin and forced their eyes to meet.  “Don’t let it get _you_ in trouble because you won’t ask for help.  We won’t forgive you for that.”

Will tried to smile at Julian, but his features got squashed in Julian’s hand.  “Thank you.  And don’t worry.  If it does get bad, I will _definitely_ ask for help.”

Will surprised himself by realizing that he meant it.

 

 

Julian

 

Julian had an itch on the end of his nose, but he knew if he moved his arm to scratch it, the skin that had melted onto the vinyl chaise lounge would be pulled off his muscles.  Plus the energy and effort required to lift the arm was too inhuman to contemplate.  It was so hot.  Why had he agreed to come out here?  Those three bastards all got to play in the pool, and he just got to swelter in the Serengeti.  The umbrella wasn’t helping.  It might as well be transparant for all the good it was doing.

“Juliannnnnnn!”

“Juuuuuuuulian!”

“Jullllllllian!”

Julian just managed to get his dry eyeballs to roll in his head in the direction of the pool.  His friends were lined up and leaning on the edge, relaxing in the cool water.  They waved him over and he couldn’t muster the strength to shake his head.

“What?” he croaked.

“Come into the water!” Will called out.

Julian’s head twitched.  It was the best he could do for a negative shake of his head.  “I don’t want to get a tan.”

“Why not?” asked Scott.

“It’s not like you’ll get a tan in one day,” said Chris.

“Because,” Julian defended himself.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be gothic when you have a tan?”

“Since when are you ‘gothic?’” Will asked derisively.

“Come on, get in!” Scott yelled.  “They made _me_ get in.  I hardly think that having a tan is worse than having green hair.”

“I hate water,” Julian lied.

“Oh, now he’s just being recalcitrant for the sake of being contrary,” Will sighed.

“Oh, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” Chris said giving Will a sarcastic look.

“Are you going to take that lying down?” Scott asked.  “I’m not really sure what he said but I think he called you a girl.”

Julian closed his eyes and let the heat lull him into moribund sleep.  Then the meager shade of the umbrella was taken away from him.  He threw up his arms to ward off the sun and opened his eyes in time to see the bucket of water emptying onto his head.  His shout was lost in a gurgle of water and he sat up coughing.  His friends were laughing and already running back to the pool.

“You’d better come on in,” Will sang out.  “Your towel won’t be dry for a while.”

His friends whooped in victory and jumped into the pool.  The lifeguard blew his whistle at them, but they were still underwater and didn’t hear it.  Julian’s stubbornness had met its match.  The cool water had felt way too good to go back to melting in the hot sun.  He got up, pulled off his wet T-shirt, and jumped into the pool.  He instantly felt better and decided it wouldn’t matter if he got a tan.  Compared to his friends he already had one anyway.  Unless they were just really, _really_ white, which was a possibility.  Chris was normally about two shades darker than Scott and Will, and Julian fell somewhere in between.  He figured it was the Greek in him.  He’d probably never be able to be truly pasty white.

They splashed and played around in the shallow end in order to make it easier to talk and to accommodate their laziness.  They also stayed in the shallower water for Will’s sake.  All four of them could swim, but Julian wouldn’t leave Will alone too long in deep water; considering how athletic he was, he was a surprisingly weak swimmer.  But as long as his feet were on something solid, he was a real terror during Marco Polo.  The boy had ears like a bat.  He, Scott, and Chris were all circling Will and more or less keeping out of his reach.  They hadn’t played Marco Polo since they were in elementary school.  Back before they were too cool to play it anymore.  It was funny how things that you did when you were younger suddenly became okay to do again once you made it past the trauma of junior high.

Julian called out “polo” and Will swung around toward him.  But, it wasn’t Will.  It was his father.  His dad reached out for him, caught him, and threw him up in the air with a laugh.  Julian squealed and laughed and waved to his mother where she watched them from the pool deck.  Then he saw Will lunging away from him after Scott.  His chest tightened up on him and he couldn’t breathe properly.  Tears filled his eyes and spilled over without warning.  His friends weren’t looking at him.  He needed to go away before they saw him.  He ducked underwater and pushed off the bottom in the direction of the deep end.  He swam to the far corner as far away from the other splashing pool goers as he could get and clung to the white concrete lip.  His feet dangled in the water, nowhere near the safety of the bottom.  He bent his head forward and let out a couple of sobs.  He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, so he took in several deep breaths to calm himself down and buried his face in his arms.  He closed his eyes and breathed in the pungent chlorine smell from the pool.  The water lapped gently against the side of the pool and the sound was amplified by the cavern he’d created with his arms.  The sound gave him something to focus on.  It helped him relax a little.

The last few weeks had been bad.  For a while he had been doing pretty well.  He almost felt like he was back to his normal self.  Then Will had gone to soccer camp, Scott had gone to see his mother, and Chris had had to work.  He’d been left alone for three days.  He’d lain on the stripped mattress of his parents’ bed and known that all he had to do was get up and go out to the mall or call one of the girls, but he couldn’t do it.  He’d lain in the hollowed out room and stared at the ceiling.  He must have eaten and used the bathroom during those three days, but he couldn’t remember any of it.

He’d completely broken down at his session with Dr. Gorman.  He’d screamed and cried and literally beat the stuffing out of one of her couch pillows.  He’d realized then how lucky he was that he hadn’t stopped his therapy sessions.  If she hadn’t been there to put him back together, he was positive something terrible would have happened to him.  After that week had passed, he’d gotten better.  He’d begun to recover again, but then he’d started having the hallucinations.  Maybe hallucination wasn’t the most accurate term, but the visions were vivid.  He could see his parents like they were right in front of him.  Dr. Gorman said he might experience those when he did an activity for the first time since losing his parents.  He could only hope that after the first time it would stop.

“Hey.  Are you okay?”

Julian felt that he had himself under control again, so he raised his head with a smile.  The crinkle in Laney’s brow smoothed out when she saw his expression.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said.  “I just opened my eyes underwater is all.”

Laney sat down on the edge of the pool and dipped her legs into the water.  “Yeah, that hurts.”  She crossed her legs and for the first time in his life he understood why Scott thought Laney was hot.  Her smooth, soft leg stretched up and up and drew his eyes over the flat plane of her stomach and up to the small, but perky mounds filling out her bikini top.  Julian looked away and mentally berated himself.  How dare he think of Laney in that way?  She was a cute, sweet, innocent little girl.  Not some pinup to objectify.  Though how did someone so short get legs that long?  No!  Stop it.  Don’t think dirty things about her.  She was too pure for that.

“So, I haven’t seen that much of you this summer,” she said, lightly bobbing her leg on top of the other.  “What have you been up to?”

“Ah, you know,” Julian said, his eyes watching her leg, “same old, same old.”  He forced his eyes up to hers.  It was much easier to remember that she was his cute little friend when he looked at her face.  That was still young looking.  Unlike her body which had suddenly gotten very mature.

“Is that so?” Laney asked.  “I thought things might be a little different.”

“Yeah, they are.  For me.  It’s just that the world carried on without me, you know?  It’s the same as usual; I’m the one who has changed.”

“I think the world is different,” Laney said, sweetly fierce.  “It’s different without…them.  I miss them too.”

Julian couldn’t help but to grin at her.

“What?” she cried, a little distressed.  “I mean it!  Don’t make fun of me!”

“I’m not, I’m not,” he said laughing.  “You’re just so sweet.  I love that about you, Laney.”

Her cheeks turned pink.  “Oh, hush,” she admonished.  “You probably say that to all the girls.”  She slapped him lightly on the shoulder and gave him some “sexy” eyes.

“And to some of the boys too.”

Laney laughed a bit louder than the comment warranted and touched him again, still giving him those…“sexy?” eyes.  Was she trying to flirt with him?  That was funny.  Now he had a vague of idea of what Scott must have felt when his sister hit on him.  He was saved from having to respond to the flirting by the chorus of his name belted out by his three friends.  He patted Laney’s knee.

“Thanks, Lane.  Why don’t you come play in the shallow end for a while?”

“Um, okay.”

Julian pushed off the wall and swam back to help Will and Scott convince Chris that he needed to flirt with an underclassman.  Once Chris was on his Mission: Impossible, they turned to Scott’s girl issues.  And it was just too tempting.  When Scott queried who should kiss him, he just had to do it.  He’d really wanted to get his hands on that hair; he loved that shiny, pretty hair of Scott’s.  But if he grabbed him by the top of the head, it would be too easy for him to wiggle away.  So, he’d secured him under the jaw and just let the tips of his fingers fondle the fringe of his friend’s hairline.  He should have just buried his hands in it as much as he wanted; Scott didn’t even flinch when he brought their lips together.  Julian would have sworn that Will would be the first of his friends he’d ever kiss, but being wrong wasn’t so bad.  Scott was sweet in more ways than one.

After Will decided that Anna would be a better way to make Antoinette jealous, Julian decided to go in search of a pair of goggles so that Scott could recover in privacy.  They got out of the pool together and Will dashed off to save Chris from his potentially violent ex-girlfriend and Julian made a beeline for his bag.  His weaving around sunbathers and gossipers brought him close to a girl he recognized from his art classes.  Maybe he should try flirting with someone too.  If nothing else it would be good practice to see what worked and what didn’t for when the time came to proceed with Dr. Gorman.  He had a lot of ground to make up there.  It was hard to be all sexy in front of someone when they’d seen you with red eyes, a scrunched up face, and snot hanging out of your nose.

Julian walked right up to the girl and her friend.  They were both Asian with short dark hair and dark eyes and they were about the same height.  They looked completely different though.  The friend had very ethnic features with a flat bone structure and wide nose.  The girl from his class had very high cheek bones too, but she pulled off the haute couture model look.  Well, sort of.  She still looked like a normal high school girl.

She and her friend stopped what they were doing and stared at him.  He didn’t recognize the other girl; it was a good possibility that she didn’t go to Calverton.  Regardless, they both appeared to already be aware of his reputation to kill people with his brain.  That could work to his advantage.

“Hello, ladies.  Would you like me to read your fortune?”

He smiled in a way that let them know he knew it was a corny line.  They smiled with him and his intended target giggled a little.

“Sure,” she said.

Julian realized how lucky he’d gotten.  He hadn’t considered the possibility of having to flirt with both of them.

“May I?” he asked, extending his hand and wordlessly asking for hers.

She placed her hand in his and he ran his fingertips over her skin as he turned it palm up.  She was trying hard not to smile too broadly.  Julian made a show of looking at her palm.  He’d never learned a single thing about fortune-telling in his life, let alone specific knowledge about palm reading.  He passed his thumb over the slightly rougher skin of her palm and then musingly nodded his head.

“Hmm.  I see a tall, dark, and handsome man in your future.”

The friend rolled her eyes but his target smiled coquettishly at him.

“Oh yeah?  And what will he do?”

“Oh.  It will be an epic romance spanning all the ages.  His devotion will overtake you.  The gifts, the flowers, the jewelry he will bestow upon you!”

The girls blinked at him.

“Or, lacking sufficient funds, he might be able to offer you a snow cone.”

The girls laughed, but the friend tried to hide it.  She wasn’t going to make it easy for Julian.  Fortunately, his target wasn’t so worried about letting it show that she liked him.

“So,” she said, “after I’m swept off my feet with flavored ice, then what will I do?”

“Oh, you’ll be enthralled.  His face, his body.”  He quirked an eyebrow at her and she lightly bit her lip as she smiled.  “Maybe not so much the personality, but you can overlook that for his great sense of humor.”

She laughed again.  The friend wasn’t quite so amused anymore.  She might have realized that none of this was for _her_ benefit.

“Then you’ll give him your number.”

“Will I?” she asked haughtily.  “Well, _when_ I see him, I guess I’ll do that.”

“Okay.  But don’t hesitate or be subtle.  Fortune favors the bold.”

He ran his thumb over her palm again and then let his fingers trail light overly her skin as he backed away.  He flashed anther smile and then turned to walk over to his bag.  He saw Chris and Anna giving Will questioning looks as he wildly gesticulated his plan.  More than likely he was saying something along the lines of how this would be a chance for Anna to make out with the guy she was in love with without having to go through the messy trouble of confessing.  Julian shook his head in amusement and dug his goggles out of his bag.

“Hey.”

Julian looked over his shoulder at the soft greeting and then straightened up.  His target had approached him.  She was smiling confidently, like she did this all the time, but she couldn’t _quite_ make full eye contact with him.

“Here’s my number,” she said, holding out a slip of paper.  “I would have given it to you right away, but I wasn’t sure it was you I was looking for.  After all, you said tall, dark, and handsome, not tall, dark, and gorgeous.”

Julian smiled at her and took the paper from her.  Before he could say anything the nerve she’d mustered to say that to him failed her and she scampered back to her friend.  Julian watched her go and then glanced at the paper.  Written above the number was “Eun-hee.”  No wonder he couldn’t remember her name.  He put the paper safely into his bag and then ran for the pool.  The few minutes he’d spent out of it had been terrible.  Why was it so frickin’ hot out?  He was a few strokes away from Scott when something jumped on his head.  He struggled under the water as the person pushed his head down.  Then the person let go and he popped up, gasping for breath and searching for revenge.  He spotted Laney swimming away from him in a huff.  What had that been all about?  She really needed to learn how to play in the pool.  That wasn’t fun at all.

 

Julian glanced at his friends.  They all looked kind of bored as they fidgeted and glanced around the waiting room.  He knew Dr. Gorman didn’t have any patients scheduled before him, so she was intentionally making them wait.  Was she doing it just to drive him mad?  He was nervous about this whole meeting.  He wasn’t sure if it was because he was worried what they might say about him or what she might say about him.  Or maybe he was worried what she might say _to_ them.  She didn’t mince her words.  Then again, he might be worried that his friends would pick up on their slightly unprofessional relationship.  Will might in any case.  He tended to notice things that other people didn’t.

The door to her office opened.  Julian bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from collapsing in hysterics.  She’d dressed up for their meeting.  But of course, dressed up for her just meant she looked even more like a fashion victim than usual.  He could only imagine what his friends were thinking.  He stood up and led them into the office, and then introduced them to Dr. Gorman one at a time.

With Chris and Scott she was pretty normal, but when he pointed out Will, she got a little pinched in the face.  He knew that she had been dying to meet the boy that he claimed he was in love with.  And now that she saw him, Julian wondered if she felt a little insecure knowing that her competition was so stiff.  After all, Will was prettier than her.

They took their seats on the couch and Julian settled in against the arm of the couch so that he could get a good look at all of his friends as Dr. Gorman shrank their heads.  He’d had a feeling that even though the premise for them coming was for them to help Julian with his counseling, that she wouldn’t be able to resist butting into their problems.  And boy did they have problems.  Julian knew that, he’d spoken with them about it before.  But listening to them break down in front of Dr. Gorman was a whole other experience.  He’d had no idea that Chris was such a martyr, and it had never occurred to him that Scott was possibly being abused by Antoinette.  Knowing his personality, he wondered why the three of them hadn’t seriously considered that before.  Will was the only one who hadn’t really been manipulated by her successfully.  She had managed to draw out that he was hiding something from them, however.  Julian had felt such a flash of rage at the betrayal that he’d shocked himself.  After hearing Will’s reasoning for not telling them, he did calm down.  But he was beyond curious at what it might be.  What could put them in an awkward position if they knew about it?  Had the CIA contacted him and now he was building a weapon for the government?

It had been an hour of interesting revelations.  He even had one for himself.  While Dr. Gorman had been her usual blunt and brutally honest self with Chris and Scott, she had been downright snippy with Will.  She was jealous.  She had to be.  He had her totally wrapped around his finger.  It was great.  As long as he could get his anger and depression under control, he’d be able to get Dr. Gorman to open up to him for once.  And then she’d be his.  His fingers itched.  He was dying to get a hold of her.  His curiosity was out of control tonight.

“Now, Julian,” Dr. Gorman turned to him.  “Let’s talk about you for a minute or two.”

Julian glanced at his watch.  They still had ten minutes left in the session.  Crap.  He thought he’d be able to get out of it.

“What would you like to talk about?”

“She said ‘you,’ didn’t she?” Will asked.

Julian gave him a look.  Smart ass.

“Okay.  Let’s talk about me.”

“Do you want to tell them what happened a couple weeks ago during our session?”

Julian’s eyes went wide.  “Absolutely not.”

Chris and Will turned their heads and Scott peeked out from under Will’s arm to look at him.

“Why?  What happened two weeks ago?” Chris asked.

Dr. Gorman remained silent.  At least she had enough sense to respect doctor-patient confidentiality.  Julian cracked his knuckles and wished he’d never agreed to let them come.  He would die before letting them know he’d nearly gone off the deep end.  Especially if he explained the reason why was because he’d been alone for three days.  More than likely they would blame themselves.  Will definitely would.  They had all promised him not to leave him alone, and they had done a good job of keeping their word.  But sometimes, like for those three days, it had been impossible.  He knew that and didn’t blame them for it.  He just couldn’t handle it, but he didn’t want them to feel guilty about it.  So, they couldn’t know about it.  Why had she brought it up?  Did she think it would help for them to know?  She was so wrong about that.  She really didn’t understand the four of them very well at all.

“Julian,” Dr. Gorman said softly, “is there anything you’d like to say?  Anything you’d like them to know?”

Julian rested his arm on the end of the couch and used that hand to rub his head.  The room remained quiet for several minutes.  He knew everyone was waiting for him.  Finally he straightened up and shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m still sad,” he said.  “It’s still a huge big deal for me.  I’m trying to carry on with my life, but it’s really hard.  The problem is that I’m not always aware of that.  Sometimes I feel like everything is back to normal and I’m okay.  But it’s really not.  It may never be.  I’m just not there yet when it comes to coping with it and being able to move on.”

The room was quiet again.  But it wasn’t uncomfortable.  Julian had a sneaking suspicion that what he’d just said hadn’t been that big a surprise to his friends.  He looked at them and they were looking back at him (Scott having finally sat up).  They weren’t looking at him with pity or overwhelming sympathy.  It was just understanding.  Even if they couldn’t relate to exactly what he was going through, they were willing to go through it with him in whatever way he needed to do it.  That was a good feeling.

“Well,” Dr. Gorman said closing her notepad, “I believe that’s all the time we have for today.  And thank goodness for that.  You four are more than a handful.”

“Geh.”

Julian wasn’t sure which one of them said it, but they were all thinking it.  They stood up and shuffled for the door.  They mumbled goodbye to Dr. Gorman and she adjusted her glasses as she watched them go, looking triumphant.  He intentionally gave Will a lingering look as his pretty friend left the room and then turned to Dr. Gorman.  She had caught the look and didn’t seem happy about it.

“Well.  That was interesting,” Julian said.  “Let’s never do it again.”

“I thought you’d be happy that I helped your friends acknowledge their problems.  I gave them free psychiatric help.  I think Will and Chris will be fine, but it might behoove Scott to start seeing _someone_ regularly if not me.”

Julian smiled.  “I think if he does start going to therapy he won’t ever agree to come back and see you again.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.  I think Scott lets himself be babied because he enjoys being bossed around.”

“Nobody enjoys being bossed around.”

Dr. Gorman shrugged. “Okay.  Ignore the expert.”

They laughed and then stood awkwardly, shifting their weight.  Julian spoke first.

“Well, they’re waiting on me.  I’d better go.”

“Okay.  So, we’ll meet here again next Wednesday, correct?”

“Yep.”

“When does school start again?”

“Um, September 6th.  That’s a Tuesday I think.  So, we’ll be back in your main office on the 7th.”

“I shall plan accordingly.  Have a good night.”

“Goodnight,” Julian replied.  He held her gaze for a moment and then left the office.  She was _so_ falling for him.

His friends were clustered by the exit and trying not to look at the secretary.  He joined up with them and they spilled out of the office, more than happy to get away from Dr. Gorman and her notepad and her perceptive insights.  Chris and Will’s moods were starting to improve already and Scott was sniffing back the last of his tears.  As they made their way through the parking lot, Scott turned to Julian and said, “You know.  She kind of reminds me of your mother.”

“What?” Julian laughed.  “Did my mother ever make you cry?”

“Well, I don’t mean in the whole being mean and evil sort of way.  I just mean the way that she’s very honest.  And says what she’s thinking.  And even some of her mannerisms.  I’m not saying she’s _like_ your mother; I’m just saying she reminds me of her.”

Julian shook his head in amusement.  Silly Scott.

“Now that you mention it,” said Chris.  “You’re right.  I thought there was something about her.  I guess that was it.”

Julian glanced sharply at Chris.  Say what?  Those two yahoos didn’t know anything.  He looked to Will.  _He_ had known his mother the best.  He would refute their claims.

“Come on, Will.  Tell them they’re crazy.  She’s nothing like my mother.”

“No, she’s not like your mother.”

Julian felt relieved.

“But like Scott said, she reminds me of your mother.  I guess that’s why you like her so much.”

Julian stopped walking and his friends didn’t notice as they continued on to Chris’ car.  He felt frozen in place.  This was too cruel.  This was proof that there was a god.  And he was a vicious little bitch.


	9. Chapter 9

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

 

Will

 

The first day of classes was always so exciting.  You got to see all the people you hadn’t been able to over the summer; you got to see which teachers you got and who was in your classes; it was something new to do, a change of pace.  Will Harder didn’t really care about any of those things.  He found the first day of classes so exciting because he really just loved to learn.  Of course, the feeling was always short-lived.  As soon as he read the syllabus for each class he knew that he was going to be bored.  Even if he’d never independently studied the subject before, the teacher always moved at too slow of a pace.  In some cases it would take two weeks to cover one chapter.  Shouldn’t they be doing at least two chapters in one day?  Isn’t that how college worked?  These were supposed to be college prep classes, but they seemed so scaled down.  Even more so this year.  He was expecting so much more from his senior level classes, but he was pretty much ahead of all of them already.  Maybe he should have at least tried to get into an International Baccalaureate program.  But then he would have had to go to Huntington Academy.  And if he wasn’t going to be in school with his friends, there was no point in staying in high school and he would have just gone to college anyway.

Will sighed as the calculus teacher discussed how the course was going to be quick paced and require a lot of outside work and effort on the students’ parts to keep up.  Yeah right.  He was so going to get in trouble this year.  When he got bored he tended to act up.  Maybe he shouldn’t have spent the summer browsing through the quantum physics books at the city’s university library.  In order to understand quantum physics he needed to know calculus, so he’d taught himself what he needed to know to do his research.  Unfortunately, he’d pretty much covered the entire high school course for the year.  For the first time he really felt like he was wasting his life by staying in high school for another year.  But maybe he just shouldn’t look at it that way.  He was getting another year with his friends and another year to run around with no responsibilities.  If he was going to have to work extra hard to make up for lost time when he was in college, he should play now while he still could.  Besides, he definitely wasn’t ready to say goodbye to his friends, and he knew that’s what college would mean.  He knew that they would not be attending the same school as him.  No offense to his friends, but only Scott was possibly smart enough to get into the schools he would be applying to.  And Scott would more than likely choose a school for its campus life than academic reputation.

The bell rang and Will dragged himself out of his desk.  He was certain his other classes were going to be just as depressing.  Well, maybe not.  His friends might be in some of his other classes.  None of them were in his calculus class.  They had all been put in the AB version of the AP class while he and four other nerds had been put in the “harder” BC version.  And those four nerds tended to shun him because he was too much of a jock.  Well.  If they were smart enough that they didn’t have to study for their BC calculus class they could spend more time exercising too.  Punks.

Will walked down the hall toward the stairwell.  His next two classes were upstairs.  He didn’t like it upstairs.  It smelled.  He was distracted from those thoughts as two Playboy Bunnies walked toward him with bouncing hair and swishing skirts.  Oh, wait, no.  It was just the lesbians.  He continued on his path for the stairs, but they cut him off.  They stood in front of him with their hands on their hips and at least three different products making their lips nice and glossy.  One was his height with curly auburn hair and the other was a little bit shorter with dark, sleek, straight hair.  He’d made out with the shorter one before, and since then he always been kind of curious about the other one.

“Hey, Will,” the dark-haired one said demurely.

Before he could reply the taller one complained, “Excuse me, I was here first.”

“No,” the girl turned an irritated look on her girlfriend, “you were just following and copying me like always.”

Will raised an eyebrow.  Ah.  The lesbians were fighting.  They must have broken up again.  Whenever they broke up they took turns flirting with him.  The last time things had gone a little bit beyond flirting and he’d been sworn to secrecy about it.  Like he cared enough to lord it over her so that he could ruin their relationship later down the road.  He also didn’t care that they fought over him like he was some sort of prize.  He didn’t find it insulting.  He thought it was funny.  And a little true.  Anybody would be lucky to be with him.  He smiled at his own thought and they broke off from their squabbling.

“Oh, please,” said the taller one with a toss of her auburn hair.  “You are not _that_ great.”

Will shrugged, still smiling.

“Well, then if you don’t think he’s that great, I’ll date him,” said the shorter one.

Her dark eyes flashed as she looked him over and bit gently on her lower lip.  Will smiled back at her.  He knew a lot of it was just a show for her girlfriend, but he also knew part of it was from remembering their afternoons together in the janitor’s closet.  He wouldn’t mind a repeat of that himself.

“No, you got him last time.  I’m going to spend some time with him while you think about what you’ve done.”

“Well, how about we let Will decide.”

The both turned to him expectantly.  Will rubbed a finger over his chin.  Which did he want?  He’d never been with the taller one before.  Maybe it would be interesting to give her a whirl.  Or maybe he should go with what he knew was good.  Then again, the redhead may have been the one who taught the brunette everything she knew.  Decisions, decisions.

“Hey, Will!”

Will started guiltily and turned to see Liz skipping up to him.  She waved to the lesbians and tugged gently on the sleeve of his shirt.  She was one of very few girls at Calverton who weren’t intimidated by the lesbians’ beauty or their apparent control over the male population.  Probably because she’d been singled out by Will Harder for over year while they’d dated.  Liz wasn’t stupid.  She knew that that had raised her status in the school.  After they’d broken up, three guys had asked her out the next week.

“I was just wondering which lunch you have this year,” Liz said.

“Um, I think have B lunch.”

“Oh.  Bummer.  I have A.  And we definitely won’t have many classes together.  I guess we won’t see each other that much.”

“Well, not in school maybe.  But we can always hang out after.”

“Yeah.”  Liz glanced at the lesbians and then back at Will.  “Well, I have to get to my next class, but since I won’t see you much this week I just wanted to make sure—I mean, find out if we would be going to the back to school dance together.  I mean, there’s really only one weekend to shop for it.  So, I just wanted to know if I should, you know, go shopping.”

She smiled and waited hopefully for the answer.  Will looked at the lesbians.  It really was too hard to choose between them.  And more than likely they would have gotten over their fight in two weeks time and would be going with each other to the back to school dance.  In which case Liz would at least have that much pride that she wouldn’t change her plans to go with him at the last minute.

“Yeah, of course we’re going,” he said.

Liz’s smile got considerably brighter.  “Great!  So, I’ll talk to you and the guys later to make plans.”

“Okay.  Bye.”

Liz walked away, though Will thought it was a bit closer to a skip.  He faced the lesbians and shrugged.  He started to head for the stairs again and the shorter one put out a hand to stop him.

“Will, we know you don’t like her,” she said.

Will stepped away from her touch and gave her a cold look.  “What’s your point?  You guys don’t really like me.  It’s just that if you have to date a guy you’d rather date one that’s pretty enough to be a girl, and I fit the bill.”

“Right,” said the taller one, “but you know that.  So, it’s okay.”

“Don’t jerk her around,” said the other.

Will rolled his eyes.  “Look, she’s not as clueless as she seems.  It’s all an act.”

“So?  That doesn’t mean she can’t still get hurt.”

Will made a face and walked away from them.  Who the hell were they to get all up in his business?  Did they _want_ him to share all the secrets he knew about them with each other?  He was sure the redhead would be shocked to learn that her girlfriend had gone to third base with a boy, and the brunette would be offended to hear even half of what her girlfriend said about her when they were broken up.  Stupid lesbians.  They were trying to make Liz’s self-deception his problem.  A lot of people liked him and had crushes on him.  Was she responsible for all of their feelings?  He certainly wasn’t responsible for Liz’s.  He hadn’t been leading her on.  He’d actually said flat out to her once that even though they were spending a lot of time together again, they were not dating.  She’d just shrugged his words off.  That wasn’t his fault.

The rest of the day went okay.  As he suspected his classes were all way behind him.  The one possible exception would be English class.  He hadn’t read the books and plays they would be reading during the year, so that would be new at least.  And Scott, Chris, and Julian were all in the same class with him.  It was fun to be able to sit in the corner and talk and ignore the teacher.  Until they got yelled at.  After three infractions the teacher had unwisely made all four of them go stand in the hall.  All they had done was talk without having to worry about getting in trouble.

After school he and Julian waited by the end of the student parking lot.  Chris had had to leave them to go to work, so they stuck their hands in their pockets to ward off the cold wind whipping around them as they waited for Scott.  September was usually warmer than this, but a storm was brewing.  After the second rumbling of thunder they decided to leave Scott behind.  If he was going to be that slow they certainly weren’t going to get caught in the rain with him.  They hurried for the metro and Will wondered if the storm was bringing back memories for Julian.  There had been other storms over the summer, but he’d never had the courage to ask Julian how he felt about it.  He never seemed bothered when it lightninged or thundered, but sometimes Will worried that he wasn’t as good at reading Julian anymore.  He watched him carefully as they clung to the metal bars on the rumbling train.  Not that they needed them to keep their balance; they were packed in like sardines.

“Why do you keep staring at me?” Julian asked leaning close to him.  “Are you finally ready to give in to my wooing?”

“I was just wondering how you felt about thunderstorms.”

Julian tilted his head.  “What do you mean?”

“Well.  You know.  That night.  There was that terrible storm.”

“Oh.”  Julian smiled.  “I don’t remember it.  I don’t remember there being a storm.  I mean, I think I can remember some rain, but honestly, the weather doesn’t stand out in my memory.  So, I’m okay.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

“Don’t look so sad,” Julian said as he pinched Will’s cheek.

It took a few seconds for Will to wrestle his hand from his side and up to his face to slap away Julian’s hand.  They arrived at their transfer point and waddled off the train with half its occupants.  They approached the stairs that led to the lower platform.

“So, are you going to start going to your ‘job’ again?” Julian asked.

“Why did you call it a ‘job’?  It’s real.”

“I know.  But it’s kind of a weird one.  You watch after some guy’s cat because he works late.”

“Yeah, basically.”

“So, why did he get a cat if he’s too busy to take care of it?”

Will shrugged.  “He’s a weird guy.”

“Unh-hunh.  Oo.  There’s my line.  See you later!”

“Are you going to be okay?” Will called after him.  “At home?”

“I think so,” Julian called out going down the stairs.  His next sentence was unintelligible.

“What?” Will shouted.

Julian pulled out his cell phone and pointed to it, then to Will, and then gave a thumbs up.  Will assumed that Julian would call him if he wasn’t okay and needed help.  He adjusted his messenger bag and took the stairs out of the station two at a time.  When he breached the subway entrance it wasn’t as dark as he had been expecting.   The clouds were still menacing, but the charge in the air was gone.  If the weather did break, it would just be rain and not a thunderstorm.

Will made his way to Ken’s building, punched in the entry code, and hopped onto the elevator like he was a resident.  He wouldn’t be surprised if the guards started thinking he was a resident before too long, if they didn’t already.  He made his way down the 17th hall floor and checked his watch.  He was right on schedule.  He’d get two hours to play with the kitten and do his homework, read: mess around on the Internet, and then it would be time to feed the kitten and head home.  It was the same schedule he’d developed at the end of the last school year.  His departure and Ken’s arrival usually overlapped by fifteen to thirty minutes.  More often it was fifteen and sometimes they’d miss each other altogether.  Will didn’t like to leave the kitten alone after she’d been by herself all day, but it was impossible to tell when Ken was late if it would be for ten minutes or for two hours.  Will couldn’t recall if he had a big project going on or not, so he didn’t know if he would see him before he left.

When he reached number 1703 he dug out his keys and unlocked the door.  As he was stepping inside, he glanced down the hall and thought he saw someone familiar.  He leaned back on his foot and saw that that someone had stepped back in their apartment momentarily.  He debated whether he should wait for the person to step back out to see if he really did recognize them.  If he did, they might recognize him.  But would that be a bad thing?  He and Ken weren’t doing anything wrong; there was nothing illicit about their relationship.  Will smiled wryly.  Yeah, right.   The door to Autumn Rose’s apartment began to jiggle.  Will quickly ducked inside Ken’s condo and slammed the door shut behind him.  Joyce Greene paused on her way to him at the loud sound.  Then she sat down and began to lick a paw in order to play it cool; she hadn’t been startled at all.

Will dropped his bag on the floor and scooped the kitten up into his arms.  He knew he was going to get white fur all over his dark sweater vest, but it was worth it to hear her purr against his chest.  She really was the cutest thing ever created, and she had the best personality.  And he wasn’t biased at all.  It wasn’t like she was _his_ cat.

Will shifted the kitten in his arms as he walked over to the bay window.  She was starting to get big.  She wasn’t huge by any means, but she was definitely growing.  He sat on the bench under the bay window Indian style and put Joyce Greene in his lap.  Together they watched the fish swim around in the large marine aquarium.  He had tried to identify some of the species in the tank from the Internet, but was only certain about five or six of the approximately ten different species.  The easiest ones had been the seahorses, the snowflake eel, and of course the Nemo-esque clown fish.  He knew the difference between corals and anemones, but didn’t know which specific types were in the tank.  He’d managed to identify the flame angelfish and the yellow-tailed damsel, but the rest of the brightly colored fish were kind of a mystery.  Joyce Greene eventually made her way off Will’s lap and sat as close as possible to the glass.  Every now and then she’d put her paw out and pat the glass.

Will left her to puzzle over the bright things she couldn’t touch and dug his laptop out of his messenger bag.  Whenever he worked on the computer at Ken’s apartment he chose to sit at the dining table.  He didn’t want to look like Ken, snuggled up on the couch with his beloved collection of silicon and wires.  Even if Ken was straight he’d probably still think of his computer first when someone mentioned silicone.  He sat cross-legged on the chair and powered up the machine.  As he waited for it to boot he leaned his arm on the table and rested his head on his hand.  He was bored.  He didn’t really have anything to do.  Not just at Ken’s, at his house either.  They hadn’t even been given homework.  So what if it was the first day of school?  Shouldn’t they be getting started already?  Maybe it wasn’t too late to apply to a college and join belatedly.  They might be willing to make an exception for him since he was a genius.  And if his mom got involved, well then it would probably be a done deal.

His computer found the wireless connection that the complex provided as one of its amenities.  Will was pretty certain the cost was somewhere in the condo fees Ken paid every month, which were outrageous.  He knew his parents had an above average income, but they weren’t rich enough to throw that much money away every month just to pay a couple security guards to sit downstairs and watch TV.  The computer prompted him for a password to use the wireless connection.  He typed in the one Ken had given him and wondered why the man trusted him so much.  Will supposed that if he trusted him not to turn him into the police or try to blackmail him, a couple passwords and a key to the place weren’t that big of a deal.

Once he was connected he checked multiple lists of top rated universities in the country.  Columbia was usually number one on each list.  It might be fun to go to school in New York City, but he’d always been kind of interested in MIT.  He’d ruled out Yale and Harvard long ago for being too cliché.  Plus the undergraduate admissions really weren’t fueled so much by academics as by connections and money.  As he scanned the list of Ivy League schools, he clicked on Dartmouth.  He’d previously placed it on the “no-go” list because they didn’t actually award Bachelors of Science.  You could major in a science, but you’d still get a Bachelor of Arts.  He hadn’t been too thrilled with that idea.  But, maybe a small school would be better for him.  He could just lock himself in a laboratory and not be worried about missing the nightlife.  He sat back in his chair and tapped his finger on the Pentium processor stamp.  Now why was he suddenly interested in looking at Dartmouth again?  He rolled his eyes.  He was not going to get into an argument with himself.

Joyce Greene hopped up on the table and began to prance around in front of him.  She nuzzled against him and he got the hint.  He walked into the kitchen, fed the kitten, and then went rifling through Ken’s pantry.  He found a box of wheat thins and some fancy looking soft cheese in the refrigerator.  He made himself a plate and opened a bottle of flavored Dasani water.  Ken didn’t drink sodas or flavored drinks with sugar added, or anything good for that matter.  As he settled back in front of his computer and took a bite of his cheese covered cracker he realized he really did make himself at home.  Maybe he should actually do something to earn that privilege.  But he did.  He took care of the cat, the fish, and the plants.  And oh yeah, he didn’t turn the dirty pervert rapist into the police.  Joyce Greene hopped onto the table again and looked at him.  He rubbed her under the chin.

“I don’t mean it,” Will told her.  “He’s not a dirty rapist and I wouldn’t turn him into the police.  Though he is a pervert.”

Joyce Greene settled on the edge of the table and hung part way off it.  Will checked his watch.  Usually he would go home now, but Ken still wasn’t home.  He might as well stay and keep the kitten company.  Or rather, let her keep him company.  His parents were both out of town again.  Maybe he could look up international universities.  Why limit himself to the US?  Probably because the best schools were in the US, but maybe going to Oxford or Cambridge could be fun.  At the very least it would make him very snooty-sounding when he told people where he went to school, and the snootiness factor was important when choosing a university.

A couple more hours passed and Will had long since stopped looking at schools.  He’d done a little studying up on some organic chemistry principles, but then he’d started randomly searching for weird or interesting pictures and videos.  It was a shame there wasn’t a website where people could just upload random videos for all the world to see.  He’d read somewhere on his Internet scouting that some people were working on developing such a principle, but it hadn’t come out yet.  Maybe he should make one.  It couldn’t be that hard, right?  He glanced at the time on his computer.  It was getting close to eight o’clock.  Why wasn’t Ken home yet?  He left at 6:30 every morning.  If he did this on a regular basis or on days when Will couldn’t come over, that was way too long to leave the kitten alone.

Something thudded against the door.  Will and Joyce Greene whipped their heads around to watch the doorknob jiggle, and then Ken stumbled through the entrance.  He shut the door behind him, dropped his briefcase on the floor, and shrugged out of his jacket.  He began to work on his tie and toed his shoes off.  Then he flopped face first over the arm of the couch and groaned into the cushions.  Will and Joyce Greene looked at each other, and then Will looked at the trail of clothing Ken had left on the way to the couch.  He had never left clothes on the floor before in all the time Will had known him.  Granted, that wasn’t that long of a time, but he knew him well enough to know that this was abnormal.

Will uncurled his legs and cautiously approached the couch.  He froze as Ken stirred, but all the man did was drag himself forward so that he was lying more comfortably on the couch.  Will leaned on the back of the couch and looked at Ken’s long, lean figure.  The man didn’t move again or make any noises.

“You okay?” Will asked.

“No,” Ken groused.  “I’m tired, my body aches; I’m absolutely miserable.”  His voice was muffled by the cushion.

“Mm-hmm.  Bad day?”

“That doesn’t even begin to cover it.”  He turned his head slightly so his face wasn’t pressed directly into the cushion.  He was a little easier to understand when he spoke.  “The people I work with are so stupid.  They keep making stupid mistakes and causing me stupid problems.  And my father just had to stop by today and see the absolute mess I’ve made.  Plus I’ve been on my feet for the last _week_ and all day today I was bent over looking at people’s computer screens.”

Will laughed.  “So, you spent all day today bent over?”

“Oh, shut-up.”

Will walked around the couch and sat on the coffee table so he could see Ken’s face.  His eyes were closed and he looked downright haggard.  Now he felt a little sorrier for him.

“Well, you’re rich,” Will said, “why don’t you go to a spa or something?”

“That does sound like a very nice idea.  Unfortunately, I don’t really have the time for that.”  He sounded a tad snippy to Will’s ears.  “And I couldn’t go now even if they are still open.  I’m way too tired to even try moving.”

“I guess now would be a good time for a fake girlfriend.”

“Why?”

“Then she’d be able to give you a massage.”

“Hmph.  A fake girlfriend would just turn my headaches into migraines.  Besides, _amateurs_ are never good,” he said like a spoiled brat.

Will was glad Ken’s eyes were closed so he couldn’t see the face he made.  “They can be, you know.  My friend’s mom—the dead one—used to give really good ones.  She even taught us how to give them.”

“Oh, really?” he asked, not sounding particularly interested.

“Yeah,” Will said, realizing Ken was beyond tired and probably just wanted to be left alone.  He played with a fingernail and watched Joyce Greene hop up onto the couch.  She walked carefully down Ken’s leg to his back.

“Hey, baby,” Ken murmured.

Will smiled.  He almost stood up to collect his belongings and go, but stayed seated and stared at the finger he was picking at.

“Do you want me to give you one?” Will asked.

Ken was silent.  He didn’t open his eyes and he didn’t move.  Will wondered if he’d fallen asleep.  He waited a few moments and when Ken didn’t answer he started to get up.

“If you don’t mind,” Ken said quietly.

“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

“Do I need to move?”

Will thought about it.  It would be kind of hard to do it sideways on the couch, but he knew the bed was too high for him.  And it’s not like there was a massage table lying about that he could use.  Plus it was questionable whether or not Ken was capable of moving.  Will stood up and approached the couch.  He was in a strange mood tonight; he could feel that.  So, he put one knee on the edge of the couch beside Ken’s hip, and then swung his other leg over his body.  He settled his weight on the back of Ken’s thighs and the man’s eyes flew open.  He didn’t move or protest, but he looked very worried and even tenser.  Will moved the kitten to the back of the couch and then began to rub Ken’s back and shoulders the way Mrs. March had taught him.  It didn’t take long for Ken to get over his discomfort and let his exhausted body relax.  Will still needed something to distract himself from what he was doing.

“So, what kind of work do you do?”

“Mm.  It’s an investment firm.”

“Like, you work the stock markets?”

“Well, one of my father’s other companies does that.  The company I head is responsible for managing the finances of large corporations.  We’re currently working on trying to bring in smaller companies and even individual investors.  Ah.  There.  Yeah.  We really need a new subsidiary for that, not just a department in my company.  All this shuffling and change has made our large investors nervous.  But my father doesn’t want to break up the company again.  And if that wasn’t enough of a headache, I’m in charge of a company merger in which both parties are being problematic.”

“Wow.  That’s two huge projects.”

“I know.  Nn.  I took them on because I wanted to impress my father.  Now I’m just worried I may let him down.”

“Hmm.”  Will ran a hand up to his neck and touched warm skin for the first time.

“What, no comforting lies?” Ken asked.

“I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Good.”

Will moved his hands back to the shoulders.

“Ah!  Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it felt good.  So, how was your day?”

Will sighed.  “Boring.  School is so slow.  I got too far ahead over the summer.  So, I spent this afternoon looking at different colleges.  I want to go to a school that’s _really_ challenging.  I want to _work_ , you know?  But then, college is supposed to be fun, right?  It _would_ be nice to be able to party for four years and still graduate summa cum laude.”

Ken grunted.  “You make me sick.”

Will laughed softly.  They stopped talking, but he continued the massage.  Ken’s dress shirt was made of a nice, expensive material, so it didn’t feel bad rubbing it, but it wasn’t the most pleasant sensation either.  Mrs. March had always done it skin on skin with aroma therapy oils.  Will knew it would be a bad idea for them to be in skin to skin contact and have something handy that could be used as a lubricant.  And why was that a concern?  If he really was just friends with Ken, would it matter?  But then again, if he really was just friends with Ken, would he be straddling him and giving him a back massage in the first place?  And letting himself rock forward with each movement, bringing his groin into contact with Ken’s ass.  It wasn’t making him hard or anything, but it was making him all tingly.  And God help him, he was okay with it.  It didn’t bother him to be open and intimate with Ken anymore.  His hands stopped moving and he looked at the bay window.  He could see a couple other tall buildings lit up in various places in the dark frame of the night.

Why didn’t it upset him anymore?  Why did he not mind crossing some lines that were very firmly drawn in the sand?  What had changed between them?  Nothing.  Nothing had changed.  So why was he suddenly okay with it?  Ken stirred beneath him.

“Thanks for the massage.”

Will was brought back to their current situation.  He hadn’t really meant to stop, but the ache in his own shoulders let him know he had been doing it for quite some time.  Then again, he could just be a wimp.

“Is it okay?” Will asked.  “Do you need it to be longer?”

“No, it’s fine.  I feel so much better now.  But, I’m not going to be able to get up for a while without getting yelled at.”

Ken had a small smirk on his face, but his eyes were still closed.

“And why is that?” Will asked snippily.

Ken’s smirk widened into a smile.  He was probably going to make some smartass comment.  Will leaned forward and pressed his chest to Ken’s back.  Ken’s words died on his lips and he opened his eyes.  He looked over his shoulder and Will braced a hand on the side of the coffee table so that he could bring their faces close together.  Ken’s face was calm, but his eyes looked petrified.  Will smiled and slowly bent his arm at the elbow, lowering himself even closer.  He tilted his head and closed his eyes.  He refused to let himself think about what he was doing.  Just this one time, in this one situation.  Just this once.

Will’s cell phone rang.  He’d changed the ring tone back to a standard ring and the momentary pause between rings felt unending.  They were looking into each other’s open eyes, lips so close it was impossible to tell if they were touching or not.  They didn’t move.  Neither wanted to pull back, but for some reason it was now so hard to move forward.  Then the second ring finally caught up to them.  Will sat up and dug his phone out of his back pocket.  Ken rested his head on his arm and watched him.  Will didn’t bother to move off him.  He just placed a hand on the small of Ken’s back and put the phone to his ear, all while maintaining eye contact.  He’d seen who was calling him and was wondering how Ken would react to it.

“Hi, Mom,” he answered the phone.

Ken went rigid beneath him.  Will smiled.

“Hello, my precious.  My flight got in early.  I’m way ahead of your father; his flight is late.  I need you to come pick me up at the airport.”

“Umm, I’m actually still in the city.”

Ken’s eyes darted around the room and then back to Will.  He seemed to be wishing that he would get off him while he talked to his mother.  He simply shifted his weight and saw Ken close his eyes in unwanted pleasure.

“This late?  Well, then you might as well meet me for dinner.”  She didn’t bother to ask what he was doing.  He knew she wouldn’t.  “We can wait for your father to get in and then he can drive us home.”

“Okay.  That sounds good.  Can we go to Chez André?”

Ken raised his eyebrows.  It was the second most expensive restaurant in the city.

“Sure.  I haven’t been there in a while.  So, I better go get a taxi.  I’ll meet you there in, what, twenty minutes or so?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.  And you know, Mom, there is a metro station about one block from Chez André, and you can hop on the right line at the airport.”

“Oh, Will, my darling boy, I do believe it is your sense of humor I love about you most.”

Will laughed and shifted his weight against Ken again.  The man gave him an unfriendly look.  He just smiled back.

“Well, I’ve got to run,” said his mother.  “See you soon.  Bye!”

“Bye.”

Will hung up and watched Ken.  The man looked like he was trying very hard not to move a muscle.  Will’s bizarre mood had passed and he was no longer interested in initiating anything weird with him.  Though if Ken grew a pair of balls and decided to initiate it himself, he might discover that Will wouldn’t exactly be resistant to the idea.  So, he waited, but Ken wouldn’t move.  Finally Will just got up.  Too bad for Ken; it was his loss.

“Okay, then,” Will said.  “I’ll see you later.”

He walked over to the dining table to put up his computer.

“Um.  Thanks again for the massage.”

“Sure.”  Will shouldered his bag.  “Anytime.”

Ken gave him a pointed look.  “I’ll remember that.”

He gave a disapproving look in return.  “Bye.”

Will left the apartment.  For the first time after something weird happened between them, he wasn’t storming out of the apartment and crying like a little girl.  Not only was he okay, he had a good feeling.  He was happy.  And that was strange.  And wrong.  And scary.  He punched the elevator call button.  That poor button.  He was going to break it one day.  The elevator came and he ducked inside, feeling not quite ashamed, but a little embarrassed by what had happened.  This was more like it.  This is the way he was supposed to feel.  What was going on with him?  What had he done today?  He’d practically ridden Ken like a well-hung stallion.  Okay, it hadn’t been _exactly_ like that, but his behavior had not been remotely heterosexual.  He needed to focus on Liz.  He needed to lead her on.  He just needed to get himself reoriented where he belonged and then everything between him and Ken would be kosher.

The elevator doors opened and Autumn Rose was waiting for it in the lobby.  She smiled when she saw him.

“Hi, Will.”

“Hello, Autumn Rose.”  _I just got further with Mr. West than you ever will_.  “See you around.”

 

Scott

 

Scott tugged on his tie, trying to loosen the noose.  He felt hot and sweaty and trapped.  The halls of the school kept collapsing in on him and everyone kept looking at him.  They knew.  Everyone knew.  Everyone knew that he was fooling around with Antoinette and that he liked kinky sex.  They could all probably tell just by looking at him.  He might as well have a big, giant “Freaky Perv” stamped on his forehead.  Even the teachers knew.  Before he and his friends got kicked out of English class, the teacher had asked him to explain his heart of darkness.  That twisted wretched jungle that he had within him.  Some might argue that the teacher had simply been asking about the summer reading, but Scott knew better.  He’d been trying to draw out a confession.  And he might as well have announced it to the entire class.  He knew everyone was looking at him and shaking their heads.  What a weird freak.  He likes to get slapped around by someone else’s girlfriend.  That’s what they were all thinking.

Scott walked nervously down the hall, eyes darting furtively about.  Were people avoiding him?  Were they walking purposely around him in large arcs?  Yes, they were!  Everyone knew!

“Mr. Ramsey.”

Scott started and threw himself against a locker.  Were they going to beat him to see if he liked any kind of pain?

“Mr. Ramsey.”

Scott opened one eye.  The vice principal was standing in front of him with his arms crossed.  He was giving Scott a look that let him know the man clearly thought he was crazy.  The fluorescent lights reflected off his bald, black head and Scott straightened himself up.  Mr. Hayden was half a foot taller than him and had the aura of a man in charge of running an inner city title one public school rather than a prestigious predominantly white private school.  He was a little scary.

“Hello, Mr. Hayden.  How was your summer?”

“Fine.  Do you know the rules of this institution?”

Scott’s eyes went wide.  Were they not allowed to have masochistic tendencies while they went here?  “Um…”

“Straighten your tie.  We don’t make you wear them so that they can be slung carelessly about your neck.”

“Oh.  Oh!  Okay.  No problem.”

Scott straightened his tie.  A little too tightly.  He swallowed and the knot bobbed with the movement.  Mr. Hayden gave him a resigned, confused look.

“Well, you don’t have to choke yourself, son.”

The man continued on down the hall and Scott pulled at the tie to loosen it a bit.  He needed to calm down.  People didn’t know anything.  He was only going to make them think there was something to know if he kept acting all weird.  He straightened his sweater vest as well and glanced in both directions down the hall.  Where was he going again?  Then he spotted a professional model swaying down the hallway like she was on a catwalk in Paris.  Oh wait, no.  That was just one of the lesbians.  It was the shorter one with the dark hair.  She caught his eye as she passed.  She looked him over once and then gave him a little smile and a wink.  Scott stared after her as she walked on.  Had that just happened?  Had one of the lesbians just… _noticed_ him?  Cool.  That must mean they were broken up again if they were flirting with boys.

Feeling rather good about himself now, Scott began to saunter off toward his Spanish class.  Then he spotted a group of people coming back from C lunch.  They crowded by some lockers and formed a semicircle around the two people they used to measure their own worth by.  Jake was grinning and had his arm slung around Antoinette.  Her arm was around his waist and she was leaning against him.  She looked happy.  She was talking with her friends, hanging out with her boyfriend.  She didn’t even see him, and he was less than twenty feet away.

Scott turned abruptly away and ran for the bathroom.  He pushed through the door and ran for a stall.  He closed it behind him and dropped his bag to the floor as he leaned over the toilet.  He felt sick.  He was almost certain he was going to throw up.  And it was purely guilt induced.  Jake didn’t deserve this.  It had gone too far.  It had just been playing around in the beginning.  Now he was sleeping with her.  That was taking it too far.  He swallowed the bad taste in his mouth and took in a couple deep breaths.  The smell of the bathroom wasn’t terribly pleasant, but it made him feel a little better.  He might not throw up now.  He stood up slowly and leaned against the door.  If he couldn’t stand it for five seconds, he wasn’t going to be able to do it all year long.  He was going to see Jake every day.  He’d been lucky and not had any classes with him so far, but he knew he was in his Spanish class.  There would only be one Spanish level five class.

He was going to have to really end it now.  He’d had his fun over the summer, but now it was too much.  He was going to have to stand up to Antoinette.  The shrink had been right; he needed to grow a spine.  And even if he couldn’t convince her it was because he just didn’t feel like doing it anymore, he could just tell her he was too busy.  It was senior year.  He had to work really hard this last year if he wanted to get into a good school.  It was important to him.  And he would have after school activities.  He didn’t at the moment, but he would join any club necessary to fill up his week.  Plus, he could always tell her that he was too worried over the divorce hearing to have to worry about sneaking around.

Scott let his head fall against the door.  He sighed.  He hated thinking about the divorce hearing.  It was turning downright ugly.  His mother was refusing to give his father partial custody.  She had only barely conceded to offer visitation rights.  But if Scott stayed with his father, he would obviously have to get at least some form of custody over him, but his mother was refusing that as well.  Understandably, it was making his father angry.  At one point he’d gotten so angry he’d threatened to take all four of the children away from her.  He’d get full custody himself and then _think_ about giving her visitation rights.  It had been a serious threat.  His mother had no income and no house; she and his siblings were still living with his grandmother.  If she had no way of supporting them, a judge might grant custody to his father.  In a knee jerk response his mother threatened to tell the court about his infidelity and provide “proof” of his negligence toward his family.  Then his father had threatened to tell the court that she had been seeing a psychiatrist for the past five years and was on mood stabilizers.  The screaming had gotten exponentially worse from there.

Scott was so angry with his parents.  They were so mad at each other that they weren’t thinking about the kids at all.  None of the four of them would ever be willing to give one parent up completely.  They were going to need to see both their mother and their father.  But no.  They had to think of their children as tools they could use to hurt the other one with.  And they were willing to drag their personal family business out into the public forum.  If his parents insisted on making each other seem like complete monsters and unfit parents, Scott had little doubt the court would place them all in foster care.

He started as the bell rang.  Great.  Now he was going to be late for class.  He took in a couple more deep breaths.  He felt better now that he was pretty certain he would be able to tell Antoinette they had to stop.  He could guilt her into it.  She’d have to leave him alone if he had so much other crap to deal with.  She should understand what he was going through.  She should sympathize with him.  Her own dad was having an affair.  How would she feel if her mother found out and then they got into a huge fight and fought over who got to have the kids?  She’d definitely leave him alone now.

Scott left the stall and noticed that there was nothing in the bathroom but stalls.  There were no urinals.  Scott went cold.  He’d accidentally run into the girls’ bathroom.  There didn’t seem to be anyone currently in there with him, so that was good.  The tricky part would be getting back out of the bathroom without drawing attention to himself.  He walked to the door and cracked it open.  There were still a lot of people in the hall even though the bell had rung.  They were all focused on something.  He pulled the door open and ducked into the hallway.  No one seemed to notice where he had come from.  He started to head to class since he was already late, but tried to get a glimpse of what everyone in the hall was looking at and whispering and giggling about.  He stopped in his tracks.

It was a catfight.  Between Antoinette…and Anna.  They were shouting at each other and everyone in the hall wasn’t exactly picking sides, but supporting each girl as she delivered her insult.  Confused didn’t even begin to cover Scott’s mental state.  Or Jake’s for that matter.  The soccer team captain stood a little apart from his girlfriend and seemed uncertain if he should intervene or support her.  Scott began to push his way through the circle of people.  Anna was starting to slip into her black side.  The head was bobbing and the hand was out.  It wouldn’t be long before…

Scott was too late.  Anna gave Antoinette a little shove.  Antoinette didn’t give away much ground, which didn’t surprise him.  He knew how strong she was.  In fact, she reached back for Anna and the two girls braced themselves for a fight.

“What is going on here?” a voice thundered over all the noise.  “Get to class!”

The kids in the hall scattered like startled squirrels and Mr. Hayden grabbed both Anna and Antoinette before they could scamper off.  The vice principal gave Jake a stern look and he bolted.  Scott hid around the corner and watched as Mr. Hayden led the girls away from the empty hallway.  Once they were out of sight, he followed them.  Who cared about Spanish?  There were pod people in the school!  He followed them down to the principal’s office and watched as Mr. Hayden sat them in the front waiting area and gave them a lecture.  They sat with their arms crossed over their stomachs and their legs crossed away from each other.  Mr. Hayden eventually gave up and went into the principal’s office.  Scott slipped inside and hoped that Mr. Hayden would take his time explaining the situation to the principal.  They looked up when he came in and both of them seemed somewhat embarrassed to see him.

“Um.  Hey.  What’s going on here?” he asked.

He made sure he was addressing Anna.  He had no known affiliations with Antoinette Bixby, so he had to pretend that he didn’t care that the fight was with her, but simply that Anna had gotten into a fight.  He waited for a response, from either of them.  They just looked at him.

“Anna, what happened?”

She worked her jaw and looked away from him.  He looked at Antoinette.

“Antoinette…?” he asked vaguely, like he wasn’t used to talking with her.

She practically mirrored Anna in her movements and looked away as well.

“Come on, Anna.  There had to be a reason.  You wouldn’t just get into a fight for no reason.”

Anna looked back at him.  She opened her mouth, but Antoinette spoke first.

“Bitch pushed me.”

Scott blinked in surprise.

“I did not,” Anna ground out.

“Yes, you did,” Antoinette said irritably.

Scott put his hands out to get their attention so they wouldn’t start screaming at each other again.  “Now, now.  I’m sure that _if_ it did happen, it was an accident.  Right?”  He looked at Anna.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Antoinette snapped.

Scott let out a short, disbelieving laugh.  “What reason would Anna have to push you?”

The two girls looked at each other, and then away.  But neither would respond to the question.  Scott was at a loss.  He would never understand women.  This obviously had nothing to do with him, so he should just take himself out of their business.

“All right.  Whatever.  Have fun with Ms. Kerensky.”

They both gave him a look and he started to leave the office.  He didn’t want to get busted by Mr. Hayden anyway.

“Oh, wait, Scott?”

Scott turned back.  Anna glanced at Antoinette with a small smirk on her face and then smiled at him.

“Yeah?” he asked.  Did she want him to tell her teacher she would be late?

“I was wondering if you’d want to go to the back to school dance with me.”

He hadn’t been expecting that, but that was okay.  He was glad their friendship was back on track.  He smiled broadly at her.

“Yeah, sure.  It sounds like fun.”

Anna’s smile widened and she sat back looking pleased with herself.

“Great.  I’ll see you later.  Hopefully I won’t have detention today.”

“Yeah.  Good luck with that.  Bye!”

He waved and left the office.  This was good.  He was setting his life back in order.  Antoinette would soon be out of the picture and he and Anna would be back to the way things had always been between them.  He didn’t even care if she had all the power in the relationship.  Dr. Gorman may be right: he did let people boss him around.  But he could admit it to himself now.  He kind of liked bossy women.  They were hot.

When the final bell rang Scott bolted for the door.  He ran down the hall to his locker and quickly dropped off his books.  It was so great that they didn’t have homework on the first day.  He slammed his locker shut and darted around the crowded hallway, making his way toward the vocational hallway that led to the student parking lot.  He was so going to be at the meeting spot on time, if not early.  He’d be able to get Julian and Will to shut-up.  And to stop giving him those irritating looks.  Whenever he arrived late they always gave him one of those cheesy, patronizing kid’s show looks and said, “Oh, it’s just like Scott.”  Jerks.

He burst out the backdoors and saw that the parking lot was basically people free.  How had he managed to get here late?  Again?!  But, wait, all the cars were still here.  He must be so early that he beat everyone out of the building.  Nice.  He ambled slowly toward the end of the lot where he would meet Julian and Will.  He would so be there first.  Score.

“Scott!”

Scott turned around and saw Antoinette jogging up to him.  She looked slightly annoyed with him.

“Why were you running so fast?  Is something wrong?”

“Huh?  No.  I’m fine.”

“Well you ran through the halls like someone was chasing you.”

“Oh.  I just didn’t want to be late, like I always am.”

“Late for what?”

“To meet my friends.”

“Oh, so you don’t mind showing up to meet me half an hour late, but your friends you want to be on time for.  Let me guess.  You’re meeting Anna.”

“Um, no, I’m meeting Julian and Will.  But while we’re on the subject of Anna…what the hell happened this afternoon?”

Antoinette settled her weight back on one foot and looked him over.  A door to the building opened and students started spilling out into the parking lot.  She looked back at him.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Um, no.  It’s really not all that interesting—yes, I want to know!”

“Okay.  Then come with me.”

She turned on her heel and started to walk back to the building.  He glanced toward the end of the parking lot.  He’d definitely be late if he went to talk to Antoinette.  Quite possibly he’d be so late that Will and Julian would leave him.  Should he ditch Antoinette?  He wanted to dump her after all; there was no point in keeping her happy.  But then again, he was really curious to find out what had happened between her and Anna.  Julian and Will were already expecting him to be late, so it wouldn’t matter if he surprised them today or tomorrow.  He hurried after Antoinette and she led him around the side of the building that created an alleyway with the apartment building next to it.  He trailed his hand along the eight foot high chain link fence and watched the bottom of her skirt sway.  He was pretty sure she wore it shorter than the other girls in school, but not so noticeably that she got in trouble for breaking the dress code.  Antoinette was good at that.  She was ostentatious in many ways, but it was the subtle things she used to manipulate people.

Antoinette opened the door to the art wing and held it open for him.  He had a mind to be offended by that, but he wasn’t.  There were a few students still hanging around in this wing of the building and he wasn’t very familiar with it, so he didn’t know where she wanted him to go.  He hadn’t taken an art class since the last mandatory one in seventh grade.

“Over here,” she said.

He walked over to a classroom that had all its windows covered by art projects by the elementary school kids.  She again held the door open for him and he stepped inside.  He had a sudden flash of nostalgia.  He remembered coming to this classroom when he was in fifth grade.  Ms. Healy had been the art teacher.  He had drawn a dinosaur.  He turned around to look at Antoinette and she was just watching him silently.  The door slowly creaked shut on its noisy hinge.  The door bumped into the jamb, remained partway open, and then finally clicked shut all the way.  Antoinette punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

Scott grabbed his shoulder and rubbed it gently.  He gave Antoinette puppy dog eyes.  He didn’t want her to do it again and being cute might help her anger dissipate.  Though why she was angry with him he had no clue.  He hadn’t told her yet he was definitely breaking it off this time.

“What was that for?” he asked pitifully, trying to garner some sympathy.

“Why are you taking her to the dance?” she demanded.

Scott could feel his eyes grow wide.  He opened his mouth and then closed it.  He wasn’t sure if she was referring to what he was thinking about, but he was only taking one girl to one dance as far as he knew.  He was still trying to sort through the confusion when she advanced on him.  He backpedaled.

“And why did you say yes in front of me?  That’s mean!”

Scott bumped into a table and had to stop.  He shook his head.  “I’m sorry, what?”  They were obviously thinking about the same thing, but Antoinette’s reaction was ludicrous.  “Did you expect me to ask _you_ to go?” he asked with a half-laugh.

“Well.”  She crossed her arms and looked away from him.  Her eyes were looking at the paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling and she opened and closed her mouth, trying to think of something to say.  Scott leaned on the table behind him and crossed his arms too.  He smiled at her discomfort.  Did she think that she owned him outside of the bedroom too?  Silly girl.  She was way too possessive for her own good.  He decided to play with her.

“Dump Jake,” he said mildly.

She looked at him, her lips parted slightly.  She took in a breath and let it out slowly.  “What?” she asked softly.

“Dump Jake,” he repeated.  “And then I’ll take you to the dance.”

He said it in a way that let her know he was teasing her.  He would never demand that she dump Jake.  It wasn’t his place to make her choose between them.  Mostly because he knew who she would choose.  Hey, maybe that was the way he could end it.  If he gave her an ultimatum…Scott paused in that thought.  She had pursed her lips together and was frowning at him.  He started to move slowly away from her, but she grabbed for his arm.  She spun him around pushed him onto the table.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she growled.

She shoved hard against his lower back and the corner of the table dug painfully into his groin.  He dug his nails into the top of the table and gasped as the pleasure rocketed through his body.  She leaned against his back and moved her body, grinding him harder into the corner.  Then she latched onto his earlobe with her teeth.  He let out an embarrassing noise.  He didn’t want to stop her.  He’d been craving this.  He needed that pain again.

“ _I_ tell _you_ what to do, right?” she purred.

Scott nodded.  “Yes,” he said between clenched teeth.

It had been two months since their first time together and the only time they had had aggressive, almost violent sex.  He was ready for his second time now.  Even if it was in the elementary school art room.  Antoinette was good at playing the dominant to his submissive.  She seemed to know how much he could take and when to pull back.  She was careful to make sure that the pain never crossed over into becoming unwanted.  It was exactly what he wanted, what he needed.  It didn’t last as long as their first time together, but they were both cognizant of the fact that they were in an unlocked room at school.  They really didn’t want to get caught doing the things they were doing.  She’d been careful not to break the skin this time so that when he put his white dress shirt back on, nothing stained it.  He pulled his sweater vest on over his head and grimaced as his shoulders protested the movement.  They’d been over his head for the last twenty minutes.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He smiled.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  Just sore.  In a very good way.”

She smiled back, almost shyly, and tossed the used condom into the trashcan.  Scott jumped and ran to look inside the wastebasket.  It was a tall container and it was full of discarded paper.  He couldn’t see it.

“You can’t throw it away in here!”

“Why not?”

“Be-because!  It’s a children’s classroom!”

“Right.  So they won’t know what it is.  Besides, do _you_ want to carry it out to the dumpster?”

He shifted his weight back and forth, trying to see if it was visible from any angle.  “No.”

She fluffed up her hair.  “Then leave it.”

“That’s so unsanitary.”

“Like throwing it out anywhere is.”

He turned to look at her and chewed on his bottom lip.  Now wasn’t the best time for this.  But he needed to tell her right now.  It was over.  He got what he wanted from her: one last painful romp.  He needed to get rid of her while he was still sated.

“Hey, Antoinette, I need to talk to you about something…”

“Oh, about the Anna thing?” she asked dismissively, adjusting her skirt.  “She just accidentally bumped into me, and I’m PMS-ing.  I overreacted.  It was all my fault.  I’m sorry.  I know she’s your friend.  I’ll try to stay out of her way from now on.”

“Um.  Oh.  But, no, that wasn’t what I—”

He cut off as she stepped up to him.  She took his face in her hands and gave him a long, sweet kiss.  Then she pulled back.

“We should leave separately.  I’ll see you later.”

She kissed him again and then flounced out the door.  She was in a decidedly better mood than when they had entered the room.  Well, so was he for that matter.  Should he chase after her?  He really needed to tell her that this had to stop.  He sighed and sat on the end of the table.  He didn’t really want it to end.  He wanted the guilt to stop, but he didn’t want to stop seeing her.  He kind of liked her.  He enjoyed being with her.  Even when they didn’t have sex.  She was a surprisingly good listener for someone who could ignore whatever she didn’t want to hear.

He should have known that he couldn’t get involved with a girl just to play around.  He couldn’t do a group project at school without getting attached to his teammates.  If they ever had to do a second project, he never wanted to work with new people.  He didn’t even like loaning his pencil to people he didn’t know that well.  Why had he ever thought fooling around with someone’s girlfriend would be okay?  Because she was hot.  He wondered if he would continue to make important decisions based on that logic for the rest of his life.  If he was anything like his father, probably so.

Will and Julian were long gone, along with almost everyone else, by the time he started to make his way to the metro.  The sky was also getting dark.  It was probably going to rain.  The nightmares had pretty much stopped, but when it rained—and especially when there was a thunderstorm—they came back.  It didn’t look like it was going to be a _terrible_ storm.  He might be able to get some sleep tonight.  The storm held off long enough for him to get from the metro to the bus, but then the skies opened up.  Scott hadn’t seen such a heavy downpour since the day of the accident.  The bus had to creep along and it took twice as long to get to his bus stop as usual.  It worked out in his favor though since the rain had pretty much let up by the time they arrived.  He hadn’t brought an umbrella with him, so he would have gotten soaked on the half mile hike from the bus stop to his house.

The house was dark when he arrived.  It was supposed to be lit up and welcoming when he came home from school.  There was only a single light shining dimly from the far side of the house where the kitchen was.  Scott hurried up the driveway.  Maybe his father was home.  He unlocked the door and stepped into the dim foyer.  The clouds were still dark enough that almost no daylight was getting into the house and the kitchen light was the only thing that let him see anything at all.  He flipped on the hall light and walked into the kitchen. His father was sitting at the table, reading some mail.

“Dad?” he asked meekly.

His father looked up.

“Yes?”

He didn’t seem strange or stressed about anything.

“Is everything okay?” Scott asked.

“Yes.  Why do you ask?”

“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I’m not.”

“I mean, the house is dark.”

“Oh.  I was just in the kitchen when the storm started, so I only turned on the light in here.”

“Oh.”  Scott dropped his book bag onto the floor and sat down across from his father.  He winced as he sat down a little too hard, and then gingerly lowered himself into the seat.  His father raised an eyebrow.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” he laughed uneasily.  “Why are you here so early?”

“Oh.”  His father plopped the bank statement he’d been reading onto the table.  “It was a terrible day.  I only stayed for half of it.  We’re in the middle of a big project right now and there are some absolute buffoons working for me.  I feel even sorrier for my boss who I never feel sorry for because he’s younger than me and I’m bitter.  He’s a stand up guy, though a bit of a fool himself to take responsibility for every single problem whether he had control over it or not.  I guess it’s because his father owns the company or something.”

“Ohhh.  Did he get the job because of his father?”

“Probably.  Fortunately, he’s proven that he would have deserved it regardless.  But, he’s still at least ten years my junior.  He should be working for me.”

Scott laughed softly.

“Oh, here, this is for you.”

He handed him a pamphlet and Scott read the cover: Chesterbrook Academy, leading the country in excellence.  He flipped to the first page and his brow creased in confusion and a little anger.  It was a private all boys boarding school.  He looked up at his father.

“You want to send me here?” he asked, his voice growing thick.

“Not me.  Your mother sent it for you in the mail.  Apparently it’s only about a couple hours by train away from your grandmother’s.”

Scott slammed the pamphlet on the table.  “Are you two serious?!”

“Don’t shout at me.  I told you, your mother sent it.  I have nothing to do with it.  She wants to pull you out of Calverton and send you there.  To be closer to her I guess.  Or maybe to be farther from me.  It’s obviously your choice of whether or not you want to go.  I would prefer that you stay here with me and finish school at Calverton.  Especially since your tuition in non-refundable.”

“Jesus.”  Scott shook his head.  “What is her problem?  I mean, can’t she even pretend that she wants to take me away from you because she wants me near her instead?”

“Hey.  Your mother cares about you.  This divorce is simply between me and her.  It’s not about you or Joanna or the twins.”

“Right.  She loves me so much she wants to take me away from you and then send me to a boarding school.”

“I think the boarding is optional.  You could probably stay at your grandmother’s and then go to school by train.”

Scott made a face.  His father smiled.

“That’s what I thought too.  I think it’ll be best if we just don’t respond to her stupid little ploys.”

Scott strummed his fingers on the table.

“How long has it been since you loved her?”

His father stopped opening the last envelope and looked at him.  “What?”

“You can’t be this bitter and petty this soon.  Not if you still loved her when the divorce came up.  No matter how obstinate or mean she’s being.  You can be mean back at her because you don’t care about her anymore.  And you haven’t for a while now.  How long has it been?  Months?  Years?”

His father shook his head.  “Scott, you don’t want to know the real answer to that.  Just accept that your parents have stopped loving each other.”

“But that’s not true, Dad.  Mom still loves you.  She still _really_ loves you.  That’s why she’s being so crazy about all this.  She wants to hate you, but she can’t.  Does she even know that you don’t still love her?”

His father started to get up.  “Go do your homework, Scott.”

“I don’t have any.  Tell me.  I want to know why all this is happening.  Is it just because you met this other woman and fell in love with her?  Or did you just stop loving Mom and that allowed you to be susceptible to other women?”

His father stood in front of the sink and leaned his hands on it.  He stared out the window and didn’t respond.  Scott let out a frustrated noise and grabbed his bag.  He grumbled to himself as he started to leave the kitchen.  He froze when his father grabbed his shoulders from behind.  The man pulled him back into an awkward embrace.  He locked his arms over his son’s clavicles and put his face to the back of Scott’s head.

“You really want to know?” he asked.

Why did people keep asking him that?  He wouldn’t ask if he didn’t.  He decided not to give his father a smartass comment.

“Yes.”

“I never loved her.  I didn’t marry her because I was in love with her.  She was just more acceptable to my parents than the girl I was dating at the time.  I thought that over time I would grow to love her, but I’ve only loved her for three days in the twenty years we’ve been together.  Those were the day she gave me you, the day she gave me Joanna, and the day she gave me the twins.”

Scott stood stock still and his father tightened his grip around him.

“Now you know what a truly horrible person I am.  Now I think you’ve figured out that this woman wasn’t the first by any means.”

Scott swallowed.  He _hadn’t_ figured that out actually.  He raised his hands and touched his father’s arms.

“Dad.  You do realize that you’ve just shattered all the memories of my happy, perfect childhood, right?”

His father didn’t respond.  Scott leaned back against him.

“It’s okay.  I don’t care.  It’s the way things are and I’m not going to hate you for it and lose you too.  I guess I should thank you for keeping the charade up for as long as you did.  I just wish Drake and Ferris could have been older too before all this happened.”

“I’m sorry.”

Scott laughed harshly.  “No you’re not.  You never cared about her.”

“One: I did care about her, I was just never in love with her.  And two: I’m sorry that I’m putting you through this.  When you were born I swore I would never do anything to hurt you.  I stopped having affairs and concentrated on my marriage.”

“Oh, yeah?  So why did you start again?”

“Hn.  Well.  Your mother got pregnant with Joanna and stopped wanting to have sex.”

“Oh, that’s real sensitive, Dad.”

“I’m admitting I’m a bad person here!”

“You’re not.  You’re not a bad person.  Well, maybe a little bit, but I don’t care.  You’re my father and I love you.  Though standing with you like this is kind of making me uncomfortable.  This is like a guy trying to get his girlfriend to stay with him kind of hug.”

His father let him go.  “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”  He turned to face his father and the man ran a hand through his son’s blond hair.

“I’m afraid I’m going to keep hurting you for a while though.  I am going to fight your mother for you.  Even if I have no choice but to only get visitation rights for the other three, I’m keeping you.”  He smiled sadly.  “You are my favorite.”

“D-Dad!  You’re not supposed to have a favorite!  And you’re certainly not supposed to tell your kid who it is if you do!”

“But you are.  You’re my firstborn.  My son.  Before you were born, I was very unhappy.  I worked hard at a thankless job with little hope of promotion and came home every night to a woman I didn’t love.  When you were born, I had someone to really love.”

Scott stared incredulously at his father.  “But—but you pay more attention to the other three!  You’re way more affectionate with them than you ever were with me!  You never even touched me until all this started to happen!”

His father shrugged one shoulder, but had no other reply to give him.  Scott sighed and realized where he got his neurosis from.  He’d always assumed it had been from his mother, but now clearly, his father was even more messed up than her.

“All right, Dad.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, son.”

Scott shook his head and turned to head upstairs.  “Weirdo,” he murmured gently.

 

 

Julian

 

Julian leaned against his locker and watched Mr. Hayden stalk down the hall, looking for ruffians and hooligans.  Julian had been a little nervous about coming back to school.  He was worried that it would be like the end of last year and everyone would be giving him sad eyes and sympathetic looks.  As it turned out, everyone was still staring at him, but he was getting weird looks from the students and disappointed looks from the teachers.  Everything was back to normal.  He wondered if his new hairstyle had anything to do with it.  He’d decided to experiment and was now rocking a Mohawk.  It wasn’t extreme by any means.  Ha hadn’t shaved the sides bald, but the top but definitely sticking straight up by about three inches.  It wasn’t really his thing, but he was having fun with it.  He’d also gone a little heavy with the eyeliner this morning.

Mr. Hayden slowed down as he passed him.  Julian met his eyes and gave him a smile.  He ran his tongue over his new lip piercing, like he needed to draw more attention to it.  His parents had let him get his tongue pierced since it was in the back part and not really noticeable, but they’d told him to hold off on anything else for a while.  He’d felt he’d held off long enough and went to the place in the city that didn’t ask for ID.  He was emancipated and technically allowed to get piercings and tattoos on his own now, but the court didn’t give him a card that said that, and he was still seventeen.  He couldn’t wait until his birthday.  He wanted some ink.

Julian could tell Mr. Hayden wanted to say something to him, but he couldn’t anymore.  Too many parents and students had complained about the no jewelry policy and the school board had over turned that part of the dress code.  Of course, they probably hadn’t thought about the fact that that meant boys could now wear lip rings.  And he wasn’t the only one who was enjoying this new policy.  He watched the tall auburn-haired lesbian walk down the hall.  It took a careful eye to notice, but he could tell.  She had her nipples pierced.  She looked at him as she passed and he gave a quick raise of his eyebrows at her.  She smiled coyly at him and put a little more sway into her hips.  She was flirting with him.  She must be broken up with her girlfriend again.

He considered offering to let her feel his Mohawk, but getting involved with one of them would ultimately cause trouble with the other.  And he wouldn’t have ordinarily thought that rubbing some guy’s Mohawk would appeal to girls, but he’d already been asked twice.  Eun-hee had been one of them.  He hadn’t seen a lot of her after they’d met at the pool.  He’d spent the last half of August with his grandparents in Iowa.  It had alternately been everything he’d unknowingly secretly wanted and a living hell.  It hadn’t helped that he didn’t have his sessions with Dr. Gorman.  He hadn’t had a breakdown, but he had missed her.  After his friends had pointed it out to him, he noticed how she was like his mother in some ways.  He still had a crush on her though, and it was apparent at times that he enjoyed her company in a maternal way.  So, what did _that_ mean?  Maybe he needed two shrinks.

He was very grateful he’d followed the whim and talked to Eun-hee.  She was a very good distraction.  When he flirted with her he didn’t think about Dr. Gorman or feel guilty.  He spotted the girl now and waved to her.  She walked over to him clutching her books to her chest.  It was something girls did when they felt insecure about their breasts.  Julian didn’t think she had anything to feel insecure about.

“Hey, Julian.  How have your classes been?”

He shrugged.  “Eh.  I think I’m ready for college so I can design my own curriculum.”

“I agree.  I want to go to an art school.  You know, one where they don’t even have a ‘math for dummies’ core requirement.”

Julian laughed.  “I am right there with you.  So, do you have A lunch?”

“Yep.”

“Me too.  Should we go together?”

Eun-hee ducked her head as she smiled.  “Yeah.  That’d be nice.”

They started for the cafeteria and Julian gave her a gentle nudge with his shoulder.  “You don’t need to be shy around me.  I obviously like you.  We can skip the awkward parts.”

“Uh!”  She laughed.  “That’s so easy to say isn’t it?”

They smiled at each other.  Julian looked forward and saw Laney standing about five feet away.  Her face crumbled and her eyes wavered with unshed tears.  Julian stopped walking and stared at her.  She turned suddenly and ran away from him.  The light bulb went off.  Laney’s behavior from the time he was a freshman finally all made sense.

“Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Eun-hee asked.

“I’m sorry.  I’ll meet you in a bit, okay?  I have to take care of something.”

“Oh, okay.”

Julian took off in the direction he’d seen Laney run.  He came to a cross-hallway and looked in both directions.  He saw her head go bobbing around the corner to his left.  He took off straight in front of him and ran to the end of the hall.  Then he checked to make sure no teachers were around and pushed through the doors leading outside.  He circled part of the building and opened the doors leading back inside just as Laney came barreling out through them.  She started to mumble an apology, but when he wouldn’t let her go she looked up.  She gasped when she saw him and started to pull away.

“Laney, wait.  Please talk to me.  Don’t run away.”

She pulled away from him so she could wipe away some stray tears.  She was fighting really hard to keep them back in front of him.

“I guess you get it now,” she said miserably.

Julian felt terrible.  “Yeah,” he said quietly.  “I get it now.”

“Well, it took you long enough.  It’s only been three years.”  She sniffed and kept her eyes averted.

“Laney, I’m sor—”

“It’s okay, Julian.”  She shook her head and gave a little smile.  Then she looked up at him.  “It’s okay.  It’s my crush, my feelings.  I just need to get a handle on them.”  Her voice wavered and she sniffed again.  Every crack in her voice made his stomach feel more and more queasy.  “You just don’t feel that way about me.  It’s not like you _did_ anything to me.  You didn’t intentionally hurt me.”

“That doesn’t matter.  I hurt you and I’m sor—”

“It’s okay,” she cut him off quickly.  “Really, there’s nothing you did and nothing you can do.  But, I really don’t want to cry in front of you, so please go.”

Julian held back a sigh.  “Laney,” he said and reached out a hand for her.  She jerked back.

“Please don’t touch me.  It’s nothing you’re doing; I just can’t control how much it hurts.”

Julian dropped his arm to his side and watched her put the back of her hand to her mouth.  She was looking away from him again and seemed mere seconds away from completely breaking down.  He didn’t want to just leave her alone, but he could understand how crying in front of him would be worse than crying alone.

“Okay,” he mumbled.  “Sorry.”

He walked back into the school and noticed the halls had cleared out.  The bell must have rung.  He needed to get to lunch before the hall monitors found him.  However, he wasn’t feeling particularly hungry anymore, and Eun-hee would be waiting for him.  He didn’t know if he could be all flirty with her the way he was feeling at the moment.  He hoped the guilt wouldn’t stay with him forever.  He would never be able to see Laney in that way, and if he could never flirt again, he was going to be very lonely in the future.

A figure turned the corner and caught his eye.  He had already prepared himself to go diving behind some lockers if it was a hall monitor, but it was Will.  He was strolling down the hall and slapping a folder against his thigh.  His hair had grown a little over the summer and now had a kind of fluffiness about it.  He hadn’t pointed it out to his friend yet because the moment he did he would cut it off.  And he looked too cute for Julian to let that happen.  Ah, so he still thought Will was cute.  Perhaps he could still flirt after all.

“Hiya, pun-kin.  You work this corner often?”

Will looked up and scowled at him.  “Only when your—”

He cut off abruptly and turned white.  Julian kept his smile on his face and walked up to his friend.  He ruffled his fluffy hair.

“Only when my mom takes the day off?”

Will looked sick.  Julian laughed gently and continued to run his hand through his semi-crush’s hair.  He could really empathize with Laney.

“It’s okay, Will.  Don’t freak about it.  And even if you do slip sometimes, it won’t devastate me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Dude!  It’s okay.  Really.”

“Really?” he asked, looking at him with pained, hazel eyes.  Whenever Will got upset the brown tones took over.

“Really,” Julian confirmed.  “And if you keep looking at me with that sexy expression I can’t be held accountable for my actions.”

That knocked the sympathy right off his face.  “Feh.”

“Good answer.  So, what are you doing out in the halls, you delinquent?”

“Uh!  I’m supposed to have study hall and the teacher is all like, ‘You don’t have to study on the first day, run errands for me.’  Like, whatever.  I was totally studying.”

“Yes, I believe it.  Which is why you are definitely not perfect.  You’re frickin’ weird, dude.”

“Whatever.  What about you?  Why are you in the halls?”

“I have lunch.”

“Oh.  We don’t have the same lunch.”

“Nope.”

“Want to walk with me to deliver this to the office?”

“Sure.”

They started walking together down the hall and Julian asked, “Hey, did you know that Laney has a crush on me?”

Will glanced at him for a moment with an odd smile on his face.  And then he burst out laughing.  It was the exact same reaction he got from both Chris and Scott when he asked them.  He even asked the girls and they all just rolled their eyes and groaned at him.  Apparently it had been rather obvious.  But how the heck was he supposed to know?  She never said anything.  Not in three years.  And dropping subtle hints was not enough.  You have to come right out and tell people these things.  Like he had told Eun-hee.  It was so simple now.  They both knew they liked each other.  Done.  Maybe if Laney had said something two years, or even a year ago, something could have happened.  But now she was just too much of a friend.  He didn’t even classify her as a girl.  She was like Riley and Liz.  They were just friends.  Anna was the only one who had grown from friend to girl.  But, she was hot.  Well, so was Liz.  He guessed he just didn’t like her because she used to date Will.  More than likely he kind of hated her a little bit for that.  If he did it was buried deep enough in his subconscious that he didn’t notice it.

After school Will left him at the metro station to go to his sketchy part time job.  Who ever heard of cat-sitting?  And how did he even meet this person?  And _who was_ this person anyway?  The most he’d been able to learn was that it was some businessman.  Maybe he was one of his parents’ work colleagues, but it was still a weird thing to recruit someone for.

Julian stretched his hand out for the closing doors, but his karma was a little off for some reason.  The doors shut firmly in front of him and the train moved away from the platform.  He and about thirty other commuters all groaned inwardly and shuffled back to wait for the next one.  It was only five minutes out, but it was always disheartening to miss your train.  People hoping to get on the other line which was due in three minutes, began to crowd the edge of the platform.  Julian slithered his way back toward the center so he wouldn’t get too jostled.  He scuffed his toes and paced as he waited.  Then he looked up and saw the sign.  A poster was advertising new condominiums for sale a couple blocks from the station.  He stopped pacing and read it carefully.  There was an idea.  Maybe he should look at some condos in the city.  Or at least some apartments.  He still hadn’t decided yet if he should bother to move out of the house for a year before he went to school, but he was going to have to do it sometime.  And if he went home now, it would be the first time he went home from school without somebody there waiting for him.  He was pretty sure he had gone home to an empty house before when his parents were alive, but he couldn’t think of any of those times at the moment.

As he took the stairs out of the station he remembered the house wasn’t exactly empty.  Cornelius was at home and needed to be let out.  Well, if he needed to go there were always newspapers for him down in the basement.  He would just have to get a late dinner tonight, but he would survive.  Julian popped up topside and glanced at the sky.  The clouds were threatening rain, but not anytime too soon.  Julian thought he knew more or less which direction the advertised condos had been in, so he walked that way.  Even if he couldn’t find those, he was sure he’d find some other ones.  He was also curious to know if the leasing agents would not take him seriously since he was obviously in a school uniform and looking like a punk.  He hoped they would just so he could file an equal housing discrimination suit.

He came across some apartment buildings and decided to check those out before a condo.  It would be easier to get out of a lease than have to resell a one bedroom condo.  After several explanations of his situation to two leasing agents and their manager, he was finally shown a studio apartment that was barely bigger than his bedroom at his house.  The rent was insane for the dump they were showing him.  But, that was just the cost of living right downtown in the city.  Even so, it was still less than the mortgage on the house.  He decided to take a look at a couple places further away from the heart of the city.  They weren’t much better priced, though one building was fairly new and in good condition.  It would make things easier to not have to worry about upkeep with the house, pay less every month, and be closer to school.  But that meant he would be farther away from his friends.  And it would be problematic with Cornelius.  He’d have to take him on walks as opposed to just letting him out the backdoor and he’d have to pick up his poop in little plastic baggies.  It was only for one more year.  Less actually.  He should stay in his house.

As Julian made his way back to the metro station, the skies suddenly gave way.  One second it was dry, the next there was a deluge of water pouring over his head.  He and two other people on the sidewalk let out surprised squawks.  One hurriedly pulled out an umbrella while the other and Julian started to run for their destinations.  He’d only gone three steps before he realized he would be soaked through in another three steps.  He quickly ducked under the awning of a building, but it was very small and the base of the building jutted out, preventing him from getting much cover at all.  He saw the door to the building and decided to jump inside until the rain passed, or at least lessened somewhat.  He pushed on one of the two heavy glass doors.  The handles were oversized and very ornate.

Inside was what appeared to be a lobby.  It was very quiet, especially in comparison to the thundering rain outside.  It was a cavernous room with white marble floors and walls.  It looked to have no other entrances or exits, but when he looked closely he could see that there were hallways at either end of the room.  The marble just blended all together.  In front of him was a large, cherry-stained desk that stood out starkly against the white of the room.  The desk had a potted plant on one corner and a computer on the other.  Towards the middle was a phone with multiple line options.  Behind the desk sat a young, attractive man with a quirked eyebrow and a disdainful expression on his face.  The look didn’t put Julian off and he wandered a little further into the room, awed by its size and symmetry.  His wet shoes squeaked on the floor and as he drew closer to the desk, he looked over the receptionist’s head at the large logo emblazoned on the wall: Blue Boy.  There was no slogan or images to help discern what kind of business the establishment was, if it was in fact a business at all.  Julian stopped in front of the desk and looked down at the receptionist.  His expression hadn’t changed.

“Can I help you?” he asked, sounding like he already knew the answer was no unless it was to send him on his way.

“Hi,” Julian said cheerfully.  “Sorry to be a bother.  I just stepped in to get out of the rain.  It just came from out of nowhere.”

“Well, this is a private establishment, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

Julian felt his mouth turn up on one corner.  He was talking like David Spade’s SNL flight attendant character.  “Okay, then I’m here to patronize.”

The receptionist smiled amusedly at him.  “Is that so?”  He looked Julian over and tapped a pen against his smile.  “I’m not sure you can afford our services.”

“And what exactly are your services?” he asked, curious to know what Blue Boy was.

The man’s smile somehow grew even more irritating.  “If you have to ask, you don’t want them.  So, why don’t you…”

Instead of filling in the sentence with a word, he shooed Julian away with a couple flicks of his fingers.  Julian ignored the gesture and wondered what he meant.  He’d been expecting the sentence to be “if you have to ask you can’t afford it.”  But why wouldn’t he _want_ it if he had to ask?  The sharp clack of dress shoes drew both his and the receptionist’s attention.  A very tall and very attractive man was walking across the room to them.  He must have come from the hidden hallway; otherwise he had simply materialized out of thin air.  His broad shoulders and chest filled out his expensive, black suit.  The pleat down the front of the pants, the line and knot of the blue necktie, and even the length of dress shirt peeking out from the suit jacket’s cuffs were immaculate.  His dark hair looked natural, but had obviously been styled to perfection, and his eyes were a deep brown.  His expression was neutral, neither pleasant nor unfriendly, but it had an air of menace about it.  Without moving and barely breathing, Julian and the receptionist watched the man cross the room and arrive beside the desk.

“Tyler has a personal emergency,” the man said in a low baritone voice, “cancel his appointments for this week or see if you can arrange a suitable replacement.”

“Yes, sir,” the receptionist said and picked up the phone.  He gave Julian a look, but it wasn’t out of annoyance.  Julian would have sworn it was concern if he didn’t know better.  The man pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his inner lapel pocket and placed one between his lips.  Then he replaced the pack, pulled out a lighter and lit up.  It was only after he had returned the lighter to his pocket that he bothered to look at Julian.  Julian wondered if he was allowed to smoke in the building.  Most public buildings in the city had banned smoking.

Julian shifted his weight, a little uncomfortable, as the man looked him over.  His gaze was palpable, like a hand running over his body.  He realized he was avoiding looking the man in the face; he usually never had a problem meeting someone’s eyes.  So, he forced himself to look up and the man had a small smile on his face as he let out a stream of thick smoke.  Julian couldn’t believe he’d been holding his breath that long.

“Sorry, but we’re not currently accepting applications.”

The receptionist held back a laugh as he spoke to some other receptionist on the phone.  Julian gave him a look and then looked back at the man.

“Oh, I’m not here for a job.”

“Well, we’re very expensive,” he said and took a drag of his cigarette.

Julian’s curiosity was beyond piqued.  “What exactly is the service that this company provides?”

The man pulled the cigarette away from his lips and looked amused.  His eyes were dark enough that they glittered with the slight saccadic movements they made to look at Julian’s face.  Julian felt the need to swallow, but he refrained.  The man let the smoke out of his mouth again.  It really was amazing how long he could keep the stuff in his lungs.

“Why are you here?”

It was a fair question and yet at the same time, a little odd.  He pointed dumbly toward the front door.  “It was raining.”

“Ah.”  The man’s smile wasn’t exactly condescending, but it was getting close to it.  He seemed to be debating whether or not to answer Julian’s question or to just kick him back out into the rain.  He finally looked away to put the stub of his cigarette out in a crystal ashtray that was partially hidden by the potted plant.  It now seemed easier to breathe without his focused gaze upon him.

“This company provides companionship for those who are lonely, or can’t get out to find their own companions.”

“Oh.  So, it’s for old people?”

Even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t quite right.  Otherwise it wouldn’t be so expensive if it was a volunteer organization to help out senior citizens and the elderly.  The receptionist kind of laughed at Julian’s remark, but he didn’t seem to completely disagree with it either.  The man simply smiled at him.  He seemed to be waiting for the light to go off.  And for the second time that day, it did.

“Oh!  Oh, oh, oh.  This is.”  He lowered his voice.  “It’s an escort service.”

“Not really,” the man said, pulling the cigarettes out of his pocket again.  “Escorts escort people places.”  He lit another cigarette, took a drag, and then exhaled slowly.  The filters must be non-existent on the brand he was smoking because the smoke was very thick.  “Our clients prefer to stay in.”

Julian couldn’t help but smile.  “Oh, my.  And you run this ‘business’ right in the middle of the city?  That takes some balls.”

“Thank you,” the man smiled, showing teeth for the first time.  Perfectly white.  Not a speck of yellow staining.  “Well, it looks like the rain has slacked off.  I was actually on my way out when I came down here.  Maybe you should be on your way out too.”

The receptionist gave him a “so there” look and continued to rearrange Tyler’s “appointments.”

“Sure,” Julian shrugged.  He turned to leave, but then turned back.  “Are your services only for gentlemen?”

The man didn’t seem off put by answering Julian’s question.  “Primarily.  Some of my employees are willing to entertain women, but it’s not done via Blue Boy.”

“I see.  Are all of your employees male?”

“No,” the receptionist said sarcastically, “it’s called Blue Boy because it’s full of women.”

Both Julian and the man gave the receptionist a look.  He turned to his computer and began to clack away at the keyboard.  The man inhaled deeply on his cigarette and turned to walk across the lobby.  Julian was smart enough to know that he should walk with him.  The man’s shoes continued their sharp clacking sounds and Julian’s shoes squeaked a little quieter.  The man held the door open for the Julian and when they stepped outside the rain had stopped, but the buildings and awnings still dripped from the sudden downpour.  It was still overcast.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed your visit,” the man said.  “If you’re ever in need of our services,” he continued with an ironic smile, “contact me directly.”  He produced a card in his hand and proffered it to Julian.

Julian was very impressed.  He had practiced very hard to be good at both catching and doing sleight of hand tricks, but he hadn’t been able to tell from where the man had produced the card.  He took the card and looked it over.  On one side was the Blue Boy logo and the other was simply a name and a number.  Rylan Treviño.  He looked back up at the man, but he was already walking away.  Julian tapped the edge of the card against his palm.  His mother would say that a meeting this odd was an important foreordained crossing of paths.  His father probably would have said the guy was just a pervert and he should throw away the card.  He jumped as his cell phone rang.  He dug it out of his bag and saw that Riley was calling him.  That was strange.  She almost never called him directly.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Julian.  What’s up?”

“Nothing.  You?”

“Well…you see.  I, uh, I have a favor to ask of you.  And it’s a little awkward.  I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Can you take me to the back to school dance?”

Julian considered this invitation.  He wanted to go to the dance if nothing else to hang out with his friends, but after what had happened with Laney, he certainly couldn’t take Eun-hee or any other girl.  So, he’d have to go stag.  But now that Riley was offering to go with him, there was no way Laney would misconstrue that as a real date.

“Sure, Riley.  That is definitely a favor I can do.  And I won’t even ask why.”

Riley laughed.  “Thanks, Julian.  I appreciate that.  See you tomorrow.”

“Kay.  Bye.”

Julian put his phone up and headed for the metro station.  He looked at the card in his hand again and then at the trash can coming up on his left.  He fiddled with it and considered throwing it away.  Then he shrugged and stuck it in his back pocket.  His mother had always told him not to dismiss anything lightly for it might be a message from the universe.

 

Chris

 

He didn’t make it to his first class.  He didn’t get a chance to meet up with his friends who took the metro in.  He didn’t even make it out of the parking lot.  Chris bent down to pick up his keys after dropping them.  As he stood back up, he saw two mythical goddesses walking toward him, with long legs, bouncing breasts, and hair blowing in the breeze.  It might have been his imagination, but it seemed like they were moving in slow motion.  And they were moving directly toward him.  Chris gulped as the lesbians smiled and approached him.  They’d never shown interest in him before.  This was great.  His status would go up exponentially if he was identified as one of the few boys the lesbians were willing to turn an eye to.  He stood his ground, trying not to shake with giddiness.  Then they suddenly broke apart and walked in wide arcs around him like they were trying to avoid something.  Chris felt it like a blow to the gut.  How embarrassing.  How could he have thought that for one second the lesbians might be interested in him?  They _were_ lesbians after all.

Chris turned around.  Karen stood inches away, smiling broadly.  Chris yelped and jumped back at least a foot.  Karen’s smile disappeared and she gave him an unimpressed look.

“Was that really necessary?” she asked.

“I would have done the same for anybody!  You startled me.”

“Mm-hmm.  Can we try this again?”

“Um, sure.”

Chris turned around, steeled his nerves and then faced Karen again.  The smile was back in place.

“Good morning, honey,” she said.  “How are you doing?”

Chris’ steeled nerves dissolved again.  “Fine,” he answered warily.  “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m really good.  I’m excited about classes.  I mean, it’s our last year.  We’re finally _seniors_.”

Chris smiled.  “I know.  It’s crazy.”

Karen started to walk toward the school and he fell into step beside her.  “Who’s your first teacher?”

“Goldstein.”

“Oh, I have Randall.  I have C lunch; how about you?”

“I’m pretty sure I have C too.”

“Oh, good.  Maybe we can sit together?”

They arrived at the building and Chris started to open the door for her.  “Yeah, we could—wait a minute!”  He shot his arm across the opening, barring her entrance into the school.  She stopped and looked up at him.  She seemed shorter.  Or maybe he had grown taller over the summer.  “Karen, we’re not dating anymore.”

“Well, right now we’re not.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”  She gave him another beaming smile.  “And that doesn’t mean we can’t date again in the future.”

“Um, yes it does.”

“Hey, move out of the way,” a student grumped and pushed past his arm to get inside.  Chris and Karen stepped away from each other to give other students access to the door.

“I’m sorry,” Chris said.  “It’s totally over.  I’m through with you.”

“We’ll see,” was all she said and walked into the school.

Chris stayed put, completely dumbfounded.  What the hell was going on?  This had to be the strangest break-up ever.  And he really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her.  He was a little depressed.  He had finally received a letter from his father.  The motel he’d been staying at called Chris and told him to pick up some mail.  In the letter his father explained he’d sent it there because he was afraid of what might happen if his mother saw it first.  The envelope was clearly marked with “Cook County Jail,” and Chris had little doubt that his mother would have either thrown it away immediately or opened it up to see what it said.  At which point, she would clearly flip out upon realizing that his father knew where they lived and he had been in contact with Chris during his brief stint on the lam.

His father confirmed that he was back in jail, and that pretty much everyone had been pissed at him for skipping town.  It was why he hadn’t been able to write sooner.  They had temporarily suspended some of his privileges.  In fact, he was only able to write the letter once his lawyer finally made a stink about it.  He assured Chris that he was doing okay and that he had a hearing coming up to determine his sentence for breaking parole.  He promised to write again once he found out for how long it would be.  Chris was glad his father was more or less safe, but he felt terrible for him, and a little guilty.  He only went back for his son’s sake.  He could be free in Colombia by now, but instead he was facing a possible eleven more years in jail.  Chris wanted to do something for him, but he wasn’t sure if there was anything he _could_ do.

He thought about what he could do for most of the day.  When he got to his free period, he sat at a computer and played minesweeper to distract himself.  When the teacher supervising the session started to pace around the room, Chris pulled up a word processor program and began to type.  He started out simply writing down his feelings and frustrations; it was nice to have some sort of outlet for this ordeal.  Then he began to streamline what he was writing.  He explained that his father had only come to see him covertly because his mother would never have let them otherwise.  His father served his time and earned the privilege to get out early.  All he did was visit his son.  And all they had done was hang out together.  Yes, he broke the law by violating his parole and he should face the consequences of that action, but maybe there could be some leniency due to the circumstances.

Chris looked over what he had written.  It was almost as if he was writing to somebody.  Then he had a thought.  Why shouldn’t he write to someone?  He could write a letter explaining his father’s actions and plead on his behalf for leniency.  Maybe the judge would be more understanding if he knew why his father had left town without permission.  He was almost certain his dad wouldn’t say anything for fear of getting him trouble.  So, he was going to have to speak up.  He edited the letter the rest of his free period, and then avoided Karen by staying and working on it through his lunch.  By the time his lunch period was over he still wasn’t satisfied with it, but it would get his point across.  He knew he didn’t have a lot of time to waste; who knew how soon the hearing was?  He knew the letter technically incriminated himself since he admitted to knowledge of his father’s whereabouts and yet did nothing to turn him in.  But that didn’t matter.  He would take the heat for it if he had to.  The risk was worth it if his letter had any affect at all on lessening his father’s sentence.

After school let out he said goodbye to Will and Julian (Scott was MIA as usual), and headed off for his car.  It was such a relief to not have to drive someone home first.  He could go straight to work.  Now Becca wouldn’t be able to give him any more looks.  She had been promoted to general manager, so he was going to have to stay on her good side.  Mr. Coleman had gone off to Boston to marry his boyfriend.  He jingled his keys as he approached his car and saw her out of the corner of his eye.  He jumped away from her and put a hand to his heart.  It was panicking on him.  Laney raised an eyebrow.

“What was that for?”

“Sorry.  I thought you were someone else.”  He started to unlock his car.  “So, what’s up, Lane?  If you’re looking for a ride, I’m sorry I can’t help you out.  I have to go directly to work.”

“Oh, that’s okay.  I’m actually going over to Liz’s for a while anyway.  I wanted to ask you to go to the back to school dance with me.”

Chris threw his book bag onto the passenger seat and then leaned on the open door as he looked at Laney.  “Um.  Isn’t there someone else you’d rather go with?”

“Yes.  But I’m asking you.”

“Wow.  You really know how to win a guy over.”

She put her hands on her hips.  “Look, are you going to take me or not?”

Chris glanced at his watch.  He really had to go to work.  And if he told Laney no, she wouldn’t let him go.  And why should he say no?  He didn’t have a girlfriend and the dance was in two weeks.  He might as well take a friend.  And what did that shrink say about letting women walk all over him?

“Yeah, sure, I’ll take you.”

“Great!  We’ll talk later then.  My friends are going to be so jealous I got me a senior boy.”

Chris smiled and shook his head as Laney bobbed away.  He wondered what brought this on.  Usually she would ask Julian to go as friends first.  Maybe she already had.  Maybe that was why Julian had finally figured out she had a crush on him.  Chris wondered if he was the second one or the last one she had asked.  He started to slide into his car, but someone called out his name.  He stood up and saw the sophomore he’d met at the pool walking up to him.  Her two friends were pretending to be preoccupied about ten feet away, within hearing distance.  Chris felt a little pit of dread in his stomach.  He’d forgotten her name.

“Hi,” the girl said with a bright smile.

“Oh…hey.  How are you doing?”

She really pulled off the school girl look.  And not necessarily in that bad, sexy school girl kind of way.  She looked younger in her uniform than she had at the pool, but she was still pretty.  She had a nervous habit of hooking her hair over her ears, even when it was already there.

“I’m doing good.  I’m excited about classes and stuff.  Um.  How was the rest of your summer?”

“It was good.  Look…I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to go to work.  So, I can’t really talk long.”

“Oh, right.  I understand.  Okay.  Well, work hard!”

She made a slightly embarrassed face and turned away from him.  He started to get into his car again and saw her friends motion to her to go back and whispered threatening encouragements.  Fortunately, one also hissed her name.  The girl turned back to him.

“Chris!”

“Yes, Sophia?”

“Um.  I know it’s unorthodox, but it’s modern times and all…”

Chris waited patiently.  He really didn’t have time for this, but the least he could do was let the poor girl ask him to the dance.  Especially since he was going to have to turn her down.

“And like, well, I just figured if you don’t have anyone else to go with…you would want to take me, I mean go with me, to the back to school dance?”

“Unfortunately, he’s booked solid.”

Chris closed his mouth.  He hadn’t spoken.  He turned to look behind him.  Karen was there.  Of course.  Fortunately she was sans posse, so maybe a fight wouldn’t break out.  He sighed and leaned back against his car as Sophia and Karen squared off.

“Oh, it’s you again,” Sophia sneered.  It was amazing.  Around him she had no backbone, but she had no problem standing up to Karen.  And of the two of them, Karen was definitely the scarier one.  “Still trailing after your ex like an abandoned, unloved puppy?  It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.”

“Hmm.  Well, at least it’s not as sad as chasing after some guy who’s completely out of your league.  But, maybe I shouldn’t have interrupted.  After all, he was just about to ‘let you down easy.’”

Chris gave her a look, but she was still focused on Sophia.  The girl had a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

“Let me guess, ‘he’s going with you.’  Get over yourself.  He obviously has.”

“Who, me?  Oh no.  Not me.  He’s going with some cute perky-boobed junior.  Aren’t you Chris?”  She smiled sweetly at him.

Chris didn’t want to look at Sophia because she was looking a little crushed.

“Yeah, um, a friend of mine just asked me to go.  And I already said yes.  But, if you had been two minutes sooner, I would have definitely agreed to take you.”

“Oh.”  Her smile was forced.  “Oh, okay.  I get it.”

“Yeah, so move along,” Karen said.

“Karen, will you shut-up?” Chris snapped.  “Sophia, honestly.  It’s just a friend.  I’m doing her a favor.  That’s all.”

“Listen to all the excuses he makes,” Karen sighed dramatically.  “He does this all the time.  I wonder why I’m fighting to keep him.  He’s kind of an insensitive jerk.”

“Okay, so why _are_ you—”

“I’m sorry, are you still here?”

Sophia snapped her mouth shut.  She looked flushed and upset.  Chris felt sorry for her, but he really didn’t have time for this.  She turned away and walked back to her friends.  They shot Karen dirty looks and then sulked off toward the metro.  Chris turned back to Karen.  She was standing right beside him and smiling after the girls.  She let out a short, amused laugh.

“Freshmen.”

“I think she’s a sophomore.”

“Whatever,” Karen said, clearly unimpressed.

“Now, I _know_ you’re not here looking for a ride.”

“No.”  She turned in toward him and her breast brushed his arm.  He back up slightly.  She looked up at him with her beautiful, brown eyes.  “I was going to ask you to the back to school dance.  But, Laney beat me to it.  Why was she asking you anyway?  Did it have to do with what happened with Julian today?”

“I don’t know why she asked me.  Wait, what happened with Julian?”

“I was in the hall after fourth period and I saw Julian flirting with some Asian chick.  Laney saw it too.  She ran away crying and instead of pulling his usual ‘clueless’ routine, he chased after her.  I don’t know what happened.  I had to go to class.”

“Oh, man.  I wonder if Julian finally figured it out.”

While they’d been dating, he’d always felt like Karen wasn’t involved in his life outside of her own interests.  But she did in fact know a lot about his friends and their dramas.  Maybe he had always been the one forcing his friends on her.  She had spent time with them on many occasions and listened to him talk about them quite a bit.  He wasn’t even sure if he knew the names of her three best friends.  He knew two of them, but the third one he’d never quite gotten the right pronunciation, so he tended to forget it.  Maybe he hadn’t been the greatest boyfriend after all.  But so what?  They were broken up.  He didn’t need to know her friends’ names anymore.

“Maybe he did,” Karen said, bringing his thoughts back to the conversation.  “I guess he didn’t handle it too badly if she’s asking you out.”

“No, I think if she’s asking me that he _didn’t_ handle it well.”

“Well, I don’t want to keep you.  Wouldn’t want you to be late for work.”

“And why did you never have that feeling while we were dating?” he asked and reached a hand for her side.

She blocked his hand and bent away from him already laughing.  She was very ticklish.  He laughed too and she held onto his hand.  They gradually stopped laughing and looked at each other.  She still held his hand.  He looked down at her and she gazed back up at him.  Good grief.  He was getting sucked in again.  It got a little awkward as time dragged on.  She finally let go of his hand and backed up a couple steps.

“See you around, Chris.”

“Yeah.  Bye.”

He quickly got into his car and firmly shut the door.  He was not going to let nostalgia and a pretty face lure him back into a bad relationship.  He needed to stay strong.  He needed to stay focused on his father.  He had to make sure that he didn’t lose his nerve and talk himself out of mailing the letter while he was at work.  In fact, quite the opposite happened.  The longer he had to stay at work, the more anxious he was for his shift to end so he could get it addressed, stamped, and already in the mail so it would go out first thing in the morning.

He sped home and was grateful he didn’t get pulled over.  That last thing he needed was to tell his mother that he got a speeding ticket.  Things had not been good at home lately.  The big deal his mother had been working on—the one that would change their fortunes—had fallen through.  And she had been given an unfair share of the blame.  The higher ups had come down hard on her team and she had essentially been demoted.  She said she was lucky she didn’t get fired.  They weren’t giving her any chances to prove herself to them, and because of that she had been very tense and snippy.  Chris had been walking on eggshells for a month now.  He made sure all of his chores were done without having to be asked and he went out of his way to be overly helpful.  She wasn’t misplacing her anger on him—unlike someone else’s mom—but she was _very_ irritable.  He wondered if it was too early for her to already be hitting menopause.

He pulled in next to his mother’s car and flew toward the townhouse.  Usually he was tired after going to school all day and working all night, but tonight he was concerned about the letter.  He was glad his mother was working more reasonable hours now, but he kind of wished she still had those late hours tonight.  He didn’t want her and the letter to be in the house at the same time.  He found her sitting at the kitchen table, looking tired and miserable, reading a fashion magazine.  He said “hi” quietly.  She looked up and smiled when she saw him.

“Hi, sweetie.  Are you hungry?  I made stir fry.”

“Yeah, I’m starving.”

“Good.  Let’s eat together.”

“Okay.  Let me do something first.”

He dropped his book bag on the floor and headed for the study.  He wiggled the mouse to deactivate the screensaver on his mother’s computer and waited impatiently for the ancient machine to wake up.  He sat in the chair and contemplated who he should address it to.  If he sent it to his father, he might destroy it or hide it.  Could he try to send it to his lawyer or the prosecutors?  But he didn’t know their names.  Maybe he could address it to “My Daddy’s Lawyer People.”  He shook his head.  He already had the address of the prison on the envelope the letter had come in.  Maybe he could just address it to the prison attention his father’s prosecutors.  That might work.  Heck, even if it didn’t, at least he’d tried, right?

He took an envelope from his mother’s supplies and pulled his father’s letter out of his back pocket.  He’d kept it on him at all times just so he could be certain no one would accidentally find it.  He’d even slept with it under his pillow.  He addressed the envelope, put a stamp on it, and headed back toward the kitchen.  He’d take his backpack upstairs and shut it up in his room while they ate dinner.  As long as he had his eyes on her, he’d be pretty certain she wasn’t somehow astral projecting herself into his room and snooping around.  He rounded the corner into the kitchen and felt like he’d just slammed into a titanium wall.  His mother was standing in the center of the room, holding his open book bag, and reading something written on ordinary printing paper.  He had dozens of those kinds of sheets in his bag.  There was no way she had found that one.

The only sounds in the room were the soft hum of the microwave and the popping and cracking of their dinner warming up.  She stopped reading and looked up at him.  Her eyes were dead.  She spoke, but he couldn’t hear her.  He didn’t dare step closer to her and he didn’t want to ask her to repeat herself.  She cleared her throat and tried again, still speaking softly, but audibly this time.

“You saw your father?”

Chris’ mind was mostly blank except for one stupid question: “Why are you reading that?”

“You saw your father…and you didn’t tell me or the police?”

Chris felt irrationally angry.  “Why did you go through my stuff?” he shouted.

“I picked up your bag to move it and the zipper was open,” his mother responded calmly, not reacting to his hostility.  “A bunch of papers fell onto the floor.  There was a sheet addressed to ‘Sir or Madam.’  I thought it was from the school.  Not that it matters.  Me going through your belongings is not anywhere near as bad as you hiding something like this.”

Chris clenched his hands into fists and tried to think of something to say, but failed.  His mother’s calm was unnerving him.

“You’ve been lying to me for _weeks_ ,” she said, the smallest hint of repressed rage finally sparking in her voice and eyes.  “How could you do this to me?”

Chris felt his anger pushing at the surface.  He didn’t even want to try to contain it.  “How could I do this to _you_?!  How could you do it to me?!  You kept me from my father for nine years!  What right did you have to decide whether or not I got to know him?!”  He was screaming loud enough to hurt his own ears.  It finally got his mother to react.

“I’m not going to defend myself for that!  He didn’t _deserve_ to be in your life!  He is a _bad_ man, Christopher.”

“No he’s not!”

“Chris!  You’re a child.  You don’t understand anything.”

“I talked to him for him weeks!  He told me everything!”  Chris tried to force himself to calm down and lower his voice.  He didn’t really succeed.  “I don’t care what he did.  He’s still my father!”

“And I’m still your mother!  You owe me _everything_.  How could you disrespect me so much?  And don’t even _think_ about mailing this letter!  He doesn’t deserve your help and you’re only going to get yourself in trouble!”

“I’ll do whatever the hell I want to!”

The words left his mouth before his brain even processed their meaning.  His mother just stared at him with pinched lips.  Years passed by them in the tiny kitchen.  Finally she dropped his bag and the letter to the floor.

“Fine,” she said softly.  “Do what you want.  Just…don’t talk to me for a while.”

She turned and walked out the doorway to the den, and Chris sucked in the air he’d needed for the last five minutes.  He stumbled back into the other entrance and slid down the wall.  He was sitting half in the kitchen and half in the hall.  He drew his knees up and buried his head in his arms.  He stared at the semi-dark cave he’d created for himself and then sat up quickly, searching through his pockets.  He glanced at his book bag where it lay a few feet out of reach.  His cell phone was in there.  He couldn’t reach the kitchen phone either.  He wanted to call someone.  Anyone.  But what would he tell them?

What would he tell them?


	10. Chapter 10

Scott

 

Friday, September 16, 2005

 

Scott swung into Anna’s driveway in his father’s black Maserati.  He’d just recently bought one to complete his mid-life crisis set of an assumed-to-be younger girlfriend and flashy car.  Lucky for Scott, his father cared more about the girlfriend than the car, so he was allowed to drive it.  And now, not only was he sporting an awesome car, he was looking pretty snazzy even if he did say so himself.  He pulled down the visor and looked at himself in the mirror.  He gave his reflection two hand gun gestures.

“And I do say so,” he told himself with a self-mocking, cheesy smile.

He hopped out of the car and straightened his clothing.  He was wearing dark blue jeans, a wide-striped grey and white shirt, and a grey blazer.  He believed “sporty-dressy-casual” was the category his look fell into.  His father had approved of the look up until the footwear.  He’d made him go back upstairs and put on “real” shoes instead of his flip-flops.  Whatever.  Flip-flops were real shoes.  He combed a hand through his short hair.  It was soft again and closer to his natural texture.  He’d gone into a salon for a haircut and the hair dresser had complained about his roots.  He’d explained that he was going to grow it out natural again because the peroxide was killing his hair.  She had told him that advances in modern technology were amazing nowadays.  She’d cut his hair, bleached his roots, and used a magnificent shampoo and conditioner on him that did in fact make his hair seem like actual hair now.  Of course, it was $40 a pop.  Per bottle.  Ah, the price of beauty.

Scott froze as he was about to ring the doorbell.  It didn’t matter that he found women attractive and was having sex with one.  He was so gay.  He shook his head with an amused smile for himself and pushed the doorbell.  Anna’s mother answered the door.  Her face lit up when she saw him.

“Scott!  Oh, I’m so glad to see you!  Come in!”

She dragged him inside and gave him a hug.  “Hi, Mrs. Norwood.”

She pulled back and looked him over, and then she hugged him again.  “It’s been so long since you’ve been over!  Anna had me worried about you two.  But, I’m glad everything is okay.”  She pulled back and gave him a worried face.  “Everything is okay, right?”

Scott smiled reassuringly.  “Yes.  Everything is okay.”  Well, at least he thought so.

“Oh!  Let me go get the camera!”

She scurried off for the kitchen and her husband stepped out of her way as he came into the foyer.  “It’s not like it’s the prom, Katherine.”

Scott turned and smiled at Mr. Norwood.  He didn’t seem to have missed Scott all that much.  He gave him a disapproving scowl and crossed his arms over his chest.

“So, is this dance actually on school property?”

“Um.  Yeah, it’s in the gym.”

“Will you be taking the metro in?”

“No, I borrowed my dad’s car.”

“Oh.  So you’re driving.”

“Yes, sir.  But don’t worry; I won’t be drinking at all.”

“Good grief, son.  I wasn’t even thinking about alcohol.  I’m worried about you driving my daughter out of the driveway.  I’ve seen you drive that minivan before.”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Norwood.  I’m a very good driver.”

“Un-hunh.  What time will you have her home by?”

“What time do you want her home?”

Mr. Norwood smiled.  “You are a smart boy, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I am.  And I’m also not your daughter’s boyfriend.  We’re just friends.  I mean, I’m on your side here.  If it was someone else picking her up, I would really want you to do the whole intimidating black father routine.”

Mr. Norwood hitched an eyebrow.

“I want you to scare her dates.  It’s good for them.  But, me?  I’m safe.  I promise.  Anna and I are only friends.”

Mr. Norwood relaxed his arms a little and let some of the sternness out of his features.  Scott thought maybe he was starting to come around.  Maybe he would finally believe him when he said he had no intentions of doing anything inappropriate with his daughter.  Well, Scott’s definition of inappropriate anyway.

“Hi, Scott.”

He turned his head at Anna’s voice.  She was gliding down the stairs and Scott could actually feel his jaw hit the floor.  She was wearing a plain, white dress, but the style was that false modesty that gave the illusion of covering her up while accentuating every curve and smooth line of her body.  The length was technically just above her knees, but when she walked it swished, making it seem much shorter and revealing a lot of leg.  She’d had her hair straightened and then elegantly curled.  Scott forgot how much hair she actually had until she took the time to straighten it out; it was well below her shoulders.  Her face looked like the Anna he’d always known, but it had a glow to it and her eyes were somehow different.  More defined, maybe.  Definitely beautiful.  She looked like someone who would turn his head as she walked by if he didn’t know that under it all it was just Anna.  Of course, even knowing it was just Anna, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and smiled at him.  He smiled back.  So he didn’t get to take one of the lesbians to the dance.  Anna just might be prettier than them tonight anyway.  He could feel himself staring at her and was pretty sure the smile he was giving her was a little on the goofy side.  He heard someone clear their throat in a disapproving manner.  Scott turned his head and saw that Mr. Norwood had his arms crossed again and was looking very unhappily Scott.  So much for winning him over and finally convincing him he had no lascivious intentions toward his daughter.  He smiled at Mr. Norwood and then grabbed Anna’s hand.

“Well, look at the time,” he said without looking at a clock, “we’d better go.”

He dragged Anna away from her menacing father and heard her mother come back into the foyer.

“But, I wanted pictures!” the woman cried in distress.

“Save it for prom, Mom!” Anna called out and pulled the door closed behind them.

They laughed on their way down the front walk, and when they reached the driveway Anna stopped dead in her tracks, jerking Scott back.

“What?” he asked.

“No way.  Where’d you get this car?”

“Oh, my dad’s going through a phase.  I’m fully supporting him in it.”

“Scott, are you sure everything is okay?”

“No, everything’s not okay.”  He shrugged.  “I can’t change what’s happening with my parents.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t find the humor in it.”

“I think there’s something wrong with that.”

Scott held back an aggravated sigh.  Anna was always his Jiminy Cricket who made him see reason and deal with his problems rather than pushing them away or ignoring them.  He loved her for that, but lately he’d gotten used to Antoinette.  She would let him be as self-deceptive as he liked, only reeling him in when he indicated he was in the mood for it.  Why couldn’t Anna realize that sometimes it was okay to forget about stuff?  Tonight was just supposed to be fun; he could deal with his problems tomorrow.  She seemed to sense what he was holding back, so she waved her hands in the air.

“Never mind.  Forget it.  Tonight we’re just gonna have fun.”

Scott nodded in agreement.  “That’s more like it.  Let’s get on with it.”

He walked to the passenger side door and opened it for her.  Then he bowed in an exaggerated manner, showing her the way to her seat.  She laughed and walked over to him.  He watched every movement.

“You know, you look really amazing tonight.”

Her fingers laced together anxiously and she looked shyly flattered.  “Thank you,” she said softly.  “So do you.”

Scott shook his head.  “No.  I look okay.  Maybe snazzy.  But you look…”  He tried to find a more sophisticated word, but finally shrugged and said, “hot.”

Her smile widened and she looked away from him for a moment.  Then she faced him with a typical “you’re an idiot” look and sniffed, “Well, I’m glad you finally noticed.”

She started to get into the car, but he stopped her and pulled her into a hug.  But not a friend hug, a very intimate hug.  His arms were wrapped low around her hips and he used his chest to lean against her so that they both felt her breasts pressed against him.

“Oh, I’ve always noticed,” he said in his best playa extraordinaire imitation.

Despite her skin color and the dark of the night, he was positive he saw her blush.  He considered extending her torment, but he caught of a glimpse of her father peeking out through the curtains and let her go.  She did her best to get into the car without giddily collapsing to the ground and Scott shut the door.  He waved to Mr. Norwood as he made his way to the driver’s side.  The man was making him feel like a clichéd, perverted high school boy and he had no intention of even trying to kiss Anna.  He could only imagine what he would feel like if he ever met Antoinette’s father.

 

By the time they arrived at the dance, it was in full swing.  Somehow, they were late as usual.  He wasn’t sure if stopping for gas, touring Anna’s old neighborhood, or getting slightly lost had anything to do with it, but it really was strange how they could never get anywhere on time.  The upside to being late, of course, was that everybody was already there.  He and Anna just circled the dance floor and eyed the wallflowers until they came across their friends.  Scott spotted Liz first.  As had most of the other males in the gymnasium.  He also noticed her because his time with Antoinette had familiarized him with what “special” female underwear looked like under clothing.  He was pretty certain Liz was wearing garters.  He almost envied the night Will was going to have.  Though she wasn’t actually with Will at the moment.

“Hey guys!” Scott shouted over the music and jumped toward his friends.  Liz and Laney flinched away, but everyone else smiled.

Scott spotted Riley.  “Wow.  You look…well, you look…like—”

“If you say ‘like a girl,’ I will hurt you.”

“Like something pretty,” Scott said nervously.

Chris patted him on the shoulder.  “Nice save.”

Scott smiled at him.  “Really?  Thanks.”

Chris seemed confused for a moment, and then shook his head, draping an arm over Scott’s shoulders.  “What are we supposed to do with him?” he asked Julian.

Julian shook his head.  “Nothing.  I like him this way.”

“Wait, are you guys making fun of me?”

“Of course not, sweetheart,” Anna said, smiling sweetly.  He didn’t trust her one little bit.

“Woo.  Anna.  Where’ve you been hiding those legs?”

Scott felt protective rage surge through his body at Julian’s comment.  He started to point a finger at him, but Chris pushed his arm down.

“Easy tiger.”

“How can I be easy?  Julian is mind molesting her!”

“No, he’s not.”

“Yes, I am,” Julian grinned.

Riley and Liz backhanded his shoulder lightly.  Laney rolled her eyes and crossed her arms in a huff.

“Where’s Will?” Anna asked.

“Over there,” Chris said and pointed with the hand that was around Scott’s shoulders.  “Dancing with that fat chick.”

“Where?” Scott asked and glanced around.  Then he spotted Will dancing with a short chubby black girl.  Well, dancing, grinding, whatever.  Scott shook his head with a grin.  That boy loved anything female.  He glanced at Liz.  Unsurprisingly, she didn’t appear upset or threatened by Will’s choice of dance partner.  Or the one after that, or the one after that.  He seemed to be dancing with everyone but her, so Scott took pity on her and danced with her a couple times.  He was also curious to find out if the garters were attached to anything.  It was a little difficult to tell what was under a girl’s clothes without feeling her up, so it would be interesting to see how far Liz would let him go.  It ended up not being very far.  He got a good enough feel to suspect a full body type of lingerie and then she stamped on his foot and gave him a sassy reproach.  He’d been forced to dance with his hands on her shoulders the remainder of the song while she lectured him about how his hair was having an effect on his manners.

Then a John Mayer song came on.  Every boy in the room inwardly groaned as girls dashed for their beaus in order to get their romantic dance in for the night.  Scott passed Liz on to Will and decided he better go prop up a wall.  Anna intercepted him on his way off the dance floor.

“You wanna dance?”

“Sure.”

They got into the standard high school dance position and began to sway more or less to the right beat.  After a few bars he realized he was staring over her head toward the refreshment table.  Maybe he should look at her; that seemed like the polite thing to do.  He looked down just a little to meet her gaze and he could have sworn he saw stars in her eyes.  He stared at her in something close to fearful shock.  He wasn’t an idiot, but even if he was it wouldn’t take one to figure out what that look meant.  She hid it by leaning forward and pressing her face into his shoulder.  Her arms made a tighter circuit around his neck and he pulled her a little closer at the waist.  He wanted her to stay close so he wouldn’t have to look at her face.  Or rather, so she wouldn’t have to look at his.  He was certain it was panicked, confused, and possibly stricken.

Now, he knew what that face meant, but why was she giving it to him?  Was she thinking about somebody else?  Was she caught up in the moment?  Or did she mean it?  What if she did mean it?  Did he like her…in that way?  Did he want to let himself jump off the friend shelf?  If he did, he knew there was no going back.  If he let himself _like_ like her, he always would.  And no girl he ever met in his life would ever be good enough in comparison to her.  If she decided she really didn’t feel that way about him and moved on, he would never get over her.  Ever.  That was a scary thought: being hung up on Anna forever.  He was already hung up on her to some extent.  Did he want to take it to the extreme?  But what if it worked out?  He knew there was no one who could make him happier than Anna.  But good God, what if he was misinterpreting something or misunderstanding something?  That was not worth risking his friendship with her.  They’d had enough problems lately.

The song ended and Scott stepped away from her.  She was looking at him with questions in her eyes.  They stayed standing still as the next song started up.  It was up-tempo and really loud.  Even if Anna was about to confess something to him, he probably wouldn’t be able to hear her.  All the more reason to avoid it.

“You want some punch?” he shouted.

She seemed a little startled by his question, and then she smiled.  Any tension that had been building up between them dissipated.  She laughed softly and shrugged one shoulder.

“Sure.  Punch would be great.”

She patted his shoulder and walked away from him shaking her head with an amused smile.  She thought he hadn’t noticed.  She’d assumed he’d been his usual clueless self and completely missed the rather obvious looks she’d been giving him.  Scott headed for the refreshment table and wondered if it was fortuitous or not that she hadn’t noticed that he _had_ noticed.  Even if he wanted to change his relationship with Anna into something more, _now_ was not the time.  He wasn’t ready to get into a relationship that serious yet.  One so permanent.  And he wasn’t quite ready to give up Antoinette yet, no matter what he told her or himself.  Before he could seriously let himself contemplate the can of worms Anna was trying to open up, Antoinette would have to be very firmly a part of his history.

When he reached the refreshment table, which was being guarded by two chaperones, he couldn’t believe that there wasn’t any punch.  The only drinks they had were sealed cans.  And there were no cups or ice.  Was the school that cheap, or that paranoid about drugs?  He checked the labels looking for a diet drink and saw movement to his left.  He didn’t pay much attention to it, and then there was the sound of a can being opened.  Followed by all the carbonation bursting out all over the place.  Scott stepped to the side, but quite a bit of the soda fizzed onto his shoes.  He wasn’t really upset, but he was going to give whoever had been shaking their can around too hard a very nasty look.  Or, at least a somewhat displeased one.

Antoinette held a can of Diet Pepsi in one hand, the brown liquid running over her fingers and wrist and dripping to the floor.  The chaperone closest to them scampered off for some paper towels while the other kept other students back so that they wouldn’t slip on the floor.  Paranoid freaks.  He went ahead and gave his look to Antoinette.  She just smiled at him.

“Oops.”

“Oops my ass.”

“I’m so sorry.  That was so clumsy of me.  You have to let me make it up to you.”

Scott couldn’t stop his smile.  “How?” he asked suggestively.

“What are you implying, you pervert?  I barely know you.  I meant I’d _dance_ with you.”

“Oh, right, sorry.”  He looked away from her, hiding his smile.  It was a good thing no one had really been in earshot.

“No, it’s okay,” she said softly, turning toward him slightly.  “You actually _wanting_ sex…that’s progress at least.”

“Uh!”  Scott made a face at her.  “Hush up.”

He stalked away from her and her irritating smile.  The saucy wench.  But, isn’t that what he liked about her?  Yeah.  It was.  He found his friends again and gave Anna her soda.  Then he told them all how paranoid the school was by telling them about the beverage situation.  Then the Pussycat Dolls came on.  Scott knew who they were for obvious reasons, but wasn’t really a fan of their music.

“Oh!  I love this song!” Liz and Laney shouted in unison.

“Let’s dance!” Liz said and tugged on Will’s arm.

“Are you kidding?” Riley demanded.  “This song is so degrading.  ‘Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?’  I mean, come on.”

“Don’t cha,” Liz and Laney corrected her.

“I’ll dance,” said Julian.

“Yeah me too,” Will chimed in.

“Yeah, okay!” Scott shouted getting caught up.

Chris looked at him.  “Scott, I need some solidarity here.  We cannot dance to this song.”

“Why not?” Liz asked and starting pulling on Scott’s arm.

Somehow before the end of the song, all of them managed to get out on the dance floor.  Liz and Laney backed into Riley and bounced her in between them.  Scott laughed and trapped her from another side.  He forced her to swing her un-curvy hips in a way that was kind of close to sexy.  Will was pressed against Liz and now Scott was really envying the night he was going to have if that was what they were doing on the dance floor.  Julian had gotten in behind Will, and he seemed too involved with Liz to care who was behind him.  Anna and Chris were a little bit shyer about dancing like crazy people, especially in what was spiraling quickly into a group orgy.  They were finally pulled into the debauchery and they all thoroughly enjoyed themselves without being harassed.  Apparently the chaperones were so concerned about drugs that they didn’t even consider the possibility of someone getting impregnated on the dance floor.

By the time the song was over, Scott had made his way through five of his seven friends, which meant there had been at least one male somewhere in all that.  They were all laughing and breathing heavily.  It seemed to Scott like a good time to take a break, but the DJ had other ideas.  He put on Maroon 5’s “She Will Be loved.”  He liked the song, but kept the fact to himself.  It was kind of hard sometimes to figure out which songs were socially acceptable for guys to like.  People began to pair off again and slow dance to the song.  He looked at Anna.  She was shifting her weight from foot to foot and playing with her fingernails, avoiding his eyes.  Suddenly things were awkward between them.  He didn’t want this.  He didn’t want their friendship to end because they wanted to know “what if.”  Could he still play dumb?

“Hi there.”

He and Anna looked up.  Antoinette and Jake were standing beside them.

“Scott, right?” Antoinette asked.

He thought she was playing it a little too dumb.  “Yeah, that’s right.”

“So, I’m here to make up for the whole shoe incident.”

“What shoe incident?” Anna grumbled suspiciously.

“I spilled some soda on his shoes over at the drink table.  I apologized and asked if there was anything I could do to make it up to him.  He suggested a dance.”

Scott sucked in a breath and glanced at Jake.  The soccer team captain was eyeing Scott and running his tongue over a tooth.  He didn’t seem particularly happy about the suggestion.  Scott was going to kill Antoinette.

“ _Did_ he now?” Anna asked with an unpleasant tone.

Scott glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at him, she was glaring at Antoinette.  It didn’t seem like Anna was buying Antoinette’s story.  Not that he blamed her.  He would never in a million years be that smooth around a girl, and he was certain Anna knew that.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Antoinette said, completely un-phased, “I brought Jake along for you so you wouldn’t be left standing all alone or anything.”

Before Anna could protest, Antoinette grabbed Scott by the hand and pulled him off into the crowd of people.  It wasn’t a huge crowd by any means, but she had successfully cut them off from their dates.  They started to sway to the music at a safe distance from each other.  Scott smiled at her.

“Are you trying to get us caught?”

“What?  No way.  I complained to Jake the whole way over here how you were creepy and I was going to hate it.”

“Oh, thank you so much.  With that ringing endorsement I’m surprised he let you do it.”

“Oh, please.  Like he controls me.”

“Hmm.  Now why am I not surprised to learn that you’re the one in control in that relationship?”

Antoinette shrugged daintily, and then they both laughed softly.  Scott looked directly into Antoinette’s eyes.  With heels on, she was _almost_ taller than him.  Her hair was curled and loosely pinned up on her head, spilling down around her cheekbones.  Her make-up was light and shimmery and matched the pastel pink dress she wore.  It was a modest cut and designed more to look cute than sexy.

“You look really nice,” Scott said sincerely in order to make up for using the word “nice.”  “I’d have thought you would wear something more risqué.  But you look nice like this.  Really nice.”

“So, you like it?” she asked shyly.

Antoinette being shy?  Something was weird.  “Yeah, I really do.”

“I picked it out with you in mind.”

Whoa.  It was getting even weirder.  “Really?  Why?” he asked, genuinely curious.

She shrugged and looked away from him.  “No reason really.  I dress up for my friends and Jake all the time.  I thought I might see if I could guess what you would like.”

“Oh.”

Antoinette took a tiny step closer and put their faces almost cheek to cheek.  He turned his head slightly and breathed her in.  As usual, she smelled like honeysuckle.  Then he quickly stepped back and went rigid.

“Careful,” he said.  “We’re just supposed to be dancing for my shoes, remember?”

“Sorry.  I couldn’t help it.”

“What do you mean?  Why not?”

She stared at something over his shoulder, her eyes going out of focus.  “I like you.”

It was almost like the music stopped.  He couldn’t really hear anything other than her words echoing in his head.  He looked at her face.  Her eyes were still unfocused and she seemed rather disinterested in what they were doing.  Had she meant that?  Or was she just playing games with him?  Maybe she knew him well enough now to _really_ manipulate him.  It would be much harder for him to dump a girl who he thought liked him.  And maybe she had just meant she liked him as a friend or something.  Or as a toy.  That sounded about right.  So she wanted to play with him?  He’d dish it right back.  He leaned forward a little.

“So dump Jake.”

Her eyes snapped back into focus as she looked at him.  She’d had the same reaction the last time he’d suggested that to her.  She _was_ toying with him.  She was worried he might get antsy about Jake and give her an ultimatum.

“What?” she mouthed the word but he couldn’t hear her voice over the music.

“Dump Jake and go out with me.”

Antoinette’s eyes jumped back and forth as she looked at his face.  She looked beyond surprised.

“Do you really mean that?” she asked.

“Yeah, why not?  Oh, wait.  If you start going out with me legitimately, then I won’t be nearly as desirable, will I?  You’ll have to start going out with Jake behind my back.”

Antoinette pushed away from him and looked furious.  And a little sad.  “You’re a jerk, Scott Ramsey!”

She turned and walked away from him.  Nearby couples glanced after her and then back at him.  He could see the rumor mill starting to grind already.  It would probably be somewhere along the lines of him being a pervert and feeling up a nice girl when she had been so kind and offered to dance with his sorry self.  Jake would probably try to beat him up.  Crap.

He turned and started to head back toward where his friends had been hanging out.  He saw Anna and Jake dancing stiffly and awkwardly with each other.  He decided to save his friend and tapped Jake’s shoulder.

“Mind if I cut in?”

“Go ahead,” Jake said and smiled tightly at Anna before leaving.

Scott took his place and hugged Anna.  She hugged him back.  They were still kind of moving to the music, but not by much.

“So, I take it you didn’t enjoy dancing with her?” Anna asked gently.

“Well, she’s pretty, you know.  But she’s not…I mean, she’s also…”

“Vapid?  Shallow?  A bitch?”

Scott pulled back and looked at Anna.

“Seriously.  What is going on between you two?  You wouldn’t be this mean about someone you don’t even know.”

She opened her mouth, and then closed it.  She shook her head and smiled.  “It’s nothing, I’m sorry.  I guess I just have a ‘the most popular girl in school’ complex.  Let’s forget about it and have fun, okay?”

“Okay.”

The slow song ended and “Love Shack” took its place.  They giggled and ran to find their friends.  Laney and Julian were missing, but the rest of them had a good time rocking out to the “golden oldie.”  The DJ kept them on an upbeat pace for the next few songs and Julian rejoined them just in time for one of his favorite songs.  Scott wasn’t quite sure why Julian was in love with Gwen Stefani, but he was.  When it slowed down again Scott declared himself to be on the brink of starvation and he and Riley led the charge for the food table.  Anna was unsuccessful in getting him back onto the dance floor quickly, and only succeeded in doing so when the DJ announced that it was the last song of the night.  He forlornly let go of the last mini pizza bagel and allowed himself to be dragged toward the one set of bleachers set up by the doors.

“Um, are we supposed to dance over here?” he asked.

Anna somehow found her purse among the pile of coats and other bags and purses and fished around inside of it.

“No, we’ll go to the dance floor, but, here.”

She handed him a piece of gum.  He gave her a look.

“What’s this for?”

“Nasty mini pizza bagel breath; what do you think?”

He rolled his eyes but popped the gum into his mouth.  He hated wintergreen and it was all Anna ever bought.  He started to trudge back to the floor with the bad-taste-in-gum-flavors girl.

“Why are you so worried about my breath anyway?  You plan on kissin’ me?”

“Um, if I have to stand within three feet of you I could smell your breath.”

Scott let out an offended noise.  “Whatever.”

She pulled him close and wrapped her arms around his neck.  Then she gave him a quick peck on the lips.  “There.  Now is the gum justified?”

He laughed and pulled her close.  “Well, it’s a start.”

They hugged/danced to the last song and Scott tried not to think about how this was kind of out of the norm for them.  They would dance with each other at school dances and such, even to slow songs.  But they never did it like this.  He looked up at one point and saw Antoinette doing practically the same thing with Jake.  They went so well together.  Why did he even entertain the idea that she might think of him as anything other than a plaything?  Compared to Jake he was nothing.  He wasn’t on her level.  Of course, the question might be: was he below her or above her?  Well, he certainly wasn’t above her no matter how he looked at it.  She turned her head slightly and opened her eyes.  She spotted him and didn’t look away.  She didn’t look angry with him.  That made him glad.  He had been really mean to her.  She didn’t deserve to be judged by him.  He was contributing to it after all.  He wondered if he could somehow communicate that he was sorry to her.  He wasn’t sure what to do, so he just kept looking at her.  She looked right back for the rest of the song.

Once the dance was officially over, the chaperones bustled all the students out the doors as quickly as they could.  They didn’t want any loitering and apparently 10:30 was past their bedtimes.  On the way back home he and Anna chatted idly about this and that.  Anna wanted to know if Julian had done something to Laney because she had seen her crying at one point, but Scott hadn’t heard anything about it.  He was so happy things were _finally_ back to normal.  He was glad he had managed to avoid Anna’s confession tonight.  They needed to be _friends_ again before they tried something new.

There was a large floodlight illuminating her driveway, so he pulled up next to the curb in the shadows…mostly just to piss off Anna’s dad.  He was positive the man was straining his eyes through the curtains even now.  They sat quietly together and Anna started to fidget.  He should get out and open her car door.  He started to reach for his door handle, but Anna stopped him by calling his name.  Then she began to babble.  And considering how much he and Anna talked anyway, when they babbled, it was just strings of words loosely tied together.  He sat back and watched her look at anything but him as she talked about how fun the dance had been and how much she enjoyed going with him.  Was she working up to another confession?  What if she managed to get it out?  What should his reaction be?

Well, an addle-pated stupor would come first.  He’d honestly had no idea Anna had any romantic feelings toward him.  He’d always assumed she’d felt the same way about him as he did about her.  And he’d never thought of her in that way before.  But was that because he just hadn’t allowed himself to see her that way?  What if he let himself be open to the possibility of a deeper relationship between them?  Their friendship could survive their squabbles and problems and boyfriends and girlfriends, but if they dated and it didn’t work out, they could never go back to being friends.  One way or another, if they broke through that wall, their friendship was over.

Scott tilted his head as he looked at her.  Her straightened hair was beginning to frizz and go back to normal Anna curls.  Her make-up and been mostly sweated off and she looked like her usual self.  Especially with her mouth flapping away.  He smiled at his Anna even though she didn’t see the motion.  How could it ever _not_ work between them?

He leaned forward with the intention to shut her up by kissing her.  She stopped mid-sentence when she saw him getting closer.  She looked at him now.  He brushed his fingers by her temple and then gently stroked her hair.  He let his hand continue down until he caressed her cheek.  She leaned into his touch, but kept eye contact.  He continued to trail his fingers down her soft skin, under her jaw and finally to her chin.  He applied light pressure in order to get her to raise her head a little.  He looked at her and made it abundantly clear what he was about to do.  There were no misunderstandings.  She knew his intentions, and she wanted him to follow through with them.

 _Inhale, Scotty, don’t pass out_.

He leaned forward, closing his eyes as he went.  It was a risky plan, he might miss her lips if he didn’t watch where he was going, but he couldn’t bear to look.  His cell phone blared out its ring and they jumped away from each other so hard they both hit their heads against the windows.  They sat stunned for a moment, and then started laughing.  Scott dug around in his pocket for his phone just to get it to shut up.  He’d turned it up really loud so that he would be able to hear it at the dance in case his mother called.

“It’s probably my dad,” Anna joked.

“Probably,” Scott agreed with laugh.  He watched Anna as she silently mimicked her father being in a huff.  He put the phone to his hear and thought about putting it on speaker so they could both hear her father’s words match Anna’s motions.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Scott.”

Scott’s smile disappeared.  He was lucky he hadn’t put it on speaker, but he should have known better than to answer without checking the caller ID.

“Hi,” he said as monotonously as he could.

“Guess where I am?” Antoinette’s voice started at his ear and slid down his body.

“Um…”

“And what I’m wearing.  And what I’m _planning_ …”

As Scott listened to her fill him in on all the things she had planned, he just continued to stare at Anna.  She had figured out it wasn’t her father, but seemed concerned about who it might be.  He was beyond embarrassed to have Anna looking at him while Antoinette purred such dirty things in his ear.  That girl would be able to make a fortune in the phone sex industry.

Now he had a dilemma.  He knew if he stayed with Anna tonight and they did take a step forward with their relationship, he wouldn’t be getting any sex.  And even if she was willing to go that far, there was no way she would be okay with the kind of things he was into.  And was tonight really a good time to test the friends to lovers theory?  Didn’t he think earlier that they needed to be friends again first?  And wasn’t he just a horny asshole teenage boy?  Yep.

“I understand,” Scott said into the phone.  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Excellent.  Come around the back please.”

Scott closed the phone while still holding it up by his ear.  Anna crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

“What was that?” she snipped.  “Where are you going?  Did your friends do something stupid?”

“Oh, so all of a sudden they’re _my_ friends.”

“What did they do?”

“Nothing.”

“What are they _going_ to do?”

“Nothing.  It wasn’t them.”  Could he lie to Anna?  Did he really have a choice?  “It was my mom.  She’s being kind of crazy.”

“Oh.”  Her face softened instantly.  “I’m so sorry.  How—how is all of that going anyway?”

“Um.  Well, it’s complicated, you know.  I’ll fill you in on all of it some other time.  Right now I need to get home before my mom and dad blow up the house.”

“Oh, okay.  Right.  Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

They remained sitting in the car.  It was a little awkward.  Was she still expecting him to kiss her?  He couldn’t do that now.  The mood was gone.  Plus considering where he was actually going, he couldn’t possibly think about doing that to Anna.  She seemed to take the hint that he wouldn’t be kissing her tonight, so she turned to the door but hesitated before opening it.  He should probably get out and open the door for her, but Antoinette’s words had had an effect on more than just his common sense.  He was really happy he’d parked in the shadows.

“Right then,” she said, raising her eyebrows.  She opened the door and got out kind of muttering to herself.  She was probably just thinking that he was seeing her as a regular old friend again; no special treatment necessary.  He felt guilt wash over him in a nauseating wave, but he didn’t try to stop her as she shut the door and started up her driveway.  He waited until she was safely inside and then started the car.  The guilt was already dissolving into other emotions as he headed for Antoinette’s house.  He’d known the feeling would pass.  Bad people normally didn’t feel guilty for very long.

Scott parked the car on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac from Antoinette’s house.  He got out and leaned against the side while he played with the keys.  There were several lights on in the Bixby house.  He wondered how many family members were at home.  Since he had to go to the back, there had to be at least one other person besides Antoinette at home.  And where was Jake now?  Had he dropped her off and gone home alone?  They had been there at the very end of the dance and considering how long it took to drive back from the city they probably hadn’t had sex first.  At least he could be grateful he wasn’t getting Jake’s sloppy seconds.  Or was it the other way around?  Did she go to Jake after being with him?  Did she alternate days?  Did she wait a certain amount of time in between the two of them?

Scott shook his head and turned around to unlock the car door.  He couldn’t do this.  He couldn’t do this to Jake.  He couldn’t do this to Anna.  He couldn’t do this to himself.  He stopped unlocking the car.  He couldn’t do this to Antoinette.  He liked her too much to keep playing their stupid games.  He tugged on the locked door handle a couple times.  If he went to see her tonight he could tell her that it was over as usual.  But he also knew that he had no resolve tonight.  If he talked to her tonight, they would definitely be doing more than talking.

Scott closed his eyes and exhaled slowly as he pushed against the car with the flat of his palms.  He pushed so hard his arms started shaking.  He finally relaxed and opened his eyes.  He’d made up his mind.  Scott pocketed the car keys and walked across the cul-de-sac.  He tried to stay in the shadows and glanced at the windows in the houses as he cut across the Bixby’s lawn.  He made his way around the back and found the basement door.  He walked up to it slowly.  It was completely dark inside.  For all he knew Antoinette had called him over because she was pissed with him and Jake was waiting just on the other side of the sliding glass door to pound his ass.

A dim light flicked on.  Antoinette stood behind the glass.  Scott gulped hard and pressed his palms against the glass.  She was wearing clothing, more or less.  Scraps of cloth strategically placed here and there.  She was really amazing.  She wasn’t a high school student.  She was every clichéd seductress in every guy film ever.  His breathing was getting shallow and his heart rate had already accelerated.  She took a step forward and slowly opened the door.  He let his hands fall to his sides.  They stared at each other for a few moments, and he could tell her cool exterior was slipping.  He apparently had a little bit of an effect on her as well.

“S-so, how long have you been outside?”

He half-smiled.  She knew him very well.  “About ten minutes.”

“So, what made you decide to go through with it?”

How should he word this?  He stepped through the doorway, slid an arm around her waist, and pulled her close.  He kissed her chastely, but urgently.  He pulled back slightly.

“I wanted you,” he whispered against her lips.

Then he kissed her again.  She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned his kiss.  There was nothing chaste about this one.  They forgot about location and time.  When they finally did pull apart, their breathing was loud enough to alarm them.  Scott glanced toward the basement stairs hoping no one would be drawn to investigate.

“My siblings are gone for the night,” she panted.  “But my parents are upstairs.  And by upstairs I mean the top floor.  They shouldn’t come down here at all.”

“Well, that’s very reassuring,” Scott replied, gently sarcastic.

“It’s okay,” she said.  She pulled gently on his hand and led him back toward the mini theater.  “It’ll be okay.”

Scott nodded, foolishly trusting her.  The seats in the middle section had been reclined back so that they were flat.  There was a huge expanse of cushion available for them to roll around on.  She’d spread a couple sheets over the section and it was blocked in by the front and back sections and the far wall.  Scott brushed a lock of hair back from her face and smiled playfully.

“Is this to keep me from escaping?” he asked.

She smiled a little evilly.  “Oh, I’ve got something else to keep you from escaping.”

Scott felt a chill run down his spine, but it was the good kind.  When he reached the edge of the seats he saw the red velvet ropes lying on the cushion.  He raised an eyebrow at her and she smiled at him as she picked up one of the ropes and ran it slowly through her fingers, the red contrasting sharply with the baby pink of her manicured nails.

“Let me tie you up, Scott.”

His first reaction wasn’t disgust or resistance.  Disturbingly, it was excitement.

He shook his head.  “I’m going to regret this, but I’d just keep wondering about it until I finally caved and let you do it.  Might as well get it over with now.”

“Get it over with?  Scott.  You say that like we’ll only do this once.”

Scott sat down on the cushion and pulled her into his lap.  She straddled him and leaned forward to kiss him.  She hummed happily and sat back a little.

“I love kissing you,” she said.  “But I’m afraid I’m not in a mood to be very sweet tonight.”

Scott ran his hands over the bare skin of her back.  “Good.”

What happened after that were things that he was pretty certain would be frowned upon in psychologist circles.  He was going to have to be a closet freak.  And a huge freak at that.  He didn’t tell her no to anything.  He let her tie him up, blindfold him, and even gag him.  The ropes and blindfold he let slide possible household items, but the gag was a ball gag, designed to keep someone quiet but perforated with holes so they could still breathe easily.  It was definitely something designed with a specific purpose in mind.  Where had she bought these things?  And not being able to see what she was going to do next…the anticipation was making it all the worse.  Which for him, made it all the better.

He lost cognitive thinking a couple times; she had managed to reduce him to nothing but raw sensations.  One moment of clarity came when after what seemed like hours of tortuous teasing, she finally took him inside her.  They’d only done it a few times before, but he could instantly recognize that something was different.  He couldn’t speak to ask her about it and he couldn’t move his arms to stop her.  Even his legs were incapacitated.  There was nothing he could do.  The rational thinking only lasted a few moments, and then it was gone.  But it didn’t matter.  It really didn’t.

 

Saturday, September 17, 2005

 

Scott woke up completely disoriented.  He was in what seemed like a bed, but there was a soft wall surrounding him.  The lighting was off too.  It wasn’t natural sunlight and it was illuminating the sides of the rooms.  He turned slightly and felt Antoinette beside him.  Well, on him.  Her head was on his shoulder and she had an arm and a leg draped across him.  She’d pulled one of the sheets partially up over them.  Scott couldn’t believe he would ever wake up next to a girl this beautiful.  He remembered where he was now and what they had done the night before.  They had actually taken it down a notch.  It hadn’t been so much painful and violent as simply kinky.  He shifted and felt his sore muscles protest the movement.  He almost laughed as he realized that “taking it down a notch” for them just meant she hadn’t left any marks.  He didn’t mind his aching body; last night had been mind blowing.

Scott gave himself a start with the thought “last night.”  They’d fallen asleep.  But maybe he’d woken up an hour or so later.  It was impossible to tell in the theater because there were no windows.  He saw his watch lying not far away where it had been tossed haphazardly aside, along with all his other clothing.  He reached for it carefully, trying not to disturb Antoinette.  He looked at its ticking hands.  It was seven o’clock.  Scott groaned outwardly, not caring if he disturbed her now.  The only way for it to be seven o’clock would be for it to be morning.  He couldn’t believe he’d stayed out all night.  He should have known better than to just “rest his eyes for moment” afterwards.  But then again, he hadn’t really been in any condition to stand up let alone drive home afterwards.  He wiggled away from Antoinette and began to gather his clothes, trying to get dressed as he kneeled awkwardly on the thick, plushy cushions.  Antoinette blindly reached out a hand for him and found his ankle.

“Where are you going?” she asked sleepily.

“Home.  It’s morning.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.  It’s like seven.  And I need to get out of here before your siblings get home and/or your parents come looking for you.”

She sat partway up and grabbed his arm.  She pulled him off balance and he fell back onto the cushions, halfway in his shirt.  She snuggled against him.

“No.  I want you to stay.”

He gently extracted himself from her and sat up again.

“Sorry, but no.”

“Boo,” she said petulantly and pouted at him, hugging the sheet in his absence.

“Don’t ‘boo’ me,” he said, stepping into the side aisle and jumping up and down to get his pants on.  “What was up with last night?”

She sat up and covered her body with the sheet.  She looked slightly annoyed.  “Don’t act like you didn’t like it.”

“No, not that,” he said with a smile as he sat down to put his socks and shoes on.  “I’m fine with all that.  Sort of.  I mean,” he stood up fully clothed and faced her, “why didn’t you use a condom?”

“Oh.  Right.”  She watched her finger trace a pattern on the theater cushion.  She looked back up and shrugged.  “I forgot to bring one down with me.  And when it was time, I didn’t want to stop and run upstairs and get one.”

“Well you should have!”

Scott clamped a hand over his mouth and glanced at the ceiling.

“Relax, genius.  This room is soundproofed.”

“Oh, right.  Wait.  Then what was with the gag?”

She just smiled at him.  He was almost embarrassed.  He was such a tool.

“That doesn’t matter anyway.  What the hell were you thinking?”

“Well, that’s kind of the point.  I wasn’t thinking.  But I wasn’t thinking about it because it doesn’t really matter; I’m on the pill.”

“So what?  It’s not 100% effective, you know.”

“No, just 99.5%.”

Scott raised his eyebrows.  He had no idea it was that effective.  He actually thought it was in the 80’s somewhere.  “Well, whatever.  Who knows what I might have caught from you.  Or Jake for that matter.”

Her face predictably became a mask of outraged offense.  She sat up on her knees and swung her arm forward to slap him.  The motion was a little awkward for her, especially on the uneven pillows, so Scott was easily able to catch her wrist.  She fought to pull it back from him, but he held her thin wrist firmly.  Her eyes glittered in the dim light.

“Don’t act so surprised,” he said coldly.

“You are such a jerk,” she ground out between clenched teeth.  She yanked against his hold and came free.  “Get out!”

“Fine.”

Scott checked his pockets to make sure his keys and wallet were still in them and then walked out of the theater without even checking to see if anybody was in the basement.  No one shouted surprise at seeing him, so he assumed there was no one around.  He made his way to the sliding glass door and noticed they’d left it partially open last night in their haste.  That was some crappy alarm system if it couldn’t even signal that there was a door ajar all night long.

“Scott.”

Scott stopped at the door and looked back.  Antoinette was standing at the theater entrance, wrapped only in the sheet.  It was thin and white, and he could see right through it.  She crossed the room a little awkwardly because the sheet was flopping around her feet, and then she flung her arms around his neck.  The sheet stayed in place because she was pressed against him, and his arms had reflexively wrapped around her as well.  She’d started kissing him as soon as she’d been close enough and he readily reciprocated.  Scott knew they didn’t have time to do anything this morning, so he pulled back before things got too hot.  They remained in each other’s embrace and put their foreheads together.

“Did we just make-up?” he laughed.

“Yeah,” she laughed too.  “It’s funny.  It’s so easy with you.”

“Well, that’s probably because we’re not in a real relationship.”

She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Right.”  She stepped back from him, holding the sheet up over her breasts.  “So, do you want a ride home?”

Scott’s instincts railed against the idea.  “No, that’s okay,” he said quickly.  “I’ve got my dad’s car.”

“Okay.  I’ll see you in school on Monday.”

“Yeah, okay.  Bye.”

He took a step forward and kissed her quickly on the lips.

“Bye,” she said softly.

Scott went out the door and shut it behind him.  He glanced around.  There didn’t appear to be anyone in the woods or in the neighboring yards.  He jogged quickly to the front of the house and forced himself to walk in a normal pace across the cul-de-sac.  It was early on a Sunday, so hopefully everyone was sleeping in or already at church.  By the time he got home, he was feeling really sleepy.  He probably hadn’t gotten much sleep as it was, and he knew his body was exhausted.  Dancing and wild sex will do that to even young, healthy people.

He noticed a silver mini van parked on his street by his driveway, but he didn’t think anything of it.  He just drove up his long driveway and parked outside the garage.  The garage door was right under his father’s bedroom, so he didn’t want to wake him up.  He skipped around to the front door, wincing every now and then.  She’d done more damage than he realized.  He grinned just remembering the things she’d done to inflict that damage.  He unlocked the door and flung it open, not worried about needing to sneak in.  He froze one step into the house.  The silence was reverberating off the walls, which meant his parents must have just stopped screaming due to his entrance.  His father was standing on the stairs and appeared to be blocking his mother from going up.  They were both now staring at him.  Scott felt like he’d been caught in the gaze of a gorgon.

“Where have you been?” his mother demanded.  Before Scott could answer she turned back on his father.  “How could you let him stay out all night?!”

His father looked at him over his mother’s head.  He had most definitely given Scott a curfew last night.  He looked back at the irate woman in front of him and shrugged.

“It was a school dance.”

“So?!” his mother screeched.  “He’s still a child.  He needs boundaries and rules.  He has a curfew that we established a long time ago!  Good Lord!  Do you even know where he was?!”

His father looked at him again.  Was he looking for some help?  He started to mouth “Julian’s” at him, but his mother turned around and saw him.

“Oh, unbelievable!  Un.  Believe.  Able.  I’m taking him back with me.”

“No, you’re not, Mom,” Scott said coming inside and slamming the door shut.  No need for nosy passersby to be privy to their family drama.  He was glad his brothers and sister didn’t appear to be around for this.  “I’m staying with Dad.”

Scott could see the anger rattling around inside of her.  She was collecting her thoughts so that she could yell exactly what she wanted to at him.  Just before she had her first scathing argument ready, the master bedroom door opened.  All three of them turned to look up.  The sound of a running shower could be heard drifting from out of the master bathroom.  Then a woman with platinum blonde waves stepped out into the open hallway, a few feet to the right of the top of the stairs.  She was examining the label of a bottle in her hand.

“David, do you have any other kind of shampoo?  This kind—”

She broke off as she looked down to the foyer.  She didn’t even try to think of anything to say.  Scott didn’t blame her.  She was wearing his father’s robe and had obviously spent the night.  Scott slowly moved his gaze to his mother.  He could have sworn her face was turning purple.  Scott began to edge his way toward the kitchen.  The last thing he saw as he ducked for cover was his father’s longing look to join him.

 

Chris

 

Friday, September 16, 2005

 

Chris walked toward his bedroom door and then turned back.  He glanced at his bedside clock as he paced another circuit around his room.  He probably should have left five minutes ago to pick up Laney.  He was a little nervous.  Not about taking Laney, of course, but leaving the house period.  Aside from work and school, he hadn’t taken a step outside the house since the fight with his mother.  She hadn’t told him he was grounded; in fact she hadn’t said much of anything to him for over a week.  All the same he’d been extra careful to always be at home when he should and do any chores that he saw needed doing.  In that way he was also facilitating his mother’s silent treatment, but he didn’t want to hear that he really was grounded either.  He probably should have checked before the night of the dance.  Laney would be pissed if he couldn’t take her.  But, if his mother really wasn’t speaking to him, maybe she wouldn’t even bother to ask where he was going.

Chris checked his pockets.  His keys and wallet were still exactly where he had put them twenty minutes ago.  He walked to his door and this time got it open.  The door to his mother’s bedroom was open and the light wasn’t on.  She was probably downstairs.  He walked quietly down the stairs, but tried not to do it so quietly that it seemed like he was sneaking out.  He reached the bottom of the stairs just as his mother was crossing from the den to the kitchen.  He hesitated slightly but kept going to the door.  She didn’t say anything so he reached for the doorknob.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

He froze and then turned around to face his mother.  She was taking a bite of her ice cream and watching him with only a passing interest.  He thought about asking her if he was grounded, but there was no need to bring that up unless she did first.  So, he might as well just tell her where he was going.

“I’m going to the back to school dance.”

“With whom?”

“Laney.”

“Laney?”

“Melanie.”

“Ah, yes.  Cute and precocious.”

Chris half-smiled.  “Exactly right.”

His mother’s eyes traveled up and down his body.  “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked.

Chris glanced down at himself and then back at his mother.  She pointed to the stairs with her spoon and then continued on into the kitchen.  Chris sighed and ran back upstairs.  He figured he better put on khakis, but he never knew what looked good together.  He was not a metrosexual.  He couldn’t call his friends about it either.  Julian’s wardrobe fluctuated with his mood and he often enjoyed mismatching.  Will didn’t so much have good fashion sense as he did just look good in anything he wore.  Scott was the metrosexual.  But he had been so offended by the label once that if any of them ever asked his opinion on what to wear anymore he would throw a fit and stop talking to them.  Chris’ only option was to wear an outfit that Karen had picked out for him; that way he knew it was stylish and everything matched.  He hated wearing the clothes Karen gave him, but he didn’t have enough money to simply throw perfectly good clothes out.  Well, technically he did have some money, but he wasn’t so stupid as to use it for a new wardrobe.

Chris tromped back downstairs in a hunter green, white-striped button down shirt with the sleeves rolled partway up.  He put on the wide leather bracelet and leather thong necklace Karen had picked to go with the shirt.  She’d told him before that it wasn’t just the shirt and pants that mattered; the accessories would make or break an outfit.  When he reached the bottom of the stairs his mother was leaning against the wall by the kitchen, sucking on the end of her spoon.  She nodded in approval when she saw him, and then she started for the den.

“Don’t stay out too late,” she said without looking at him and disappeared into the den.

Chris felt a mixture of relief and unease.  It was good that his mother was talking to him again (and that he wasn’t grounded), but their relationship was not the same.  They’d never had the mother and son of the year type of relationship, but he’d always felt they were close because they were all they had.  Now it felt like he had somehow shattered that and the pieces would never fit together quite right again.  And he knew it was his fault.  He wasn’t sure if he would forgive his mother if she had kept a secret like that from him, so he certainly couldn’t blame her for holding a grudge.

He tried to force himself to stop thinking about it on the drive to Laney’s.  She was at her father’s this weekend, so he had to drive to the next town over.  Fortunately it was on the way into the city.  He pulled into a shady neighborhood and drove past some apartments that were in even worse shape than the townhouse he lived in.  He checked the number on the address Laney had given him and stopped in front of the building with the burnt out light and glass on the sidewalk.  He wondered if Laney’s mother had seen the place.  Maybe she wouldn’t be so insistent that Laney come out to her father’s if she knew what kind of neighborhood he lived in.  Chris felt nervous just walking from his car to the door, and he’d been parked right in front of it.  He pushed the call button to Laney’s apartment and she answered right away.

“Running a little late, aren’t we?” she asked without making sure it was really him.

“Yeah, sorry.  I guess you’re ready?”

“Um, give me five minutes.”

“What?”

She didn’t respond, so Chris just anxiously waited outside, glancing around to make sure nobody was sneaking up on him.  Almost ten minutes later she came out the building’s main entrance.  Chris was ready to start complaining to her about how long she took, but he was left a little speechless.  Since her father had moved out, her wardrobe had changed quite a bit.  She’d started wearing more…well, sexier was the nicest word for it—clothes.  It hadn’t been all that obvious because he mostly saw her in her uniform, but she had gradually changed from trying to look cute to trying to look sexy.  And her figure was definitely keeping up with her.  Her father must not be at home tonight if she was strutting around this much.  She wore a halter top dress with a low plunging neckline and a very high hemline.  It was bright green, black, and white, and the colors swirled together in a pattern that was kind of a cross between army fatigues and tiger stripes.  It was kind of ugly, but it looked good on her.  Her darkish brown hair was pulled back and she was wearing a lot of make-up and big, blocky jewelry.  She was trying really hard to look like a model in a magazine.  She wasn’t quite pulling it off, but she was not the little freshman he once knew.

“Wow,” Chris said, hoping his voice was reflecting the right kind of surprise.  “You look…”  Chris shook his head and swallowed.  He couldn’t believe he was about to describe Laney in this way.  “You look really hot.”

She smiled coyly at him and flounced past him toward his car.  “I always do.”

He hurried after her so he could open the car door for her.  “Yeah, but now, well, you look almost legal.”

“Oh, shut-up,” she laughed and slid into the car, the hem of her dress riding even higher as she sat down.  “It’s not like _you’re_ legal or anything either.”

“Well, actually, every state has its own age of consent and it’s not always 18.  A lot of states actually list 16 as the age of consent.  Though sometimes there are caveats like the adult can’t be more than five or nine years older or something like that.”

Chris shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side.  When he got in, Laney was already asking a question.

“So, like, two 15 year olds can’t do it?”

“No, that’s not what it means.  Age of consent means the age at which an adult may have sex with a minor.  Some states say an adult cannot have sex with a minor under any circumstances and the person has to be 18.  Some say they can be younger.  But then again, there are a lot of loopholes that the authorities can use to charge someone with indecent acts even if it’s not considered statutory rape.”

Chris started the car and backed out of the parking space.  Laney was giving him a suspicious look.

“You certainly know a lot about this.”

“Last year in civics we had projects where we had to pick examples of federal laws and state governed laws and present them to class.”

“Mm-hmm.  Were you working in pairs?”

“Yep.”

“Did Will pick the topic?”

“Actually it was Julian.”

“I guess that makes sense.  He is going to be 18 sooner than the rest of us.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he was checking for when he turned 18.  I think it was for while he was still a minor.”

“Oh my.”

“Exactly.”

“Chris!”

Chris looked out the windshield where Laney was pointing and slammed on the brakes.  The car screeched to a stop at the red light.  He’d almost run right through it…because he’d been starring at Laney’s lap.  He glanced over at her and smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry.”

She frowned and wagged a finger at him.  “You pervert.”

“Hey!  You’re the one dressed like that.”

“Yes.  But it’s not for you.”

Chris laughed.  “Ouch.”

Despite running late, they weren’t the last ones there.  Thank goodness for Scott and Anna.  They’d been talking (and kind of dancing) quite a while with Julian, Liz, and Riley before those two finally showed up.  Fortunately most of the dances had been fast paced, so they could all dance together as a group or dance without having to touch.  Chris wasn’t much of a dancer anyway.  He always felt stupid when he did any maneuvers and was always worried about bumping into somebody or something.  Will and Julian didn’t have that problem; they could dance.  Scott wasn’t much of a dancer either, but he didn’t have the self-conscious issue to deal with.  It was kind of unfair.  He almost welcomed the John Mayer song just so that he could get off the dance floor without looking like a goober.  Laney had other plans.  She grabbed him and they began to rock back and forth to the beat, but she looking around the gym, searching for somebody.  Probably Julian.  He had disappeared a couple songs earlier.  Chris had known quite well who exactly Laney had dressed up for.

Chris looked around the dance floor.  It was pretty sparse considering how many people had just been dancing.  A lot of them were getting refreshments or hanging out in same sex groups.  It seemed that only dating couples were out on the floor.  Them, and he and Laney.  Oh, and Scott and Anna.  Interesting.  They were dancing very close together, holding on to each other tightly.  Had Anna confessed to him?  Had he reciprocated her feelings?  They turned a little and Chris could see Scott’s face.  He almost laughed at his poor friend.  Either Anna had confessed or Scott had figured it out, but either way he was freaked out by it.  Poor Scott.  He wondered how he and Julian would be able to handle their no-longer-secret crushes.

After the song ended he watched Scott and Anna share a wonderfully awkward moment before Scott bolted for the drink table.  He started to go join him, but someone grabbed his wrist.  Sophia was holding onto him and looked positively ill that she had made such a bold move.  He smiled at her to help ease her suffering.  And also to lower the chances of her throwing up on his shoes.

“Hey,” he said.

Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear her.  She was talking too quietly and the Black Eyed Peas were blaring too loudly from the speakers.  Chris glanced at Laney and she signaled she was going to go take a rest.  He walked a little bit back onto the floor with Sophia and really, _really_ wished it was a slow song, but he couldn’t turn her down once she had finally built up the nerve to come up to him.  He’d actually seen her hovering around for almost an hour now.  He was beginning think she would chicken out all together.  But now they were finally dancing a little awkwardly together.  It was his fault.  He just couldn’t dance.  Then Sophia spotted something behind him.  He started to turn to look, but she put a hand to his shoulder and pulled herself close against him.  He lost focus of everything but the girl in front of him.

She began to move her hips in a very hypnotic way.  Chris found that all he had to do was mostly stand still and she worked her way around him.  It was so wrong.  She was a sophomore.  A sweet, innocent, little sophomore.  But then again, she was probably close to sixteen.  He’d first had sex when he was sixteen.  She was old enough to know what she was doing.  But…it was weird.  Her white and pink dress was cute on her, but not filled out by any means.  She was still…developing.  He watched his hand trail around her waist as she swiveled her hips under his touch.  Then she backed into him and pulled his hands around her stomach as she pressed and rubbed against him.  He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on baseball statistics.  He could not think about one of his hands being inches from her breasts and the other hovering just above her…and he _so_ had to ignore what exactly her cute little butt was grinding against.

A-Rod’s slugging percentage dropped by .002% in the last game.  What was it now?  How many days left until the post season?  What was the Yankees’ magic number?

Chris squeezed his eyelids even tighter together and leaned over to put his lips near her ear.

“Sophia, please stop,” he whispered urgently.

“Why?” she asked in a breathy voice, reaching a hand back to run her fingers over his short hair.

Thankfully the song stopped.  He broke forcefully away from her and took in a breath to keep his composure.  Once he was reasonably sure he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of the entire school, he opened his eyes.  Sophia was smiling shyly, but provocatively at him.  He narrowed an eye at her.

“I thought you were a good girl.”

Sophia stepped forward and placed a hand on his chest.  She rose up on her tiptoes and smiled at him.  “I am,” she said sweetly and kissed him lightly on the lips.  Then she turned and walked away.  Chris watched her, very amused.  She wobbled a little and looked like she was about to faint.  It must have been a confidence overload.  Chris shook his head, grinning, as he made his way toward the drink table.  Even if Scott was gone, he needed some refreshment.  He quickened his pace when he heard the next song come on.  He was very familiar with it do to his female friends’ love of the Pussycat Dolls.  He saw Liz and Laney arguing with Riley over the merit of the song and he was almost able to slip by them but Anna grabbed his wrist.  She was going to need him to support her intense desire not to dance to the song.  He understood her feelings completely.  As he anticipated, both Will and Julian were completely willing to dance like freaks to the song, but as unanticipated, Scott was in one of his puppy dog moods and got excited over anything that someone else got excited about.  He totally agreed to dance to the song.  Chris gave him a betrayed look.

“Scott, I need some solidarity here.  We cannot dance to this song.”

“Why not?” Liz asked and starting pulling on Scott’s arm.

Liz had a hold of both Scott and Riley, and Laney was helping to pull Riley onto the dance floor as well.  Julian and Will danced their way toward the crowd.  Chris glanced at Anna.  She shrugged back at him.  He sighed and walked with her toward his spastic friends.  He felt sorry for Riley.  Liz, Laney, and Scott were all macking on her.  She looked thoroughly embarrassed.  Will was getting friendlier with Liz than he had in the last year and Julian was taking advantage of the situation as usual.  He wasn’t sure if he felt sorrier for Riley or Will.  Although Will didn’t seem as bothered by Julian’s proximity as usual.  Chris tried to stay by Anna and the far side of the girl sandwich in case Julian was in one of his moods.  It didn’t work.  They all moved as the song went on and Chris stopped worrying about what other people might think of them.  Everyone already thought their group of friends was a little weird and exclusive anyway.  Which, they were.  At one point he ended up back to back with Julian with Riley in front of him and Laney and Anna on either side of him and Julian.  He wasn’t sure where the other three were at that moment, but it wasn’t nearly as weird as he thought it might be to be rubbing against his male friend.  It was back to back; that was harmless, right?  By the end of the song he was close to embarrassing himself again; Liz was freakin’ hot and definitely knew how to move her body.  The song ended with the two of them pressed close together.  She laughed and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

“You need me to stay here for a little bit?” she asked maliciously.

“No,” he said crossly, but didn’t let go of her.

She laughed and bounced up and down.  “Aw, poor, Chris!  What’s the matter?”

“Ah!  Liz, quit it!  What are you so happy for anyway?  Will is completely ignoring you.”

“I know.  Isn’t it great?  He’s so worried about getting close to me again, so he must still really care about me.  And tonight I’m going to totally blow his mind.”

“Hmm, I wonder if it’s his mind you’ll actually be blowing.”

“Uh!”  She stepped back and slapped him on the chest, but she was grinning.  Will started to meander by them as the next song started up.  “Speaking of which,” she said with a sly smile.  She grabbed Will and he willingly settled into a slow rhythm with her.

Chris wiggled his sore toes in his shoes.  Maybe now he would get that rest he’d been after.  Laney had other ideas.  Again.  He was pulled into a slow dance before he was even sure who he was dancing with.  He sighed melodramatically, but Laney didn’t pay him any attention.  She was scanning the crowd again.  Chris had purposely been avoiding doing that.  He didn’t want to accidentally catch a glimpse of someone.  He did see Sophia standing with her friends against a wall, watching him.  Not very subtly either.  She was being kind of freakish about him.  Though maybe he had invited the insanity by flirting with her at the pool.  She might have just stayed an admirer from afar, but now he was pretty certain that _she_ was pretty certain she had a shot with him.  And was she wrong?  What harm would there be in dating her?  If he ever thought it should end he could just use the “I’m going away to school next year” line.

Chris was pulled out of his musings by an extremely bizarre sight.  It actually forced him to stop dancing and he laughed a little in disbelief.  Laney looked up at him.

“What?  What is it?”

He pointed at the sight.  “I have no idea.”

Laney turned to look where he was pointing.  He could feel her stiffen when she spotted them.  Julian and Riley were dancing.  And dancing was the word he thought he had to use because he was pretty sure the two of them wouldn’t be mating.  But it was definitely like something he’d seen on a TV show once.  Riley was in front of Julian, but his leg was so far in between hers she was practically riding his hip.  He had a hand at her waist and she had an arm slung across his shoulder.  They were joined at the hip and the forehead, and what little space was between their bodies was between those two points.  He hadn’t known it was possible to dance that sexily to a Maroon 5 song.  Chris shook his head and blinked a couple times.  Never in a million years would he have predicted that.  Julian was still uneasy around Riley’s hair.

Chris started to move again, but Laney stayed stock still.  She kept watching them, and when she finally turned around her eyes were threatening tears.  Chris panicked.  He didn’t want to deal with a crying girl.  He hadn’t done anything wrong.  Well, maybe he shouldn’t have pointed out to her what Riley and Julian were doing, but he thought it was funny.  It was obvious they weren’t doing whatever they were doing seriously.  There had to be some reason for it.  Why was Laney acting like she’d just caught her boyfriend cheating on her?  The situation couldn’t be further from it.  Finally the tears spilled over and Laney stepped back from him.  He put out a hand to her shoulder, but even he could tell it wasn’t that comforting of a gesture.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” she said with a shaky voice.  “I need to—leave for a second.”

She turned and ran off the dance floor, bumping into people as she went as the B-52’s “Love Shack” started to play.  Chris started after her, knowing that he had to, but not really wanting to.  Someone complained as Laney pushed by her and Julian noticed the small commotion.  He stopped Chris as he passed and Riley looked after Laney and then at him.

“What the hell did you do to her, Chris?” Riley demanded.

“Me?  Nothing.  She saw you two trying to make a baby over there.”

Julian groaned and rolled his head back.  Then he sighed and patted the back of Chris’ shoulder.  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “I got this.”  Then he took off after Laney.  She had left the gym and entered the school.  Chris looked at Riley.  He was seeing her in a whole new way now.

“What were you two doing anyway?”

“Uh.  Nothing.”

She flushed bright red and Chris smiled at her discomfort.  His little tomboy friend was producing estrogen.  How cute.  She must not have liked the smile he was giving her because she punched him in the shoulder.  He laughed it off but had to turn a little and rub his throbbing shoulder.  She still punched like his tomboy friend.  Having lost their dates, they wandered back toward their friends.  As expected, they were all dancing like goobers.  Chris and Riley joined in, having nothing better to do.  Well, Will said they had nothing better to do.  Chris thought eating was certainly something better to do.  Laney and Julian stayed missing for the next few songs, but sure enough when Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” came on, Julian came running to find Will.  It was so embarrassing to be around them sometimes.  He left his friends to themselves and went in search of sustenance.

The food table was pretty well picked over, but he managed to find enough scraps to keep his stomach from forcing itself outside of his body in order to go foraging for itself.  He was heading back toward the dance floor when the opening bars of the next song came on.  He recognized it instantly and froze mid-step.  He turned around and started to head for the exit.  He did not want to get caught having to do anything with anyone to this song.  And anyone was heading right for him.  He didn’t get anywhere near the door before Karen was standing in front of him.  She looked beautiful and sophisticated wearing a simple little black dress as opposed to one of the weird-colored, funny-cut dresses most of the other girls had found at trendy teen stores.

“Hi,” she said softly.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and heaved a sigh.  “Hey.”

“You know,” she said, fixing his collar with one hand, “this is our song.”

He tried to ignore her warm skin against his clavicle.  “ _Was_ our song.”

“Yeah.”  She half-laughed and met his eyes.  “We always thought it was such a terrible song to have, but it’s never been more fitting, has it?”

Chris knew the words to Dido’s “White Flag” quite well.  “Tell me about it.”

“Will you dance with me?”

Chris started to lean away from her a little bit.  “Karen, I just don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Oh, come on,” she wheedled playfully, tugging on his sleeve cuff.  “Just one dance.  Besides.  You owe me for dumping me over the phone.”

Chris winced.  He did feel guilty about that.  “Okay, okay.”

They didn’t even bother heading back closer to the dance floor.  They stayed in a dark section of the gym, isolated from everyone else.  They didn’t get into a generic dancing stance; they were practically hugging as they danced.  That’s the way they had always done it before, it was just habit.  And from this familiar position, he was able to tell that he had definitely grown taller over the summer; his chin was closer to her temple than her eyes.  It didn’t feel awkward that they weren’t talking, but he decided he should say something.

“So, did you come with anyone?” he asked.

“Are you jealous?”

He started to say no and then changed his mind.  “Well, I guess that would depend on with whom you came.”

She laughed.  “You worried I came with Darryl?”

“Maybe,” Chris growled.

Darryl was a big basketball jock who had courted Karen at the same time he had.  Chris had never liked him anyway.

She laughed softly again.  “I came with some girl friends.”

Her fingertips brushed along the line where hair met neck.  He shivered at the sensation and turned his face away from her so he wouldn’t have to breathe in her familiar lavender scent.

“I saw you dancing with that freshman,” she said.

“Sophomore,” he muttered.

“She got one glimpse of me watching and started to hump you like an un-neutered puppy.”

Chris chuckled.  “Ah, so that’s what brought on the sudden change.  You really bring out the Mr. Hyde in her.”

“Hmm.  Believe it or not that’s not the first time someone’s said that about me.”

“I believe it.”

Chris stopped talking and closed his eyes.  He didn’t want to hear the next lines.  There was nothing great in their meaning exactly, but this was the part when it happened.  On their first real date together, this song had come on the car radio when he’d been about to drop her off.  She’d sung along to one verse, and impulsively, he’d sung the next one.  He’d sounded so horrible that they both cracked up laughing.  All the tension they hadn’t been aware of had completely dissipated.  It had been so easy to lean forward and kiss her.  It had been their first kiss, and one of their best.  It had lasted for the next three or four songs.

Chris opened his eyes and glanced at Karen.  She was looking back at him and he could tell she was thinking of the same thing.  He didn’t allow himself to think.  He bent over and kissed her.  Her hands went up to tangle in his hair, but there was none there, so she just ran her fingers over his buzzed head, which felt incredible.  It was so easy to kiss her.  They did it so well.  He loved kissing her.  But did he love _her_?

He didn’t stop kissing her until the song ended.  When it did he pulled back, breathing a little hard, and swallowed trying to get back the ability to speak.  He looked sternly at her.

“That didn’t mean anything,” he said.  “It was just one of those moments.  That, you know.  You get caught up in.”

She just pouted a little and continued to run her fingers over his hair.  “It took me so long to get you to grow this out, and then you had to go and cut it all off again.”

“Sorry,” he responded automatically.  “I mean.  No.  I just put it back the way I like it.  Since I have no reason to try to make you happy anymore.”

Karen nodded thoughtfully.  “I guess so.”  She stepped away from him.  “Thanks for the dance, Chris.”  She licked her lips and walked away with a satisfied smile on her face and a sway in her hips.  Chris ran a hand over his forehead and looked at the skeletal gym ceiling.  The warning bells were clanging away.  Why was he so stupid around her?

“Okay all you teenaged Romeos,” the DJ crooned through the sound system, “it’s time to find your gal because it’s the last song of the night.”

Chris made a face.  Who was this DJ?  He’d been playing weird songs all night and every time he spoke it was like some late night, call-in radio show host.  Chris would have been happy to stay in the darkened side of the gym and wait for his friends to finish whatever it was they were doing, but Laney found him.  Her eyes were red, but she looked ecstatically happy.

“Hey, Chris.  Sorry I ran off on you.”

“That’s okay.  How are you doing?”

“I’m great!”

“Really?”

Chris quirked an eyebrow.  Had Julian done some witchcraft stuff and erased her memories?  Laney tugged on his hand.

“Let’s dance to the last dance.”

Chris allowed himself to be dragged back onto the dance floor once more.  He’d forgotten how much he hated school dances.  Or he had assumed the reason he’d hated them before was because he’d been with Karen every time who would alternately ignore him to talk with her friends or complain about something he did wrong.  It turned out though, that he just didn’t like school dances period.  Except for the big group dances he’d had with his friends, it had been kind of boring.  And repetitive.  And dangerous.  He didn’t need two freaky girls after him.

After the dance, Laney seemed anxious to be taken home.  Chris wanted to see if his friends were doing anything afterwards, but Scott, Anna, Will, and Liz had all already dashed off.  He wasn’t sure what Scott and Anna had been in such a hurry for, but he was quite certain where Liz and Will were headed.  Lucky bastard.  He didn’t even care if Will was using Liz.  Liz obviously had no problem with it.  So Will got to have no strings attached sex.  Well, that’s probably what Will thought.  Who knew what was going on in Liz’s head.  Julian was sitting by himself on the bleachers, probably waiting for Riley.  He started to head over to talk to him, but Laney insisted that he take her home.  He finally gave in to her and they started on the half hour long drive to Laney’s dad’s apartment.  He really didn’t want to go there this late at night, but he couldn’t very well take her home with him.  Maybe he could drop her off at her mother’s.  She shot that idea down and he looked around very carefully as he drove up to the building entrance.  There didn’t seem to be anyone around.  He put the car in park.  He’d wait until she got upstairs and called him to tell him she was all the way inside her apartment.

“You’re so paranoid, Chris,” Laney complained when he told her what she needed to do.

“I’m not paranoid and you need to be more aware of your surroundings.  You’re not living in a nice white suburb when you’re here, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.  Thanks for caring about me.”

“No problem.  I like to watch out for you.  You’re like the little sister I never had.”

Laney groaned.  “Not the little sister talk.”

Chris laughed.  “What?  What’s wrong with that?  You don’t want to date me, do you?”

“No, of course not, but I need a favor.”

“Oh, yeah?  What’s that?”

“I need…to be, like, _experienced_ for when Julian dates me.”

“I’m sorry,” Chris said, absolutely baffled.  “Did you say _when_ Julian dates you?”

“Yep.  So I need you to make out with me.”

“Say wha?”  Chris put a finger to his ear.  “You’re going to have to repeat that because it sounded like you just said you need me to make out with you.”

“I do!  Don’t make fun of me.  I’ve kissed a couple boys before, but I need _real involved_ experience, you know?”

Chris laughed nervously.  “Uh, yeah, look, Laney—”

“You can have sex with me too if you want.”

Had Chris been drinking something this would have been the point when he sprayed everything in his mouth out on the windshield.

“Jesus, Laney.”

“I want to be ready for everything.”

Chris could feel his lips trying to form the word “what” again, but he couldn’t get past the w sound.  Not that it mattered.  He wouldn’t have been able to finish the word anyway.  Laney deftly unbuckled her seatbelt and leapt across the center console.  Chris squished back into the corner of his seat as far as he could go, but he couldn’t completely avoid Laney’s lips.  He felt like Michael J. Fox in _Back to the Future_ when his mom tried to kiss him.  If he felt this weird having Laney on him he could only imagine how horrendous it had been for Scott when Joanna had gone after him.  He had his hands on Laney’s shoulders, but she was still kissing him.  Sort of.  Apparently she really didn’t have much experience.  Or she had been watching too many movies.  He pushed her back firmly.

“Holy bejeezus, Laney.  The hell?”

“Sorry I jumped on you, but come on.  You can’t really mind that much.  I mean, you dumped your girlfriend, right?  Aren’t you horny?”

“Not that horny.”

Laney looked hurt and sat back in her own seat.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Chris stopped himself from revealing his exasperation, but it was a struggle.  “Look, I don’t mean you’re ugly or anything.  You’re very cute and you know that.  And you definitely have a body to back up your offer, but I mean, Laney…you’re just a friend to me.”

“You’re just a friend to me too, Chris.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t kiss you.”

“Okay.  You’re like a sister to me.  Do you remember when I said that?”

“I am not like your sister.”

“Well, you’re like something that I care about but don’t want to make out with, okay?”

Laney crossed her arms and sat back in the seat.  She let out an irritated noise of disgust.  Chris stayed pressed to his side of the car, just in case.  Laney grabbed her purse and started to open the car door.  Then she turned back to him.

“Like, what if you close your eyes or something?”

“Goodnight, Laney.”

She started to mumble to herself and got out of the car.

“Call me when you get inside.”

She glared at him and slammed the door shut.  She marched up the steps to the building and Chris was no longer worried about her.  No one in their right mind would try to attack her after seeing the mood she was in.  He still waited on her though.  Several minutes passed and he wondered if she was just not going to call him.  Then his phone rang.

“Hello, Laney.”

“I’m inside.  You can go home.”  She still sounded very irritated.  And a little humiliated.

“Thanks for calling.  I had a nice time tonight.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she grumbled and hung up.

Chris smiled and shook his head.  Poor girl.  And now she was delusional.  Why did she think Julian was going to date her?  Chris was seriously wondering what he had done to her after he’d followed her out of the gym.  He started his car and drove back to town.  It was almost 11:30 when he reached his neighborhood, so he figured he’d better just go home.  He was dying to know what had happened with Scott and Anna.  He didn’t want to interrupt them so maybe he could just send him a text message.  Chris started typing his message as he got out of the car and had trouble opening the front door because he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.  He sighed in frustration as he tried to spell out his words with one thumb.  Liz and Laney could do this so fast.  It really was a girls’ skill.  Though, Scott and Will could do it pretty fast too.  That still fit in with his girls’ skill theory.  He snickered to himself as he walked into the kitchen.  His thumb hovered over the send button, but he didn’t push it.  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over.  She wasn’t crying anymore but he could tell she had been.  He went to her side immediately, everything else forgotten.  He knelt on the floor and held her hand.

“Mom?  What’s wrong?  Are you okay?  Did something happen?”

She looked at him almost like she was looking at a stranger.  It made his stomach turn.

“The police called,” she said.  “They got your letter.”

His stomach turned again and he had to sit back to get some air.  He was worried he might actually puke on his mother.  After a couple deep breaths he looked back up at her.  She looked more sympathetic now, but still detached.  She started to reach out a hand to him, but pulled it back.

“They’d like to talk to you.”

He swallowed and nodded.

“In person,” she continued.  “In Chicago.  Tomorrow.  So, we’re leaving tonight.  Go pack a bag.”

She stood up and started for the hallway.  Chris stood up and tried to process what she was saying.

“What, you mean, like, _right_ now?”

“Yes,” she said and turned to look back at him.  “Right now.”

 

Saturday, September 17, 2005

 

Chris woke up.  He looked at an unfamiliar ceiling and then closed his eyes again as fatigue and sore muscles sapped his strength away.  It had been a long night and he hadn’t gotten much sleep at all.  They had driven several hours last night…in complete silence.  Not even the radio had been turned on.  They didn’t stop until almost four in the morning at a very cheap, rundown motel.  The bed was hard and the air conditioning was broken so the warm September night had created an uncomfortable heat in the poorly ventilated room.  Chris turned his head slowly because his neck was so stiff.  He looked at the clock on the chipped nightstand.  It was 8:00.  They’d barely had four hours of sleep.  He could hear his mother moving around in the room; that must have been what had woken him up.

“Chris.”

Chris started.  It was weird to hear his mother say his name.  He looked at her where she stood with her back to him by the door.

“Go shower.  I’ll run over to McDonald’s and get us some breakfast.  I want you ready to go by the time I get back.  We still have several more hours to go.”

The door opened and closed and Chris didn’t feel anymore alone than he had with his mother in the room.  He allowed himself ten more seconds of lying still, and then he forced himself up.  He was grateful he had cut his hair so short because it helped expedite his shower.  He rushed around as fast as he could to dry off, get dressed, and get his bag together.  He didn’t know how far away the McDonald’s was or how his mother would react if he wasn’t ready.  He wound up sitting on the hard bed for ten minutes before his mother came back.  She didn’t comment on his preparedness, she just ordered him out to the car.  She got into the passenger seat without a word and Chris opened the back door to sling his bag inside.  Let his mother yell at him for throwing things around.  At least then she would be speaking to him.  This was driving him nuts.  He understood she was upset, but couldn’t she have any sympathy for him at all?  Couldn’t she at least try to empathize with him?

Chris got into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and looked at his mother as he put on his seatbelt.  She handed him his breakfast sandwich and he took it while still staring at her.  She slumped down in her seat and began to chew miserably on her hash brown, ignoring his pointed looks.  Chris sighed and started the car.  He found the highway easily enough and started heading in the right direction.  It seemed they were in for another round of silence for the next few hours.  Chris wasn’t going to put up with that.

“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he asked in exasperation.

His mother was quiet for several minutes, and then she shook her head gently.  “I don’t know,” she said sadly.

“Jesus,” Chris swore.  “Don’t be honest with me.  Just be mother and say, “Yes, of course, I’ll talk to you again.’”

After an even longer silence Chris realized she wasn’t going to respond.  He was feeling wretchedly despondent, but he was also starting to get really angry with his mother.  She was being selfish.  She was only thinking about how this impacted her.  How he had betrayed her.  Did she think this was easy for him?  Did she think that he hadn’t agonized over keeping his father a secret from her?  He gripped the steering wheel tightly and gritted his teeth.  He forced himself to remain calm while he was driving.  He was fed up with her.  Let her hate him.  He didn’t care anymore.

His mood didn’t improve once the long drive was finally over.  They had switched places just before entering Chicago because he didn’t know where to go.  His mother navigated the streets with perfect familiarity even though she hadn’t been there in nine years.  They didn’t make any stops, but drove straight to the police station.  Since he hadn’t known how close he was getting, he had felt a general sense of unease.  Once they pulled into the parking lot and he saw all the police cruisers, he felt sick and scared.  He didn’t move to get out of the car once they were parked, and neither did his mother.  They sat unmoving for fifteen minutes.  At last his mother started to get out of the car and Chris felt like he should do the same without being told to.  This is what he had gotten himself into; he needed to face it head on and unwavering.  He managed to keep breathing evenly, but his knees were shaking.  He hoped nobody would notice as they made their way inside the building and headed for the reception desk.

The station wasn’t terribly busy.  There were phones ringing and people wandering here and there, but nobody was pitching a fit and getting thrown to the floor and handcuffed.  Chris was going to talk to the receptionist himself, but his mother was walking in front of him.  Before either of them could say something, they were intercepted by a tall, good-looking man wearing a black suit.  The shirt underneath was white and the tie was black with hollow white squares on it.  He looked very professional, exactly like a lawyer, and like he charged a small fortune per billable hour.  Chris and his mother stared at the man.  He smiled, showing perfectly straight, white teeth.

“Hello.  My name is Dean Richardson.  I’m Mr. Navarro’s legal representation.”  He stuck a hand out to Chris’ mother first.  “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Navarro.”

His mother went white in the face.  “It’s Pelletier.  My name is Pelletier.”

“Oh, excuse me.  I meant no offense.  Mrs. Pelletier.”

“Just Ms.”

“Ah.  So you haven’t remarried.”

Chris wondered if his mother was about to scratch Mr. Richardson’s eyes out.  She just took in a short breath and didn’t respond.  It hadn’t been a question after all.  The man turned to Chris and smiled pleasantly.  His extended hand was now directed at him.

“And you must be Chris.  You’re all your father ever talks about.”

Chris shook hands with him and forced a smile.  His mother was frowning.

“Like he even knows anything to talk about.”

Dean Richardson didn’t react at all to the comment; he just maintained eye contact with Chris.  “We’re going to head over to the correctional facility if now is a good time.  I know you’ve had a long drive, but it would be best if we don’t put this meeting off any longer.  You’ll meet with the parole board and there will also be a police officer present.  He’ll just be there to hear what you have to say.  I would be very surprised if you are charged with anything, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

Chris swallowed and nodded.  He didn’t feel very reassured.

“The only thing you have to worry about is that they won’t be terribly happy to be at work on a Saturday, so they might be a little grumpy.”

The lawyer smiled amusedly, but Chris didn’t see anything funny about it.  Then Mr. Richardson turned to the side and used his arm to direct them back toward the door.  He let Chris’ mother go first and then he walked beside Chris.  Chris felt weird walking beside him.  He was obviously a very confident and probably very powerful man.  How on earth could his father afford a lawyer like him?  Was he a mob lawyer?  Was the “Family” taking care of his father?  That was a weird thought.

Mr. Richardson drove a Lexus.  Chris sat in the back seat and watched his mother sit stock still in the passenger seat.  Mr. Richardson was very calm and relaxed.  The longer they rode the more uneasy Chris felt.  His mother was obviously very uncomfortable seeing Mr. Richardson again.  Was this bringing back a lot of unpleasant memories?  Of course it was.  Chris shouldn’t be angry with his mother.  She remembered better than he what it had been like to go through the trial and deal with the media.  Chris vaguely remembered there being a lot of cameras around.  It made sense now.  His father had been trafficking large amounts of drugs and also associated with cop killers.  It had probably been big news back in the day.

The Cook County Jail was right in the middle of Chicago.  It wasn’t isolated from the rest of the city or hidden away where people couldn’t see it.  He wondered what degree of criminal was housed at the Cook County Jail.  Were there death row inmates just minutes from popular tourist locations?  That didn’t seem right.

Once inside they had to go through metal detectors and pat downs and turned in their IDs so that they could be issued special escort required badges.  There were other people going through the same process.  Were they there to visit some family member?  Was he going to be able to see his father?  He expected that they would be left to sit for a long time, but unfortunately (or fortunately) for his nerves, they were led right away to a large room with a single empty chair facing a table of six sour looking people.  Chris clenched his jaw.  Those people were waiting for him.  Mr. Richardson guided him to stand in front of the panel.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chris Na…Pelletier.  You all have a copy of the letter he wrote, correct?”

Chris felt faint as the people nodded to the affirmative.  Mr. Richardson indicated he could sit for which he was grateful.  He might have hit the floor otherwise.  He sat down and ran his sweaty palms over the knees of his jeans.  He wished he had worn more respectable clothes now, but he hadn’t known how quickly he would be taken to the parole board.  They were all staring at him now: four men and two women.  One of the men wore a police uniform.  Mr. Richardson and his mother waited by the door.

“Hello, Christopher,” said a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair.  “We’re going to ask you some questions, and we want you to answer them as honestly and in as much detail as possible.  We will be recording this meeting, but don’t let that worry you about what to say.  Just answer in a straightforward manner.  Okay?”

He nodded.  And then quickly said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Can you tell us how your father first contacted you?”

Chris took in a breath and collected his thoughts.  He momentarily considered lying.  He didn’t want his father to get in trouble for breaking and entering, but who knew if his father hadn’t already admitted to that?  He better not do anything that might jeopardize his father’s chances of getting a reduced sentence.  Or might get himself in trouble.

“Well, I came home from work one night and he was in our kitchen.  I was, of course, very surprised to see him.”

“Were you unaware he had been released from prison?” asked a chubby man.

“No.  My mother had told me the night before that she had been contacted by the police because he had broken his parole.  But, that was the first I had heard about it.”

“So, when you saw him the kitchen, what did you do?” asked the man with the sourest expression.

Chris felt that this man thought he was already lying.  “Well, I was shocked.  I didn’t do anything.”

“Did he say anything?” the other woman asked.

“Yes, but I honestly don’t remember exactly what he said.”

“That’s okay,” the first woman cut off one of her colleagues.  “Just continue please.  What happened next?”

“Well, my mother came home and my father left.”

“Left?  What do you mean ‘left’” asked the surly man.

“He went out the backdoor.”

The panel tried to hide their chuckles and the sour man sat back, realizing it had been a stupid question.

“I’m sorry, Christopher,” the woman who appeared to be in charge said, “please continue and we’ll try not to interrupt anymore.”  She gave the man a pointed look and he put his pen down so he could cross his arms.

“Um, well, my mom came in, and I didn’t know what to do.  Or what to tell her.  But before I could say anything, she told me that my best friend’s parents had been killed in a car accident.”

Chris heard a noise to his right.  He turned his head slightly and saw that his mother had reacted to that news.  She hadn’t known it had happened the night of the Marches’ deaths.  Chris looked back at the panel.

“I completely forgot about my father.  My friend had been in the accident too, but he had survived.  I went to the hospital and saw him, but it was very difficult because he was very upset.  He’d just lost his parents.”

Chris felt tears at the corners of his eyes just remembering that terrible night and seeing Julian balled up on the floor at Will’s feet.  His voice wavered a bit.  The panel’s faces softened slightly.  He probably could have stopped himself from crying, but it wouldn’t hurt to garner a little sympathy, so he let the tears collect and then fall as he kept talking.

“The next morning my father came back.  When I saw him, all I could think about was how my friend didn’t have his parents anymore.  And about how I hadn’t had my father for nine years.  And I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him again.  I had just gotten him back.  And I—I wanted to spend time with him.”  His voice cracked and he stopped to collect himself.  He was letting it really get to him and he needed to pull it back a little.  He didn’t want these people to see that much.  “We just spent some time together and talked.  I mean, we went fishing.  It didn’t seem like I was harboring a criminal.  I just thought—I just thought I was spending time with my dad.”  Chris strategically left out the money heist at the Bixby’s house.  “I’m sorry I broke the law.  I just…kept telling myself that a little longer wouldn’t hurt.”

Everyone, even the surly man, seemed less sour now and a little more understanding.  He wondered if the tears had worked.  He reached up a hand and wiped away the remaining stray tears and sniffed as quietly as he could.  Everyone on the panel remained quiet.  It seemed no one wanted to be the one to ask the next question.  Finally, the police officer spoke.

“And do you know anything about why your father came back?”

“He said that he should turn himself in because he didn’t want me to get into trouble.  He just didn’t want to wait to see me and he was afraid my mother wouldn’t want him to.  So, he just came on his own.  But now that he had seen me, and he knew that I didn’t hate him, he’d be able to handle more jail time if that’s what it came down to.”

The panel nodded and wrote some notes on the papers in front of them.  The woman in charge glanced at the members of the panel on either side of her and some silent understanding passed between them.  Then she looked at Chris and smiled sympathetically at him.

“Thank you for coming all the way here to explain the matter to us.  We appreciate your honesty.”

Chris felt a little guilty.  Was lying by omission just as bad as lying outright?

“We’ll take your statements into consideration,” she continued.  “And while what you did was against the law, the city has decided not to press charges against you.  You’re free to return home.”

Chris exhaled slowly in relief.  He stood up and wondered if he should shake their hands or bow or something.  Mr. Richardson cleared his throat and when Chris looked at him he waved him over.  Chris walked to his mother and the lawyer and refused to look back.  If he did, they might change their minds.  His mother was wiping tears away with a pristine white handkerchief.  It must be Mr. Richardson’s.  When he got to her she reached out a hand and took his.  She gave it a little squeeze, but didn’t look at him because she was still wiping tears away.  This was a good sign.  Maybe she understood a little better why he had done it and would be able to forgive him now.

Mr. Richardson led them outside into the hallway and Chris wrapped an arm around his mother’s shoulders.  She leaned into him and Chris felt secure for the first time in a long while.  Mr. Richardson gave them a little space, but only for a moment two.  Then he cleared his throat again.

“Would you like to see your father before you leave?”

Chris started to say yes immediately, but then stopped as he glanced down at his mother.  She looked back at him and then sort of shrugged/nodded.  He took that to mean it was okay with her if he did.

“I’d like that very much,” Chris said.

Mr. Richardson led them to a different section of the prison.  There was one more pat down before they were allowed into the visitation room.  Chris was worried it would be one of those set ups where they would be separated by glass and would have to talk into telephones.  However, it was a big open room with several tables set up and inmates meeting with their visitors with nothing between them.  Mr. Richardson led him to an empty table and then went back to the main entrance where his mother had planted her feet and refused to come further into the room.  Chris fidgeted terribly for what felt like time unending.  In reality in couldn’t have been more than five minutes before his father was escorted into the room by a uniformed guard.  He was wearing a grey jumpsuit and his beard was back to the scraggly condition it had been in the first night he’d seen him.  Chris stood and smiled as his father approached.  His father smiled too and they embraced tightly.  The guard stood back a little.

His father put a hand to the back of his head and turned his face so he could talk softly in his ear.

“You stupid little…I told you not to get involved.”

“It’s okay,” Chris sniffed, the tears coming back, “I didn’t get in trouble.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It kind of is.  I’m not in trouble, and I think I helped you.”

“So,” his father lowered his voice even more, “is everything…taken care of?”

Chris buried his face in his father’s shoulder to hide his smile and laugh.  Then he turned his head slightly so he could murmur his reply quietly.

“Yeah, your acquaintance got in touch with me and set everything up.  It’s all good.  Though a little shady.  Meaty was scary.”

His father chuckled.  “Yeah, he is.  But he’s trustworthy.”

They finally parted and Chris quickly wiped his cheek with his wrist.  He didn’t want his father to see him crying.  His father pretended that he didn’t.

“Chris,” his mother’s voice reached them weakly.  “We have a long drive back, we need to go.”

Chris felt a sudden stab of anger pass through his body.  He’d been with his father less than two minutes.  But he shouldn’t push for too much too soon.  Things were just getting better between them.  He turned to look at his mother and saw that his father was staring at her.  He wondered if this was the first time they had seen each other in nine years.  His mother looked petrified and his father stared at her almost in awe.  He took a couple steps in her direction and even though she was thirty feet away from him, she backed away.  The guard stepped forward and caught his father’s arm, preventing him from going any closer.  His mother turned and fled out the door.  Chris looked back at his father.  He looked sad.  He watched the door for a couple seconds and then turned back to his son.  They hugged again and said their goodbyes.

“I’ll call you,” Chris said.  “And write.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

“Bye, Dad.”

The guard took his father by the arm and escorted him back toward the holding cells.  Chris walked toward the exit and noticed that Mr. Richardson was gone.  He must have stepped outside with his mother.  When he opened the door, he saw her standing a few feet down the hall, crying into her hands.  Chris went to her and put a hand on her shoulder.  She didn’t seem startled by him; in fact, she seemed almost unaware of him.

“Mom,” Chris said carefully, “are you okay?”

She shook her head, her face screwed up in a painful expression.  “No,” she said tearfully.

Chris was stunned by her reaction to seeing his father.  It was almost as if…Chris shook his head and then squeezed her shoulder gently.

“You still love him,” Chris whispered.

“Of course I still love him,” his mother sobbed.  She started to turn away from him, but Chris pulled her close.  She had her arms bent between them, but she allowed herself to be coddled.  She cried into his chest and Chris tried to take this new information in.  He’d always assumed his mother hated his father and that’s why she tried so hard to cut him out of their lives.  Now he had to wonder if her anger at the revelation of their meeting hadn’t been toward him, but toward his father for not trying to see her as well.

 

 

 

 

Will

 

Friday, September 16, 2005

 

Will knew he looked good.  Well, he always looked good, but he looked especially smashing tonight.  And it was intentional.  He was wearing a casual black suit and a blue striped dress shirt with the top two buttons undone.  He’d recently cut his hair and it was looking stylishly messy because he’d swallowed his pride and put a little gel in it.  He’d even taken a page out of Julian’s book and outlined his eyes so subtly no one would ever be able to tell that his eyes looked more striking this evening because he was wearing eyeliner.  He just wished he was a little taller.  It wasn’t fair.  Scott was the baby.  Why couldn’t he be the short one?

Will gave himself one last look in his visor mirror and got out of his mother’s BMW.  A couple girls walking by on the sidewalk tried to inconspicuously stare at him as they passed.  Will refrained from smiling.  Good.  He wanted to be noticed.  He wanted everyone to melt at the sight of him.  He needed Liz to be completely at his mercy tonight.  He stood outside the front entrance to her building with his hand hovering over the call button to her apartment.  He lowered his gaze to a crack in the pavement.  Was that guilt he was feeling?  No, it shouldn’t be.  He wasn’t just trying to use Liz; he was legitimately trying to make things serious with her again.  He had to.  His sanity depended on it.

After what had happened on the first day of school, Will had been forced to admit to himself that he and Ken were no longer “just friends.”  He had crossed a line.  A line that was not only drawn in the sand, but every layer of rock beneath it to the core of the earth.  And he was having a hard time getting back on the other side of it.  There was always tension between them now.  But Will couldn’t pass it off as nervous energy or simple irritation.  He swallowed thickly as he acknowledged _again_ that it was sexual tension.  It had been so palpable the next time they had seen each other that Will had left the condo very quickly.  Since then he’d fed Joyce Greene, but had been certain to leave before Ken got home.  And except for two occasions, he’d managed to avoid him altogether.  But those two times had been fraught with unspoken desires.  And maybe in Ken’s case he really was interested in Will that way, but Will knew he was only feeling it so acutely because he was horny.

It was that simple.  He was a teenage boy and he hadn’t been engaging in much sexual activity—even with himself—at all lately.  The only times he had come close had been with Ken.  He was simply identifying Ken with his sexual urges because he was the only person who had been around him when he’d been feeling that way.  Lately.  He meant lately.  He just needed to project his sexual desires onto someone else, say, Liz, and then once the tension was gone, everything would be kosher between him and Ken.  Things would go back to normal.  Ken might still tease him every now and then, but it wouldn’t have an effect on him anymore.  Because he would be dating Liz.  And releasing his sexual tension with her.

It was a good plan.  And he wasn’t using her.  He had every intention of staying with her as a couple.  He could date her again.  He liked her.  He really liked her.  It had been the reason he’d run away from her in the first place.  He’d felt like he was getting too close to her, starting to care too much about her.  But now he was ready for that.  He wasn’t scared anymore.  He was ready to start his relationship anew with Liz.  And he knew he could because he had never gotten over her.  He’d dated tons of girls after they’d broken up, but not one had ever made him forget Liz.  He’d gotten distracted recently by Ken, but that was to be expected because it was so freakishly abnormal.  All he had to do was get himself to remember what he once felt for Liz and he would be able to forget that he ever felt anything for Ken.  Not that he ever, like, _felt_ anything for Ken.

Will shook himself, took in a breath, and steeled his resolve.  He knew what he had to do.  No problem.  He pushed the call button to Liz’s apartment and she answered right way.  She must have been waiting by the intercom.

“Hi Will!” she said excitedly.

“Hi, Liz.”  He tried to match her exuberance, but wasn’t quite sure that he succeeded.  “Are you ready?”

“Yes.  I’ll be right down!”

Will used the toe of his expensive Italian shoe to keep redirecting a lone ant while he waited.  She was down in record time and Will was left standing a little off balance.  He was pretty certain his plan was going to work.  Liz looked amazingly beautiful in a deep red satin dress.  It had a high neckline and sleeves that covered her shoulders, but the modest cut was completely undermined by the perfectly formfitting design.  It left very little to the imagination though one usually didn’t need any imagination when it came to Liz.  She had her short blonde hair pulled back, but it was gelled and hairsprayed into wild, soft spikes.  Her make-up was understated, except for the red lipstick that matched her dress.  Will had to remind himself to breathe.

“Elizabeth May.  Be still my heart.”

Liz smiled and tried not to look very pleased with his reaction.  She kind of rocked side to side shyly for a moment and then she met his eyes, looking more confident.

“So, you like it?”

“Very much.  You look incredible.”

“Thank you.”  She smiled coyly.  “My underwear matches.”

Will quirked an eyebrow.  “Really?”

“Yep.  Maybe you can see for yourself later.”

Will’s other eyebrow joined the first as she sashayed happily toward the car.  He could detect trouble.  But, isn’t this what he wanted?  He took in a breath and forced himself to relax.  He didn’t know why he was so tense; why he felt so uneasy.  Maybe things would get better once they got to the dance.  He opened the car door for her and then walked around to his side to get in.  He shot her a pout as he fastened his seatbelt.

“You didn’t say anything about how I looked.”

Liz rolled her eyes, smiling.  “Oh please.  You look prettier than me and you know it.”

Will had been backing out of the parking space and then he slammed on the brake.  They hadn’t been going fast, but it did cause their seatbelts to lock up on them and Liz gasped in surprise.

“No, I’m not!” Will snapped.  “I’m not.  You know.  Even if it’s true, guys don’t want to be told that they’re pretty, okay?”

Liz blinked at him, looking bewildered.  “Well.  I meant in a masculine beauty sort of way.  You know that.  I’ve never once compared you to a girl, Will.  Besides, you call yourself pretty all the time.”

Will flexed his fingers around the steering wheel and stared out the windshield, trying to calm himself down.

“I know.  I’m sorry.  I don’t know why I’m reacting this way.”

“Yeah, me either.”

Will turned to her with a perfect smile in place.  She immediately relaxed again.

“That was weird,” he said, his tone perfectly normal.  “Let’s just get to the dance and have some fun.”

“Great. I’d love to.”

Will eased his foot off the brake and started to drive to the school.  What was it someone had said about his acting abilities once?  He was going to wind up on Capitol Hill.  He forced those thoughts out of his mind.  There was no reason for him to be all moody and sensitive about stupid things.  They were going to hang out with their friends and have fun.  And Will loved school dances.  It was one of his most favorite things to do.  He had a reputation for being so kindhearted that he would dance with any girl who asked, no matter how socially awkward or in which clique she might be.  It was true, he would dance with anyone, but it wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart.  He found it thrilling to have that much control over a person.  Whenever one of his crushes danced with him, he could control her thoughts and mood for the entire song.  It was so fun.  He’d explained his reason for dancing with anyone to his friends once.  They had given him weird looks.  How had Scott so delicately put it?  Oh, yes.  He’d called him a non-practicing sociopath.

They arrived at the dance fairly early, but there were already a lot of people there.  Julian and Riley were the only ones among their friends there before them.  Will was impressed with Julian.  He looked quite dashing.  And Riley looked…almost like she had a feminine figure after all.  It wasn’t long before girls started asking him to dance.  He never turned one down and had fun dancing with his little lambs.  He loved being adored.  Julian was so right.  He had a bad personality.  But the more time he spent with other girls, the more he realized that he was spending hardly any time with Liz.  And oddly enough, she didn’t seem to be bothered by his lack of attention.  But why wasn’t he paying attention to her?  Why was he avoiding her?  Was he too scared to open himself up to her again?  Or did he just not want to?

These thoughts did not make him happy and he was trying to enjoy his dance with Shanelle.  She was a rather large girl in his grade who had gotten a new weave just for the dance.  Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten a very good one because he could see the stitching.  Just as they were finishing their last shimmy, he saw that Scott and Anna had finally made it.  Will blinked.  Anna looked hot.  He grinned.  Scott was going to be in so much trouble; Anna obviously had some plans for tonight.

After the song was over he thanked Shanelle and ran over to his friends.  Scott was looking very spiffy as well, but he was the one of the four of them that actually knew how to dress.  He’d actually been expecting Chris to show up looking like a slob, but someone must have told him what to wear.  Will would have thought it was Karen, but he was pretty certain he wasn’t hanging out with her again.  Though he did see them in the halls together a lot.  Then Will saw her out of the corner of his eye.  He’d been waiting for her to approach him all night.  She was his favorite crush.  She was such the stereotypical nerd: glasses, braces, and braids.  And a voice worse than nails on a chalkboard.

“Hi, Will,” the social outcast said with an ugly smile and pushed her glasses up her nose.

His friends cringed at her voice.  Will smiled back at her.

“Hi, Megan.  Are you having a good time?”

She shrugged.  “Yeah, well, you know.  It’s a school dance.”

Which meant she had come alone and had been propping up a wall for almost an hour.

“I know what you mean,” Will said.  “Do you wanna dance?”

She laughed and covered her braces with a hand, but her snorts could still be heard around it.  Liz and Laney made a face of disgust.  They could be very snobby when they wanted to be.  Will proffered his arm and escorted the irritating klutz toward the dance floor.  Everyone they passed stared at them.  He guessed the school believed that not even he would dance with The Regurgitator.

Things were going wonderfully and he was having a good time right up until the John Mayer song came on.  He knew who absolutely loved John Mayer and he started to run for the bathroom, but Liz caught up with him.

“I’m not letting you out of this one.  I want to dance.  Like, with my date.”

“Okay.  That’s all you had to say.”

Liz wrapped her arms around his neck and put her head on his shoulder.  He put his hands on her waist and swayed with her.  She wasn’t exactly being subtle.  Of course, she had all but told him they would be having sex later that night.  Why did that bother him?  Wasn’t that the plan?  Why was he _suffering_ through this dance with her?  Why wasn’t he enjoying holding her in his arms?  She was warm and soft, and yet firm in all the right places.  Being pressed this close against her was doing things to his libido, but he was almost forcing it.  Shouldn’t he be feeling that way naturally?  When the song was over a Black-Eyed Peas song came on.  He decided he should stay and dance with Liz; he needed to spend more time with her.  It was the polite thing to do, but two sets of hands grabbed him and pulled him away.  He found himself caught between the lesbians.  They were smiling, laughing, and enjoying flirting with each other around him.  He guessed they had made up.  And he certainly wasn’t going to complain about being in the middle of it.

As he moved in between them he got a glimpse of a platinum head twitching spastically.  That had to be Scott.  He looked around the brunette lesbian to get a better look.  Scott was at the drink table.  With Antoinette.  They were standing apart and appeared to be having a conversation about the spilled soda on Scott’s shoes, but Will knew better.  Something was going on.  He needed to talk to Anna.  He needed to find out if she was taking things slow or not.  She needed to get a move on if she wanted to have a shot at him.  He knew he couldn’t tell her outright about Antoinette, but maybe he could let her know she had some competition.

He finally managed to extract himself from the lesbians and reached Anna’s side just as Scott rejoined the rest of them and started to complain about the drink situation.  He listened to Scott babble for a while, and then wondered if he should pull Anna aside.  Then a Pussycat Doll song came on.  Liz and Laney were excited, naturally, and Julian gave him a leer.  He was obviously in a mood to play.  Will laughed.  So was he.  This song was so funny to him.  And seeing as how Scott was all for it and Liz and Laney seemed intent on embarrassing the hell out of Riley, he’d have to wait until later to tell Anna to step up her game.  Though, if she were smart, she’d use this opportunity to get in a grope or two.  Julian certainly did.  He was being a bit more invasive than usual, but Will didn’t mind all that much.  Who was he to gripe about a little boy on boy?  Besides, he got his hands on both Laney and Anna and they didn’t turn around and slap him.  Anything and everything was fair game during a PCD song.

The strangest thing that happened was not his lack of concern of Julian’s near fondling, but when Liz and Scott danced together.  Julian was back to back with Chris and had Scott in front of him.  That wasn’t so weird; Julian, despite being straight, did enjoy pretending he was gay sometimes.  And it wasn’t that Scott didn’t mind having Julian run his hands through his hair.  Probably because he was too busy moving his hips in time with Liz’s and running his hands up and down her satiny sides.  No, that was all fine.  The problem was that while Liz and Scott flirted and macked on each other, he was kind of in between them.  He’d been dancing with Liz in a very naughty sort of way, and then she’d started playfully moving toward Scott.  The next thing he knew, he was trapped between them, being rubbed in all kinds of interesting ways.  Scott’s eyes and hands were on Liz, but _she_ wasn’t who he was grinding against.  He guessed it wasn’t that strange.  After Julian, Scott was of course the obvious choice of which of his guy friends he would ever intentionally or accidentally have a homosexual experience with.  Of course, he’d been having enough of those lately.  He really didn’t want anymore.

Liz leaned forward and he closed his eyes as her legs went on either side of one of his thighs.  She put her face close to his and began to kiss his neck.  He turned his head to give her better access, but that put his face against Scott’s neck.  He found he was enjoying Liz’s work too much to move, so he hoped Scott wouldn’t mind that he was panting against him.  He felt hands moving on his body.  Three of them.  And he was almost certain they belonged to three different people.

By the time the song ended he was between Laney and Anna again.  None of the teachers had stopped their little orgy, and hopefully no one had been paying too close attention to them.  He could only imagine what he must have looked like when he was caught between Liz and Scott.  He had definitely been out of control.  He hated that feeling.  Though he hadn’t really minded it at the time.  To make up for it, he spent almost the rest of the night dancing with every girl in attendance.  Fast songs, slow songs, he didn’t care.  Just as long as it was with someone he didn’t care about.  He made an exception for Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.”  He sought out Julian and they danced like the biggest goobers in the world to it.  They really didn’t have similar taste in women, but they both loved Gwen.  And he’d gotten used to the song after having it for his ring tone for so long.

When the DJ announced it was the last song of the night, in the most irritating way Will could have ever imagined, he felt dread in his stomach.  No, not dread.  Just nervousness.  But that was to be expected.  It was going to be his first time after all.  And guys got nervous too.  Maybe not about the emotional repercussions of doing it, but about whether or not they would do it right.  He’d seen pornos before but he had a feeling those were not meant to be instructional examples.  And his only real-life experience certainly wouldn’t help.  He’d been on the wrong end of it.  Will put his hands to his head and vigorously rubbed his hair.

“I thought I forbade you from thinking about that!”

“Thinking about what?”

Will started and turned to see Liz.

“Let me guess,” she said, “‘Nothing.’  Right?”

“Correct.”

“Okay, well, you are not getting out of this one.  Come here.”

She grabbed onto his arm and pulled him onto the dance floor.  Then she wrapped her arms around him and put their faces close together.  Will couldn’t believe this was the song the DJ had picked for the last song: Howie Day’s “Collide.”  It wasn’t even a good song.

“I love this song,” Liz sighed.

Will rolled his eyes.  Liz put a hand to the back of his neck and gently ran her nails along the sensitive skin there.  He let her do it.  He loved that feeling.  He liked it so much that whenever he let his guard down enough and Julian started doing it to him, he would let him.  Liz must know he liked it.

“So, did you enjoy the dance?”

“Hmm?” Will murmured.  He pulled himself out of the haze her fingers were lulling him into.

“I asked if you had a good time at the dance.  I mean, since I didn’t really see you or anything.”

Will refused to feel guilty.  “I was here the whole time.  And I danced with you.  And I even let you hump me into Scott.”

She giggled.  “Sorry about that.”

Will shrugged.  “Eh, it’s okay.”

“I mean, what can I say?  You two look hot together.”

“Wha?”

Will pulled back from her and gave her a disapproving look.  She just laughed and pulled him close again.

“But I like the way you look with me better.”

“Unh-hunh.  Did you have a good time?  I know I kind of was…elsewhere.”

“Yeah, it was fun.  And I didn’t mind that you were gone.  I mean, I’ve been waiting for the dance to end for two hours now.  I kind of wish we could have skipped the dance altogether.”

“I don’t know.  I enjoyed coming.  Though this DJ was terrible.  And can you believe what he said earlier?  ‘All you teenaged Romeos.’  That’s so stupid.  Romeo _was_ a teenager.  I mean, people don’t realize this, but Juliette was like, 14 in the play.”

“Will,” Liz said his name in exasperation.

“What?”

“Who cares about the DJ?  Why are you being so…so…I mean, do you really have no idea what I’ve been implying and hinting at and planning for all night?”

“No, Liz, I’m not an idiot.  I got it loud and clear.”

“Well, you don’t seem to care.  Why is it so blasé to you?”

“It’s not blasé you silly wench!  Guys get nervous too.”

She stared at him for a moment and he felt his face grow warm.  Stupid girl.  Liz smiled at him.  He didn’t like it.

“You mean it?  That’s so cute!”

“Uh!  Shut-up!”

Will let go of her and stomped away.  She laughed and ran after him.  She grabbed onto his arm and still had that irritating little smile in place.

“Come on, why don’t we head out now?  I know you hate this song.”

Will grunted in reply.  He followed her obediently as she went to the bleachers to get their coats and her bag.  Then they left the gym.  She took his hand in hers.  He didn’t pull away from her, but he wasn’t squeezing her hand nearly as tightly as she was his.  She really seemed to be walking on air and she didn’t come down off her cloud even when they got into the car.  Will concentrated on driving very hard.  He didn’t want to think about what might happen when they got to her apartment.  He’d never completely adhered to the speed limit before in his entire life.  Why was he stalling?  What was his problem?  Was he scared?  Did he think it would bring back memories of _that_ night?  This was completely different.  And he was ready for it.  He was a semi-mature adult-like person.  He could deal with the responsibilities and consequences of having sex.  And he wanted to, right?  Didn’t all men want that?  Of course they did.

They got to Liz’s apartment way too fast.  And miraculously, there was a readily available parking space on the usually overcrowded street.  Everything was working out perfectly.  Great.  Will turned off the car and sat in his seat staring out the windshield.  He didn’t know what to say.

“So, you wanna come up?” Liz asked.

He looked over at her.  It didn’t even occur to him that they had driven to her home rather than a hotel or something.  He wasn’t sure if he actually did know what she’d been implying all night.  Maybe he was wrong and about to really embarrass himself.

“My parents are gone for the weekend.”

Nope.  He’d understood.  “Oh, really.”

Liz unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car.  Will was left by himself in the quiet vehicle.  He was going to do this.  He was just nervous.  He was sure that by the time they got into it, he’d completely forget about whatever was bothering him and he’d be totally into it.  He remembered fooling around with Liz.  It had been fun; he’d had a good time.  He’d been sent home with blue balls on more than one occasion.  He was totally attracted to her.

“Okay.  Let’s do this,” he said to himself.

He got out of the car and locked it.  Liz was waiting for him by the entrance to her building.  It was amazing.  Liz’s apartment wasn’t that far from downtown, but it was completely different from the buildings down there.  It was dirty and not well-maintained and the elevator made scary noises as it struggled up the floors.  It had been a while since he’d been in Liz’s apartment, but it surprised him how much smaller it seemed than he remembered it.  The whole thing was probably about the size of Ken’s condo, but four people lived in it.  It seemed small compared to his own house of course, but in comparison to Ken’s it was downright cramped.  Her mother kept it clean and stylish though, so it was a nice place to live.

The lights had all been out and Liz didn’t turn any on as she hugged him and started to kiss him, using the streetlights spilling in through the windows to guide them toward her bedroom.  Will pulled back a little.

“Uh, what about your sister?”

“She’s spending the night at a friend’s.”

“Oh, really.”

“Stop saying that.”

She kissed him again and this time he kissed her back.  They moved slowly across the room, hands running tentatively over each other, their lips slowly working each other’s apart.  She was good at this.  He liked kissing her.  But…there was no spark.  It didn’t feel the same as he remembered.  Maybe it was the nervousness.  He needed to relax and just let things happen.  He felt her hands at his belt.  The tingly feeling that resulted definitely helped him relax.  He was glad they made it into her room before they started to shed clothing.  Leaving a trail across the floor was just too soap operatic for him.  Once he undid her zipper and helped her out of the dress he was left momentarily speechless.  Her underwear really did match the dress.  It was a red satin teddy attached to garters and thigh highs.  What high schooler owned an outfit like that?

She sat down on her bed and stretched out on it for his benefit.  She reveled in his apparent captivation as he drank in the sight of her.  She laid herself out before him and smiled invitingly.  Will swallowed and stepped out his pants where they’d pooled around his ankles.

“Exactly how long have you been planning this?” he asked her.

Her smile was almost annoyed.  “Two years.”

He moved slowly because he was still nervous and a little scared.  And despite her eagerness she was anxious too.  And the teddy was harder to take off than it looked.  They started off awkward and a little clumsy, but soon figured out what they needed to do.  It was kind of like falling off a bike.

Afterwards, Will lay on his back, the hand on his chest rising and falling rapidly in time with his labored breathing.  He couldn’t believe how much work that had been.  Maybe he’d been doing something wrong or had been a tad overzealous in his efforts, but still—it had been hard work.  He couldn’t believe Ken had done it three times in one night.  The man had stamina.

Will half-groaned and half-laughed as he put a hand to his forehead.  Why was he thinking about Ken?  At a time like this, why was he thinking about _him_?  He felt Liz turn to her side next to him.

“Will?  What is it?  Is something wrong?  Did—did you not like it?”

“No, I did.  I did like it,” he reassured her.  “A lot in fact.  It was amazing,” he said truthfully.

“Yeah, I thought so too.”  He could hear the smile in her voice.

“But—” Will started, and then paused.  He lowered his hand and stared at the ceiling.  A feeling akin to nausea was moving through him, but he didn’t feel sick.

“But what?” Liz prompted.

Will’s eyes searched the blank ceiling.  “Can you imagine what it would be like to do it with someone who can make you feel this way just when their hand accidentally brushes yours?”  Will swallowed and drew in air to keep the lightheadedness away.  “Someone who can set your heart racing with just the sound of their voice.  Someone who…when you look in their eyes you feel like you could die and that would be copacetic.”  He stared at the ceiling without really seeing it.  “Can you imagine how much _more_ it could be to make love with them?”

“I don’t have to imagine it,” Liz said softly.

Will heard her words, but their meaning was lost on him as the ceiling collapsed in on him and his mounting epiphany hit him like a ton of bricks.  “A metric ton,” Will whispered to himself, the nauseous feeling growing worse.  And yet, he still didn’t feel sick.  It wasn’t nausea.  Will sat up and put his face in his hands, a small cry escaping his lips.

 _I love him.  I’m in love with him.  I’ve_ been _in love with him._   Will dropped his hands to his lap, a burning energy rising in his blood.  _I have to see him._

“Will, are you okay?”

“I have to go.”

He leapt out of the bed and started grabbing for his clothes.  Though his words had stunned her, his actions had jolted her out of her momentary stupor.

“Wait, what?” Liz asked, her voice colored with astonishment and disbelief.

“I have to go,” Will repeated, struggling into his clothes.  “I’m sorry.  Really sorry for leaving you like this, but there’s something I _have_ to do.”

Liz held the sheets to her chest.  She still sat in the bed, trying to pretend this wasn’t happening.

“It’s not you.  This isn’t about you.  I just…realized there’s something I need to do.”

Will left most of the buttons on his shirt undone and only put on one sleeve of his jacket before he started working on his socks and shoes.

“I don’t understand,” Liz said.  Her voice wavered with tears and a little anger.  “What do you have to do _right_ now?  It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, I know.  I just… _realized_ it.  Right now.  And it can’t wait.  I have to go.  _Now_.”

Will stood up and hurriedly searched for any of his other belongings.  He pulled his jacket on the rest of the way and rushed for the door.  He stopped before leaving and turned to Liz.

“This isn’t about you.  Or me being freaked by what we just did.  It’s completely unrelated.”  _Sort of._   “It just suddenly dawned on me, and it can’t wait.”

“What is it?”

“Something…important.”

She didn’t seem happy with that answer—and he couldn’t blame her—but he didn’t have time to explain it to her even if he could.  What if the world ended tomorrow?  He had to see him tonight.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?  I promise.  Or you call me in case I forget.”

She started to protest, completely offended, but he cut her off.

“No, no.  You’re right.  I won’t forget.  I’ll call, I swear.  Tonight wasn’t a bad thing.  In fact, I think I should thank you.”

She shook her head miserably.  “For what?” she asked bitterly.

Will looked away from her, trying to hide the smile that was spreading over his lips.  “Maybe I’ll be able to tell you one day.  Sorry, again.  I know I’m being a tremendous asshole, but I’ve got to go.”

He started to open the door.

“Will, wait.”

He stopped and Liz got out of bed, holding the sheet around her.  She walked up to him and leaned forward him to kiss him.  He turned his head and her lips found his cheek.  She pulled back slowly and when he turned to look at her he could see the hurt in her eyes.  Under any other circumstances he would have done anything to try to make it up to her and make her feel better…but he had to go.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said again, his words sounding patronizing even to his own ears.  He left her room and ran through the apartment.  He was already trying to map a way to Ken’s building in his head.  He’d never driven there before so he wasn’t entirely sure how to get there by car.  And even though it was after midnight, the city was still jumping and full of traffic.  It was Friday night after all.  He managed to make it to his destination without hitting anyone, which was a miracle in and of itself considering how wired he was.  He stopped in front of Ken’s building and didn’t know what to do with the car.  There was no parking on the street and the garage was for residents only.  Though there had to be some sort of guest policy.  But he knew if he had to call up and talk to Ken, he might lose his nerve or Ken might be tired and tell him to come back in the morning not realizing how urgent the matter was.  Will knew he couldn’t wait.  He couldn’t.  If he just left the car on the street, how would he explain the ticket to his parents?  He had to park illegally because he had to go confess his love to a 32 year old man?

Someone knocked on his window and he started violently.  He was half expecting to see Liz, half expecting to see Ken and half expecting to see a police officer.  Wait…that didn’t add up quite right.  What he saw was Jeff, one of the guards who worked the front desk.  Will rolled down his window, surprised to see him.

“Hi, Will,” Jeff said cheerfully.

“Hi, Jeff.  Um.  Don’t you work during the day?”

“Yeah, I volunteered to trade shifts with one of the night guards tonight and tomorrow.  There goes my whole weekend.”

“Yeah,” Will laughed a little nervously.  Why did he feel like he was doing something wrong?

“So, I’ve never seen you with a car before.”

“Oh, yeah…I had to use it to come out here because the metro has stopped running.”

“Really?  I thought it ran until two on weekends.”

“Oh.  Heh.  Right.  I forgot.”

Will shrugged and smiled.

“So, do you need to go up?” Jeff asked.

“Up where?” Will asked defensively.

“Um, the building?  I could park the car for you.”

“Oh.  Really?  You can do that?  Where?”

“In the garage.  In one of Mr. West’s guest spaces.  That is who you’re going to see, right?”

“Yes.  I mean no.  I mean.  I forgot to feed the cat today.  And I think he left for a business trip.  I had to come see if she was okay.”

“Wow.  You must really love that cat.”

“Well, he pays me to take care of her.  If she dies, I rather imagine he’d be mad at me.”

Jeff laughed.  “Good point.  Well, if you give me the keys I’ll put the car in the garage for you and you can head on up.  The guy in there now is LaRon.  He’ll probably be too busy watching TV to even notice you.”

Will got out of the car and handed the keys to Jeff.  “Thanks a lot.  I was wondering what I would do about parking.”

“It’s no problem.”

Will started to head for the front stairs.

“So, hey,” Jeff called out and Will turned around.  “I thought you two brought something back one day.  It was a cat?”

“Yeah, a kitten.”

“What’s its name?”

“He named her Joyce Greene.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow and then shook his head with a smile.  “That guy and the color green.  I tell ya.”

Jeff got into the BMW and started to drive it into the garage.  Will was smiling ear to ear as he took the stairs two at a time and then punched in the access code.  So Ken’s color fetish was noticeable to other people.  He had proof now.  Inside the lobby LaRon glanced at him but didn’t say anything or try to stop him as he called for the elevators.  As the elevator slowly rose, so did his adrenaline.  It was building in him so rapidly he felt like he’d be able to get to the 17th floor faster by taking the stairs.  When the doors opened and he stepped into the hallway, his heart leapt to his throat.  He could feel his body shaking.  It was getting harder and harder to put one foot in front of the other.  When he was standing in front of door 1703, he knew he was a mess.

He put his palms against the door and tried to force himself to calm down.  If he fainted in front of Ken it would be no fun confessing to him at the ER.  He bent his knees and slowly lowered into a squatting position.  He bowed his head and took in deep, relaxing breaths.  He needed to get his breathing and heart rate under control.  After a couple minutes he began to feel better.  He was about to see Ken.  That thought made him happy and curiously calm.  He stood up slowly and ran his fingertips over the wood door.  Ken was on the other side.  Will leaned forward and pressed his lips to the door.  Why was he hesitating now?  He took a step back, took in and let out a deep breath, and looked down at himself.  He wondered what Jeff must have thought of his appearance as he quickly straightened his jacket and buttoned some of his buttons.  Though what was the point?  Weren’t they going to be undone again very shortly?  Will’s chest tightened up again at the thought.  It was one thing to realize he was in love with Ken…but was he ready for _that_ tonight?

“Hell yes,” Will breathed and knocked on the door.  He didn’t wait to see if Ken heard him.  He knocked again a little bit louder and then waited.  He tried to stand still.  He didn’t want to be fidgeting when the door opened.  And he didn’t want to be knocking when the door opened.  But he might need to do it again.  Or, why was he knocking?  He had a key.  He knocked again and waited.  He didn’t want to just barge in, but Jeff hadn’t seemed surprised when he said Ken had gone on a business trip.  Maybe he had, maybe he wasn’t home.  But surely he would have told him he was leaving, even if he’d been avoiding him all week.

The door opened.  Will’s eyes were drawn immediately to Ken’s.  The deep blue of his irises wasn’t masked by the dim lighting.  He loved those eyes.  And that straight nose, and those talented lips, the round chin, prominent Adam’s apple, the hollow formed where his clavicles met, the glimpse of his toned chest through his partially unbuttoned dress shirt.  Will shook his head and looked back up at Ken’s eyes.  He was getting distracted.  Ken looked confused, but not tired.  Will didn’t even have to look behind the man.  He was certain his laptop and tray table had been put aside so he could answer the door.  Why was he working after midnight on a Friday?  This guy really had no life.  He was the same as he’d always been, but Will was seeing him differently now.  He was seeing him without being afraid.  Will smiled.  Ken’s confusion grew.

“Is something wrong?” the man asked.

Will shivered upon hearing his voice.  He remembered hearing that voice moan into his ear the first time they’d been together.  He wanted that again.  He wanted to be the one making him moan.  He blushed a little at the thought.  He realized he’d just been staring since Ken asked his question.  He needed to say something.  But what?  How could he work his way up to what he needed to tell him?

“I love you,” Will blurted out.

What followed was a silence that lasted as nearly as long as the time it took for two NFL teams to play two minutes of football.  Will didn’t want to rush him, so he waited.  He knew Ken would have questions and would need time to think about his response.  Then Ken spoke.

“What?”

 _Actions speak louder than words_ some little voice whispered to him.  He stepped forward and stood on his tiptoes.  He took Ken’s face in his hands and brought their lips together.  It was a chaste kiss and Ken didn’t respond to it.  Will pulled back a little and looked him in the eyes.  His pupils had shrunk into the turbulent blue of his frightened eyes.

“I love you,” Will said again.  He gulped and flushed bright red.  “I want you to make love to me.”  He felt like one of those cartoon characters who faces literally caught fire with embarrassment.  Why would someone ever make someone say something like that?  It was so corny.  Couldn’t he just get with the program already?  He waited for Ken’s reaction.  He could see the thoughts and questions and desires building up inside him.  Finally, he let it all out.

“What?”

Will felt his eyebrow twitch in irritation.  Was it really that hard to understand?

“I love you,” he said once again, just to make sure it was clear.  “Now do me.”

He put one arm around Ken’s neck and used that to pull himself up.  He kissed Ken again, and this time chaste was out the window.  He pressed forcefully into Ken and worked on getting his mouth open.  Once he felt a slight part in his lips, Will swept his tongue into his mouth.  He teased Ken’s tongue and begged it to return the favor.  He felt one of Ken’s hands at the small of his back, and his tongue was pushing back into him now.  Will moaned in acknowledgement.  This was what he wanted.  He wanted him to go deeper.

Ken pulled back suddenly and pushed Will away.  He put a hand to his mouth and stared at Will like he was some possessed demon.  Will stepped closer to him again, showing no fear.  It was easy to do; he had none.  There was nothing Ken could do to him that he wouldn’t want.  Will used his foot to the slam the door shut.  He stood in front of Ken and ran a hand down the line of buttons on his shirt.  When he reached Ken’s waist, he kept going.  Ken suddenly grabbed his hand and Will looked up at him.  Ken looked almost angry.

“Is this what you really want?”

Will took a step forward, putting their bodies close enough to feel each other’s heat.  It wasn’t exactly intentional, but he knew his expression must be downright seductive.

“It really is,” he answered.

Ken’s hand clenched around his, but he didn’t feel the pain.

“Fine.”

Ken bent down and scooped him up into his arms.  Will squawked in surprise but could do nothing to stop him.  Ken started to carry him toward the bedroom.

“Oh, come on,” Will complained.  “Don’t carry me like this.  It’s so emasculating.”

Ken met his eyes and Will felt something low on his body tighten.

“Trust me.  This is the least emasculating thing I’m going to do to you tonight.”

Will didn’t know it was possible to blush over one’s entire body.  He couldn’t stand to look into Ken’s eyes anymore.  He turned his head and pressed his lips to Ken’s shoulder.  The fabric from his shirt was warm from his skin.  As he looked back out into the room he saw the white fluffy figure of Joyce Greene following them.  Ken slammed the bedroom door shut in her face.

 

Saturday, September 17, 2005

 

Contentment.  It wasn’t a big fancy word, but it was the right one.  He’d never felt so perfectly content in his life.  The firmness of the mattress, the cool, silken sheets, and even the pillows were the right amount of fluffy.  If felt wonderful just to lie in it and settle deeper into its comfort.  And the slight movements of his body made him aware of his sore muscles.  He smiled with his eyes still closed and reveled as each movement caused his body to ache.  The mild discomfort was almost pleasurable as it made him recall what he had done to make himself feel that way the night before.

No, not what he had done to himself, what _he_ had done to him.  There were parts of it that were almost too embarrassing to recall, and parts of it that had felt so incredible he had forgotten to be embarrassed.  The human body averaged a temperature of 98.24ºF or 36.8ºC.  That was 309 Kelvin.  It was hard to appreciate how hot that really was until one had experienced being inside of another person.  Or having that person inside of you.

Will stretched his arms over his head, the smile on his face still in place.  He could tell there was sunlight in the room, so he opened his eyes.  He could see the stark white ceiling and part of the sage green wall it was connected to.  He could tell immediately from the bright white sheets and dark furniture that he was not in his own room.  But he wasn’t worried or confused or scared.  He knew exactly where he was and couldn’t be happier that he was there.  He turned to his side to greet his bed partner.  Joyce Greene was curled up on Ken’s vacant pillow.  Will reached out a hand to scratch her behind the ear.  She didn’t really wake up, but she leaned into his touch.

“While I appreciate that you are female,” Will said, “you’re not exactly who I was expecting to wake up next to.”

He sat up and glanced at the clock radio on the nightstand.  It was a little after ten.  He wasn’t normally a late sleeper—and some people would argue that ten wasn’t all that late—but he had had a long night.  He grinned and almost giggled.  A very long night.  The silkiness of the sheets helped him slide out of bed and he padded across the carpet for the bathroom.  He wasn’t embarrassed by last night and he certainly didn’t regret it.  The only thing he might regret was not figuring out his feelings for the older man sooner.  Though, maybe it was a little awkward to be peeing completely naked in someone else’s bathroom.  Had he locked the bathroom door?  He didn’t want Ken to walk in on him.  He hated for anybody to bear witness to any of his bodily functions.  Of course, there had been one last night that Ken had been very up close and personal with.  The heat that passed through Will was so intense he felt momentarily dizzy.  It was mostly embarrassment, but not completely.  It was amazing how a little chemical rush induced by physical stimulus could totally override a person’s rationality and make them do things that they didn’t even know they were capable of.

Will left the bathroom and saw that the bedroom door was partially open.  Ken had taken to keeping it closed all the time to prevent such occurrences like a cat getting onto his bed.  It was strange that he had left it open this morning, but then, he probably had other things on his mind.

“Like me,” Will gloated to himself.

He walked to the bed and picked up the shirt Ken had been wearing the night before.  The room was pretty much still a “mess” due to the strewn clothes all over the floor.  Ken’s shirt had managed to stay on the bed through it all.  Will gathered the fabric in his hands and brought it to his face.  He inhaled deeply and tamped down the arousal that built up just by smelling his lover’s scent.  Hadn’t he accused Ken of being creepy for sniffing his underwear?  Well, this wasn’t the same thing.  Will tossed the shirt aside.  It had been incredibly cheesy to refer to Ken as his _lov-ah_.  He wasn’t about to be all prissy and prance around in nothing but Ken’s dress shirt like a woman might do.  He went to the dresser and starting rooting around for the green plaid boxers and Dartmouth T-shirt he’d worn before.  He hadn’t been idiot; he’d noticed what kind of an effect it had had on Ken.  He’d just chosen to ignore it at the time.  And now he was trying to provoke it.  So what?  Sex before breakfast would be nice.  He was certain Ken must be in the kitchen making them something.  He’d love to have another one of his omelets.

Will didn’t hesitate entering the main room, but he was a little tentative.  He knew things could be different in the morning light, but he wasn’t worried about it.  He loved Ken and had spent the night in his arms.  Among other places.  Will smiled to himself.  His smile started to fade when he saw that Ken wasn’t in the kitchen; he was sitting on the couch, bent over.  Will felt the first stirrings of dread in his stomach.  Ken had never actually said he loved him back last night.  But, Will knew how he felt.  He had been with him.  He’d seen him and felt him.  He wasn’t mistaken.  He was sure of it.  Will walked quietly around the side of the couch.  Ken was wearing his underwear, but nothing else.  His elbows were on his thighs and his face was hidden by his hands.  He looked broken and like he might be crying.  Will’s heart stopped beating.  He moved quickly to Ken and knelt in front of him.  He gently gripped Ken’s wrists and pulled his hands away from his face.

“What’s wrong?’ Will asked, needing but not wanting to know the answer.

Ken looked down at him and tried to pull away from him.  “How can you ask that after what I did to you last night?”

Will wasn’t sure what he was referring to.  Did he mean that he used him?  That he took advantage of the fact that Will loved him to have sex with him even though he didn’t feel the same way about him?  Will shook his head.  He knew that wasn’t true.  He could tell.  He knew how Ken felt about him, though it would be nice to hear it from him.  Will decided he should try to clear this up one step at a time.

“Um…I asked for it.  It wasn’t like our first time.  It was consensual.”

Ken shook his head and looked away from him.  Will was starting to feel sick.  He had to know now.

“We’re in love,” Will said, deliberately baiting an answer from Ken.

The man laughed bitterly and Will felt like he’d been stabbed.

“I was relying on you,” Ken said.  “You’re _straight_.  And you hated me.  You were supposed to keep me in check.  And you did.”  Ken looked at him pityingly.  Will felt the knife twist.  “But I teased you too much.  I pushed you too far.  We got too involved and entangled and I ended up confusing you and warping you.  I coerced you into believing a sick fantasy.  Last night was a huge, stupid mistake.  I’m so sorry.  I’m so, _so_ sorry, Will.  This is worse than the first time.  I did it to you willingly, knowing how deluded you were.  Not even caring.”

Will scratched the side of his head.  Now he was actually confused.  What was Ken talking about?

“What are you babbling about?  I love you.”  He slapped Ken’s thigh and startled the man into looking at him.  “Coerced?  Warped?  Deluded?  About what?  I’m in love with you.  I’ve been in love with you.  Possibly since the very beginning.  How can you not tell?”

Ken stared at him like he was an alien.  Will wasn’t happy that his love confessions made Ken stare at him like something unnatural.  It had happened last night too.  Ken shook his head with a self-deprecating smile.

“You’re just curious,” he said irritatingly.  “I’ve teased and poked and prodded so much that you finally just gave in to it to see what it was like.  Or something.”

“I’m not curious,” Will said.  “And I know exactly how I feel.  I’m very analytical and not remotely romantic.  I love you.”

Ken seemed to get more and more flustered every time Will said he loved him.

“I’m too old for you,” he said, stating the obvious.  “The novelty will wear off.  You’ll go to college and meet someone new.  Probably a girl.”

“Um.  My whole sexual orientation changed for you.  This isn’t some whim.”

“I don’t think that’s true.  I think you’re going to get over this, whatever it may be for you, and where will that leave me?”

Any anxiety Will had been feeling cleared right up as a shot of anger went through him.

“Fine,” he snapped.  “But even if we do stop seeing each other eventually…” Will rose gracefully and put one knee on the couch and the other between Ken’s legs.  He slid forward, straddling his thigh and running his hands up the man’s bare arms.  “Why don’t we have fun now?”

Ken leaned back into the couch to put distance between them, but Will followed him forward, rubbing himself against Ken’s leg and digging his nails into his shoulders.  Will could tell he was having an effect on Ken.  He could feel it against his knee.  Ken grabbed his shoulders and kept him from leaning closer.

“If we let this go on, it will kill me to lose you.”

“Like it wouldn’t now?” Will asked cruelly, anticipating the pain that crossed Ken’s features at hearing the hard truth.

“You’re right,” Ken said, his voice drowned in despair.  “We’re already too involved.  So, why prolong the inevitable?”

Will shifted against him, enjoying the sensation he was generating between his own legs.  He closed his eyes for a moment to let the pleasure move through him and then he opened his eyes again.  Desire was starting to fight back against the sadness in Ken’s eyes.

“To give me time to convince you it’s not inevitable.”  Will twisted out of Ken’s grasp and moved forward to capture his lips.  The man didn’t try to fight back; he just opened himself up and moved in response to Will’s demands.  Will could feel him give into it, just for a moment.  Ken grabbed his hips and tongued him hard.  Will let out small moans with each aggressive jab.  Then Ken pulled back.  He started to shake his head, but Will grabbed him under the chin and forced their eyes to meet.

“Besides.  You couldn’t get rid of me when I hated you, what chance do you think there is when I love you?”

Ken finally smiled and the gesture comforted Will.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Ken murmured.

Will rocked his hips and pushed his knee into Ken’s groin.  The man closed his eyes and his fingers dug into Will’s flesh hard enough to bruise.  Will ran his fingers through Ken’s hair and then ran his thumb over the shell of his ear.  Ken opened his eyes and Will licked the wicked smile on his face.  Ken gulped.

“You know, I know it’s you, but you’re almost like a completely different person from the one I knew.”

“No, it’s still me.”  Will was having trouble maintaining his thought process as he developed a rhythm against Ken’s leg.  “I’m very goal-oriented.  I just know what I want now.”

“And what’s that?”

One of Ken’s hands moved off his hip and slipped in between his legs.  Will couldn’t think to answer the question.  He was making short, embarrassing noises and knew he wasn’t going to be able to take much more.

“I—I—Oh, God.”

“What do you want, Will?”

This wasn’t fair.  _He_ was supposed to be seducing _him_.  Not the other way around.  And it was obvious he wanted sex, so Ken wanted to know what he really wanted, but he didn’t want to have to tell him to say it.  He just wanted him to tell him because he meant it.

“Nm!  Ken, please!”

Will felt his body tense and then the stimulus was taken away.  He grabbed for the back of the couch and tried to collect himself.  He gasped in a couple breaths and then yelped as Ken dumped him out of his lap and onto his back on the couch.  Ken held himself above him and Will squirmed uncomfortably beneath him having been denied his release.  Ken lowered himself down and they kissed slowly and lustfully.  They parted and watched each other breathing hard.  Ken dropped his head a moment, and then he raised it back up to look at Will.

“God help me,” he said, “I love you, Will.”

Will smiled and wrapped his arms around Ken’s neck.  He pulled him close.

“That’s what I wanted,” he said.

Ken rubbed a hand up and down Will’s arm, smiling at him.  Will gave him a playful smile back.

“You know, this couch has been begging for sex since the first time I sat on it.  Don’t you think we should give it what it wants?”

Ken laughed.  “Who am I to deny a three thousand dollar couch all the stains it wants?”

They closed the distance between them, joining their bodies everywhere they could.  Before Will completely lost himself he had the fleeting thought that he hoped Joyce Greene stayed in the bedroom.  She was too young to see this kind of thing.

 

Julian

 

Friday, September 16, 2005

 

Julian sat in his dead father’s car, pondering his appearance.  His own, not his father’s.  He rather imagined his father wasn’t looking too pretty right now.  He hadn’t been embalmed and he’d had nothing but a thin shroud between him and the worms.  Julian felt that choking despair that sometimes came upon him.  He never knew what might set it off, but he’d been working with Dr. Gorman to control it.  He closed his eyes and took in a few deep breaths.  Now was not the time for wallowing.  He could call Will tomorrow morning if he still felt depressed.  For now, he needed to focus on being chipper and excited for the dance.  He didn’t want his friends to know how much his parents’ deaths were still affecting him.  He thought he should be getting better by now, and he was, but every now and then it was too much to bear.  But now could not be one of those times.

He pulled the visor down and inspected his face in the tiny mirror.  He knew that Riley’s parents didn’t really like him that much.  They hadn’t been fond of his parents and never wanted her to go over to his house.  Things hadn’t much changed with his parents’ deaths, but at least tonight maybe they wouldn’t be totally put off by him.  He’d already gotten rid of the Mohawk and had more or less normal hair again.  Of course, that might be the only thing normal about him.  In addition to the tongue and lip rings, he’d gotten both ears pierced.  And not just once.  He had a blood red stud and two silver hoops in his left ear and three silver hoops in his right with a fourth hoop through the cartilage.  Plus, he was wearing make-up and an all black ensemble.  Honestly, he looked damn good.  Though Riley’s parents might not see it that way.  But oh well.  He was taking Riley to the dance, not them.  And it’s not like he and Riley were dating or anything.  He was just escorting her to the dance and doing her an unknown favor.

Julian got out of the car and walked confidently up the front walk.  It was still light out and if the neighbors were peeking out through their windows he wanted to leave a good impression.  He had thought about getting Riley some flowers, but she killed everything green within a few hours.  She was absolutely incapable of having a living plant within five feet of her without it wilting and dying.  So, he’d opted to go cheap and get her nothing.  Most high school guys did that anyway.  Julian rapped sharply on the front door and stood back with his hands clasped behind his back.  Let her parents get the full effect.

The door opened and Julian blinked.  Had he gone to the right house?  Riley stepped outside onto the front porch and locked the door behind her.

“Hey, Julian.”

Julian opened his mouth and then closed it.  Strange, it sounded like Riley and this was her house and it vaguely resembled her, but it was a test of his faith to believe it was actually her.  She wore a simple green empire style dress that was good for her lack of figure.  It boosted what little cleavage she had to make it look like she had some and the straight cut hid her straight body.  Her hair was pulled back with cute butterfly clips so that it looked like girl hair.  She was even wearing make-up, though her freckles still stood out.  She shifted uneasily under his scrutiny.

“What?” she asked warily.

Julian shook himself and forced himself to speak.  “N-nothing.  You just…look like a girl.”

She made a face at him.  “I always look like a girl.”

Julian let his eyes travel over body again.  The dress couldn’t really hide her athletic frame, but the difference between normal Riley and dressed-up Riley was so huge it made her seem downright gorgeous in comparison.

“Yeah, but now you look like a hot girl.”

He gave her a leer he normally reserved for Will.  It didn’t have the slightest affect on her.

“Bite me,” she griped and started to clop past him a little awkwardly in her low-heeled shoes.

“Ah, there’s the Riley I know and love,” he said as he followed her to the driveway.

She laughed and glanced back at him.  He smiled at her and she halfway rolled her eyes.

“Oh, come on; let’s not be so melodramatic about this.  It’s not like the magical ugly-pretty girl transformation you see in the movies.”

Julian barely managed to get to the door before she did and opened it for her.

“That’s really not necessary,” she said.

Julian rested his arms on top of the door and leaned forward to give her a knowing look.

“So, who’s the guy you’re trying to make jealous?”

Her fair skin readily betrayed her blush.  She just dropped her eyes and let out a soft, embarrassed noise as she plopped into her seat.  Julian grinned and shut the door.  This dance might actually be very interesting if he got to help make the guy jealous.

Riley immediately started talking about sports.  She kept it up all the way to the school.  Julian let her ramble.  It had probably taken most of her nerve just to get into the dress in the first place.  When they arrived, they were the first ones there.  They’d only been beaten by the parents and teachers who were chaperoning, and the DJ was dancing by himself on his stand.  They glanced at each other and then at the empty gymnasium.  They shrugged together and went inside.  They dropped their belongings off on the bleachers and wandered over to the food table.  It was pretty measly offerings.  They stood silently by the vegetable platter and Julian munched on a carrot as he glanced around at the cheap paper streamer decorations.  This was a private school; what exactly did they do with all that tuition money anyway?

“Okay, well, maybe it’s a good thing that nobody is here yet,” Riley said out of nowhere.  Julian turned toward her.  She was keeping her eyes focused on the ground.  “It’ll be easier to ask this with no one around to overhear.  There’s kind of more to the favor, if you’re willing.”

Julian knew better than to respond verbally.  It might freak her out.  So, he just waited for her to continue.

“As you’ve already figured out,” she heaved a sigh, “I’m trying to make a guy jealous.  Actually, I’m trying to make him regret spurning me.  When I said I liked him, he said I’m nice and all but dating me would be like dating a boy.”

“Hell,” Julian burst out, “forget making him jealous.  Tell me who this punk is and we’ll go beat the snot out of him together.”

Riley looked up with an amused smile.  “Thank you for the offer, but that won’t be necessary.”

“Well, the offer will always stand.”

“Thanks.  But beating him up won’t give me the same satisfaction as making him wish he’d never turned me down.”

“What exactly do you have in mind?” Julian asked, making a face and tossing a half-eaten piece of broccoli into the trash.

“I thought we’d just dance together.  In front of him.”

Julian waited for her to fill in the rest of the details to the plan.  She had just gone back to looking at the floor.

“That’s it?” Julian asked.

“Well, I mean.  When we dance, we can be all, like, you know…”  She blushed and covered her eyes with a hand.  “Don’t make me actually _say_ it, Julian.”

“You want it to be all smexy?”

Riley looked up with a laugh.  “No!  Well, yes, actually.”

“No problem.  Uninhibited public spectacles are a specialty of mine.”

“Fantastic,” she said dryly.

They turned toward the doors as more people came into the gym.

“Well, it’s about time,” Riley said.  “So, how long before any of _our_ friends actually show up?”

“Half hour.  Minimum.”

They spent that next half hour dancing with each other and some of Riley’s friends from the girls’ field hockey team.  It would have been nice to be the only guy dancing with a bunch of girls, but Julian was pretty certain three out of five of them had bigger muscles than him.  At least he was taller than them.  Though not by much.  As he danced and grooved with them, he kept looking toward the door to see when his friends might show up.  At last he saw Will.  He looked good.  Julian grabbed Riley and hauled her toward the entrance.  As he got closer he saw Liz and the little sexy number she was wearing.  The slut.  Julian was surprised by his thought.  Maybe his dislike of Liz wasn’t so subconscious.

“What up?” Julian greeted them.

“Not much.  We—” Will cut off and stared at him.  He stepped forward and grabbed his chin.  He turned his head slightly to get a better look at his ears.  “I thought you said you were going to consult me before doing anything.”

“Sorry.  Impulse.  Do you like?”

“Hmm.  I like the right one.  I’m not sure how I feel about the stud in the left.”

“Maybe a different color?”

Will half-shrugged, still examining his ears.  “Maybe.”

“Is that eyeliner?  It’s very well done.  I can hardly tell you’re wearing any but your eyes are gorgeous.”

“Thank you.”

“ _Ladies_ ,” Riley said, interrupting.  “Are we going to talk about our jewelry all night long?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Will asked, playfully snide.  “Oh, heavens me.  Riley?  Is that you?  You know, I always knew you were a girl, but I never knew you could actually look like one.”

Riley punched him in the shoulder.  He laughed but then turned partially away and rubbed his shoulder.  Julian had no pity for him even though that had probably hurt a lot.  Liz stepped between them.

“Stop abusing my date,” she admonished Riley.  “That’s my job.”

Julian rolled his eyes.  Will saw the gesture and discreetly gave him a wag of the finger.  Julian hooked an arm around Will’s shoulders and they waited patiently for the girls to finish telling each other how beautiful they looked.

“So, should we go dance?” Will asked.  “I don’t know what Chris and Laney are doing and who knows when Scott and Anna will get here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Liz said, giving Will a sappy smile.

“Um, excuse me.”

The four of them turned to see Heather Mallonci standing just behind Will.  Julian repressed his smile.  So, the date-challenged girls were already ready to start exploiting Will’s “kindness.”

“Hi, Heather,” Will smiled at her.  Julian felt a little stirring somewhere down low and the smile hadn’t even been directed at him.  Poor Heather.  It really was cruel what he did to these girls.  Julian frowned.  How come Will would never do it for him?  He and Heather wandered onto the dance floor.  Liz didn’t seem upset by it; she’d gone to dances with him before.  Dancing with the less popular sect of girls who attended Calverton was one of his favorite things to do.  The sicko.  He reached for Riley’s hand, but Liz grabbed onto her.

“You guys can’t leave me standing here alone,” she said.

Julian groaned inwardly and stayed with the girls despite it being terribly awkward.  They had nothing to talk about.  Maybe he could get them both to dance with him at the same time; then at least they’d be doing something.  Fortunately he was saved by Chris and Laney’s arrival.  He was a little alarmed by Laney’s bizarre dress, but he accepted her judgment that it was in style.  It helped immensely to have Chris there.  He was so much more adept at social situations than he was.  And even if the two of them couldn’t manage to keep the conversation up, Scott’s arrival trumped all awkward pauses.  Because there never were any when he was around.  That boy could talk to a wall and still feel like he’d had a meaningful conversation.  And he was so adorable when he got riled up over Anna.  And he could understand why he would; Anna looked beautiful.  This was bad.  He was seriously starting to put her out of the friend category and into a more ambiguous one.

He was listening to the girls (and Scott) chatter idly away when he turned and looked around the gym.  He spotted Eun-hee on the other side of the room.  He tugged gently on Riley’s fingers.

“Um, Riley would you mind if I abandoned you for a bit?”

“No.  That’s cool.  Is something wrong?”

“No, there’s someone I want to talk to.”

“Oh, sure.  Go ahead.  I’ll let you know…when I need you.”

“Got it.  Later, guys.”

“What is that all about?” Julian heard Liz ask Riley as he headed across the floor.

Eun-hee was wearing a light grey skirt with a fine pattern of black stripes running through it and a silky black top that looked like it was very complicated to put on.  She looked nice, but he would have put her in blue.  She spotted him well before he got to her, but she pretended like she didn’t.  Perhaps she was worried he wasn’t on his way to see her.  She finally glanced up at him once he got within five feet.  He smiled at her and she started to smile and then her expression turned into bemused shock.

“Wow.  Hi, Julian.  Nice ears.”

“Thank you.  I got them from my mother.”

She gave him a look and a smile.  “I meant the piercings.”

“So did I.  Most of these were hers.”

“Oh.”  She immediately sobered.  Julian quickly changed the subject; he didn’t want this to turn into a “So, how are you doing?” conversation.

“Did you come here with anyone?”  It was a little direct, but he needed to know who his competition was.

She looked away shyly and then looked back at him.  “I came with a friend.  A girl friend.”

“Oh, good.  I was worried some guy might ask you.”

“Well, someone did.  Two someones actually.  I just—I kept waiting for you to ask me.”

“Oh.  Oh, I’m sorry.  A friend of mine asked me to go.  As a favor.  I guess I should have let you know or something.”

“No, it’s okay.  I mean, you weren’t obligated to me in any way.”

“I know, but I feel bad that you couldn’t make plans.  Though, I must admit I’m glad you’re not here with some other guy.”

“Me too.”

Julian felt that homicidal twitch he always got whenever he heard a John Mayer song.  But, it was a slow song and girls liked him.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He wasn’t sure if he should do the school dance stance or a real dance stance.  He kind of waited to see if she was going to reach both hands behind his neck, but that would probably be hard for her to do.  Standing this close to her he realized he was a lot taller than her.  They went with a more traditional stance: he put a hand on her waist and held one of hers in his other.  Her left hand didn’t quite make it comfortably up to his shoulder, so she held onto his arm.  Julian was surprised to learn that she actually knew how to dance.  He was guiding her in pretty simple pattern, and she followed easily.  She had to bend her neck back quite a ways to look at him.

“Where did you learn how to dance?  I mean, you actually know how,” she laughed.

He smiled.  “I was my mother’s practice partner.”  He made a face.  “And sometimes my father’s.”

She laughed softly and the sound made him happy.

“How about you?’ he asked.

“Dance school.  I did the typical ballet and tap and jazz as a little kid.  I still do some of that, but recently I got into ballroom dancing.”

“Very cool.  We’ll have to go dancing sometime.  To a real dance.”

Her smile lit up her face.  “I’d like that.”

She dropped her head and he didn’t blame her; she’d have a crick in her neck if she looked at him for the entire song.  He slid his hand a little further around her waist, bringing her just a bit closer.  She turned her head and rested her face against his chest.  The crown of her head was just even with his shoulder.  He’d never been attracted to someone this short before.  It wasn’t so awkward after all.  After the song ended a fast-paced Black Eyed Peas song came on.  Eun-hee started to leave the floor but he pulled her back.  She seemed more than a little embarrassed to dance a fast song with him, but he held onto her and made her move with him.  She started to laugh and relaxed a little bit under his hands.  He didn’t try anything too frisky with her though.  He wasn’t sure yet where on the virgin scale she fell.  Or if she was even on it for that matter.  Toward the end of the song, her friend interrupted them.  She spoke to Eun-hee in Korean, and she kept glancing at Julian, trying to apologize for her friend.  He didn’t have to be fluent to understand that she was miffed at being left alone at the dance they had both supposedly come stag to.  Julian rubbed the back of Eun-hee’s shoulder.

“I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” he said, deliberately ignoring her friend.  _She_ was the one who started being rude in the first place.

Eun-hee smiled and nodded.  “I’ll look for you.”

Julian still didn’t acknowledge the friend and headed back for the side of the gym his friends were hanging out in.  He saw the girls standing in a group and he wondered where the boys had run off to.  He took his time with his approach so he could admire Anna some more.  Since when did she get so beautiful?  He’d seen her almost every day of his life since he was eight, and now suddenly in the past few months he was seeing her in a completely different way.  What was wrong with him?  Anna, Eun-hee, Dr. Gorman.  Why was he suddenly so girl happy?  He thought about asking her to dance the rest of the song with him, but Scott joined them and handed her a soda.  He then proceeded to complain about the extreme paranoia of the school officials.

Will joined them in time for Scott’s tirade and Chris had the misfortune of passing by them as “Don’t Cha” came on.  He loved the Pussycat Dolls.  It was so easy to dance skankily to them.  He looked at Will to see if he was up for it.  He scoffed at his look, but it seemed like he might be in the mood for a little harmless flirting.  The eager ones pulled the reluctant ones onto the dance floor.  Liz was monopolizing Will’s front, but that was okay.  Julian ran a hand down his friend’s side and used his belt loop to pull him tightly against him.  Will didn’t flinch or squirm away like usual.  Maybe he was too involved with Liz to really care what he was doing.  Maybe he should test that.  Julian gripped one of Will’s arms and held him immobile as he moved his lower half against him.  Will just kept moving in time with the song and even dropped his head back against Julian’s shoulder at one point.  He looked so beautifully out of control; Julian knew he needed to get away from him before he did something that Will wouldn’t be able to forgive.  He started to move away, but Will moved an arm back and held him in place.  Julian momentarily forgot how to breathe. When he remembered, he leaned down to whisper in his ear.

“Are you really okay with this?”

“Yeah, sure,” Will replied more involved in the dancing than in his response.  “Boy, girl.  Does it matter as long as you’re having fun?”

Julian’s brow creased in confusion.  “Do you really mean that?”

Will smiled to himself.  “Yeah, I’m afraid I do.”

Julian couldn’t take it anymore.  He moved away from Will and found Anna.  It wasn’t fair for Will to give him hope like that.  He must not have meant it in exactly the same way that he did.  But that was all right.  It had been nice to have that short moment of his fantasy being tantalizing reality.  He’d just have to put it out of his mind.  And Anna was certainly a good distraction.  She was getting a little more into the song and he almost got a leg in between hers, but then Scott came in between them.  He gave Julian a disapproving look.  Julian gave him a challenging look in response.  If Scott didn’t know what to do with her, that didn’t mean other guys couldn’t.  And if he was going to spoil his fun, he’d have to make it up to him.  Julian pulled Scott flush against him and felt someone back to back with him.  He was finally going to fulfill another fantasy of his he’d had for a while now.  He buried one of his hands in Scott’s hair.  He’d been expecting it to be stiff and damaged, but it was soft, almost silky.  He ran his fingers across Scott’s scalp and forced his head back so that it rested on the top of his shoulder.  From his vantage point Julian could tell that Scott was enjoying the feeling.  Then his eyes snapped open and he looked somewhat panicked.  He picked his head up, but Julian grabbed onto his hair and yanked back on him.  A shudder passed through Scott’s body and Julian hitched an eyebrow.  That had been out of pleasure, not pain.  Unless the pain had…

Scott reached out for Liz.  He didn’t try to escape Julian, but he was focusing very hard on a girl now.  He was focusing so intently on Liz in fact, he didn’t notice that it was Will he was really dancing with.  Julian seriously wondered if Will was drunk or high.  He would never let a guy grind on him that hard, let alone _two_ guys.  Maybe that was the power of the Pussycat Dolls.  When the song ended he had an arm around Laney.  She had put it there herself.  He’d been a little worried about how the dance might go because of the debacle a couple weeks earlier, but she seemed almost like her normal self.  Only now he realized that a lot of her “innocent” touches hadn’t been so innocent all along.  How had he not figured it out sooner?  Maybe he’d been deliberately ignoring it.  Unfortunately, he didn’t think that was the case.  He was just that clueless.

The next song that came on was one he knew he’d heard before, but like heck if he had the slightest idea who it was.  He really didn’t like contemporary pop music.  Lady Gwen excluded of course.  Laney looked up at him with doe eyes and he wondered if she was about to ask him to dance.  She opened her mouth but then Riley grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him away.

“Now!” she said pulling him across the dance floor.  Julian stumbled after her and then bumped into her when she stopped.  She quickly got into a dancing position with him and attempted to find the beat of the song.  Julian looked around at the nearby couples.  Which one was the guy who had turned Riley down?  It was hard to tell which one might be Riley’s type.  There was a basketball player, a baseball player, and even an artsy almost Goth kid among others around them.  Who was he supposed to make jealous?  He leaned down to talk to her and was grateful he didn’t have to bend over that much.  Getting that close to Eun-hee would have sucked.

“Which one is he?”

“Shh!  Don’t talk about it.  He might hear.”

“Well, you know this song doesn’t exactly lend itself to being all sexy and stuff.”

“That’s okay.  I just want him to see that I have a date.”

“Um, Riley.  Everyone knows we’re friends.  He’ll probably just assume we’re here as friends.”

“Oh, right.”

She sounded so dejected.  Julian listened to the song.  It had bits that could be referred to as sultry and the refrain of “she will be loved” could be taken as a euphemism.  He stopped their generic rocking and put his hand at the small of her back.  He pulled her forward and lined up their lower halves.  She gripped his biceps in surprise, but didn’t pull away from him.  He thrust his leg in between hers and then planted his feet in the ground.  He made sure his hips were the only thing moving.  Riley dug the nails of one hand into his arm.  He could feel it through his shirt.  The other she slid up to his shoulder, and then behind his neck.  She licked her lips and looked up at him.  He leaned forward and put their foreheads together.  He could feel her warm breath crossing his lips.  She let her hips move in time with his.  It was fun to dance like this, especially since he knew it was an act, but he’d always wondered how actors did sex scenes without actually getting excited.  Maybe they just got used to it and could ignore the feelings.  But Julian didn’t have that kind of practice and Riley was most definitely a girl and most definitely knew all the right ways to touch him.  If this mystery guy saw her now and didn’t curse the day he let her go, he had to be gay.

The song came to an end and they stayed pressed together for a moment or two.  Then they stepped away from each other and Julian grinned at her.

“Riley Mayfield, you little minx.”

She slapped him lightly on the arm.  “Don’t even.  That was _all_ you.”

“Oh, no, I can’t take all the credit for this one.”

“Hey!”

Riley and Julian turned as a girl shouted in annoyed surprise.  They saw Laney pushing her way through the crowd and heading for one of the exits.  She was obviously crying.  “Love Shack” started blaring and as the crowd burst into motion he lost sight of her.  Then Chris came running by.  He put out a hand to stop him.

“What the hell did you do to her, Chris?” Riley demanded.

“Me?” Chris asked incredulously.  “Nothing.  She saw you two trying to make a baby over there.”

Julian groaned and looked at the ceiling.  Then he sighed and patted the back of Chris’ shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, “I got this.”

Julian took off in the direction he’d seen Laney run.  The only place she could have gone was the exit that led to the locker rooms.  He knew the doors were unlocked because that’s where the students had to use the bathroom during functions that took place in the gym.  He didn’t even hesitate or glance around to see if anyone was looking before he entered the girls’ locker room.  It was easy to find Laney; her sniffing was echoing off the walls.  She was sitting on a bench using a coarse brown paper towel to wipe away her tears.  She must have seen him out of the corner of her eye because she looked up, and then gasped when she saw it was him.

“Get out of here!  It’s the girls’ room!”

“Laney, I’m not going anywhere.”

He walked over to her and knelt down in front of her.  She tried to scoot away, but he moved with her.

“Laney, please don’t do this.  Don’t cry every time I do something.  It will kill me.”

“Kill _you_?  How about me?  Do you know what it does to me when I see you do stuff like that?  What’s wrong with _me_?”

Julian shook his head.  “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ , you danced all over Will.  You danced all over Riley.  Will’s a _guy_.  And I have bigger boobs than Riley.  Why am I the only one you can’t see in that way?”

“Um,” Julian tried to hold back his nervous laughter, “it’s not what you think with Riley and me.  I was only dancing with her that way as a favor.  She wanted to make some guy jealous.”

Laney sniffed a couple times.  “Oh, you mean Nick Tripp?”

“Nick Tripp?” Julian asked with ire in his voice.  That punk?  He was on the soccer team.  How dare he treat Riley that way?

“It doesn’t matter though,” Laney interrupted his thoughts of vengeance.  “Whether it’s ‘cause you want to or you’re doing it as a favor, it still sucks to see it.  Especially since you won’t even look at me let alone touch me.”

Julian took her hands in his.  “I’m sorry.  What can I do?  What can I do to make this better?”

“Date me,” she said with no hesitation.

He laughed softly.  She kept her straight face.  Julian’s smile disappeared.

“Oh.  You’re serious.”

She looked toward the ceiling and dabbed a tear away even as her mouth made an unhappy, scoffing noise.  She folded and re-folded the paper towel and Julian considered her request.  Why was he so averse to dating Laney?  It wasn’t because he thought of her as a little sister; he didn’t have a sister.  He didn’t know what it felt like to have one.  And the few times he’d tried to entertain sexual thoughts about his mother, he’d very nearly lost his lunch.  The thought of Laney and sex together certainly didn’t make him feel that way.  So, she wasn’t like family to him.  Was she just not his type?  She had a nice body and he liked her personality well enough, maybe he’d just never allowed himself to think of her that way.  Maybe if he did, he’d feel the same attraction toward her.  But…what about Eun-hee?  “Dating” didn’t necessarily mean it was exclusive.  He could date both of them.  And what about Dr. Gorman?  What about her?  She was his shrink.  And apparently like his mother.  Though he didn’t lose his lunch when he thought of her in sexual situations.  But, it would be best to keep Dr. Gorman in a professional capacity for now.  He still needed her to deal with his grief.  He wondered if she did relationship advice.  Laney pulled him out of his musings.

“Look, Julian, I’m not asking to be your girlfriend.  And I’m not asking for you to just fall in love me.  I’m simply asking for the chance for us to get to know each other better.  In a different way.  I just want you to at least view me as a regular girl.  Give me a chance.  That’s all.”

Julian thought that sounded harmless enough.  “Okay,” he shrugged.

Laney’s eyes nearly popped out of her head and she leaned toward him.  It took every ounce of his will power not to edge away from her.

“Do you really mean that?”

“Um.  Sure.  I’m mean, yes.”

“Great!”  Laney leapt off the bench and Julian fell onto his backside.  “It’s a promise,” she said emphatically, pointing a finger at him.  Then she ran out of the locker room.

“Oh, dear.”

What had he gotten himself into?  Well, it couldn’t be that bad.  He could deal with Laney.  And who knew?  Maybe he would find that she really was the one for him.  He felt a little guilt in already knowing that that wasn’t the case.  He liked Laney as a friend, and if he didn’t let himself think about it too much, he could probably get pretty physical with her.  But the thought of spending the rest of his life with her made him think an Oedipus complex wasn’t so bad after all.  And if he knew he could never seriously be with someone, what was the point of dating them in the first place?  Could he be the promiscuous, insensitive guy who just fooled around for the sake of fooling around?  He didn’t want to be that guy.  He was all for fun sex, but there had to be some desire for it other than wanting to get off.  Otherwise it was little better than masturbation.  Ok, it was a lot better than masturbation, but he knew what he meant.  He wondered if Eun-hee would be okay with non-exclusively dating.  He didn’t want to have to hide this from her and he didn’t want it to ruin his chances with her.  He smacked a hand to his forehead.  Why had he agreed to this?

He spent a while moping in the locker room.  What if she wanted to start tonight?  He couldn’t do it tonight.  He wasn’t in the mood.  He was already feeling stressed and that made him feel bad.  Nothing would make him feel better.  Then, even through the thick walls of the locker room, he heard Lady Gwen.  And it was none other than her smash hit “Hollaback Girl.”  He ran out of the locker room and plunged back onto the dance floor.  He searched vainly for a few moments, and then he felt someone jump on his back.  He staggered slightly under the attack, but Will didn’t weigh all that much, even with his muscle.  He hopped down and the two of them danced away like a couple of queers on the night of the Tony Awards.  People looked at them strangely, but he was certain not one of them suspected that either of them might harbor same sex tendencies.  Their reputations were too well known.  Well, actually, he was pretty certain most of the school thought he was bisexual.  But that was cool.  And kind of true.  There may be only one boy that did it for him, but he was still a boy.

When the song was over he told Will he should probably go look for Riley seeing as how he had ditched her over twenty minutes ago.  Will nodded in acknowledgement and probably went in search of some social reject to dance with.  Wait a minute.  Julian stopped walking.  _He_ was a social reject.  Did Will dance with him out of pity?  He shook his head.  Of course not.  It’s not like he was The Regurgitator.

As Julian circumvented the dance floor he kept his eyes peeled for any interesting developments.  Kind of like the one taking place in a secluded corner of the gym.  Julian slapped both hands over his mouth to keep from shouting out.  Chris…was making out…with Karen.  He closed his eyes and counted to ten.  When he opened them, not only had he _not_ imagined it, but they were still going at it.  Julian shook his head.

“Nn, nn, nn.   This is not good.  We might have to stage an intervention.”

  He continued on his trek, still trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed when he saw Eun-hee.  She was dancing with another guy.  It was someone he didn’t really recognize so he must not be in their grade.  He scowled.  He thought she was happy that she hadn’t come with another guy.  That meant she should spend the entire night guy free.  Then a bad feeling washed over him.  Had she seen his little performance with Riley too?  It would suck trying to explain that to her.

He felt like a stalker as he watched them dance.  It was stiff and a little bit like a junior high school kind of dance.  Of course, all of their dances tended to be that way since the younger grades were allowed to attend a lot of the same events as the older grades.  The only real exception was prom.  It made Julian feel a little better.  If he didn’t know who Eun-hee was, based on their dancing, he would have assumed they were in seventh or eighth grade.  So, this guy wasn’t much competition.  He knew he should go find Riley, but he needed to get one more dance in with Eun-hee before the end of the night.  Especially if he was going to have to explain Riley.  He’d save Laney for another day.  Then the DJ announced it was the last song.  Perfect.  Riley was probably going to be pissed with him, but he walked quickly up to Eun-hee and smiled at her, completely ignoring the guy standing beside her.  She flashed the other guy a quick smile and then took his hand.  Julian led her a little away from the underclassmen and they started to dance together.  Julian didn’t say anything at first.  It didn’t seem that she had seen him dance with Riley; otherwise she might not have been so eager to dance with him.  Unless that underclassmen had been really sketchy.

“Um, Julian?” She looked up at him and then shyly looked away.  Then she took in a breath and looked up to meet his eyes.  He could tell she was forcing herself to be confident.  “So, you like me, right?”

He nodded, smiling enigmatically.  He wasn’t trying to be an asshole, but he wasn’t going to make this easy for her either.

“Okay.  And I like you.  Like.  A lot.”

He moved an arm and lightly brushed his hand over her short curls to let her know he liked what she was saying.  Her eyes brightened with happiness even though she seemed a little flustered now.

“Okay.  So, we like each other.  As has been previously established.  Um.  I guess what I’m saying is, I kind of want to be more than just friends who like each other.”

Julian nodded.  “I really agree.  We should go out on a date.”

“Yeah.  A date.”

Her nerves finally failed her and she looked away from him.  She moved closer and pressed the side of her face to his chest.  She had successfully hidden herself from him, but they were still intimately connected.  Now really wasn’t the time to bring up Laney, but was he deliberately misinterpreting her suggestion on how to change their relationship?  Had she meant they should be boyfriend and girlfriend?  He had merely mentioned a date.  It was so hard these days for people to simply date.  It seemed like the belief was that if you were dating someone it had to be exclusive.  But that’s not really what dating was.  Would Eun-hee understand that?  Even if she didn’t, she’d have to hear it from him directly first.  If one of her friends said they saw him out with Laney, she might think of it as “cheating” and not want to see him anymore.  Sometimes he had to agree with the adults and think that kids grew up too fast.  What was the point of getting into serious, long-term, monogamous relationships when you were fifteen years old?  It seemed like a dumb idea to him, but he’d been told on more than one occasion that his view of the world didn’t exactly mesh with that of reality.

 _Oh well_ , he shrugged mentally.  It was clear what he was doing in his head.  He’d try to make it clear for her, but if they had a misunderstanding, well these things happened.  Julian had an unobstructed view over the top of Eun-hee’s head, so he looked around to see if he could spot any of his friends.  Since it was the last song, the dance floor was crowded and he didn’t think he’d be able to see anyone he knew.  Well, cared about.  He saw Antoinette hanging all over her boyfriend.  He didn’t know if he should feel sorry for Scott or not.  They were just fooling round, right?  But Julian knew better.  Scott developed weird attachments to his pencils.  He was certain he’d developed more than an attachment to Antoinette by now.  Did Antoinette know how much she was hurting him?  How much she was hurting Jake even though he didn’t know it?  He stopped pondering the bizarre love triangle as her body language had him confused.  She was staring at something.  And when Jake tried to turn them a little as they swayed, she kept them in the same place, so that she could continue to stare at whatever had her attention.  Julian tried to see what or who she was looking at, but her line of sight was at too obscure an angle for him.  He felt a little worried.  If she was looking that intently at who he thought she was looking at, then Scott was in a lot of trouble.

Then he saw Riley dancing with Nick Tripp.  It was slightly awkward between them, but that was a fairly common occurrence at a school dance.  Good for Riley.  Their plan had been a major success.  He kept his eyes on Nick and tried to make the back of his neck itch.  Nick turned slightly and looked over at him.  When he saw who was staring at him, he went a little white.  Julian gave him a warning glare.  Not a “stay away from my girl” glare, but a “don’t treat my friend like crap” glare.  Nick nodded slightly in acknowledgement.  Riley said something to him and he turned his attention back to her.  And then he seemed to completely forget about Julian.  That actually made Julian happy.  It meant Nick had a genuine interest in Riley.  Hopefully that genuine interest wasn’t the thought that Riley was easy and would put out.  Neither he nor Riley had quite thought of that outcome.  But Riley was a big girl.  She could make decisions about that kind of thing herself.

When the song ended Julian escorted Eun-hee off the dance floor by holding her hand.  He waited with her by the bleachers where coats and purses had been thrown until her friend came to retrieve her.  They set up a time for their first date.  Sunday afternoon lunch.  It wasn’t going to be the best relationship outside of school; Eun-hee lived in a town on the other side of the city from him.  She’d only been at the country club that day as a guest of her friend.  But they spent most of their time at school anyway, so it wasn’t like it was really a long distance relationship or anything.  Or a relationship at all he had to remind himself.  They were simply “dating.”  He wondered how many dates Laney would require they go on until she was satisfied that he had gotten to know her better in a different way.  Probably not until they were married.

He sighed and bounced his crossed leg as he waited for Riley to show up.  He was sitting by her purse, so she had to come see him.  The place was clearing out fast because the chaperones were herding them quickly toward the exit.  He’d seen Scott and Anna head out earlier, completely oblivious to him.  He hadn’t even seen Liz and Will.  They must be long gone.  Chris looked like he would have come over and said something, but Laney had a firm grip on his hand and was practically dragging him out of the gym.  She looked very determined.  And a determined Laney was a dangerous thing.  He wondered what she was planning.

Finally Riley came up to him.  She was walking with Nick and they dropped hands as they neared him, but he saw the movement.  Julian remained sitting on the bleachers, bouncing his leg, and waited for them to stammer out their request that Nick be allowed to take Riley home.  It took them a couple minutes to get around to the point, and he didn’t help at all.  He just sat and bounced his leg and smiled.  At last they managed to ask if it was okay and if he minded.  He of course assured them that he was fine with it, that they should have fun, but not too much fun.  He gave Nick another warning look.  Nick almost looked like he might change his mind simply because he didn’t want to date one of Julian’s friends.  He might melt his brain after all.  Riley just hid her smile.  She gave Julian’s hand a squeeze as she reached for her purse and he gave her a wink in return.

Now he was one of five people left in the gym.  Time to go.  He got up and wandered out of the gym.  It was strange; he had come to the dance with someone and had two different girls ready and willing to date him, and yet he was still leaving the dance alone.  That was sad.  It was really sad.  It made his chest tighten up and he felt tears sting his eyes.  He looked up at the sky to keep them from falling down his cheeks.  He knew he wasn’t really sad about the girl situation.  He was still upset from earlier in the night when he had started thinking morbid things about his parents.

It was a really bad sign if the depression hadn’t left him by now.  He needed to call one of his friends to talk about it.  But who?  He couldn’t disturb Scott because Anna might be trying to make her move tonight.  And maybe Chris had made plans with Karen afterwards?  That would be a good meeting to interrupt, but he had to take Laney home and it would be a while before he got back to his townhouse.  And Will…Julian refused to think what he was doing.  That would only make him even more depressed.  He glanced at his watch.  It was only 10:30.  That wasn’t terribly late.  Maybe he could make an emergency visit to Dr. Gorman.  Would she mind?  Maybe.  But hopefully she’d understand that he needed help tonight.  He was really feeling down for some reason.  He could never explain why some days were worse than others, but sometimes they were bad enough that he didn’t want to be alone.

Julian left his car in the school parking lot and headed for the metro.  He was pretty certain her building was near the transfer station.  Once he was topside again, he glanced around, trying to remember which building was hers.  He knew it was fancy, but there were a lot of fancy buildings in this particular section of the city.  He saw that the crossing signal across the street was a bright orange hand, so he stopped by the edge of the curb and looked up and around, trying to see if there was something that might trigger his memory.  He took a step back and found the edge of the curb.  His ankle twisted to the side and he pitched to his left, headlong into the street.  A car speeding down the road changed lanes and Julian saw nothing but headlights.  Then he felt a jolt as something grabbed his arm and a dull ringing sound that coincided with a sharp pain in his head.  He had totally hit his head on a lamppost.  But that was certainly better than having it squished under a car tire, right?

Julian shook his head to clear his vision and turned in confusion to look at his arm.  He was sitting upright on the curb, but it was above his head.  He was pretty certain he wasn’t holding it up, so something must have a hold of it.  He followed the line of his arm up until he saw the hand around his wrist.  Then he followed the arm attached to the hand up past a shoulder and neck to the face of the man that had saved him.  He blinked a couple times.  He knew this man.  But from where?

The man dropped his wrist and his arm fell heavily to his side.  The man pulled out a cigarette, lit up, and took a long drag.  “You should really watch where you’re going, kid.”  The man exhaled a thick column of smoke.

“Rylan Treviño,” Julian murmured.

The man took another drag of his cigarette and had an unhappy expression on his face.  “Do I know you?”

“We met a couple weeks ago,” Julian said, still dazed, “You gave me your card.”

Rylan Treviño’s brow creased in displeased confusion.  “You look a little young and a lot poor for me to have given you my card.”

“Um, yeah, I—”

Julian started to stand up.  His left hand was bruised and cut up from the pebbles and broken glass that was on the street.  He didn’t remember catching himself when he fell off the curb.  It had happened so fast.  He grimaced and held his hand as he stood up.  Then he pitched to the side again as his ankle gave out on him.  Rylan stopped him from falling out into the street again.  He hadn’t felt the pain in his ankle either until just now.  He had managed to really hurt himself.

“You been drinking, kid?”

“What?  No.  I twisted my ankle, that’s all.”  Julian tried to sit down because the pain in his ankle and his head was making him feel dizzy and a little nauseous.  The man kept a hold of his upper arm and forced him to remain standing.  He propped him up against the lamppost and then knelt beside him.  Julian rested his head against the pole and took in a few deep breaths.  Rylan pushed his pant leg up and gently pulled down on his sock.  Julian tried not to flinch or pull away.

“This looks pretty bad,” Rylan said standing up.  “It’s already swelling.”  He sighed in utter disgust.  “Come on.  I’ll help you get to a hospital.”

“No, that’s okay,” Julian said, waving him off.  “I’ll be fine.”

Rylan was using his tongue to play with the cigarette between his lips.  He was looking at Julian like he was something mildly interesting, but nothing he wanted to get too involved with.

“You sure about that?”

“Yep.”

“So, then, why don’t you cross the street?  The light’s turned.”

“I will,” Julian said defensively.  “Once you’ve left and I don’t have to have you watch me limp and crawl my way to the metro.”

“Mm-hmm.  Just let me take you to the hospital.  It’s not far.”

“What’s the point?  It’s not remotely life threatening.  I’ll be stuck waiting there for hours.”

“True, but then I’ll feel as if I’ve fulfilled my obligation.  So, hours of waiting for you sounds acceptable to me.”

Julian let out a half-laugh.  He looked at Rylan.  “Thanks.  I can feel your concern.  But I can’t go anyway.  I don’t have any insurance.”

Rylan ground his cigarette out on the lamppost by Julian’s head, but rather than tossing the butt onto the ground, he put it in his pocket.  It made Julian raise an eyebrow.  Rylan didn’t seem to the type to care if he littered.

“So, you’re one of the poor families that have fallen through the privatized health care cracks, huh?”

Julian looked at the ground.  It was none of this man’s business.  “My parents died a few months ago.”  He couldn’t stop himself from talking.  Why did he feel the need to explain himself?  “Their insurance policy only covered a further three months.  And I haven’t gotten around to buying my own yet.”

Julian looked up.  The man was busy lighting another cigarette.  He wondered if he had even paid attention to him while he revealed his inner pain.  Not that he cared if he did.  Rylan put his lighter up and looked extremely annoyed as he took a deep drag of the cigarette.  The end flared bright red for a moment and then dulled to a soft orange.  He let the smoke out of his mouth and somehow looked even more irritated.

“Damn.  I should have let that car hit you.”

Julian wasn’t sure how to respond, so he didn’t.

“Now that I’m involved I can’t just let you wander off by yourself.  Come with me.”

“Where?”

“To my condo.  I’ll get you some ice and some aspirin.  And maybe I’ll let you wash off that hand.  It’s not that far.  You can probably make it.”

Julian gave him an incredulous look.  Did this man really expect him to follow a complete stranger to his home?  A stranger who ran a sketchy business and seemed like he would have preferred Julian’s death to actually having to help him?  Julian tilted his head as he looked at him.  He was wearing casual clothes, but he still looked sharp and stylish.  He had a dour expression on, and Julian was pretty certain it wasn’t just a mask he wore, but he wasn’t getting any bad vibes from him.  In fact, he felt attracted to him.  Not in a physical sense, but by his presence.  Julian knew his “sense” about people wasn’t foolproof, but with a feeling this strong, he was certain he could trust Rylan.

Rylan frowned at him.  “Look kid, my sense of good will is even shorter than my attention span.”

Julian smiled.  “Okay.  I’m coming.”

He pushed off the lamppost and gingerly took a step on his left foot.  Rylan hooked an arm around his upper back and took most of his weight onto his body.  Julian didn’t have to put hardly any pressure on his left ankle during the two block walk to Rylan’s building.  Though he did keep glancing around at the people who passed them on the way.  What were they thinking when they saw them together?  Did he look drunk?  Did he just look like he was injured?  Did it look the two of them were heading somewhere to do something illicit?  But why would they think that?  They didn’t know what Rylan’s occupation was…or maybe they did.  Maybe it was known throughout the city that he was a giant pimp.  Julian wasn’t sure why he was being so self-conscious.  He never cared what other people thought of him or what he was doing.  But for some reason it seemed a little weird to be seen with a man who sold other people’s bodies for a living.

Rylan’s building was just as posh and swanky as Dr. Gorman’s.  He wondered if it was the same building.  Rylan used a key card to get inside the main door and the front lobby didn’t look familiar.  It must be a different place.  There was a young, pretty woman sitting at the front desk.  She was talking on her cell phone, but immediately put it down when they came in.  However, it wasn’t because she’d been caught talking at work.  She was smiling at Rylan and leaning forward so that her cleavage filled in the low cut of her shirt.  Julian felt like he was in some sitcom where the horny teenager can’t take his eyes off the busty chick.

“Hello, Rylan,” she said with perfect familiarity.

“Hello, Poppy.”

_Poppy?  Who names their kid Poppy?_

“You know, you keep bringing these young, pretty boys home and I’m gonna get jealous.”

Julian raised an eyebrow.  Did Rylan have an employee discount?

“You have nothing to worry about,” Rylan said.  He gave Julian a disapproving look and then turned back to Poppy.  “Trust me.”

Julian almost took offense.  Why did this guy think he wasn’t good enough?  He was very attractive to both genders.  He was certain of it.  Julian groused over Rylan’s obvious distaste for him as they headed for the elevator.

“Oh, Rylan, wait.”

They turned back and Poppy bounced out from behind her desk.  She may have been walking but the parts that Julian was looking at were bouncing.  She was holding a note out to Rylan.

“Someone stopped by earlier and dropped off this message.”

Rylan took the message, thanked her, and helped Julian onto the elevator.  He let go of Julian to open his message, but Julian remained leaning against him.  His ankle was throbbing.  And he was nosy.  He glanced over at the paper.  Rylan was smiling wryly at the message.  It said, “I appreciate your willingness to give me free product samples, but please check with me first to make sure my schedule is clear.  Or that I won’t have company over when the product arrives.  Like, say, my boss or something.  You colossal twat.  --KJW.”

Rylan chuckled and slid the note into his pocket.  Julian looked up at him.  He was surprised that he had to.  Being six feet tall there weren’t many people that he had to physically look up to in order to make eye contact.  Rylan was probably around six and a half feet tall.

“So, you sell stuff other than people?”

“I—”  Rylan cut off in annoyance and then let out a short, aggravated sigh.  “I don’t sell people.  I sell memberships.”

“So what was he trying for free?”

“Nosy, aren’t we?”

The elevators doors opened.

“Yes.”

Rylan dragged him off into the hall.

“So, what was he trying?”  Julian lowered his voice.  “Sex toys?  You give those out for free to clients?”

“I certainly never give anything away for free to clients.  They’re clients because they pay.  Some people may think that offering a free sample will get people to become paying customers.  I’ve always found it to be true that if you want to make money, you need to charge people money for the things you sell.”

“I see.”

Rylan stopped by a door at the end of the hall and dug some keys out of his pocket.  The number on the door was 17012.  They must be on the 17th floor.  Didn’t Dr. Gorman live on the 17th floor too?

“So, what was it?  A vibrating dildo?  Flavored condoms?  Ooo!  Edible underwear.  I’ve always heard of that stuff but does it really exist?”

Rylan got his door open and dragged Julian inside.  He instantly forgot all his questions.  The place was huge and expensively decorated.  The kitchen, dining room, and living room were all in the front, but they were so spread out and so large it was hard to believe it wasn’t actually a house or something.  There was a hall leading toward the back where the bedrooms must be.  Julian was certain there had to be more than one with a space this big.

Rylan dumped him on a chic, stone-colored couch and headed for the kitchen.  Julian looked around.  The entertainment system was off the wall.  Everything was Sony and it was the latest model.  The living room furniture was mostly glass topped, and there wasn’t a single fingerprint anywhere.  The guy had to have a maid.

“Lie back,” Rylan ordered when he returned.

Julian kicked one shoe off and then delicately removed the one from his left foot.  He propped himself up on some pillows, stretching his feet out on the cushions.  Rylan sat by his feet and none too carefully rolled up his pants and yanked his sock off.  Julian barely kept from crying out with pain.  And he did whimper when the ice pack was applied directly to his ankle.  It was so cold.  He tried to reach forward to get it off his skin but Rylan pushed him back.  Then the man sat on the couch and kept his ankle elevated.  Julian flexed his fingers and made funny faces as he adjusted to the cold.  It was several minutes before he became aware of anything but the painful chill around his ankle.

“It was a person.”

Julian looked up. “Huh?”

“The product I sent was a new employee.  I needed someone to test drive him for me.”

“Ohhhh.  So, the guy you sent him to is not a client?”

“No.  Just a friend.”

“A ‘special’ friend?”

Rylan laughed softly.  “No.  Not anymore.”

“Ah.  But it was your decision.”

Rylan looked sharply at him.  “What do you mean?”

“It was your decision to end it.  So, you feel like you have to wait for him to re-start it.”

“That’s not it at all.”  His denial was too fast and way too defensive.

“Oh.”

Julian left it at that and Rylan gave him an unpleasant look before he got up.  He piled up a couple throw pillows and let Julian’s foot fall onto them.  He started to disappear down the hall.

“I’m going to get some ointment and a bandage for your hand and head.”

“Okay.  Thanks.”

“And it does exist by the way,” his voice floated from down the hall.  “Edible underwear.”

Julian grinned as he settled back against the pillow.  He laced his fingers together on top of his chest and exhaled slowly.  He stared at one of the track lights that illuminated a dark-colored abstract painting.  The painting kept going in and out of focus, but it wasn’t because it was abstract.  He was having trouble keeping his eyelids up.  He didn’t know why he was suddenly so tired.  He figured it wouldn’t hurt to close them.  Even if he fell asleep, Rylan would wake him up when he returned with the bandages.

 

Saturday, September 17, 2005

 

Julian shifted against his pillow.  He felt something cool against his lip.  He must be drooling.  He raised a hand and wiped his mouth.  Then he settled back into the pillow.  But he couldn’t get comfortable again.  It wasn’t a normal pillow.  It had stiff corners and tassels.  He turned over to find a different pillow and found that he was blocked on one side.  He opened his eyes and saw the back of an unfamiliar couch.  He turned the other way and saw a very unfamiliar room.  Where the hell was he?  Maybe he should start with where he had been last night.  That might explain his current location.  He remembered going to the dance, and then he decided to go to Dr. Gorman’s.  Was this Dr. Gorman’s apartment?  That couldn’t possibly be.  It was decorated too tastefully.  He moved again and felt his sore ankle.  That’s right; he never made it to Dr. Gorman’s.  He’d fallen off a curb and nearly gotten hit by a car.  He’d been saved by the proprietor of Blue Boy, a male escort company.  And then went with him to his condo.  Julian bolted upright and looked around the apartment.  It was bright and sunny.  Had he spent the night here?  Obviously.  He looked down at his ankle.  It had been bandaged and the ice pack was now warm and squishy.

“Oh good,” a deep voice said, “You didn’t die during the night.”

Julian looked up and saw Rylan enter the room.  He didn’t stop to address him further but continued on into the kitchen.  Julian raised his hand to feel his head, but paused.  His hand had been bandaged too.  He could tell by the way his forehead wasn’t moving quite right that there was a bandage up there as well.  He moved his eyes so he could see Rylan.  He was wearing a suit and tie sans the jacket.  His shirt wasn’t tight on him, but Julian could see his back muscles rippling under the fabric.

“Did we have sex?” Julian called out.

Rylan didn’t react to the question.  He just finished pouring his coffee and then took a seat at his stylish dinette set that was casual enough to be used for breakfast, but could be dressed up for formal dinners.  He eyed Julian as he stirred something into his coffee.  He took the spoon out, wiped it gently on the lip of the cup, and then set it down neatly on a napkin.  He picked up the mug and took a sip without looking away from Julian.  Julian got the impression that he would have preferred to have a cigarette.  When he was done with his sip, he set the mug down and gave Julian a patronizing look.

“Please.  You’re injured, underage, and you’re not really my type.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

Julian stood up from the couch, fully clothed minus his shoes and one sock.  He found that while his ankle was tender, he could walk on it easily enough.  He went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee.  He could tell by the smell that it had been made really strong so he added cream and sugar.  And Rylan had real cream in his refrigerator.  Julian hobbled over to the table and sat down.  He sipped his coffee and tried not to look sheepishly at Rylan.  He hadn’t meant to sound accusatory.

“Do you normally sleep that heavily?” Rylan asked as he started to go through the morning paper.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, after I came back with the bandages, you wouldn’t wake up.  And you didn’t even stir while I bandaged you.  I actually wondered if you had a concussion or something.  But I figured I’d wait until morning to see if you woke up or not.”

“And if I hadn’t?” Julian asked with shocked amusement.

“One of my clients is pretty high up on the police force.  He would have helped smooth things over.  I mean, you don’t have parents, right?  Who would be pressing charges?”

Julian rolled his eyes and sat back into the chair.  This guy was unbelievable.  “I actually have a very good friend whose mother is a hardcore, scary lawyer.  They might.”

“One of the DA’s is also a client of mine.”

Julian grinned.  “Do you have clients in high places everywhere?”

“Not yet,” he said nonchalantly, turning a page.  “But I’m thinking about running some of my boys’ extracurricular appointments through the company.  And maybe hiring some boys that will take on female clientele exclusively.”

“Oh, yeah?” Julian mused, trying not to formulate an idea.  His stomach grumbled.

“There’re some croissants in the box on the counter.”

Julian got up and helped himself to buttery, flakey goodness.  Then he sat back down at the table.  Rylan was looking at the stocks section.  He didn’t know that page was actually comprehensible.

“How much does someone make as an escort anyway?  It should be good, right?  To risk jail time.”

“It’s not illegal to be an escort.  It’s illegal to exchange money for sex.”

Julian munched on his croissant.  Rylan still seemed focused on the paper.  Julian waved a hand in the air.  “Right.  And…?”

“I don’t charge my clients for sexual services.  Blue Boy is a club.  A gentleman’s club if you will.  A client pays his membership fee for the year and then he can come to the club and enjoy a sanctuary.  A sanctuary where he can smoke cigars and drink brandy without the pressures of life bearing down on him.”

“And enjoy the company of your employees.”

“Yes, my clients do enjoy having someone attractive being attentive and listening to what they have to say.”

“Isn’t that ordinarily what their wives would do?”

Rylan’s lips twitched, but he kept his smile back.  “Sometimes you need an impartial ear.”

“Okay.  So they go to the club.  They smoke, they drink, they talk.  When do they fornicate?”

“Well, certainly not on my property or on my employees’ time.  Occasionally a client will ask to meet one of my employees somewhere if they can’t make it down to the club that day.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“And if they enjoy their time together and consensually decide to engage in sexual intercourse, well that’s their business and has nothing to do with Blue Boy.”

“You are so full of horseshit.  You schedule when and with whom your employees have sex.”

“I most certainly do not.”  Rylan met Julian’s eyes and gave him a little smile.  “That would be illegal.”

Julian laughed and eyed the box of croissants on the counter.  Rylan gestured for him to get another and pulled out the business section of the paper.  Once Julian returned with another croissant, he made himself comfortable.  He wanted to know more about this business.

“You never answered my question,” Julian got out around a mouthful of pastry.  “How much do they make for being ‘friends’ with your clients?”

“It varies depending on experience and time of service, but the average salary is $40, 000 a year.”

“Wow.  Well, that sounds like a lot to me, but it’s probably not that much if you actually live within the city limits.”

“Their salary is what _I_ pay them.  They make anywhere from fifty to five hundred dollars in tips per night.  My top escorts make over $100,000 a year.”

“Holy beejeezus.  Just for smiling, laughing at bad jokes, and having sex?”

“Yep.  Pretty much.  And they get pampered too.  They get nice dinners and spa treatments and other material bonuses.”

“Hmm.”  Julian rubbed his chin.  He could think of some downsides to the job, but they weren’t outweighing the benefits as far as he could tell.  “So, how does one go about becoming an escort?”

“Forget it,” he said flatly.  “I told you, I’m not currently hiring.”

“But I need money.  Something that pays well but doesn’t take up a lot of time.  Maybe I could do it part time?”

Rylan finally stopped reading the newspaper.  He looked Julian hard in the eyes.  “You would have sex with men?”

Julian hesitated.  That was a question.  He shrugged.  “I’m rather indifferent to gender.”  _Sort of_.

“Uh-huh.  Not that it matters because I would _never_ hire a minor.”

“I got emancipated after my parents died.  I’m legally an adult.  And I’m going to be 18 in November.”

“I don’t employ anyone under the age of 21 for obvious reasons.  And even if I did, I still wouldn’t hire ‘teenagers.’  If a client comes in asking for one, I can honestly say we don’t have any.  Then I can also send him packing.  It’s one thing to be kinky and quite another to be perverted.”

Julian raised an eyebrow.  Was Rylan Treviño really one to talk?

“So, you can come back when you’re 21.  Maybe by then I’ll have the female side of the business up and running and you can work for me then.  And actually be useful to me and not get me nothing but complaints from my clients saying that you’re grossed out by their sexual advances.”

“Oh come on,” Julian whined.  “Isn’t there _something_ I can do?  Just to get my foot in the door?  Like answer phones or something?”

“I already have a receptionist.”

“Yeah, I met him.  So, don’t you need someone to answer phones and stuff?”

“Why don’t you get a regular job?  Like at a video game store.  Or one of those poorly lit, trendy stores that teenagers like with the loud music blaring.”

Julian shrugged and turned his mug around on the table with his index fingers.  “Working for you seems more interesting.”

“Well, that’s certainly true.”

Julian watched his fingers turn his mug in circles slowly.  Rylan wasn’t speaking, but he could still feel his attention on him.  Julian looked up and Rylan was scrutinizing him like a proposed new product line.

“You know,” Rylan mused, “maybe you could be a test dummy.”

“Um…could you explain that before I jump to the wrong conclusions?”

Rylan smiled.  “My current test dummy is turning 21 soon and wants to switch jobs.  You could take his place.”

“Again, can you fill me in on what the job entails?”

“I thought you were ready and willing to have sex with men.  How could this job be any worse?”

Julian flushed.  Busted.  “Well, I.  I mean.”  He sighed.  “So, what would I do?”

“You would interview new clients.  I put them through a rigorous application process.  I don’t like weirdoes.  You could help me weed out the sketchy ones.  You seem to have a…sense about you.”

Julian found himself focusing more intently on Rylan and infinitely more intrigued by him.  “I do,” Julian said, knowing he sounded a bit like a puppy as he did so.  “People usually don’t believe me or think I’m just being new-agey when I say I really do get ‘vibes’ from people.  And I’m always right.”

“Always?”

“Usually.  You must have it too if you can sense it in me.”

“No, I’m just very good at reading people and predicting their actions and reactions.  It’s a little different.”

“So…do I have a job?”

Rylan looked at him with consternation.  He sighed and shook his head.

“Yeah, I guess you do.”

“Really?  I’m hired?!  Awesome!”

“Yeah, yeah.  Write your number down and I’ll give you a call when I have your first job.”  He took a sip of his coffee and his eyebrow twitched as Julian did a little dance in his chair.  “You need cab fare?” he groused.

Julian took Rylan’s subtle hint and hopped out of the chair.  “Nope,” he said as he headed into kitchen.  He’d seen a pad and paper hanging on the refrigerator earlier and he grabbed it before going back to the table.  “My car is at my school.  I can take the metro back there.  My ankle is feeling much better.  Oh.”  Julian finished writing his name and number down and slid it over to Rylan.  “Thanks, for what you did last night.  I don’t think I thanked you.”

“You didn’t.”  Rylan looked at the paper.  “Julian March.  Julian.”

When he said his name, Julian felt it like a finger trailing down his back.

“Okay then.  I’ll give you a call.  Now scram.”

“Okay.  Sure thing.  Boss.”

Julian laughed and hopped on one foot over to the couch to get his sock and shoes.  Once he had them on he waved to Rylan as he headed out the door.  The man pretended not to see him.  Julian smiled.  That was so cute.


	11. Chapter 11

Sunday, September 25, 2005

 

Liz

 

Liz held up the blue earring to her ear, and then the silver.  She switched them back and forth a few times before throwing them both back in her jewelry case in disgust.  She started to root through her dozens of other pairs of earrings.  Why was it that she had so much jewelry and yet nothing was ever what she wanted?  And why was she even worked up about looking perfect today?  She was going to meet her friends for lunch like she did almost every weekend.  She sighed and dropped the five earrings in her hands back into the box.  She knew what the problem was.  She pulled off her shirt and threw it onto the bed.  As she stood in front of her overstuffed closet she crossed her arms under her breasts and knew exactly why she was worried about going.

It was going to be weird.  It felt weird for her to be around Will.  And it felt even weirder because it wasn’t weird for anybody else.  They had all reverted back to the relationships they’d had before.  Before Will had started acting interested in her again, before Anna had come part way out of the Scott closet, before Julian had figured out the way Laney felt about him.  Everyone was pretending like the past few weeks hadn’t happened.  What were they all so scared of?  Of their relationships changing?  Of the group dynamic changing?  Things changed, life happened.  It wasn’t something you could wish away or hope that things stayed simpler.  Why was she the only one who seemed capable, or ready, to acknowledge that?

Will especially was having that problem.  Why couldn’t he just come out and tell her the truth whatever it may be?  He did call her the day after like he had promised and they did talk about what they had experienced together that night.  But he wouldn’t talk about why he left.  He hadn’t even brought it up; she’d had to.  He’d apologized again and sounded very sincere and contrite when he did.  She did believe him when he said he was sorry for leaving her like that.  Not for leaving her, just for leaving her the way he did.  And what had she really expected?  For them to spend the night together and wake up in each other’s arms with the sun shining and birds singing?  Kind of, yes.  She admitted to herself that that had been the fantasy she’d pictured when she’d planned the evening.  She’d known all along it wouldn’t happen that way.  In fact, she wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he hadn’t stayed the night without the mysterious exigent circumstances.  If they’d just talked a little bit afterwards, maybe done it again, and then he’d left, she would have thought nothing of it.  That was just Will.  But he left so abruptly and in such a panic that she knew something was up.

Liz picked a pink baby doll shirt out of the closet and pulled it over her head as she headed back for her jewelry box.  She was now past the point of being humiliated and rejected.  She was now determined to figure out what had affected Will that way.  No, not what… _who_.  She was positive it was a who.  He had left her to go see someone.  He was seeing someone and she had to figure out who the tramp was.  And why he was being so secretive about it.  The boys didn’t know about it either.  She wouldn’t be able to say how she knew, she just did.  And if he was even hiding it from the boys, then it must be something big.

So, what did that mean?  A social reject?  It was one thing to dance with one in public, but to go out with one would be something that even Will might be embarrassed to admit.  Or was it one of the lesbians?  Or both?  Was he dating both those skanks behind their backs?  Or maybe he was keeping it hush-hush because there was something socially unacceptable about it.  Like he was dating a terminally ill girl.  Or some retarded chick.  Or maybe it was an older woman.

Liz finished putting on her dangly pink earrings and picked up her pink lip gloss.  She tapped the bottle against her lips.  Now, there was an idea.  An older woman.  That didn’t seem all that unlikely.  She started to apply the lip gloss and then froze in mid-motion.  She met her own startled eyes in the mirror.  That was it!  He’d become a prostitute!  That’s why he’d run out and had something he _had_ to do.  He had to keep an appointment.  She shook her head with a soft laugh.  She finished applying her lip gloss.  That was ridiculous.  Will would never ask for money for sex.  That would be beneath him.  But an older woman was definitely a possibility.  Maybe a girl he dated last year and was now in college?  One of his mother’s business associates?  A teacher?  That would be scandalous and right up Will’s alley.  _Who_ was it?

“Liz!  Hurry up!  If you want a ride to meet your friends, we need to go now!”

“Okay!  I’m coming!”

Liz checked her reflection and then sat on her bed to put on her pink sandals.  She stood up and smoothed the wrinkles out of her white skirt and grabbed her purse from where it was hanging on the bedpost.  She couldn’t stop herself from looking in the mirror one last time.  Why did she care what some jerk who didn’t care about her thought?  She sighed and left her bedroom.  It hurt so much because he _did_ care.  He just didn’t care enough to make her happy.  She had to figure out who this mystery slut was.  You had to know who you were up against if you wanted to have a chance at winning.

Her mother dropped her off at the Johnny Rockets downtown.  She hated the place.  She hated themed restaurants in general and hated them even more if their only fare was greasy hamburgers and lumpy milkshakes.  And she always hated to be seen in one.  And going into one or coming out of one.  She just knew someone would see her and think, “Oh, look where she ate.”  Which was silly.  She knew that.  But she couldn’t help always wondering what other people thought of her.  Let all the after school specials in the world tell her that what really mattered was what she thought of herself; other people’s opinions meant something to her.  And she didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing.

Inside the restaurant The Shangri-Las were singing about the leader of the pack.  Her friends were in a large circular booth in the corner.  And they were all there.  She’d been beaten by Anna and Scott.  A fact that no one seemed willing to let slide by.  So, she blamed it on her mother, which was technically true.  Her mother had said they couldn’t leave before 1:00.  Never mind that they didn’t leave until 1:15 because she’d been changing her clothes.  She shooed Will over and squeezed onto the end of the seat.  She reluctantly took the catsup stained menu from Will and watched Scott, Anna, Julian, and Riley fight over the table jukebox.  This was another reason she hated Johnny Rockets.  Those dorks always made a scene.  She looked at Laney who sat across from her.  She was looking at the four dorks in much the same way.

“So, what’s going on?” Liz asked her.

“We, well, _they_ were just talking about the college days you guys get to take this year.  You know, when to do it and where you’ll go.  And then we started watching this report.”

Laney pointed to the television that was mounted in the corner nearest to them.  There was a middle-aged, mole-covered man talking to a camera while a shiny number five twirled in the corner.

“What is it?” Liz asked.

“It’s so stupid,” Riley gave her unsolicited opinion.

“It’s a segment the local news is doing,” Chris said in order to have something other than the jukebox squabblers to focus on.  “They’re counting down the most eligible bachelors in the city.”

“Why always the bachelors?” asked Scott, momentarily distracted from trying to beat the others in shoving a quarter into the slot for the jukebox.  “Why not the most eligible bachelorettes?”

“Because by ‘eligible’ they mean rich,” Julian said.

“And women only get rich by marrying rich men,” Will finished for him.

The girls all made offended noises and Will got swatted by both Liz and Anna who sat on either side of him.

“Well, even if there are eligible women, who would want them?” Liz asked.  “Just like the men.  I mean,” she looked at number five again, “they must all be old, wrinkly men, right?”

“No, it’s not a wealthiest people list,” Laney said, “it’s actual eligible bachelors.  So, they’re not the richest of the rich, but they’re young.  Ish.”

“Well, are any of them at least cute?”

“Not really.  Number was seven was okay.”

“Are you kidding?” Anna jumped in.  “Number seven was frickin’ hot.”

“Number seven was not hot,” Scott said, almost looking like he might be jealous.  “He was weird looking.”

“No, number five was weird looking,” Laney said, “number seven was all right.”

“I think nine was scary,” said Julian.

“Yeah, with the nose?” Scott asked.

“Are you sure he wasn’t just Jewish?” Will asked.

“Maybe,” said Laney.  “But that doesn’t explain the gross attached earlobes.”

“Hey,” Chris muttered, his hands going to his ears, “What’s wrong with attached earlobes?”

Liz laughed.  She loved her friends.  She glanced at Will and he was leaning across Scott and Anna to peer at Chris’ ears.  They were all inspecting them and he slid down into his seat; a little color spreading across his cheeks.  Liz shook her head, smiling, and looked back at the TV.  Number three was a plain looking man who was a partner in a Fortune 500 company.

“I know they’re not all that attractive,” Laney said, “but they are really rich.  Why are they still single?”

“They’re workaholics,” Will said, returning to his seat.

“Exactly,” Liz agreed.  “Even if you did marry them, they wouldn’t pay attention to you.”

“So, don’t marry them,” Laney shrugged.  “Just date them.  They’ll shower you with gifts and then you can cut them loose if things get serious.”

Everyone looked at her and Liz noticed that Julian seemed particularly unnerved by Laney’s child-like logic.

“You scare me sometimes,” Julian told Laney.

“So, _anyway_ ,” Scott said, drawing attention away from the TV, “I was telling you all about my parents’ latest drama when I was so rudely interrupted by the threat of Billy Idol.”

“Buddy Holly,” Julian corrected him disdainfully.

“ _Whatever_.  So, anyway…”

Liz felt her eyes drawn to Will, like they always were every two to three minutes when he was in the same room as her.  His eyelashes were so long.  And he always made the perfect facial expressions.  It was like he seemed to know how much to smile and how much he could move his face before it would stop being cute or start being unattractive.  Or maybe he was unaware of it.  Maybe he just always looked perfect.  Even when he expressed uglier emotions, he always looked beautiful.  Nothing hurt worse than having something that beautiful look at you with irritation or exasperation.  At least she’d never really seen him angry with her.  Or hating her.  He probably didn’t have that range of emotion anyway.  Like and dislike; those were things he could express.  Hate and love were probably beyond his grasp.  So, why did she love him?

How could someone look at him and _not_ love him?  He was painfully beautiful.  And he was always the best to look at when he was happy, like he was now.  Though something was different about him.  His happiness seemed more…genuine somehow.

She looked away from him.  Someone did that to him.  Someone made him actually feel that happiness he always exuded.  She needed to find out who.  And she needed to be certain that she was right before she confronted him or enlisted any help from the others.  She was definitely going to need the boys’ help in order to figure out _exactly_ who this hussy was, but she wasn’t going to say anything unless she was positive he really did have a secret someone.  After all, it could just be that he was freaked out by what had happened between them.  Maybe he hadn’t been ready for sex.  He was so mature in some ways, but some things still had to scare him.  But, that didn’t seem quite right.  It was also entirely possible that he didn’t care about her at all and had “rekindled” their relationship in order to dump his pesky virginity.  That hurt too much to even consider.  Plus, while Will was a self-absorbed, insensitive twit, he wasn’t cruel.  Liz needed to believe that there was another woman.  But who?

She looked at Will again.  She sucked in a breath and shifted her lower half, feeling a little tingly.  Will was playing with his straw, his tongue running over the end of it and licking off the drippy white milkshake.  Liz felt a little dirty for getting turned on by the sight, so she tried to find something else to focus on.  She followed Will’s line of sight over to the television in the corner.

“Whoa, Laney,” Liz said, sitting up straighter, “check out number one.”

She could tell everyone at the table turned to look.  Number one was someone who actually deserved the title of most eligible bachelor.  He was young and movie star handsome.  And if he was on the list, he must be rich.  He was a little different from the others on the list; he didn’t seem to be aware of the camera being on him in the various clips they showed and he never fully faced the camera.  He must have actually been working.  Then they switched over to the newscaster and had a picture of the man in the corner.  His smile was to die for.

“Our number one truly is a number one.  He’s the CEO of a top-ranked investment firm and part of the Q*West dynasty.  He’s never been married and his hobbies include reading and fast cars.  So, he’ll be willing to curl up with you in front of the fire place, but also be able to take you for the ride of your life.  This combined with his classic good looks and genuinely friendly and outgoing personality makes Ken J. West our _most_ eligible bachelor.”

“Now, _that_ I would be willing to risk a lifetime of being ignored for,” Laney said.

The group laughed and turned away from the TV.  As far as Liz could tell they had gone back to talking about Scott’s whacked out parents.  But Liz lost focus again and looked at Will.  He was smiling at his milkshake.  Liz narrowed her eyes.  He was thinking about that mystery someone _right now_.

But who was it?  Who could it be?


	12. Chapter 12

Monday, October 3, 2005

 

Julian

 

Julian rolled his tongue over his lip ring.  His tongue ring grazed the roof of his mouth.  It didn’t give the same sensation it used to; he’d gotten acclimated to it over the years.  Maybe he should get a piercing through the tip of his tongue.  He’d heard that tongue piercings were good for oral sex, but the one he currently had was more for fellatio.  Since he was most likely going to spend most of his time in the company of females, he might should invest in a piercing that would do _them_ some good.

Julian slouched further down on the hard, concrete bench.  The public service announcement across from him was warning about the dangers of herpes.  If ever there was a deterrent for oral sex, that was it.  No fair.  Why did he have to live in an age when people had to be worried about those kinds of things all the time?  It really put a damper on exploratory, recreational sex.  He scowled and kicked a small pebble.  It skittered across the coarse tile of the platform and then fell onto the tracks.  Like he knew anything about exploratory, recreational sex anyway.  He was totally the only virgin still left amongst his friends.  Girls excluded.  He was positive Will had done it with Liz the night of the dance.  If he hadn’t, he would still be treating her like he might date her again.  But he’d gone back to treating her like a friend.  Which was some comfort to Julian in that he now knew that Liz meant nothing to him.  But someday somebody would and Julian would lose him forever.  But, did he really want a forever relationship with Will?  Friendship, of course, went without saying.  But what about the other?  Did he honestly believe they would ever have a romantic relationship?  Would that be something he even wanted?  He liked girls.  He liked being with them.  He wanted to get married and have a family.  Would he really give all that up for an emotionally stunted egomaniac?

“Hey, Julian!”

Julian looked up at the sound of Will’s voice.  His friend was passing through the turnstiles of the metro entrance and kind of hopping toward him.  Julian half-smiled.  When Will was excited he could never just walk anywhere.  Julian bit his lip.  Will was looking kind of slutty today.  His jeans were slung really low on his hips for someone who wasn’t a male model or a cage dancer.  The thick, riveted black belt contrasted sharply with his delicate frame.  The Blink-182 T-shirt he wore was thin and worn.  It was an old one he’d had since middle school and it barely still fit him.  And some might have said it didn’t since it didn’t quite reach the top of his jeans.  He had a green wristband on his left wrist and a thin leather cord with a brass medallion on it around his neck.  Julian’s father had brought it back for him from Thailand.  He was smiling.  Julian knew he would give anything to be with Will.

“What up?” Will asked and plopped beside him on the bench.

“Figuratively or literally?”

Will raised an eyebrow and glanced at Julian’s lap.  There was nothing to see, but he wagged a finger at Julian anyway.

“For shame.  This is supposed to be an educational outing, Julian March.”

“Yeah, educational.”

They laughed.  Calverton gave all the seniors two days during the school year that they could use to visit colleges in order to help the decision making process.  The four of them had all taken the day off listing the city’s university as their destination.  Not one of them had any real intention of applying for admittance, and the school knew that.  But there was nothing they could do about it since their parents had all signed the permission slips.  Or in his case, he had signed his own.  Now they got to take a day off of school and play around in the city.  They had agreed to meet at the metro station at 9:00 and then they would ride in together.  Julian and Will were early.  Chris would be on time.  And Scott…well, when Chris got there they would make bets on just how late he would be.

Julian nudged Will.  “So, why were you thinking dirty thoughts, huh?  I could have meant the sky.”

“You never mean the sky.  And besides, I saw myself in the mirror this morning.  If you’re even half as hot for me as you claim there’s no way I’m not turning you on right now.”

Julian scoffed indignantly and looked away from him.  Little bugger was right.  Julian felt cross with him, so he decided to pick on him.  He turned toward him and draped an arm across the back of the bench.  Then he scooted close, capturing Will against the side of his body.

“So, I’m turned on.  What now?”

“Whatever you want.”

Julian grabbed Will under the chin and forced him to meet his eyes.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Why not?”

Julian moved away from him.  He put his hands on the cool seat of the bench and scowled as he looked at the ground.

“Don’t do that, Will.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t act like you’re all okay with it all of a sudden.  All our lives you always acted skittish and grossed out.  And now for the last few weeks, it’s like you don’t care if I do things to you.  When I know that you do care.  Don’t give me any kind of false hope like that.  It’s a joke for you, but for me it’s cruel.”

“Julian,” Will sighed his name and it sent chills running up and down his body.  “You’re right; I shouldn’t do anything to lead you on.  But, honestly, it just doesn’t bother me like it used to.”

Julian looked at him.  “Why?  Why the sudden change?”

Will looked a lot uneasy and wouldn’t meet his eyes.  “I don’t know.  It just doesn’t seem that important anymore.  You know, when you’re faced with life and death all of sudden you realize that there are more important things in life.  And you manhandling me just isn’t that big a deal anymore.”

“I still don’t understand why—hey!  I do not _manhandle_ you.”

“Excuse me, molest.”

“Wha-?!  I have never—”

“Three days ago.”

“What?”

“Three days ago.  Friday.  In the locker room.  Ringing any bells?”

Julian grinned sheepishly.  “Oh, yeah.  Sorry about that.”

“Unh-huh.”

They laughed it off and started to discuss the merits of the Playstation versus the Xbox game controllers.  By the time Scott showed up, nearly 30 minutes late, Chris was trying make a case for the original Atari controller.  A joystick and a button.  Did you really need anything more?

It worked out quite nicely Scott being that late.  They got to miss most of the rush hour traffic and paid the off peak hours fare.  Julian suspected Will had planned that all along and told Scott 9:00 so that he would be there by 9:30, but he could have let the other two know so that they didn’t have to get there until 9:30 either.  Not that it mattered.  Sitting at the metro station and talking with Will and Chris was definitely on his list of fun things to do.  They never got bored with each other, which meant either they were really interesting or they were really simple-minded.  He wouldn’t hazard to guess which they might be.

Once they were in the city, they discovered that unless they were going to go to a museum or a gallery, there wasn’t really anything fun to do until nighttime.  Well, nothing that they would admit was fun.  Because window-shopping and browsing through stores was something women found fun.  Not manly men.  Though they were playing around in the electronic stores; that was manly.  It was nearly impossible to get Chris away from the Sony employee.  Julian would have sworn they were about to orgasm all over each other if they kept up their cyber talk.  Chris didn’t particularly like that Julian had voiced that thought out loud.  Scott and Will had laughed, but backed away quickly.

They spent most of their time downtown, which Julian was rapidly becoming familiar with.  He recognized the building Dr. Gorman lived in, and the one Rylan lived in, and the four of them actually walked right by Blue Boy.  It wasn’t advertised on the outside, but Julian distinctly remembered those huge ornate doors.  He had tried to peek inside, but the glass was frosted so he couldn’t see anything.  Rylan hadn’t called him since offering him a job.  It was a good possibility that he had simply done that in order to get him to leave, but he still thought there was a chance it might be legitimate.  He was going to wait a little while longer.  No doubt Rylan was not the kind of guy who liked to be called and reminded of things.  He was definitely organized and a planner.  When—and if—he wanted Julian, he would call him.

“Oh, my God!”

Julian looked at Scott.  He was collapsing onto Will and Chris had moved to the smaller boy’s aid to keep the blond bimbo from crushing him.

“I am starving.  We have to eat.”

“Okay, okay,” Will said, pushing Scott away.  “Just stop drooling on me.”

“Where should we eat?’ Chris asked, handing Scott a piece of gum to tide him over.

“Somewhere new,” Julian said, leaning against a building wall.  “We eat in the city all the time, but we always eat at the same five places.  There’s gotta be some place new we can try.”

“You wanna go somewhere fancy?” Will asked.  “Since it’s lunchtime we might get away with being in jeans.”

“Those five places are the only places we can afford,” Chris said.  “Well, I can anyway.  I don’t think I can swing $30 for lunch.”

“Not even one time?” Will asked.

Chris half-sighed and half-shrugged.  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I know a place,” Scott said, smacking his gum and folding the wrapper into a ring.  “My dad told me about it.  He sometimes has business lunches there.”

“Well, if they cater to business lunches, they’re not going to let us in,” Will pointed out.

“No, see that’s the thing, it’s like, a double restaurant.  It has two sides.  Like, one side is all fancy and stuff.  And the other is casual.  Like, the appeal is that the casual diners can look at all the fancy people and go ‘Ooo.’  And the fancy people can feel all elite as they’re led into a private dining section.”

Julian started off the wall in surprise as Will launched himself at Scott.  He grabbed him behind the neck and tried to stick his fingers in his mouth.  Scott clamped his mouth shut and turned his head left and right to keep Will’s grabby fingers away.

“Give it to me!” Will shouted.  “Give me that gum.  I can’t stand it when you chew gum.  Especially when you talk.  You’re like a six year old.  Why did you give it to him?” Will demanded of Chris.

Chris shrugged and put up a hand to keep the other two from crashing into him during their battle.  “I thought it would be less annoying than hearing him whine about how hungry he was.”

Julian stepped forward and grabbed Will around the waist.  He hauled him off Scott and held onto him as the blond moved to hide behind Chris, sticking his tongue out at them.

“Leave him alone, Will.  And Scott, spit out that gum.  We’ll go to the restaurant you want.  Is it near here?”

“Yeah, it’s on 18th St.  I think.”

Will narrowed his eyes at Scott.  Scott returned the gesture, but took the gum out of his mouth.  Will settled down enough that Julian let him go.  He fell into step beside Chris as they led the way.  Scott started to sneak up behind Will with the gum in his hand, but Julian took it from him and gave him a warning look.  Sometimes when the four of them were out together, he felt like he and Chris were a married couple and they had to watch after their two rowdy children.

After determining that the restaurant was not on 18th St., but the 1800block of 16th St., they arrived just past the main lunch rush.  They were seated immediately in a prime spot that had a great view of the entrance so that they would be able to see who was special enough to warrant being seated on the other side of the restaurant.  It was called The Flip Side.  Points for not using a cheesy name with the number two or some variation of it, but minus points for picking a name that could also be used for a low end burger joint.

“Hey, do we have to write a paper about our impressions of the college we were supposed to look at today?” Scott asked.

The other three looked up from their menus.  Julian noticed Will and Chris looked as panicked as he felt.

“What makes you think that?’ Chris asked.

“That’s what Mr. Hayden said when he saw me turning in my form.”

Will waved a dismissive hand.  “He was just messing you.  You know he loves to pick on you, Scott.”

“I know!  I don’t know why!  I’m certainly not the worst person at school.”

“But you’re fun to tease,” Will said with a smile.

Scott understandably looked peeved, but he also blushed just a little.  Julian wondered if it was just out of angry embarrassment or if he wasn’t the only one Will had an effect on.  Scott hid behind his menu, and then he suddenly put it down on the table.  The other three lowered theirs as well.  They could tell he had something to say and there was no chance of concentrating on anything else as long as Scott Ramsey wanted attention.

“So, like, what about college?”

They waited.  He didn’t say anything more.  The three of them glanced amongst themselves, waiting for more.  Scott just kept looking at them.

“What about college?” Chris finally dared to ask.

“Well, I mean, what are we going to do?  Are we going to try to stay together?  Or…are we all going to split up?”

Nobody answered him.  It was something they had been aware was coming, but they thought they still had time not to think about it.  But, application deadlines would be in December or January, so they had to start gathering materials now.  Which meant they had to make decisions on where they wanted to go.  Which meant realizing they wouldn’t be applying to the same schools let alone getting into the same ones.

“Well,” Chris said, “I think we’re gonna have to split up.  Because in order for us to all go to the same school, Will—and as much as I hate to admit it—you Scott, will have to go to a less academically challenging school.  And I know Will isn’t willing to do that.  And you shouldn’t be either.”  Chris looked at Julian.  “And weren’t you thinking of going to an art school?”

“Well, yeah, I was,” Julian admitted. “Or, am.  I am considering it.  But, lately I’ve also been thinking of majoring in business and maybe doing a five year MBA program.”

“Business?” Will asked, cocking his head to one side.  “Since when?  Where did this sudden interest come from?”

“It’s not sudden,” Julian said unconvincingly.

“Um, yes it is,” Scott said.

Julian shrugged.  “You know how my mind works.”

“No, we don’t,” Chris said with a laugh.  “That’s where the confusion usually comes in.”

Julian smiled.  That wasn’t such a bad thing.  The last thing he wanted was to be predictable.  And telling them he might be employed by a male escort company was certainly something they wouldn’t anticipate, but it wasn’t necessarily something he should share either.  Especially since he was certain he would have to explain that this particular company didn’t escort women.  But, he wouldn’t be an escort.  He’d be a crash test dummy, which didn’t really sound much better.  But that’s why he was interested in business now.  How fun would it be to own and run an escort company?  It would be smart business too.  Talk about job security; everybody always wanted sex.  And it would never be boring.  He could only imagine the kind of problems he would get called in for.  “Uh, hey boss, I kind of got stuck in the sex swing.  Can you send someone to help me out?”

Julian looked toward the entrance to hide his smile.  He sat up straighter when he saw Dr. Gorman walk in the door.  She looked hideous.  The dress was a horrible cut, a horrible color, and he was pretty certain she’d crimped her hair.  She looked like she’d tried to dress up.  Was she going to the fancy side?

“Hey, guys, I see Dr. Gorman.  I’m gonna go say hi.  You wanna come?”

He looked back at his friends.  They were all looking at him like he was cruelly insane.

“Okay then,” he said standing up.  “I’ll just tell her you said hi.  If the waiter comes by order me a Mr. Pibb.”

“Pibb Xtra,” Scott said.

“What?”

“They renamed it to Pibb Xtra.”

“Do you know what I mean when I say Mr. Pibb?”

“Yes.”

“Then just order it, poindexter.”

Julian left to Scott’s offended protests and Chris trying to console him.  Will was just laughing at him.  Julian hurried across the restaurant so that he would get to Dr. Gorman before she reached the hostess stand.

“Hi!” he said brightly with a wave.

Dr. Gorman started and looked utterly shocked to see him.  He started to address her further, but then she grabbed his wrist and yanked him around the corner to the short, secluded hallway that led to the coat check room for the fancy side.  Julian stood still, more than a little surprised by the doctor’s behavior.  She glanced around him to see if there was anyone coming to the coat room.  Then she looked back at him.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

“Um…” Julian glanced around for exits.  The only one was behind him, so he had a good chance of escaping if Dr. Gorman did in fact turn out to be homicidally crazy.  “I have the day off from school and my friends and I came here for lunch.  I saw you come in and decided I’d come over and say hi.  I’m sorry if…wait, why are you so weirded out by this?”

“What?” she said, failing to look nonchalant.  “I’m not.  I was just surprised to see you since I know you’re supposed to be in school.  I was just worried you were cutting school because something was wrong.”  She used a hand to fluff up her hair.  She hadn’t made eye contact yet.  “You aren’t cutting school, are you?  That would be bad.”

“No, I’m not, and don’t change the subject.  Why are you being weird?  You’re totally acting like a guilty person.”

She finally looked at him, trying to appear offended, but only succeeding in looking even guiltier.  “I most certainly am not.”

Julian smiled and crossed his arms over his stomach.  “You’re acting like you’ve run into your illicit lover.”

Her mouth dropped open in appalled dismay.  “I most certainly _am_ _not_.”

“So, you normally react this way when you see patients outside of the office?”

“N-no.”

“Hm-mm.”  He dropped his eyes and then raised them slowly as he examined her body.  He gave her what he knew must be an irritating smile.

“Stop,” she said sticking a finger out at him.

Julian raised his hands in mock surrender.  “I didn’t do anything.  So, why are _you_ here?”

She tried to muster her dignity and stand up straight.  “I have a lunch date.”

“Oh, yeah?  With that guy from last time?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, doc.  Are you _trying_ to make me jealous?”

She blushed and couldn’t come up with a response.  This was funny.  She’d reacted to his flirting before, but never had she been rendered speechless.  Maybe since she was flustered earlier, she was just having a harder time controlling herself.  Julian wasn’t quite sure what to do with this new information.  He didn’t know he could have this much of an effect on her.  And now that he knew he could, what did he want to do?  He knew he was flip-flopping on whether his feelings for her were like a child for a parent or something else.  There was one easy way to find out which one was the more prominent.

He moved forward suddenly, catching Dr. Gorman completely off guard.  He pushed her against the wall and planted his lips firmly on hers.  She gasped in surprised and tried to raise a hand against him.  He pinned her wrist to the wall and got his tongue inside her open mouth.  It was a little awkward with his lip ring; he had to ease up and kiss her gentler, but that was okay.  He could still do what he needed to do, and it certainly helped that Dr. Gorman was no longer fighting him but participating.  She was pretty good.  He enjoyed kissing her.  It definitely was not like kissing his mother or any other family member, but there was no passion.  He didn’t feel like he wanted more and more of her.  He didn’t feel electrified by touching her.  So, maybe he should stop teasing her and just leave her alone.  He really still needed her in a professional capacity anyway.

He pulled back after giving her a couple quick parting kisses.  He tucked an errant strand of wildly crimped hair behind her ear and started to apologize.  The words caught in his throat.  Dr. Gorman was completely overwhelmed.  She was still pressed against the wall, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes glassy.  Julian swallowed uneasily.  He’d just pushed Dr. Gorman over the edge.  If she had been fighting her feelings toward him before, she’d given in.  She was now completely in love with him.  He was certain.

Whoops.

 

Will

 

“Will, that shirt is so old and worn.  Why don’t you wear something nice?”

“’Cause I’m going for the twink look, Mom.”

His mother started the engine even though she clearly wanted to wait for him to go back upstairs and change his clothes.

“Don’t think that just because I’m an old woman that I don’t know what new slang words mean.”

“You don’t know what it means.”

“And how do you know?”

“Trust me.  You would have given me a very different look if you did.”

His mother gave him a look.  “Don’t think I can’t look it up on the Internet.”

“Go right ahead.  Do you even remember what it is I said?”

“Twinkle something?”

Will laughed.

“Don’t make fun of your mother.  I can drive you to school just as easily as I can the metro.”

“So?  I won’t go in.”

“Why are you so bad?”

“Bad?  _Bad_?!  Are you serious?”

“No.  You’ve always been good.  Well, except for when you get bored.”

“I still maintain that anything that happens when I’m bored is not my fault.  It’s everyone else’s for not keeping me entertained.”

“Hmm.”  His mother maneuvered the relatively busy streets with perfectly controlled aggressive driving.  “I still can’t believe the school believes you’re actually going to look at the city’s university.”

“They don’t.  But you signed my form, so what are they going to do about it?  Besides, I could miss a month of school and it really wouldn’t make a difference.”

“Do you want to?”

Will looked at this mother.  “What do you mean?”

“Would you mind missing a month of school?  Your father’s and my schedules are conflicting.  Our cases are going to take us away for a month and they’re overlapping.  It’s one thing to leave you alone for two weeks, but one month is just too long.  I was thinking maybe you could…”  She sighed.  “Come with me.”

“Well, at least say it like you want me to.”

“Sorry, baby.  I didn’t mean it like that.  I was just thinking of the paperwork that would be involved for pulling you out of school.  I really wouldn’t mind if you came along.”  Will glanced at his mother.  Did she really not want to be away from him for that long?  “You know how to stay out of the way.”

Will rolled his eyes and looked out the window.  Typical.  What was he supposed to do by himself for a month with no friends and no school?  She was probably going to New York, so at least that would be fun.  But he would much rather stay here.  It would make it a lot easier to see Ken on the weekends.  Heck.  He could just stay at Ken’s for a month.  That could be fun.

“You know, I can stay out of the way really well if I stay here.”

“No, Will.  I’m not leaving you alone for a month.”

“Mom.  I’m seventeen.  I’m going to college in less than a year.  Where I will be away from you for months at a time.  And definitely not being in bed by midnight.”

“I know, but baby, that’s not the same.  Even though you’re ‘independent’ at college, there are a lot of systems and services in place to help take care of students without them realizing it.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry about it.  I’ll just talk to your father.  I’m sure he’ll be able to arrange his schedule so that he’ll be able to check in on you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Will insisted.  He’d gotten very attached to the staying at Ken’s for a month idea.

“It doesn’t matter.  I’ve made up my mind.”

Will slouched in his seat and grumped to himself.  Two weeks was better than nothing.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time at the New York office.  Are you going to get transferred?”

“Maybe.  It’s been talked about.  For a while now.  But don’t worry.  It won’t happen before you graduate.  I know you sacrificed a lot to stay with your friends, so I really doubt you’ll give them up for me.  And paying for weekly flights from New York will be a little expensive even if I get the raise.”

“You could move and Dad and I could stay here.  You only live in the house about one week out of every month anyway.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.”

“Oh, yes it is.  Dad is here, but you’re really not.”

His mother stopped in front of the metro entrance.  Will unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Does that bother you?”

“Not really.”

“You see, that’s what bothers me.”

Will looked at his mother.  “Mom, look, we’re just not one of those eat dinner together at the end of the day kind of families.  That doesn’t mean we’re a failure as a family.  That doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”

“I know.”

“Don’t be all depressed okay?  Have a safe flight.”

“That’s the other thing that bothers me.  I’m sure it won’t bother me for that long.”

Will smiled at her.  “Good.  See you in a week, right?”

“Four days actually.”

“Okay.  Dad should be home this week too.  How about I get him to make us dinner on Friday night and we can all eat together?”

“Won’t you be going out on Friday?”

Will hopped out of the car.  “What, go out with my friends rather than stay at home with my parents?  No way.  The latter is definitely the rarer.”

“Hmph.  Oh, and baby…?”

Will stopped shutting the door and looked back inside at his mother.

“Should I be concerned that you’re actually _trying_ to look like a young, dumb, pretty, gay boy?”

Will blushed and felt his stomach drop.  Why did his mother know that word?

“It was a joke,” he muttered and slammed the door shut.  He could actually hear her laughing even as he put distance between them.  He should know better.  There was nothing his mother didn’t know.  Nothing.  Well, she probably didn’t know he was sleeping with a 32 year old man.  And even that wasn’t entirely true.  The night of the dance and the following day had been so sex-filled he almost felt like he’d been in a porno movie.  But then after that, they’d barely touched each other.  And not by choice.  Sort of.  Ken had insisted that there be a “no sex on school nights” rule.  If he was going to risk jail for the relationship the least Will could do was help him not get caught.  Missing curfew and possible truancy were definitely things that might arouse suspicions.  So, that left the weekends.  Ken had been gone for one and he had been monopolized by his friends for the other.  And now he had a whole week before the next weekend.  He didn’t know if he was going to make it.  They had fooled around last Friday before Ken had to leave for his flight, but it hadn’t been nearly enough by half.

Will shook himself and forced those thoughts away.  Today was supposed to be fun.  He didn’t have to go to school and he got to hang out with his friends in the city.  It was so exciting.  He saw Julian sitting on one of the left over concrete pieces from the station’s construction that was being passed off as a bench.

“Hey, Julian!”

Today was going to be fun.  And it was fun.  Looking at the neat things in the stores and running around the downtown streets when he should have been in school was awesome.  Awesome?  Maybe he was trying a little too hard to forget his sexual frustration.  And could he even have any?  He hadn’t had sex for sixteen and a half years and he’d been fine.  Give him one weekend of debauchery and he was craving it like a heroin junkie.  But, he had to admit to himself: it wasn’t really the sex he was craving, it was Ken.  He missed him.  He wanted to be with him.  It hurt to be away from him.  He knew that not too long ago thoughts like that would have scared him to death, but now it just seemed natural.  It seemed like he had always felt this way.  That he had always loved Ken.  He’d only known the man for five months, but maybe that’s how long he’d actually been alive.

Will was jolted out of his thoughts as he accidentally ran into two young men on the sidewalk.

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Will said.

“No, it’s okay,” one said.  “He wasn’t watching where he was going.”

“Hey,” said the other.

Will smiled and stepped around them.  He started to catch up to his friends, but heard the two men whisper to each other.  He didn’t quite hear what they said.  He glanced back and saw them looking over their shoulders at him.  They were checking him out, and it wasn’t his imagination.  One of them gave him a wink before they opened a heavy-looking, ornate door and disappeared inside a building.  Will squirmed a bit.  Maybe he shouldn’t have dressed like this after all.  He really hadn’t been trying to look like a twink; it had just sort of happened.

He caught up with his friends just in time for Scott to collapse on top of him, melodramatically announcing his impending death due to lack of food.  Why was he such a goober?  And why did he always feel the need to rub in the fact that he was taller?  He had little doubt that Scott knew just how much his lack of height bothered him.  That’s why he was always pretending to use his head as an armrest or bending over to talk to him.  Scott wasn’t even the tallest of them by any means, but he was certainly the most petty.  Or maybe he was simply getting him back for all the crap Will gave him.  Karma sucked.

The restaurant Scott chose turned out not to be so bad.  He was a little skeptical of the whole two-sided motif, but it was actually kind of fun to see the diner style restaurant open on one side and a mysterious dim opening leading into the fancy place.  All the people dressed in suits and dresses got led back there and they glanced over at the common folk to see if they were being watched.  It would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.

Will glanced over his menu.  They had a section advertising their specialty milkshakes.  They looked tasty.  But, he really shouldn’t get one.  Soccer season was going to start soon and he really didn’t need to eat anything too fattening.  He stiffened at the thought.  Not eating a food because it was too fattening?  That was way too girly of a thought.  And he’d certainly been doing enough things that were girly for the last two weeks.  He ducked behind his menu and blushed ashamedly.  Not for remembering the things he’d done, but for being ashamed of them.  He knew how much he loved Ken, but he was still mortified at times to think of how completely homosexual their relationship was.  He didn’t know if it was the teenage boy in him who didn’t want that label, or if it was the part of him that was very heterosexual that was fighting back against his heart’s desire.  Either way he felt bad.  It wasn’t fair to Ken and it wasn’t right.  He really needed to admit to himself that he was…that he was…

Will tapped his fingers on the table.  He couldn’t even think it.  It was a good thing their relationship was technically illegal and had to be kept a secret.  Plus Ken wasn’t out of the closet, so there was certainly no pressure on him to come out.  But was he really _in_ the closet?  Was he really…that way?  He was just a heterosexual male who had fallen in love.  And the person he fell in love with just happened to be male.  Will shook his head.  It didn’t work that way.  Did it?

He was glad Scott brought up colleges to distract him from his other thoughts.  When he was with Ken he had none of those doubts and insecurities, but away from him it was hard to get that little voice to shut up.

Will was surprised to hear Julian mention that he might be interested in business.  He’d never been interested in that kind of thing.  He kind of held the view that his parents’ had; that capitalism was evil.  Maybe he was trying to get into business as a way to change it.  But that would be a little bit like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, only bloodier.  Julian was strong but he didn’t have the ferocity needed to really succeed in the world of business.  Especially not if he was going to try to buck the system.  Will had had enough exposure to the corporate world through his parents to know that Julian didn’t belong there.  Not unless it was a very unique situation.

When Julian got up to go say hi to Dr. Gorman, he returned to looking at his menu.  He better decide on something.  He hated being that person that held everyone up and made the waiter tap his toe.  Scott had other ideas.

“And what about you?” he asked in an accusatory manner.  “What do you think about college?”

Will continued to appear interested in his menu and said lightly, “I’ve actually been looking at Oxford and Cambridge lately.”

“Oh, really?” Chris started, and then Scott burst out, “No!”

The heartrending cry forced Will to look up from his menu.  Scott looked so distressed Will actually felt guilty for teasing him.

“It’s one thing for us to be all split up over the country,” Scott said, his voice weak with despair, “but you can’t go to another country!”

Will blinked at him.  “I was just looking at them.  But, I’m not going to go.”  He hadn’t actually decided yet whether or not he would seriously consider going abroad, but now he had made up his mind.  He couldn’t stand to see Scott like this.  The stupid little puppy.  He was so manipulative and he didn’t even know he was doing it.  “Okay, Mr. Co-dependent?  You can un-bunch your panties now.”

Chris snickered and Scott went from looking tragically lonely to infuriately pissed.

“Fine!  Go to England!  Who needs you anyway?  I certainly don’t.”

“Please.  You’re probably going to steal something from each of us and sleep with it at night.”

Chris laughed and Scott raised his menu threateningly, but he couldn’t decide which one he wanted to hit first.  Julian returned and plucked the laminated weapon out of his hands as he sat down at the table.  He started to hand the menu back to Scott, but pulled it out of his reach.

“Are you going to behave?”

“Ask them!  They’re the ones being mean!  And Will is going to go to the other side of the world!”

Scott snatched the menu from Julian as he gave his attention to Will.  “Really?  Where are you going?”

“Nowhere, nowhere!  I just mentioned I might want to go to Oxford or Cambridge and Spazzy McSpazerton here had a fit.”

Scott glared at Will but didn’t say anything.  Chris was hiding behind his menu, never having stopped laughing but trying not to upset Scott further.  Julian nodded thoughtfully.

“I see.  Poor Scotty.  You’re really worried about being apart, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said, looking embarrassed.  He buried his nose in the menu.  “So, how is Dr. Gorman?”

A strange look passed over Julian’s features.  “She’s fine.  So, Will, where are you really thinking about going?”

“Most likely an east coast school like Colombia or MIT or Dartmouth.  Some Ivy League something or other.”

“Dartmouth?” Julian questioned.  “I thought you had already ruled that one out.”

Will fingered his menu.  He hadn’t meant to let that slip out.  Why had it?

“Are you re-considering it?”

“Well, you know, it just popped into my mind.”

“Is there some reason you’re looking into it again?” Chris asked, signaling the waiter.

Will shook his head slowly.  “No, no reason.”

He looked up.  And he already knew what he would see.  It was like he had felt him.  Ken was standing at the hostess podium with a group of very well-dressed men.  Most of them were much older than him and the other two probably had at least ten years on him.  Even though he was as professional and serious-minded looking as the rest of them, he seemed a little out of place.  Will didn’t mean to stare, he didn’t want to draw his friends’ attention, but he couldn’t look away.  Not until he was no longer in his view or…

Ken looked over at him.  He didn’t look particularly surprised to see him and didn’t react at all.  Will wanted a reaction.  His friends were more or less preoccupied by the menus since the waiter was on his way over, so he put the tip of his index finger to his lips and parted them.  He bit gently on his finger, staring very intently and meaningfully at Ken.  He could see the man squirm from thirty feet away.  Will smiled.

“What can I get for you all?” the waiter asked, flipping open his notepad and readying his pen.  Ken was disappearing inside the mysterious dim entrance with his colleagues.  Will got out of his seat, his eyes trained on his destination.

“I’ll have a vanilla milkshake and the veggie burger.  I gotta pee.”

He left the table abruptly, not sure or caring what his friends were thinking about his sudden departure.  He made his way toward the restrooms, which were shared by the two sides of the restaurant.  He paused by the entrance to the fancy side.  It was very French in its set-up and reminded him of Chez André.  Ken’s party was being seated at a large circular table in the center of the smallish room.  He was talking to one of the younger businessmen and unbuttoning his jacket so that he could sit down.  He laughed at something the man said and then looked up.  He spotted Will by the door and the boy gave him a smile.  Ken gave him a look that pretty much said, “Go away.”  Will gave a slight nod toward the restrooms and a quick raise of his eyebrows, inviting Ken to join him.  The man just gave him a warning look and sat down, ignoring him.  He looked back up to see if Will had been deterred.  Will was pretty certain his look was saying “I will come in there and drag you forcibly out if I have to so unless you want to explain why you’re being bossed around by a high school boy I suggest you get your ass over here now.”  Ken looked indignant and Will assumed his message had gotten through loud and clear.

Ken turned to the older man beside him and said something to him.  The man didn’t look at all pleased and growled discreetly at him.  Will could tell Ken apologized to him, and then he stood up and excused himself from the table.  As he did so, the younger businessman he had been talking to turned his head toward the entrance.  Will quickly ducked into the hallway and wiggled his fingers nervously.  He hadn’t gotten a great look at him, but he hadn’t needed one.  He’d recognized him immediately.  Hopefully Scott’s father hadn’t recognized _him_.  Not that he would assume Ken was going to the restrooms to meet with him if he did.

Will hurried on into the bathroom; he wanted to see if they would have any unwanted company.  Once inside he looked in the three stalls and saw that they were empty.  They had the bathroom to themselves.  Excellent.  Will waited in the entrance to one stall and happily noted that the walls extended completely from floor to ceiling.  How convenient.  The bathroom door started to open and for a moment he worried that it might be someone else, and then Ken walked in, looking annoyed.  The expression vanished when he saw Will.  He just shook his head in resignation and walked over to him.  Before he could say anything irritating or responsibility-inducing, Will grabbed him by the tie and yanked him into the stall with him.

“Will!” Ken said his name like a complaint, but he made sure the door was shut behind them.

Will started to give him a playful look when he noticed the door to the stall was glass.  And clear.

“Um…what kind of weird ass bathroom is this?”

“What do you mean?” Ken asked, straightening his tie.

“You can totally see through these doors.  Ignoring people doing naughty things in them, do you really want to watch other guys take care of their business?”

Ken reached behind himself and locked the door.  The glass immediately turned opaque white.

“Oh!  That’s neat.”

“Unh-hunh.”

Will picked up the tie Ken had just straightened and started fiddling with it.  “So, what are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Ken asked.  “I believe you have a thing called school, right?”

He had his hands pressed against the sides of the narrow stall at about chin height.  The stance made him look like he was in some high fashion photo shoot.  Sometimes when Ken was talking, he would get into these sexy poses that made it impossible to focus on what he was saying.  The irritating part being that Will could never tell if it was accidental or intentional.

“I have the day off of school.”  He twisted the silk tie around his finger and looked up at Ken from under his lashes.  “Do you have a business meeting?”

Ken cleared his throat.  “Yes.”

“Is it for the merger?”  Will stepped closer and Ken didn’t move away.

“Yes.”

“It must be going well if you’re going to lunch together.”

“Yes.”

Ken’s fingers were turning white around the edges.  He was pressing them against the walls to prevent himself from touching him.  Will had to take in a deep breath and let it out slowly.  He often got lightheaded when he realized just how much Ken wanted him.  He let go of the tie and ran his hands slowly up the front of his white dress shirt.

“Who was that scary guy who didn’t want you to leave?”

Ken finally moved his hands and used them to stop Will’s.  He gently squeezed his fingers and pressed them to his chest.

“He’s my father,” Ken said with a half-laugh.

“Really?” Will asked, leaning forward.  “He looks young to be the father of someone as old as you.”  He gave him a playfully mean smile and Ken didn’t look amused.  “He was kind of hot.  If you age as well as him, you have nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, hush up,” Ken griped and let go of his hands, which was what Will had been wanting.  He grabbed Ken’s tie and pulled him down so that he could get his lips on him and an arm around his neck.  Ken didn’t fight it; he knew he wouldn’t.  Even being in the completely enclosed stall, he was still a little worried about the noise they were making, but not nearly enough to stop.  He was rapidly losing focus of their surroundings anyway.  He could feel Ken start to pull away, but he grabbed on tight and jumped up a little to keep their mouths connected.  He wrapped his legs around Ken’s waist and the man fell against the door, gripping the boy through his tight jeans.  Ken kissed him for a moment longer, a slight movement in his hips, his hand rubbing him through the denim.  Then he threw his head back to both put distance between them and to catch his breath.  After a couple deep inhalations, he looked back at Will.  They were breathing heavily in synch and their breath was rushing over each other’s lips.  Will leaned forward to kiss him again, but Ken turned his head to the side.  Will kissed the hinge of his jaw instead.  Ken groaned and clenched his hand; it was behind Will and partially between his legs.  Will’s body tightened and he dug his nails into Ken’s suit jacket.

“We can _not_ do this in here,” Ken forced out.

“Why not?” Will moaned, using the arm around Ken’s neck to give him enough leverage to grind his hips against Ken.  The man couldn’t respond for several seconds, his eyes closed and his hand helping Will’s movements.  Then he pulled himself together and pushed down on Will insistently, forcing him to his feet again.  He ran the back of his fingers lightly across Will’s cheek.

“Which of the bazillion reasons would you like me to list first?” he asked with a smile.  “Besides.  I need to get back.  I am _working_ here.”

Will pouted at him.  “You’re always working,” he said petulantly, playing with the end of his tie again.

Ken stroked his hair tenderly.  If the gesture was meant to calm him, it had the exact opposite effect.

“Come over tonight,” he said softly.

“Oh?” Will gasped, intentionally sounding scandalized.  “But I thought there was no sex on school nights?”

Ken’s loving face instantly became irritated.  “Are you coming over or what?”

Will wanted to give him a sexy smile, but he could feel himself grinning goofily.  “I am _so_ coming over.”  He tugged on Ken’s tie and they gave each other a long smooch.  Then Ken pushed Will back to arm’s length.  He started to reach behind him to unlock the door, but then stopped.  He tilted his head as he looked Will over.

“Were you expecting to see me today?”

“No, why?”

“Well, your outfit is a little…well, I mean if you weren’t… I mean.  You kind of look…”

“If you say I look like a twink I will knee you in the balls.”

Ken bit his lip to hold back his grin.  He waved his hands in the air as if to say, “Never mind.”  He unlocked the door and it turned clear.  Fortunately there was no one in the bathroom as far as they could tell.  He opened the door and stepped outside to adjust his clothing in the mirror.  Will stayed in the stall just in case there was someone to the left or the right out of sight.  He watched Ken meticulously straighten his shirt cuffs and the position of his tie.  He carefully examined the placement of each hair on his head.  Then he met Will’s eyes in the mirror and gave him an air kiss.  Will smiled.

“You might want to stay in here a few minutes,” Ken said.  “Those jeans are little tight.”

Will gave him a “and whose fault is that?” look.  Ken turned and opened the restroom door.  Another man came in just as he was leaving and Ken gave him a nod and walked by him completely unflustered.  Will turned around and pulled the door shut, hurriedly locking it so that the man couldn’t get too good a look at him.  Will leaned against the opaque glass and wondered about Ken.  Either he had nerves of steel or he was used to acting normal after doing things he shouldn’t in a public restroom.  He was going to talk to him about that tonight.

 

Chris

 

Chris walked toward the metro station from the parking lot.  He twirled his keys around on his finger and caught himself whistling.  He was in a very good mood today.  He couldn’t be more grateful that he had a day off from school, and it had only been a month since it started.  It wasn’t his classes or the homework; it was Karen.  She made a point to talk to him at least once a day, and it was rare that it would be so infrequent.  They had three classes together and they ate lunch together everyday.  He knew he shouldn’t sit with her at lunch, but none of his friends had the same lunch as him.  Not even distant acquaintances.  The situation made Chris realize how exclusive he and his friends were.  If Scott, Will, or Julian weren’t around, he didn’t really know anyone well enough to just invite himself to sit with them.  Not even the people in his computer science class.  So, he sat with Karen because he at least knew her.

However, seeing Karen everyday and talking with her wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that he enjoyed the time he spent with her.  He hadn’t just dated her because she was pretty.  He had liked her when they’d first started dating and the first couple months of their relationship had been downright pleasant.  She was good at making even small talk interesting, and when she laughed it made him want to join in.  That’s the way it had been almost two years ago, and that’s the way it was now.  He was actually enjoying her company, which was so very dangerous.  He kept his emotions in check by remembering that last time it had started out nice and exciting before it turned taxing and unbearable.  More than likely if he let himself fall for her again, their relationship would turn out the same way.  And he didn’t want to go through that again.

Chris ran his card over the scanner and stepped through the turnstile into the station.  He saw Julian and Will sitting on a bench.  He stopped in his tracks as he watched them.  They had their hands out in front of them and were making rather suggestive motions with them.  What on earth were they doing?  Then he recognized the movement of their thumbs.  He grinned and started to head toward them.  They were debating over Playstation versus Xbox again.

“Good morning,” Chris said.  He pointed to the ground.  “This is the Dweebs Anonymous meeting, right?”

Julian laughed and Will looked at him with exaggerated offense.  Chris sat down next to Will and checked his wristwatch: 9:04.  He glanced toward the entrance to the station and then back at his friends.

“9:22,” he said.

“9:34,” Will said.

“9:17,” Julian bravely ventured.

Chris and Will looked at him.

“What?  Today is something exciting.  He might actually get his ass moving.”

Chris and Will shook their heads doubtfully.  Will ended up guessing the closest; Scott was thirty minutes late.  But they didn’t mind; that was just Scott.  And it wasn’t hard for the three of them to kill thirty minutes.  Dweebs Anonymous meetings were always quite entertaining.  And he was wearing them down.  They would be fans of old school Atari eventually; he just needed a little bit more time to convince them.  Just like he needed to convince them that spending an hour and a half in the Sony store was not abnormal or boring.  He found one of the employees and they got into a discussion about resolution.  He loved talking about resolution because it applied to virtually every electronics product ever made.  Okay, maybe not a toaster, but those didn’t technically count as electronics.  They were appliances.  The first hour went by pleasantly enough; their conversation only interrupted by pesky customers needing help, which Chris sometimes provided himself.  Then his friends started circling him.  He could tell they were bored of playing with the robotic dog and were trying to get in close to him to pull him away.  Eventually they stood right beside him in a row with their arms crossed over their chests.  He knew they should get going, but he ignored them just for a minute more.  The employee actually seemed to think that plasma was better than LED, which was, of course, ridiculous.  Unfortunately he waited a little too long and Julian got a little too bored.

“Geez,” he muttered to Scott and Will, “these two better back up or they’re going to squirt each other in the eye.”

Scott’s hand flew to his mouth like he’d just witnessed the first flight of monkeys.  Will was a little more subtle and made a fist to cover his smile.  They both took a couple steps back and then disappeared amongst the digital video cameras.  Julian was looking after them, wondering where they were going.  The Sony employee looked extremely embarrassed mumbled something about needing to get back to work before ducking away.  Chris punched Julian in the arm.

“Ow.”  He rubbed the spot and looked at Chris like he was the crazy one.  “What was that for?”

Chris rolled his eyes and walked away from him.  Let him go round up Will and Scott.  And then the three of them could have a big laugh at the computer nerd.  Jerks.  He never made fun of their hobbies.  Well, he did, but never in such a public forum.  He was hiding in the big screen TVs section and noticed one of the cables had come loose on a monstrous 71” plasma screen.  He squatted down and jiggled the cable back into place.

“Excuse me, but do you know anything about why a $5000 TV won’t have a clear picture?”

Chris smiled to himself.  He was always getting mistaken for an employee when he was in an electronics store because of the conversations he had or the fact that he usually messed with wires and cables and stuff that he wasn’t supposed to as a regular customer.  He stood up, ready to explain that he didn’t work there, and then he was put off guard by the man’s physical presence.  He was extremely tall and very broad through the shoulders.  His deep baritone voice fit him quite well.  He was a handsome man, but that was undermined a bit by his menacing look.  Chris could tell he was trying to be nice because he was asking for help, but he was just one of those people who always looked like he was ready to kill something.

“Um.”  Chris lost his words.  He felt like he was breathing underneath a heavy weight.

“You see,” the man said, reaching into a coat pocket, and then stopping himself, “I have a room that has several TVs set up.  Kind of a sports room slash waiting room.  And the picture is fuzzy on some of them, but they’re all brand new and the satellite company says their signal is not the problem.  Do you know what it might be?”

Chris felt hypnotized by the man’s dark eyes.  He was worried that if he couldn’t help him the man might do something very nasty to him.  The man waited patiently for Chris to respond and reached into his coat pocket again.  He brought his hand out with nothing.  There was obviously something in there he wanted, but he either couldn’t or didn’t want to bring it out.

“Hello?”

Chris shook himself.  “Oh, sorry.  So, you use satellite?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a box for every TV, or are you running cables between them?”

“Cables.”

“Well, if you’re using a splitter and especially if you’re using more than one, they reduce the signal a little bit.  So, if the TV farthest away from the main box has four or five splitters between it, that could be why your picture is suffering in quality.  Now, assuming that you want to be able to feed each TV a separate picture, rather than having them all show the same thing at once, I think what will help you is a matrix switch.  It’s just a piece of broadcast equipment and you can get a small one which handles component video with enough bandwidth for HD broadcasts.  They can be a little pricey though, but the benefit with them is that they can be controlled using Ethernet cables or a telephone line.  The matrix switch usually has video inputs and outputs in multiples of four, and they can get pretty large.  The signal at each input can be applied at any one time to none, one, or more than one of the outputs.  Then, of course, you would need to run cabling to each TV.”

The man stared at him.  Chris swallowed uneasily.

“I really didn’t follow any of that.  I guess I need a ‘matrix switch’ and someone smart like you to put it all together for me.”

Chris laughed nervously.  “Yeah, that would probably be your best bet.  Or, rent more than one box from the satellite company.”

The man sighed.  “Tyler was right.  I guess I need an IT guy after all.  I don’t suppose I could steal you away from this dream job, huh?”

“Oh.”  Chris laughed nervously again, afraid of what the man might do when he found out the truth.  “I don’t actually work here.  I’m still in high school.”

“I see.”  The man’s eyes raked over him and Chris felt a little violated.  “So why aren’t you in school?”

“Self-imposed holiday.”

The man smiled and Chris felt the tension leave his body.  He felt like he’d done something right to earn this man’s smile, which was a bizarre feeling.

“Enjoy your day off.  I’ll see if I can find someone else to help me with my major switch.”

“Matrix.”

The man’s face went back to its natural scowl.  He obviously didn’t like being corrected.  “Got it.”

“CHRIS!”

Chris started and looked toward the front of the store.  Scott was waving at him from the entrance.  Chris used his thumb to point toward the dork wildly waving his arms around.

“Well, I gotta go.  Good luck with your set up.”

“Sure, thank you for your help.  Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah.”  Chris backed up and ran into a display stand.  He turned around quickly to prevent anything from falling off, and then he turned back toward the man.  He was smiling at him, but it wasn’t very pleasant.  Chris could tell this man enjoyed watching the effect he had on people.  He knew he had to get out of there because he was starting to blush.  He didn’t know why, but for some reason the way the man was looking at him made him feel naked.

He joined his friends on the sidewalk and rolled his eyes when he heard Julian’s suggestion that they go to the “hemp shop.”  That’s what Chris and most everyone else called it, even though it was technically a “magic shop.”  It was more or less a Wicca run store that sold crystals and weird smelling herbs and skirts made out of hemp.  The other two didn’t seem to mind going, so he sighed and followed them.  Will stepped on the back of Scott’s shoe and the blond stumbled forward and almost ran headlong into a wall.  He shouted at Will, who was laughing at him, and chased him down the sidewalk.  Chris and Julian exchanged looks.  Sometimes it was like they were a little family.  He was the husband who wanted to look in the electronics stores and Julian was the…whatever who wanted to look in weird stores, and their two unruly little brats did nothing but embarrass them in public.  Maybe that was why he’d stayed with Karen for so long; to keep himself from feeling like he was married to Julian.

He was grateful when they stopped for lunch.  As long as Scott and Will were seated and eating, they probably couldn’t be too hyper.  He and Julian just made sure they were sitting across the table from each other and not next to each other, i.e. not within poking, kicking, or breathing distance of each other.  Chris was a little surprised at them.  They usually could behave more or less like young adults, but they were being troublesome today.

Chris held back his sigh as he looked over the menu.  If these were the prices for the cheap side of the restaurant, he’d hate to see the expensive side.  But why couldn’t he spend a little money?  He had some after all.  The money he and his father had liberated from the Bixby’s wall was in an account he couldn’t access until he was 18, but he knew that money would be available for him for college tuition.  So, why couldn’t he use some of the money he’d been saving from his job at the mall?  Well, he was obviously going to today.  Nine dollars for a hamburger?  It better be one frickin’ amazing hamburger.

Chris was distracted from the obscene menu when Scott brought up the topic of college.  Like the rest of them, he’d deliberately ignored just how soon it would be before they all split up.  He was surprised that Julian was considering something other than art school.  His art was weird and dark and often made Chris feel depressed, but it was good.  He’d always thought Julian would be able to support himself with his art while he was actually still alive.  Though he wasn’t sure how much longer that might be after the turd got up to say hi to Dr. Gorman and left him alone with Will and Scott.  It was hilarious watching Will tease Scott though.  It was kind of like watching a little kid holding a squeaky toy just out of a puppy’s reach.

When Julian came back and they could have a real discussion about what Will wanted to do, he went ahead and signaled the waiter over.  He was starving.  Chris wasn’t really surprised by anything Will said; Ivy League sounded exactly right.  He just wished he was able to get into a school like MIT too.  He might have the computer savvy to hold his own amongst other self-proclaimed computer nerds, but he knew he wouldn’t really be able to survive MIT if he somehow managed to get in.

The waiter arrived at their table and flipped open his pad.  Chris opened his mouth to give him his order since the other three probably weren’t ready, but Will beat him to it.  He stood up suddenly and announced what he would have to eat and that he had to pee.  And then he was gone.  He and the other two exchanged looks with each other.  Will was a very strange child.  Chris ordered his outrageously priced hamburger and watched with amusement as Scott and Julian tried to make the other order first while they made up their minds.  The waiter tried to leave twice, but they kept saying they were ready and calling him back.  At last the captive waiter was released and he took away their menus.  Now they couldn’t hide behind them or hit each other with them anymore.

“You don’t think Will would really go to school in England, do you guys?” Scott asked, sounding a little worried.

“He said he wasn’t going to,” Chris reminded him.

“I know.  But you know he placates us.  He’s a placater.”

“Why are you so worried about it anyway?” Julian asked.  “If we all split up we’ll only see each other at school breaks anyway.  He’ll come home to visit.”

“Would he?  Don’t you think he’d just stay over there?”

Julian didn’t answer.  Chris was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing he was.  If Will went away too long, he might not think about coming back.  He lived his life in a very out of sight, out of mind kind of way.

“So, it’s decided then,” Scott said.  “We have to sabotage his England applications.”

Chris balled up the paper belt that had been holding his napkin around his utensils and threw it at a white-blond target.  “Seriously, I don’t think he’s going.  He said he wasn’t going to and he sounded pretty decisive when he said it.”

“But—”

“Besides, why are you so upset about it anyway?  I thought he was your third favorite of the three of us.”

“Yes, but he’s my third favorite person in the whole world!”

Chris wagged his finger at Scott.  “Awwww.  I’m gonna tell Anna.”

“Just because Will is third doesn’t mean that Anna isn’t still first or second.  Maybe one of you has been bumped down the list.”

“Oh!”

“Oo!”

Julian and Chris sat back in their chairs and looked alarmed.

“Oh, no,” Julian said, his voice full of fake tears, “you mean, I’m not in the top three anymore?”

“Or is it me?” Chris bemoaned his demotion.  “Tell me, what did I do?”

“What did we do?” Julian wailed.

Chris and Julian cried into their napkins.  Scott unhappily waited for them to finish making fun of him.  The waiter returned with their drinks and Scott took a big sip of Will’s milkshake.  He thumped it down on the table in Will’s spot and said, “That’ll show him.”

“You know he’s going to beat you senseless when he sees some missing,” Chris said.

“He won’t know it was me.”

“Like we won’t rat you out.”

Scott looked appalled.  “You bunch of Judases!  You two are like the frickin’ Rosenbaum couple!”

“The who?” Julian asked.

“He means the Rosenbergs,” Will said, slapping Scott behind the head as he sat down.

Scott winced and shot Will a dirty look.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.  “How long does it take to pee?  Were you covertly filling out overseas applications in there?”

Will looked confused.  He turned to Chris and Julian for help.  They just waved their hands, telling him not worry about it.

“You know Will can’t pee in front of people,” Julian said.  “He probably had to wait for everyone to clear out.”

Chris and Scott laughed.  Will ignored them and picked up his milkshake.  He paused before taking a sip and eyed it carefully.

“All right.  Who took a sip?”

Chris and Julian looked at the table, but they were kind of nodding toward Scott.  Scott actually pulled off looking completely innocent.

“So, Chris, how about you?” Scott said to distract Will.  “Where do you think you’ll go to school?”

Chris thought about making Scott suffer just a little bit, but looking at Will he seemed to be happy to have the attention off him anyway.

“Well, I’ve been thinking lately.  About not doing computer science stuff.  Or maybe doing it as a minor or something.  I think I might want to do pre-law.  See how I like it, and then maybe go to law school.”

“Why?” Scott asked.  “I thought you were set on building your robot empire.”

“That was like, in fifth grade!”

“I believe that dream lasted through ninth grade,” Julian said.

“I think he still has it,” Will smirked at him.

“Shut it.  All of you.  I’m just afraid that if I do computer science I’ll wind up being the IT guy for some company.  Or a software engineer, but for really boring programs.  Even if I make good money, I don’t want to be bored at my job.  And law seems like it might be interesting.  Dealing with different people and situations everyday.”

“And this has nothing to do with your father, right?” Will asked knowingly.

“Well, you know.”  Chris looked around at his friends.  He had told them everything.  About how his father had come to see him and how he had helped hide him and kept that from his mother.  He told them about the letter and the trip to Chicago.  He hadn’t told them about the money heist.  He didn’t think he’d ever be able to tell them about that, but he didn’t feel terribly guilty over it.  He didn’t think of it as doing something illegal so much as doing something for his father.  He knew what he had done was illegal, but the motive behind it had been pure.  Sort of.  His intentions had been good anyway.  So, the truth was more or less out there now.  He still hated to bring it up though.  He felt weird—guilty—when he talked about his father.  He had lied to them for so long that he wondered if they held it against him.  Everyone else’s dramas were out in the open, but he’d kept his secret for nearly five months.  Well, Will’s “problem” was still a mystery, but he had changed lately.  He didn’t seem like he had a problem anymore.

“How is your father?” Scott asked gently.  “Have you heard any news?”

“No, not yet.  He’s still in jail and I don’t know yet how long his sentence will be for breaking parole.”

“How are things with your mom?” Julian asked.

Chris shrugged and started to shred his napkin with his fork.  “I don’t know.  She says she understands why I did what I did and that she forgives me for it.  She’s not treating me coldly anymore.  We’re talking again.  But I just think our relationship will never be the same.”

His friends were quiet, not sure what response they should give him.  Then Scott said, “Bummer.”  The other three just looked at him.

“Thanks, Scott,” Chris said dryly.  “You really have a way with words.”

“Wha?!  Don’t even!  You guys always make fun of me when I try to be nice.  You can’t have it both ways, all right?  Either it’s short and insensitive or it’s full on queerified.  Those are your only two options, okay?”

The three of them just laughed at him.  He started to tear up his napkin and looked glumly at the table.  He actually looked hurt.  Chris reached out a hand and couldn’t believe he was petting his male friend on the head.  His hair was soft though; he would have sworn it would be dried out and crunchy with all the bleaching.

“Scott, we don’t mean it,” he said.  “We never mean it.  Well, we might mean it, but we never mean it in a negative way.  We like you just as you are.”

Scott scoffed and moved away from his touch.  “You don’t have to be so patronizing about it.”

“But it’s more fun that way,” Julian said, burying his fingers in Scott’s hair and giving his head a rub.

“Hey, hey!” Scott batted his hands away.  “You are way too freaky with my hair.”

“Scotty, you know we love you, right?” Will said, slumping down in his chair.

Scott’s face turned bright red and he stared across the table at Will for a second and then slowly pushed his chair back.

“I hate all of you,” he said sourly.

“What’s the big deal?” Julian asked.  “Didn’t you confess your love to all of us not so long ago?”

“That’s not—” Scott heaved a sigh.  “Never mind.”

Chris smiled and looked at his watch.  Where was that stupid hamburger?  He was starving.  He glanced toward the entrance and then back at his friends.  The he looked back at the entrance again.  There was a young black man dressed in a suit who appeared to be waiting for a table in the fancy section.  Now where did he know him from?  Chris wasn’t getting a negative feeling from him, so it probably wasn’t one of Karen’s “friends” that he’d been introduced to when they were dating.  He suspected she had introduced him to handsome black men to make him jealous or keep him in line.  But, this guy seemed very sophisticated and not like the usual “thugs” Karen claimed to be so “tight” with.  Then it dawned on him.  It was Karen’s cousin, Greg.  The nice one.

“Hey, I’ll be right back guys.  There’s someone I want to say hi to.”

Chris started for the entrance and watched to see if there was anyone with Greg.  He didn’t want to bother him or interrupt something, but he seemed to be standing alone, waiting on the rest of his party.  He gave a little wave of his hand to both say hi and get his attention.  Greg looked at him with semi-recognition.

“Hi, Greg.  Do you remember me?  I’m—”

“Chris.  I met you at my uncle and aunt’s house.”

“Uh, yeah.  That’s right.”  Chris laughed a little embarrassedly.  “I guess I kind of made a lasting impression.”

“More than you know,” Greg said with an approving smile.  “The whole family got to hear later about your little adventure.”

Chris cocked his head.  “I don’t follow.”

Greg shook his head, still smiling.  “I can’t believe you nailed my cousin while we were all downstairs eating that disgusting flan.”

Chris felt his stomach drop to his feet.  He closed his eyes.  “Oh, God.”

Greg slapped him on his shoulder.  “Don’t worry, I’m not hatin’ on ya.  That’s impressive.  Takes a lot of balls.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Chris said with a pained expression.  How frickin’ embarrassing.  Who had told?  Definitely not Karen’s father.  Had her mother talked privately with one of her sisters and the word just spread?  Had Karen announced it herself, trying to rub her white boyfriend even more in her family’s face?  Then he remembered that Nana had apparently been hiding at the top of the stairs.  Chris opened his eyes and glared at the corner of the hostess stand.

“Nana,” he whispered menacingly.

“Yep,” Greg confirmed.  “Nana spilled the beans.  Well, spilled indicates an accident.  She kind of pried the lid off and threw them everywhere.”

Chris half-laughed and looked back at Greg.  “Well…”  He trailed off and shrugged.  What could he say?

“Oh,” Greg said, suddenly serious, “can you do me a favor and not mention that you saw me here today?  I’m kind of not supposed to be here.”

“Yeah, aren’t you supposed to be in Rhode Island?”

Greg nodded.  “I took a couple days off to come to an interview.  There’s a biotech company in the city I’m looking to do a summer internship with.”

“Ah.  That doesn’t sound like it would be conducive to a career in law.”

“Exactly.  So, let’s keep this on the down low, okay?”

“Sure, no problem.  I’m not exactly in a position to tell anyone anyway.”

“Oh, yeah.  I heard about that too.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Yeah, word got out and Karen’s taking a lot of flack for it.”

“Really?”

Chris felt a little sorry for her.  He was certain that even though the family knew they had broken up, they didn’t why they had broken up.  There was a good chance they thought it was because of what had happened at the dinner.  Or maybe that he got scared off by Karen’s father.  Either way had him coming off as the bad guy.  He didn’t care what they thought of him, but that wasn’t fair to Karen.  She didn’t deserve to be ostracized because of their relationship.  Greg must have noticed how the news affected him.

“Hey, Chris, man.  Don’t worry about it.  She’s doing fine.  I mean, they’re not ganging up on her anything.  They’re just kind of giving the ‘we told you so’ speeches, you know?”

Chris nodded.  That made him wonder how that would affect Karen.  She was not someone to take lecturing or teasing lying down.  She was the type who would want to prove them wrong.  And one way to do that would to no longer be the one who had been dumped and made a fool of.  Of course he didn’t know for sure if Karen had told her family that he had dumped her or if she had skewed the truth a little bit.

“Say Greg,” Chris said thoughtfully.

“Yes, Chris?”

“Do you think Karen is the type of person to take revenge?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t even hesitate or think about it before answering.  Chris had to agree with him.

“Why?” Greg asked.

“Well, I don’t know what version of our break-up you heard, but it wasn’t very amicable.”

“You dumped her with a voicemail message.  We heard that part.”

“Ah.”  Chris felt a little bad.  “You see, she’s being nice to me at school and saying she wants me back.  Now I’m wondering if it’s just so that she can date me again so that she can be the one to dump me.”

“Hmm.  She is the type to do something like that.”

Chris felt a little deflated.  “Yeah, I think so too.”

“But you know, she’s not very good at acting.  She’s very straightforward.  Her motives are usually pretty clear.”

“I know,” Chris agreed.  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“That’s she’s just trying to hurt you to get revenge?”

“No.  That’s she’s being sincere.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Well,” Chris rubbed the back of his head nervously.  “I’m not…I mean.  I just…”  Chris looked up at Greg.  “I am not going to discuss with it you.  How’s _your_ girlfriend doing anyway?”

Greg smiled sadly.  “Still a secret.”

 

Scott

 

He rounded the corner slanted toward the ground he was running so fast.  He leapt over a large potted plant, and dodged a work rush straggler.  He wrestled with his wallet all while maintaining speed and balance.  He took the escalator stairs up two at a time.  He stretched his fare card out in front of him so that the turnstiles would open before he crashed into them.  He caught one of the barriers with his left hip as he tried to squeeze through.  He ignored the pain and ran up to his three friends who were sitting on a bench and watching him.  When he reached them he bent over and put his hands on his knees, desperately trying to catch his breath.

“I’m h-here,” Scott panted.  “I got here—” he swallowed and gasped in a breath.  “I got here as fast as I could.”

Chris looked at his watch.  “9:31.”

“Yes!” Will pumped a fist.  “Pay up.”

Chris and Julian made faces but each reached into their pockets and produced a dollar bill from their wallets.  Will collected the money and counted it like he’d just received a fat stack of Benjamins.  Scott watched them with despair.

“Oh, no,” he whimpered softly.

They all looked at him.

“What’s wrong?” Chris asked.  “We weren’t being mean.”

“I know!  That’s the point.  You’re no longer disgusted.  You just have this resigned acceptance about it.”

“Now that’s not true,” Julian said.

“We’ve learned to turn it into a game,” Will said, waving the ones around.

That didn’t make Scott feel better.  “I’m so pathetic,” he groaned.

“Yes, this is true,” Will agreed.

“And for more than one reason,” Julian smiled at him.

“Aw, come on!” Scott said, his brow creasing with unwanted emotion.

“Relax,” Chris said, standing up.  A train was approaching and he pulled on Scott to lead him toward the edge of the platform.  “Don’t cry over every little thing.”

“I’m not!  I can handle big important things too!”

“Yeah, sure you can.”

All three of them patted him on the back and stepped onto the train.  Scott dejectedly followed behind them and plopped down into a seat.  They kept talking about whatever they had been before he showed up and didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t joining in.  He watched the doors slide shut and then sighed as he started to pick at a speck of dirt on his jeans.  They didn’t know anything.

He was glad to have the day off from school; anything to get away from Anna and Antoinette and Jake.  School was awkward almost to the point of being debilitating.  He was trying to go about life as usual, but his conscience was poisoning him.  And it almost felt literal.  Sometimes he would feel so sick with guilt he came close to throwing up.  It just didn’t seem fair; people did this sort of thing all the time, so why was he having such a hard time with it?  And why did he feel so guilty about Anna?  They weren’t dating.  She wasn’t his girlfriend.  He didn’t owe her anything.  And on top of all that, he’d been worrying for the last two weeks that Antoinette was pregnant.  She’d said that it was impossible, that she was on the pill, but he knew that when a guy and a girl had sex and certain fluids were exchanged, there was a chance the girl might get pregnant.  Even if it was only a 0.5% chance, it was still there.  And his luck was just the kind that would make that 0.5% the more likely to happen.

He’d been obsessed with the idea of a baby.  He couldn’t stop himself from wondering during math class if he was going to have to ask Antoinette to marry him.  Would she even consider it?  Would he have to fight Jake for her?  Or would she just tell him that Jake could raise his baby?  Or would she even have the baby at all?  He wouldn’t claim he knew her 100%, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she were willing to go through with an abortion.  He didn’t think he’d be able to kill his child, no matter how inconvenient it was.  But he would have no control over that.  It wasn’t fair; men had no reproductive rights at all.  A man couldn’t tell a woman that she had to have a baby, but a woman could tell a man that she was going to take one away from him.

These thoughts had been plaguing him for days, and he knew it was stupid.  She wasn’t actually pregnant; he wasn’t actually going to have to make these choices.  But he couldn’t help thinking about them.  And those thoughts had finally given him the strength to stand up to Antoinette.  He’d refused to fool around with her until she could tell him definitively that she was not pregnant.  He had even insisted that they not see each other just to talk—he didn’t have that much confidence in his self-control.  Their time apart had made him realize something he’d been trying to ignore.  He really did like Antoinette for more than just the physical stuff.  He missed not talking to her or being able to look at her openly.  He missed spending time with her.  He truly enjoyed being with her, and the last two weeks had been terrible not really because he felt guilty about Jake and Anna or because he was worried Antoinette might be pregnant, but simply because he missed her.  It made it hurt all the more to wonder if she missed him.  He had no idea how she felt about him, which was probably an indication all on its own.

He was dealing with all of this emotional turmoil, and they had no idea.  They all just seemed to think that he was silly, baby Scotty.  As usual.  Sometimes he wondered if they viewed him more as a pet than a friend.  Or if his blond hair made them think of him as a mindless, clueless idiot without a care in the world.  His chest caved in on him as he was forced to wonder if that’s the way they had always seen him, even before the hair.  They were the people he felt closest to the in the world; did they really not know him at all?

“Scott?”

Scott looked to his right and found Will looking back at him.  Chris and Julian were engrossed in a debate on the other side of Will.  Scott wondered what he wanted.  It was impossible to tell from his expression.  He never really showed if he was worried or upset or angry.  Not when it was a real emotion anyway.  He could be asking him for a life-saving kidney or a piece gum for all he was emoting right now.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Scott smiled his usual bright smile.  “Nothing.  I know you guys are just teasing me.  It’s okay.”

Will didn’t look away from him and Scott got the feeling he wasn’t buying it.  He was positive he wasn’t buying it when he looked him in the eyes.  His usual placid green was leaching into hazel.  Scott knew that look.  Will was seriously worried about him.

“It’s nothing,” Scott said.  Will’s eyes grew darker.  He knew he was lying.  “It’s nothing I can’t handle is what I meant.”

Scott felt his chest lighten and his mood improved considerably just witnessing Will’s concern.  He should have known better.  How could he doubt his friends?  They cared about him and would never belittle any of his problems or feelings.  That was enough to give him the confidence he needed to deal with his life.  He smiled for real at Will and watched with fascination as his friend’s eyes faded back to green.

“I’m better now,” he said.  “And come on.  Stop looking at me like that, you homo.”

He punched Will lightly in shoulder, but he looked like he’d been socked in the gut.  He sputtered wordlessly for a moment, which was rare to fluster Will that much, and then he scowled at him.

“Whatever!  See if I care about your stupid little problems anymore!”  He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched down in his seat.  “You try to be nice to a guy and he goes around calling you names.”

“What happened?” Julian asked.

The rest of the ride in was nothing but sunshine and rainbows.  Except, they were underground so there was no sunshine and the only rainbow was the patch pinned to some guy’s backpack who was too busy making out with his boyfriend to notice it had fallen out into the aisle.  He wondered how those guys had the guts to do that.  He would never be able to make out in public with a girl let alone someone who might be considered socially unacceptable.

And speaking of socially unacceptable, he and Will were misbehaving today, but it was fun.  As long as Chris and Julian were there to keep them from doing something totally stupid, they would be fine.  Scott didn’t really care to look in any of the stores, but he liked following his friends around to see what they were interested in.  Of course, Chris’ hard on for electronics got boring after awhile, but Julian was there to lighten the mood.  He also suggested they go to the “magic store.”  Scott really wanted to go.  He loved looking at weird new age stuff.  And it smelled like weed inside.  They might get a contact buzz.

Inside the store Will started to look at the crystals.  More than likely the dork was trying to calculate the angles or the light refraction or something like that.  Chris managed to find the one thing that ran on batteries in the store and Julian was deeply involved in a conversation with the pretty store clerk.  Scott wandered toward the back of the store, running his fingers over knickknacks and odds and ends as he went.  He cruised by the chicken feet and carefully examined a bag labeled “sage” that looked like it might contain something else.  At the back of the store there was a red velvet curtain partially blocking off another room.  He glanced around to see if there was an “employees only” sign, but there wasn’t.  So, he stepped through to the next room, and stopped dead in his tracks.  He looked around the shelves and could feel his jaw hanging open in a shocked half-smile.

“Oh…my…”

“Are you lost, little boy?”

Scott started and looked to his left.  A couple feet away a young man was crouched down, taking something off the bottom shelf.  He was looking at him like he’d stumbled into someplace he shouldn’t be.  Which was very much the case.

“Oh, I uh—I was just curious what was behind the curtain.  There wasn’t a sign.”

The man stood up.  “I’ve told her she needs to put an ‘18 and older’ sign up, but she’s worried it will draw attention to the shop.”

Scott laughed.  “And here I thought it was the pig’s blood and eye of newt for sale in the window.”

The man smiled and walked closer to Scott to examine the objects on the shelf in front of him.  Scott was trying not to look at the items on the shelf in front of him, so he looked at the man.  He was as tall as he was, but really skinny.  The belt holding up his pants was on a notch he had made himself because the ones it came with would have made it too big.  He was kind of dressed like Will was today, which was to say, kind of slutty.  But, he wasn’t as pretty as Will.  He had fine, delicate features and glossy dark brown hair that fell around his face in angles accenting his eyes and cheekbones.  There had been a lot of thought put into that haircut and it probably made him seem more attractive than he really was.  Not that he wasn’t a good looking guy anyway.  Scott didn’t really want to think about the attractiveness of another man, so he looked at the item in his hand.  It was a tube of something that started with the letters A-N-A.  Scott was pretty sure that was how you spelled trouble.  The man caught him looking and turned the tube over so he could see it better.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

Scott stared at the tube of Anal-Ease.  He shook his head.  “Not that.”

“This stuff can be really useful.  Not just for, like, sex, but any other problems you might have.  It has a numbing agent in it, so it really helps with things going in or out.”

He proffered the tube to Scott so he could take a better look at it.  Scott was trying to ignore the implications of things that would need help coming _out_.  That was just an unpleasant thought waiting to happen.  He took the tube and turned it over; he wanted to read what he knew would be the ridiculously obvious directions.

“Why is it flavored?” Scott asked.  “I mean, like, who’s going to just eat this stuff?”

He looked up at the man and he had a funny smile on his lips.

“You never know,” he replied.

Scott handed the tube back.  “Oh,” he said, trying to hide the fact that he was still such a total virgin in some ways.

“Yeah, so have fun looking around.  I won’t tell Kiley you’re back here.  Not that she really cares if people your age come in here.  I mean, it’s not like kids your age don’t have sex.”

“That doesn’t mean we have kinky sex!”

The man stopped walking toward the curtain and turned back slowly on his heel.  He was smiling evilly, and then bit his lip as he looked Scott over.  Scott shifted uncomfortably.  Why was he such a spaz?  The man crossed his arms over his chest and smiled playfully at him.

“So, what kind of kink are you into?”

“I’m not.  I was just saying that I’m not.  That’s all that outburst was.  I don’t need any of the stuff in here to enjoy having sex.”

“Unh-huh.”

The man looked him over again.  He walked slowly toward him and then circled behind him.  Scott turned with him so that he didn’t lose sight of him.  The man’s eyes just kept traveling up and down his body.  Scott tugged on the collar of his polo shirt.  It was getting a little warm and the room seemed smaller than it had before.  The man finally looked him in the face again.

“You’re too innocent to be into really weird stuff like water sports or anything like that.  And I don’t think you’ve ever had the good fortune of messing around with a guy before.”

Scott opened his mouth to confirm that he most certainly had not, but the man kept talking.

“And there’s no way you’re dominant enough to tie up a girl and torture her until she’s dripping.”

Scott gulped.  He had such a vivid imagination anyway, he didn’t need this guy to help create any more fantasies.

“No,” the man said, sliding closer, “you smell like a sexy little submissive.”

Scott took a step back, but he bumped into the shelves.  He inhaled sharply and just watched to make sure the man didn’t get any closer.

“Now, my only question is, is it just being controlled and maybe tied up every now and then?  Or are you into pain?”

Scott didn’t know how to answer.  He couldn’t say yes and if he said no the man wouldn’t believe him.  But apparently this man was intuitive enough that he didn’t need an answer either way.

“Ahh, I see.”  He looked Scott over again.  “I don’t usually top, but I could make an exception for you.”

Scott huffed and gave him a look.  “Thanks but I have a _girl_ who’s completely willing to take care of my needs.”

“Hmm.  Does she…” he trailed off and tapped the tube of Anal-Ease against the shelf at eye level.

“No, she doesn’t,” Scott said firmly.

The man shrugged and stepped away from Scott.  He could suddenly breathe again.  “Well, you’re missing out.  You know, all men who _truly_ enjoy anal sex have to be just a touch masochistic.  There is absolutely nothing like it.  The pain and the anticipation…the only thing better is the pleasure.”

The man smiled over his shoulder at Scott, and he almost believed him.

“Oh,” the man turned back like he’d forgotten something.  “My name is Tyler,” he said, holding out his hand.

Scott shook it automatically, but then had to wonder where that hand had been.  He considered not giving Tyler his name or a fake one, but decided he’d probably never see him again anyway, so what could it hurt?

“I’m Scott.”

“Well, it was fun chatting with you, Scott.  And if you and your girl ever go your separate ways and you have trouble finding another to replace her…give me a call.  I’ll tide you over until you can find someone else.”

He grinned and held out a card to him.  Scott just gave him an unpleasant, skeptical look.  Tyler laughed.

“Go on, take it.  You won’t turn gay just by touching it.”

Scott snatched the card out of his hand and Tyler laughed as he disappeared to the other side of the curtain.  Scott glared at the swishing red velvet and hoped that he would get hit by a bus once he left the store.  Then he quickly amended that wish.  He hadn’t been _that_ bad.  Scott looked at the card in his hand.  It had Tyler’s name and a phone number on it.  He turned it over.  The logo said “Blue Boy.”

“Good grief,” Scott muttered.  “He’s a professional.”

He stuck the card in his pocket and quickly ducked back out into the store.  Hopefully no one would see where he had come from.  He walked toward the front of the store, searching for his friends or Tyler.  He didn’t want to run into any combination of them.  He was almost afraid Julian and Tyler would run into each other at the register.  But, Scott didn’t see Tyler at the register even though Julian was buying some rocks.  They were probably “special rocks,” but they just looked like rocks to him.  Chris and Will joined them from separate aisles.  Scott looked around toward the back of the store.  It wasn’t that big; Tyler was gone. Had he not paid for his…item?  Should Scott tell the shopkeeper?  Did he want to explain why he knew someone had stolen a tube of Anal-Ease?  Certainly not.  It couldn’t be that expensive anyway.  And heck, Tyler’s job might have made him such a frequent customer that he had a running tab.  Now that was a disturbing thought.  Think about something else.  He was hungry and his friends were leaving him behind in the store.  He hurried after them and knew that he was going to have to let them know sooner or later that his stomach was grumbling.

All in all, they took the news pretty well.  Will seemed a little off put by being fallen onto and his gum smacking, but he may have just still been peeved about the homo comment earlier.  He liked the interior of the restaurant he’d picked out.  It was like a Silver Diner, only not as cheap.  As they were seated at a table with a view of the door he realized that the reason he had thought of this restaurant was because his father had mentioned last night that he would be having a business meeting here the next day.  He hoped they wouldn’t bump into each other.  His father knew he wasn’t going to look at the university when he signed his form, but he still didn’t want to get caught.

He also didn’t want to discuss the fact that they would be splitting up soon, but apparently he was the only one with enough balls to bring it up.  Of course, everyone kept getting up and leaving.  They obviously couldn’t really handle it after all and tried to hide that fact by blaming it on him.  He was the sensitive, clingy one who was being a baby about the whole thing.  Yeah right.  He was the only one being open about how he felt.  The other three just didn’t show what they were feeling.  And it was so irritating when they patronizingly told him how much they liked him.  They might as well have been scratching him behind the ears and given him a milk bone.  And Chris and Julian pretty much _had_ scratched him behind the ears.  Will had decided to reach his foot across under the table and grind it into his groin all while telling him how much they all loved him.  Will’s sense of retribution was frightening at times, but Scott definitely made a mental note not to call him any variation of a homosexual ever again.

“So what about you?” Chris asked when he came back from talking to some random black guy in a suit.  “Where are you going to college?  Are you going to be leaving us and going way off to the west coast or something?”

“Probably not,” Scott said banging the glass catsup bottle until a huge blob fell out on his plate.  “Every college offers psychology as a major.  And it would kind of be like you, Chris, if you decide to do law.  It won’t really matter where I go for undergrad.  I’ll have to look more carefully at schools that offer PhDs later.”

“Oooo,” Will and Julian said, showing how impressed they were.

“Really?” Chris asked.  “You’re still interested in it even after what happened with Dr. Gorman?”

“Well, I would obviously be better and nowhere near as evil as her,” Scott replied and then shoved five catsup covered fries into his mouth.

“You do realize that psychologists are supposed to listen and not blather on and on, right?” Will quipped.

“I amb a gud lis-son-her.”

He could see his friends grudgingly acknowledge that fact to themselves.

“Maybe you _would_ make a good psychologist,” Julian conceded, “but _we_ would never come see you.”

“Yeah, it’s never good when the doctor is crazier than the patient,” Will laughed.

Scott swallowed.  “Oh, whatever.  You two yahoos are definitely crazier than me.  Only Chris might be slightly sane.  And it’s a big if that it’s more than me.”

His friends all laughed and Scott smiled in contentment.  This was nice.  This was the way college should be.  They should all go to the same school and be able to have lunch together in the middle of the day on their own schedule.  Why wasn’t there a university out there that could accommodate all of them?

He jumped as his butt buzzed.  He put down his hamburger and reached into his back pocket to pull out his phone.  It was Antoinette.  He immediately panicked.  It was still school hours…why was she calling him in the middle of the day?  It must be something really important if she was cutting class to call him.  He stood up.

“Um, I gotta take this…over there.”

Scott headed for the entrance and started to go outside when he saw an empty hallway that led back to a coatroom.  He ducked inside and quickly answered his phone before it switched over to his voicemail.

“Hello?  Hello!  Antoinette?  Are you there?”

“Yeah, hi, Scott!  How are you?”

“Um.  Good.”

“Having fun cutting school?”

“Yeah, we went—I am not cutting school; I’m looking at the university.”

“Yeah, right.  You should have told me so that I could take the same day.  Then we could have just stayed in.  You know what I mean?”

Scott smiled, but then shook himself.  “I do know what you mean and it’s definitely a ‘no’ and you definitely know why.”

“Oh, we don’t have to worry about that,” Antoinette said lightly.

Scott felt relief.  “Really?”

“Yeah.  I mean, once you’re pregnant you can’t like, get pregnant again.”

Scott didn’t feel well.  Little black dots started to dance in his vision and he had a sudden attack of vertigo.

“…Scott?  Answer me.  Scott?”

Scott shook his head and realized Antoinette had been speaking to him for longer than he’d heard her voice.  He looked around noticed that he was sitting awkwardly on his feet on the floor.  The phone was still clutched in his hand and pressed to his ear so hard it hurt.  Should he ask her now?  Would she be mad if he did it over the phone?  Should he wait until he had a ring?

“Antoinette?”

“Uh!  Scott!  Why didn’t you answer me?  I thought you’d hung up on me, but we were still connected.  And you wouldn’t say anything.”

“Well, I—”

“I’m just joking you dweeb.  I started my period today right on schedule.”

Scott tried to process those words.  What did they mean?

“Scott?”

“Omigod, Antoinette!”

“What?”

“What kind of sick joke is that?  I pretty much blacked out onto the floor.”

Antoinette burst out laughing.  “Really?  That’s so funny.  You’re such a spaz.  Though I guess it’s good to know just how unprepared you would be if it actually happened.”

“I was more prepared than you know,” he said seriously.

She must have picked up on his tone because she stopped laughing at him.  “I’m sorry, okay?  But I thought you understood that I _couldn’t_ be pregnant.  That’s what birth control does.”

“Listen to me, Antoinette, I want you to really understand that this is not something to joke about, okay?”

“Okay, I got it.  Chill.”

“No, promise me.”

“Okay, I promise.  I will never tell you I’m pregnant again unless I really am.  How’s that?”

Scott nodded and then realized she couldn’t see the motion.  “Okay.  That’s fine.”

“So,” she said coyly, “you want to come over tonight?”

“What?  Ew.  No.  Not until you’re done…bleeding.  Ew.  And I am still very displeased about that ‘joke.’  If you want it, you’re gonna have to earn it.”

“You see, if you were a normal guy, that might be sexy.  But you really mean I have to earn it by being good.”

“Yes, I do.  Starting by not cutting class.  You should get back.”

“Look who’s talking.  And besides, I’m at lunch.”

“Are there people around you?!”

“No, I went down to the art room.  You know, _our_ room.”

Scott blushed.  “Yeah, I know the one.  Talk to you later.”

“Bye, honey.”

She hung up.  Scott stared at his phone.  Honey?  He smiled.  He was her honey.  Then he frowned.  If he was her honey, what was Jake?

Scott heard someone approaching down the hall and started to stand up.  He got to his feet just as a woman rounded the corner and nearly tripped over him.  She yelped in surprise and he helped steady her, already apologizing.  Once she regained her balance they looked at each other.  Scott immediately let go of her and took a step back.  It was his father’s mistress.  The one his mother had caught his father with the night of the back to school dance.  She was sporting a fur coat much too heavy to be wearing in early October, but it was jet black and her platinum blonde curls looked amazing against it.  She was probably about ten years younger than his father and her name was Kristen.  She didn’t even have the decency to have a trampy name like Candy or Trixie.

They stared at each other, having one of the most awkward moments of their lives.

“Um, so,” she said trying to do anything to diffuse the tension, “you know, if it wasn’t for the hair, you’d look exactly like your father.”

“Unh-hunh.”  He stared at her a moment longer and then just blurted out, “Why did you go after a married man?  I mean, I know my dad’s to blame too, I’m not saying he isn’t, but why would you think it’s a good idea to go after a married man?”

She took in a short breath and seemed to be a little angered by the question.  Then she sighed and looked at him almost sympathetically.

“Okay, I can tell you’re not being angry and bitter about this, and you seem like a sweet boy.  Your father goes on about you like you’re—well, he talks about you a lot, so I kind of feel like I know you just a little bit.  So, I don’t want to lie to you.”

“I don’t want you to lie to me either.”

She nodded.  “Okay.  Your dad hit on _me_.  And he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring at the time.”

Scott felt something settle on his shoulders.

“I didn’t find out he was married until I randomly saw him with his family one day.  I think it was at the annual book fair downtown.  So, I of course yelled at him and told him I was going to leave him.  But by that point, I was already in love with him.  He told me his family came first and that he would never choose me over his family.  Or even his wife.”  She shook her head.  “But I didn’t care.  I loved him.  I still love him.  I signed on to be his mistress; not really thinking what might happen if the truth ever came out.  Well, at least not how it would affect the children.”  She sighed.  “We just got sloppy after a few years.”

Scott blinked.  “A few _years_?”

The room started to go dark again.


	13. Chapter 13

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

 

Chris

 

Chris fed a wire through his hand as he walked from the den, around the living room, through the foyer and into the kitchen.  Scott had set up tables in every room with enough snack foods and drinks to feed a small army.  The furniture had been pushed against the walls and most loose trinkets and pictures had been removed.  Chris led the wire up to the laptop sitting on the counter and plugged it into the attached switch that was already mostly full.  Scott had borrowed speakers from all three of them and a couple of the girls so that there would be music in every room.  His house looked like the setup for a full on blow out party like in the movies.

Scott skipped into the kitchen, thankfully dressed in jeans and a dark grey T-shirt with a weird design across the right shoulder.  When Chris had arrived at his house an hour earlier, he had answered the door in a towel.  And Chris was once again forced to wonder what on earth the boy did to have such a ripped body when he knew for a fact that he didn’t play sports or lift weights.  Or exercise for that matter.  Some people we just born lucky.  The little prick.

“Hey, Scott?”

“Yeah?” the blond asked, dumping a bag of ice into an ice chest.  Chris waited for the deafening rattling to stop.

“Do you really have enough friends for a party this big?”

“Of course not.  I made flyers and handed them out at school.  Didn’t you see it?”

“No.”  Chris looked over the switch before turning to the laptop to run a diagnostics check on the system he’d set up.

“Oh.  Well…there’s probably not going to be that many people anyway,” Scott said opening a twelve pack of Coke and dropping the cans into the ice chest.

“Dude, there’s probably going to be a boatload.  Calverton is totally a party school.  And if everybody at school asks one of their outside friends to come…that’s a lot of people.”

Scott waved a dismissive hand as he headed out of the kitchen with a piece of tape and a sheet of paper.  Chris clicked on a song in the iTunes list Scott had set up and followed him out to see if any of the speakers weren’t playing.

“Not that I care or anything,” Chris said adjusting a wire to cut down the feedback, “but your dad is going to kill you.”

“Relax,” Scott said, writing on the paper with a big black Sharpie.  “I’ve taken precautions.  All the upstairs rooms, basement, and garage doors are locked from the inside and I’ve put up mostly everything breakable.  And to keep out the really bad elements…”

Scott opened the front door and posted the sign he’d just made: Sorry, we’re out of alcohol.

Chris looked at the ceiling and counted to five.  “Scott, what if people bring their own alcohol?”

Scott looked at him like it was the first time this was occurring to him.  “Stop worrying.  It’s not going to be that big.”

Before he could try to talk some belated sense into him, Will called out from the front walk.

“Hey!  Happy birthday, Scotty!”

Will jumped onto Scott and the two of them tumbled into the house.  Julian followed them in and then he and Will looked around the space.

“So this flyer of yours says it’s going to be a rocking party,” Julian said.

“Yep!” Scott agreed cheerfully.

“How come _I_ didn’t see this flyer?” Chris asked.

“Should we do presents now?” Will asked, holding a bag up with his two hands and hopping from foot to foot.

“Ooo!  Yes!”  Scott started hopping with him.

“No, wait,” Julian said.  “Yours requires assembly.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Will said, deflating quickly.

“Oh, well, you guys can spend the night after the party and we can do it later.  Or in the morning.”

“Yes!”  Will was back at 11 on the 1-10 party scale.

“Why don’t you put them in my room for now.  The door’s locked, but the key is on the ledge above it.”

“Okay!  But can we do the other thing now?” Will asked, looking to Chris.

“Yeah, I’ll go get it out of my car.”

“What?  What is it?” Scott cried.

“Hold your horses.  I’m going to go get it.”

Chris grabbed his keys and jogged outside to his car where it was parked in the driveway.  He popped open the trunk and pulled out a big, red plastic bat and the colorful piñata they’d picked out for Scott two weeks ago.  When he went back inside Will was coming down the stairs and he could hear Scott and Julian in the kitchen.

“Scotty~~!” Chris called out.

Scott came bounding out of the kitchen.  His eyes went all glassy when he saw the piñata.

“You got me a piñata?” he said, his voice full of happiness.  “And it’s even a bu _rr_ o!” he rolled his r’s.  “That’s so cool!  Can we do it now?”

“Yeah, yeah, now!” Will said and ran into the kitchen to retrieve a chair.  Chris and Julian exchanged looks.  Here they were again, supervising their two rowdy boys.  Will returned and placed the chair underneath the small lamp hanging in the foyer.  The vaulted ceiling was about twenty feet high, so the lamp was on a chain about twelve feet long.  Will started to tie the piñata to the decorative knob on the bottom of the lamp while all Scott did was watch.

“Um, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Chris said.

“Yeah, the chain will make it swing more and more than likely it’s going to come out of the ceiling if it swings too much,” Julian backed him up.

“It’ll be fine,” Will said.  “And if it breaks we’ll just blame it on one of the guests.”

He hopped down off the chair and he and Scott snickered.  Chris couldn’t believe it.  Was this actually Scott’s house or had he somehow shifted them all into an alternate dimension so that it wouldn’t matter if _this_ house got damaged?  He shrugged and let it go.  Scott was a big boy.  He could do what he wanted.

Chris moved the chair out of the way while Will blindfolded Scott.  Julian put the plastic bat in his hands and the three of them helped spin him around.  When they let him go he crashed into Julian and then fell to the floor.  They helped him back on his feet and set him in the right direction.  He started swinging wildly and they called out to him if he was warmer or colder.  Much to Chris’ chagrin he was forced to use the descriptor “freezing” as he ducked under the flailing bat.  Finally Scott found his footing and started heading the right way.  Once he tapped the piñata with the bat once, it was all over.  He squared his feet, pulled back, and swung with all his might.  The burro exploded in half and the candy and other items they’d filled it with sprayed across the room in every direction.  There was squealing from the direction of the front door.  Scott pulled up a corner of the blindfold and gasped.  The other three turned to look at the front entrance.  The girls were standing rigidly from the shock of being pelted with candy.  Anna had a condom in her hair.  Scott ran up to her and plucked the offending item out of the frizz and smiled at her.  Then he looked at the packaging.

“Ooo.  Chocolate flavor.  And it’s sugar free.”

“I found them online,” Will laughed.  “There’s like, six different flavors.”

“Couldn’t you have waited for us?” Laney complained as she bent over to examine the items on the floor more carefully.

Chris bent over and picked one up.  The packaging really did say it was sugar free.  He looked at Riley and Anna.

“Would this really matter to you?” he asked.

“What?” Riley asked.

“Would you be more or less likely to give a guy oral sex if the condom said it was sugar free?”

Anna pondered the question and Scott jumped in between them and flicked his fingers at Chris.

“Do not bring up such dirty things with her!”

Anna draped an arm across Scott’s shoulders.  “Aww, come on, Scott.  I’m a big girl.  It’s not like I’ve never done it before anyway.”

Scott gasped and stepped away from her like she’d just announced she was radioactive.  He looked at her with disillusioned eyes.  Riley kicked a condom with her toe.

“I would never do that with a guy.  I mean, he pees with it.  Gross.”

Anna, Scott, and Chris all looked at her.  They sighed.  “Riley…”

“What?”

“So,” Julian said, getting their attention, “should we try to get all this stuff up before people start arriving?”

“Whoa.  I already love this party,” they heard someone say as he walked into the house without waiting for an official invite.

The girl with him said, “Candy and condoms.  Who needs alcohol?”

A steady stream of people began to follow them in.  Chris stepped to the side with his friends as he watched the tide come in.  He only recognized about one in five.

“I don’t get it,” Chris said.  “Who comes to a party all at the same time…and _on_ time?”

“Oh, the flyer said six o’clock.  I knew people would come late,” Scott said, hurrying into the kitchen.

Chris glanced at his watch.  It was 7:26.  That was pretty late.  Suddenly the music that had been playing softly in the background blared out of all the speakers and most of the lights went out.  The people inside cheered and the people outside anxiously pressed forward, excited to join the fun.  The house was rapidly filling and conversation at normal talking distance was no longer an option.  He turned to look at Will and Julian.  They seemed to be all for the party.  And he certainly wasn’t going to be the responsible one.  He followed his friends into the throng of people and was amazed by how pretty all the girls were.  Okay, well, maybe they weren’t pretty per se, but they were scantily clad and that could make up for a lot.  He lost track of time as he moved from stranger to stranger.  With one possible exception he’d never met a single one of the girls he danced with.

The house was at capacity.  He couldn’t believe how many people had come.  Fortunately it appeared that people realized most of the doors were locked, so after a few couples went upstairs and came back down disappointed, nobody went upstairs anymore.  And while the house was jam packed full of people and they were all dancing like crazy, horny people—it really was more or less controlled.  He hadn’t heard anything breaking, (not that he would really be able to hear it anyway) and he hadn’t seen people with beer cans or bottles.  Maybe they really would get away with just a few stains on the floor.  No, wait. Not _they_ , him.  This was his deal.

Chris looked over at the “him” in question.  He could see the top of his bright head bobbing away to the music and when the crowd parted for a moment, Chris could see that he was smiling.  It made Chris happy to see Scott look like he was having fun.  He didn’t know what was going on with the Anna-Antoinette-Jake situation, but he did know that the first custody hearing had been the previous week.  He didn’t know the details, but Scott told them it hadn’t gone well.  The fact that it had only been the _first_ hearing was an indication of that.  Scott had been down since and that was probably why he’d planned the blow out party.  So, at least he was actually enjoying it.

Chris started to squeeze his way out of the crowd in order to find some water, but he felt a hand on his shoulder.  The hand turned him around and he found himself face to face with Karen.  It was too loud to say anything, so she didn’t bother.  She just slid her arms around his neck and pressed their bodies together.  The song, along with all the music that had been playing all night, was a hard, fast techno number.  And while there weren’t any flashing lights or strobes—there was only track lighting along the walls and some Christmas lights providing the limited visibility and ambiance—it felt like they were in a club downtown.  Most people, whether in couples or trios or groups of more, were probably only prevented from actually having sex by the fact that they were wearing clothing.  It was just how you danced to that kind of music.  Which was the rationale he used for letting Karen move against him and not pushing her away.  It would be rude not to dance with her at least once, and this was the only way they _could_ dance.

Of course, he didn’t have an excuse for their hands.  Hips were one thing, but hands could stay still even in a club setting.  Their hands were roaming.  The music was pounding so strongly in his head he couldn’t have had a rational thought even if he’d wanted one.  And they were pressed so close together…it was impossible for her not to feel him through her skimpy tank top.  When they stood together he used to press directly between her legs, now he was more against her abdomen.  It was a little disappointing and he couldn’t stop himself from bending his knees just a little bit until he put himself where he wanted to be.  Her nails dug lightly into the skin of his shoulders and he knew that she wanted him there too.  Her lips were pressed against his neck, and as he slid his hand up her side, his thumb caught on the underside of her breast and that was all the excuse he needed before covering it with his whole hand.  She forced his head down and kissed him.  He could feel their feet moving slowly together as they worked their way out of the crowd.  He looked up and found that they had been subconsciously moving toward the stairs.  She saw them too.  She pulled herself up to whisper in his ear.

“You wanna go up?”

He nodded, swallowing over his labored breathing.  They turned, holding hands, and started up the stairs.  Then he stopped and pulled her back.  She came back down a step to stand beside him.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot.  The rooms are locked.”

“But, you know how to get in, don’t you?”

He felt his resolve crumbling as he knew his flimsy excuse didn’t hold any water since he remembered where Scott said the key was.  He was resisting because he knew this was a bad idea.  Nothing good would come of them sleeping together.  And it had taken him so little to get to this point that he felt like such an easy slut.  Didn’t he have any will power at all?

“Chris?” Karen said, pressing against him again so he could hear her.  “You know how to get in, right?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean we should.”

“Chris.”  She turned his head so that he had to look her in the face.  “I do want us to make up and date again.  I do want us to have a meaningful relationship.  But…can we forget that tonight?  Can’t we just…you know?”

Chris had already made up his mind, but he figured he might as well put up a little more fight, just for show.  He hesitated and looked like he was wavering, and then he said, “No strings?”

“None,” she said, putting her hands in the air and wiggling her fingers.

“Okay then.  Let’s go.”  He grabbed her hand and they started up the stairs again.  “I have a flavored condom.”

She glanced over at him and he stopped walking and put his hands in the air.  “Not that like, you have to find out what flavor it is or anything.”

Karen smiled and leaned forward from the step above him to kiss him.  Then she leaned forward more and put her lips to his ear.

“I would love to find out what flavor it is.”

Chris hoped the music was loud enough to hide his embarrassing whimper.  They took one more step up the stairs and the song ended abruptly, allowing everyone in the room to hear the loud bang.  Everyone turned toward the front door where it had been swung open too hard against the wall.

“Whoops.  Sorry.”

The next song started up and everyone returned to what they were doing, no longer concerned by the newcomer.  She still had Chris’ attention however.  It was Antoinette.  She was wearing nothing but a really wide belt and a short tube top.  Well, the belt may have actually been a skirt, but there would be a good argument for its use as a belt as well.  And even though most of the people had returned to dancing, most of the males’ eyes in the room were still on her.  Her hair was so shiny it actually seemed to be glowing in the dim lighting.  She looked like someone ready to cause trouble if ever Chris saw one.  He saw her scanning the crowd, and then she seemed to spot something.  He looked to see what she might be looking at, afraid of what he would see.  Scott’s platinum head was easy to spot in the crowd.  Surprisingly, he was practically the only one there with hair that blond.  Antoinette started to walk toward him with definite purpose, and with Jake in tow.  Chris clenched his hand.  He was not going to let her mess with him tonight.  He’d never gone from up to down so fast before in his life.  He dropped Karen’s hand and started down the stairs.

“Chris?”

“I’m sorry.  There’s something I have to do.”

He pushed his way through the crowd and intercepted Antoinette before she reached Scott.  She pulled up short in surprise when she saw him step quickly in front of her.  Chris looked behind her.  She’d lost Jake along the way.  He looked back at her.

“Hi,” he shouted.

“Umm.  Hi.”

He reached out and took a hold of her by the elbow.  “Come dance with me.”

“Um, actually I was—”

He pulled her away from Scott’s direction.

“Well, okay then.”

He knew there was really only one way for them to have a conversation, so he pulled her close.  She didn’t really react to the proximity and almost appeared to be bored.  He was glad she was so tall; it would make the conversation easier.

“Don’t fuck with my friend,” he growled in her ear.

She stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed.  But not back to the way she had been before, this time she melted against him and Chris was put under desperate strain to remember what the purpose of this dance was.

“Settle down,” she purred into his ear.  “I’m not.”

He squeezed her arm, but not nearly hard enough to hurt her.  “Yes, you are.”

“Only because he likes it,” she said coyly.

“I mean emotionally, Antoinette.  Even if all you two do is fool around, which I know isn’t the case, you would have to have realized by now that Scott can’t separate his emotions from anything.  He can’t even pick out a piece of fruit without wondering how it might affect the other pieces that don’t get selected.”

He heard her soft laugh.  “I know,” she said.

“So then stop playing with him.  It’s a game for you, but he actually likes you.”

She pulled back and smiled brightly at him.  “Really?  Do you mean it?  I mean, did he say that?”

Chris stared at her, a little confused by her reaction.  Then the light bulb went off.

“Oh, my gosh.  You like him.”

She looked startled and couldn’t answer for a moment, and then she shook her head with a laugh.  “Well, of course I do.  He’s sweet.  Who wouldn’t like him?”

Was she deliberately misunderstanding him?  “Antoinette, if you like him, why are you doing this?”

“Because he—” she said, suddenly upset, and then cut off.  She looked away, schooled her features, and then looked back at him.  “Because we don’t feel the same way about each other.  It’s not like that.  I like a lot of people.”

Chris was glad his confusion was preempting his desire to shake her until her neck snapped.  What the hell did that mean?  How did she really feel about Scott?  She was either very complicated or very simple.  He felt sorry for Scott; this girl was a pain in the neck—and other unmentionable places.

He sighed and wondered why they were still dancing.  He guessed they were waiting for the end of the song.  But why bother?  He turned his head toward the stairs.  Karen was still waiting there, with her arms crossed and looking very impatient.  He dropped his head.  He couldn’t do it.  No matter how good it might be, it wasn’t right.  Even if he could just have no strings attached sex, he couldn’t do it with Karen.  They were tangled together enough as it was.  He looked back at Antoinette; she looked lost in her thoughts.

“Hey, Antoinette?”

Her eyes moved to meet his, drawn out of her ponderings.  “Yeah?”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Don’t slap me, okay?”

“Huh?”

He pulled her close and used his hand to move her hips in a circular motion against him.  She looked weirded out for a moment, but she didn’t stop him.  He had her pressed completely against him, but there was still a lot of space between their faces.  Her boobs really were huge.  And sooooo nice.  Chris cleared his throat.  This was business; he needed to control himself.  Then he felt Antoinette run a hand over his buzzed hair and start to move her hips on her own.

“Is your ex watching?” she asked demurely.

“No,” he denied so vehemently he was obviously lying.  “Yes.”

Antoinette giggled and used her hand to guide his down the side of her body toward her backside.  “Well, it’s a good thing you picked one of the three girls at Calverton who aren’t afraid of Karen Green.”

“You’re not afraid of her?” Chris asked, his hand sliding around the curve of her ass to her thigh.

“Nope.”

He wasn’t sure if he lifted her leg or she raised it, but it was now partially hooked on his hip.

“Not even a little?” he challenged.

She gave a little undulation of her body.  It was such a small movement, but with her legs spread it put him squarely where he shouldn’t be.  And he was feeling up again.  Chris choked back a gasp.

“I’ll take that as a no.”  His voice was strained.  He was making weird noises again as they kept moving and he tried to cover it up as a laugh.  “Damn.  Now I know why Scott’s willing to put up with so much shit for you.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t even know the half of it.”

Chris gulped at her predatory expression.

“Dude!  Get off my girlfriend!”

Chris and Antoinette turned to see Jake standing right beside them.  Chris immediately dropped all body parts he had possession of and tried to step away.  He bumped into someone and only managed to get a foot back.

“Oh, s-sorry.  I-I was j-just—”  Chris looked to Antoinette for help.

“You were just what?” Jake demanded, advancing on him.  Chris wondered why he’d never noticed how large the soccer team captain was before.  Antoinette put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“It’s okay, Jake.  We were just dancing and he got a little carried away.  But, what can you do?  Most boys are perverts.”

Chris gave her an astonished look and she just smiled at him since Jake’s back was to her.

Jake glared at him and stuck a finger in his face.  “I’m going to give you a pass on account of you being Will’s friend.  Stay away from my girlfriend.”

Chris nodded, unable to find words.  Jake turned and wrapped an arm around Antoinette’s waist to lead her away.

“See?  That’s why I don’t want you to wear shit like this,” he said as they disappeared into the crowd.

Chris sighed once they were out of sight.  He was worried he might have been responsible for a fight breaking out in Scott’s house.  Why had he even done something so stupid?  Ah, yes.  He remembered.  He looked toward the stairs.  Karen was gone.

 

 

Julian

 

Julian winced as he entered the Harder’s driveway too fast and the bumper scraped the ground.  Well, it was the underside, so it wouldn’t be visible.  No harm, no foul.  He braked but didn’t park because he saw Will was sitting outside on the railing of his porch.  He had his cell phone to his ear, but he said what Julian assumed was a goodbye and hung up.  He hopped off the railing and picked up a green bag stuffed with green, yellow, and white tissue paper.  As low effort as the wrapping job had been, it still put him to shame; he’d wrapped his in a grocery bag.  But to be fair, he’d put a lot of effort into Scott’s gift.  He wondered if he would like it.  He was usually scared by his art.

Will opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.  “What up?”

Julian backed out of the driveway smiling.  “Figuratively or literally?”

“Now, now.  None of that.  You’re driving so there can’t be any molesting.”

Julian started heading for Scott’s.  His house was barely five minutes from Will’s by car.  “So, are you ready for this shindig?”

“I don’t know.  This party is either going to be really lame or a disaster.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But oh my God.  Piñata.”

Julian glanced over at Will.  Uh-oh.  He was going to be hyper tonight.  In the few short minutes it took to reach Scott’s house Will was already amped up and itching to get out of the car.  Julian followed him shaking his head.  He could see Chris and Scott in the doorway.  Scott was hanging something up and Chris looked like he was trying to explain the concept of reason to him.  He felt sorry for Chris and himself.  Their boys were going to be troublesome.

“Hey!  Happy birthday, Scotty!”

Will launched himself at Scott and after he regained his balance they twittered like a couple of birds hyped up on Ritalin.  He was almost nervous to put Will in charge of taking the gifts upstairs, but he wasn’t usually destructive when he was excited.  Only when he was bored.  Chris left to go get the piñata and Scott waved at him to follow him into the kitchen.  He started messing around with a laptop set up on the counter.

“So, what is it?  What’d y’all get me?”

“It’s a surprise,” Julian said, looking over Scott’s shoulder to see the playlist.  “House music.  So, this is a no-talking kind of party.”

Scott let out a small laugh.  “Pretty much.”

Julian turned Scott around and held him by the shoulders as he looked at him.  “Aa-ah,” he sighed.  “My little boy is growing up.  Seventeen years old.  What a fine man you’ve turned out to be.  I’m so proud of you.”

Scott ignored the mockery.  “Thank you,” he said.

Julian raised a hand to ruffle his hair and Scott ducked away.

“Back off, hair freak.”

Julian just smiled.  “I’ll get you later.”

“Yeah, whatever.”  Scott pulled a hat out of his back pocket and crammed it down over his ears.  He turned back to the computer and adjusted the order of some of the songs.  Like with that kind of music it would even matter.

“Scotty~~!” Chris called from the foyer.

“Ooo!”

Scott bolted out of the kitchen, throwing his hat aside as he went.  His energy and enthusiasm were infectious and Julian was feeling it even as he watched the potential disaster that was the piñata unfold.  This is what he would really prefer.  Just the four of them hanging out and having a good time.  He hadn’t been in the mood lately for crowds and noise, and he wanted Scott to talk about the custody hearing.  It was very odd for Scott to just clam up about something.  Anything for that matter.  Maybe he just needed to be lost in a crowd for a while; he might need to kind of forget himself.  Julian could understand that.

He had been chilling and watching with great amusement as Scott stumbled around his foyer, but then he figured out where the piñata was.  Julian started to move but didn’t know where he could go that would prevent him from being hit with the contents of the donkey’s stomach.  In fact there was no where he could go.  Candy and condoms made it into the kitchen, the den, and on the stairs.  He was almost afraid he’d squealed like a girl when Scott busted it open; thankfully it had been the girls.  At least he was pretty sure.  Laney picked up a tootsie roll in one hand a condom in the other.  She walked over to Julian.

“You like spearmint flavor?” she asked him.

He leered at her.  “Do you?”

She looked surprised for a moment and then tried to cover it up and look cool.  She struggled to find something to say.  Then she gave up and scowled.

“Damn.  That’s not fair.  You gotta give warning.”

“I like spearmint flavor,” Will said, taking the condom from Laney.

“And what are you going to do with it?” she asked him.

“Probably make a spearmint flavored water balloon.”

“Don’t you think you could find a better use for it?” Liz asked, examining the ones she’d found in her hands.  “I kind of like strawberry myself.”

“I don’t need it,” Will said.  “We don’t use—”

He cut off and the three of them looked at him.  Julian was stunned.  Was Will having sex with someone?  It obviously wasn’t Liz, so who the hell could it be?

“—condoms when we masturbate.  Right, Julian?”

Julian looked at him like he was one of those socially inept people who would just say random things and people never knew what they were talking about or why they were talking at all.

“Well, I usually don’t,” he said.

“Eww!” the girls squealed and put their hands up to ward off any further depictions or descriptions.

Julian turned and looked at the mess on the floor.  They hadn’t put that much in the piñata, at least he didn’t think they had, but there was candy and condoms everywhere.

“So, should we try to get all this stuff up before people start arriving?” Julian asked.

“Whoa.  I already love this party,” they heard someone say as he walked right through the open doorway.

The girl with him said, “Candy and condoms.  Who needs alcohol?”

A steady stream of people began to follow them in.  Julian stood to the side with his friends and watched in amazement as random people just walked right in.  Then the lights went down and the music jumped several decibels in volume.  Will and Chris didn’t seem too alarmed by the sudden transformation, and he couldn’t tell if his apprehension was due to the situation or his mood, so he decided to just go with the flow.

Julian didn’t recognize more than half the party-goers, but that meant that most of the girls in the skimpy clothing didn’t go to Calverton and therefore didn’t know his reputation.  As such, he was edgy while still managing to look safe, so he had a near constant rotation of girls more than ready and willing to dance with him.  And he had no objections to letting them all take a ride on the Julian Express.  Hoo-hoo!  He wondered if somebody had spiked the ice because he was getting a little bit loopy.  And thinking of ice made him want some.  He begged forgiveness of the three girls he had been dancing with and left them to some poor sap who had been waiting for the cooler guys to move along.  He found an ice chest against a wall and pulled out a bottled water.  He decided to drink straight from the bottle rather than pouring it into a cup with some ice just in case someone was having fun with the ice.  That probably wasn’t happening, he was probably just weird, but better safe than stripping on the dining room table.

He felt someone tap him on the shoulder and he turned around.  Laney smiled at him and held out her hand.  He gave her the bottle and she gulped down a couple sips.  Then she nodded toward the mass of writhing people in invitation.  He knew he should go dance with her.  He’d promised he’d date her and try to see her as girlfriend material, so now would be a good opportunity.  He knew Dr. Gorman wasn’t here and he was pretty sure Eun-hee hadn’t come, so he could do with her what she wanted him to.  They finished off the bottle of water and then joined hands to return to the dancing.

Laney was wearing short shorts and a lacey camisole, so she was definitely looking like a mature young woman, physically anyway.  But it was just strange for Julian to see those womanly features as sexual.  Those same features on the girls he had previously been dancing with had had a very different effect on him; he’d had to be careful not to potentially cause a lawsuit.  But with Laney, she was just his cute little friend.  His cute little friend who was pressing her perky little boobs against his chest and riding his thigh.  Well, her breasts were more against his stomach; she was short.  He felt bad thinking about things like that when she was obviously trying so hard to make him feel good and attracted to her.  He closed his eyes and concentrated on the physical sensations.  He ignored that it was Laney and was able to put a hand to her waist and dance in a way that he thought Laney would interpret as naughty, but wouldn’t make him feel guilty about touching her.  He opened his eyes and sighed.  It wasn’t working.  He was never going to be able view Laney as anything other than…Laney.

Julian looked down at her.  She looked ecstatically triumphant.  She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled herself up so that she could talk into his ear.

“See?  You can totally see me as a non-friend.  I’m someone you don’t mind being all sexy with.”

Julian smiled and shook his head.  “Laney, I could do this with anyone.”

“Oh, yeah?  How about…” she looked around and then said, “Riley?”  Then she made a face.  “Okay, bad example.  How about…” she looked around again.  “Oh!  Will!”  She scowled.  “Okay, that’s an even worse example.”

Julian laughed.  “Laney I don’t care about physical stuff; it’s not that important.  I don’t really have personal proximity boundaries, so touching other people is no big deal to me.  I mean, people are more than just bodies.  They have minds and spirits.  And I don’t mind touching those when I have a conversation with someone, so what’s the difference from touching someone’s body?  Personally, I feel that physicality is the most impersonal way to communicate with someone.”

Laney gave him a half-way disgusted look.  “You are so full of it.”

“I’m not!  I mean it.  I could dance like this with anyone.”

“Oh, yeah?  How about…” Laney scanned the crowd again.  If she selected a stranger he might be in some trouble.  Well, he might be in more trouble if she selected someone from Calverton who he didn’t know well enough to get freaky with.  He really believed what he had said about physically touching people, but he wasn’t stupid.  There were certain social rules and actual laws that wouldn’t be a good idea to break.

“How about Chris?” Laney asked smugly.

Julian shrugged and grabbed Chris’ wrist as he passed by.  He was startled for a moment and then relaxed when he saw it was Julian.  _The poor boy_ , Julian thought.  _He has no idea what’s about to happen to him._

Julian yanked down hard on Chris’ wrist so that he lost his balance and stumbled to the side.  Julian was there to catch him and trapped one of his arms to his side as he wrapped an arm around his waist and pressed his hand flat against his stomach to pull him close.  He had his other arm up over his shoulder, his hand clasping his chest.  Chris strained against him and used his free arm to push ineffectually against Julian’s side.

“Geh!  The hell, Julian?!”  He resisted the movement of Julian’s body and looked very displeased.  “Get off me, you freak!”

“No.”

It was much too dark to see, but Julian could imagine him blushing.

“J-Julian?” he questioned nervously.

Julian let go of him and whipped him around quickly by hooking a finger in his belt loop.  He put a hand to the small of his back to keep him from escaping and fought one of Chris’ hands off.  Chris was arching his back to keep their faces apart, not realizing that in doing so he was pressing their lower halves together even more.  He used his grip on Chris’ wrist to pull his arm over his shoulder, forcing him into a semi-embrace.

“Oh, come on, Chris.  We’re close, right?”

“Not this close,” Chris grumbled having only his right hand as a means of defense.

“Ah, relax.  You’ll love it.”  He bent his knees a bit to give their hips a tad more movement as he brought his face closer.  “I bet you’ve never made out with someone with a tongue ring before.”

“Actually, I have,” Chris said, forgetting to struggle.

“Oh, yeah?” Julian asked, not believing him but wanting to keep him distracted as they moved against each other.

“Remember that summer camp we all went to before eighth grade?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember that camp counselor?”

“ _Oh_ , yeah,” Julian said getting a shiver just remembering the first woman all four of them had ever agreed upon.

“She had a tongue ring.”

Julian gasped and almost forgot to keep dancing.  “You did _not_ with her.”

“Oh, I so _did_ with her.”

“What a slut!”

“I know, right?  Mad at her boyfriend so she goes after me.”

“Not her, you!”

“Me?”

“Yes, you total skank.  I know exactly when it happened!  You skipped archery to make out with her.”

“Hey!  I’m the victim here.  A nineteen year old getting it on with a thirteen year old?  That’s some serious emotional problems.”

Julian shook his head in disbelief.  “I can’t believe you tongue kissed before me.”

Chris smirked.  “I did it before Will too.”

“But, he did when he was like, twelve, right?”

“Yeah, after I told him about it.”

“Unbelievable!”

“I know.  Girls are always all over Will and you’re the most sexually open, but I did _everything_ first.”

Julian ran his tongue slowly over his lower lip and let go of Chris’ wrist (since he was no longer fighting to take his arm off his shoulder) and slid his fingers onto the back of Chris’ neck.

“You didn’t kiss a boy first.”

Chris laughed.  “No.  You do have me there.”

“Excuse me,” someone shouted over the music.  They turned and saw Scott standing beside them with his hands on his hips.  “Can you two stop being gay long enough for Chris to tell me what I did with that other ice chest?”

Chris went rigid as an iron pole and looked like he wanted to drop off the face of the earth.

“I got distracted,” he said, pushing to get away from Julian.

Julian let him go and smiled at Scott.  Scott saw his look and panicked.  He tried to run away, but Julian grabbed him.

“Hang on, birthday boy.  Get over here.”

He clasped his hands around his stomach and hauled Scott back against him.  Scott squirmed and tried to pry his hands off.

“Hey, hey, knock it off!  Whoa!  Hands!”

Scott looked over his shoulder at Julian and scowled.  Julian laughed and nuzzled his cheek.  Then he saw Laney standing where he’d left her with her arms crossed over her chest and an unimpressed look on her face.

“See, Laney?  I can dance with anybody like this.”

Scott tried to escape again, but Julian dug his fingers into his hair and yanked back hard.  His head landed on his shoulder and he gasped.

“Ow.”

“Did that hurt?” Julian murmured in his ear.

“Yes, you j—”

“Did you like it?”

Scott shut-up.  Julian was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating off his cheeks.

“Scott, Scott, Scott.  I honestly never would have guessed, but I can’t say I’m surprised either.”

Scott looked away from him, mortified.  “Julian…” he said weakly.  He did nothing further to get away, seemingly afraid and possibly excited by what Julian might do to him.

“See, Laney?  I’m a total dance whore.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she shouted over the music, her eyes on Julian’s hand where it was playing with Scott’s waistband.  “They’re your friends.  You feel comfortable with them.  It doesn’t count.”

“Hmm.”  What could he do to convince her of his point?  Scott moved his head and Julian followed his eyes to see what had gotten his attention.  Antoinette was heading right for them.  She looked like she was on her way to rescue Scott.  Like hell if he was going to let her mess with him tonight.  He reluctantly released Scott, he was more fun to tease than he’d ever realized, and took a couple steps forward to keep Antoinette from reaching her goal.  He pulled her against him and began to move her backwards while trying to make it look like he was just getting his groove on.  He looked over his shoulder at Laney.

“This is the most popular girl in school and I’m friends with her boyfriend.  I guess I have no shame,” he shrugged.

He didn’t wait for Laney’s reaction and danced Antoinette away from Scott.  They rounded the stairs and he guided her back until they were out of sight behind the wall.  She let him move her.  It was almost like she knew what he was trying to do and was making a show of not caring.  He wouldn’t be able to guard Scott all night after all.  She moved with him and put one hand on his shoulder.  She gave him a look of indifference and a chilled smile.

“Nice lip ring,” she said, her eyes focused on his lips and her index finger lightly brushed against his earlobe.  “It’s actually made me really curious.”  Her eyes came back up to meet his and her finger, again, just barely touched his ear.  Her words, her look, and that damn finger did exactly to him what she wanted it to.  As much as he’d been rubbing against girls tonight, this was what got him hard.  Her smile became derisory as she could feel his response to her.

“Ooo,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her, “you’re good.  No wonder Scott is powerless against you.”

She let out a laugh and dropped the act.

“But, hey,” Julian said seriously, “don’t fuck with my friend.”

“Uh!” she looked exasperated.  “I’m _not_.”

“I mean emotionally.”

“I know what you mean.  I know how sensitive he is.”

“Do you really?”

She didn’t respond for a moment, her eyes cast down to the floor.  She pulled herself a little bit closer to him and looked back up.

“Do you think he _like_ likes me?”

“No,” he said bluntly.  “Not yet anyway.  Well, not completely.  You can still let him go without it hurting him too badly.  So why don’t you just back off?”

Antoinette looked away from him, looking a little guilty.  Apparently she knew she should let him go.  Maybe all she needed was a little encouragement.

“Besides, Anna wants him anyway.”

Her head snapped back toward him, her eyes livid with anger.  He actually wanted to step away from her.

“Well, too damn bad,” she snarled.  “She can’t have him.”

All of a sudden the anger made sense and he wasn’t scared by it anymore.  “Ooo,” he drawled, purposely trying to be irritating.  “You like him.”

She shook her head, still angry, but trying to play it off.  “It’s not like that.  I just don’t think they’d be good for each other.”

Julian thought that was a laugh.  What the hell did she know about either of them?

“And I’m not through with him yet.”

Julian snapped.  He shoved her into the wall of the stairs and she gasped in surprise and fear.  He put his face right in hers and dug his fingers into her arms as hard as he could.

“Do _not_ fuck with him.”

She opened her mouth to try to say something, but couldn’t get any words out.  Tears wavered at the corners of her eyes.

“Dude!  Get off my girlfriend!”

Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him forcibly off Antoinette.  Jake was standing between them and had a handful of Julian’s shirt.  His other hand was curled into a fist by his side.

“Sorry, Jake,” Julian said, instantly regretting losing his temper.  He was lucky they had been so close to the wall because that had prevented him from slamming her _really_ hard against it.  “I got a little carried away.”

He gave Julian a look, his fist convulsing.  He looked back at Antoinette.  “Are you hurt?”

She stepped forward and gently pulled on his arm until he released Julian.

“I’m fine, Jake.  It was my fault.”

“What?”

“I—I said something about his parents.  It was really stupid.”  She looked over at Julian.  “Sorry,” she muttered.

He tried to give her a look to let her know he was sorry.  He wasn’t sure if she understood and Jake took her by the hand and led her away.  He heard Jake say, “He shouldn’t have pushed you, but what the hell did you say to set him off like that?”

Julian dropped his head and leaned back against the wall.  He put the heels of his hands into his eyes and pushed until he saw stars.  Then he dropped his hands and rested his head on the wall.  He looked at the string of green and red lights glowing along the upstairs balcony.  He couldn’t believe he’d done that.  Even if it was the exact same situation, he would never have hurt anyone let alone a girl like that when his parents were still alive.  Chris was right.  He’d changed.

He looked to his right toward the front door and wondered if he could just leave for a while and come back later after the party.  Then he saw Laney.  She was dancing with some guy he’d never seen before.  Well, dancing, dry humping, whatever.  She seemed fully engrossed in her partner, but then he saw her glance slightly in his direction.  She smiled when she saw that he was watching her and immediately returned her attention to the guy.  Julian sighed.  Everyone was totally going to blame him when Laney became a slut.

Will

 

Will ambled down the stairs, sending a text message as he went.

“You better be careful you don’t fall,” his mother said.

Will jumped and put a hand to heart.

“Jesus.  You scared me.  I forgot you were here.”

“Hmph.  I am here.  And so is your father.”

“Yeah.  It’s weird.  What are you two doing tonight?”

“You’re going to spend the night at Scott’s, right?”

“Most likely.”

“Well, then your father and I will probably stay in.”

Will made a face.

“Just try not to think about it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not,” Will shuddered.  He grabbed Scott’s gift off the hall table and walked outside to wait on Julian.  He hopped up onto the railing and dialed Ken.  He answered almost immediately.

“Hello, Will.”

Will pulled his knees to his chest.  How on earth could that man do this to him with just those two words?

“Hey, hot stuff,” Will said, trying to sound normal.  Ken laughed at his term of endearment.  “What’cha doin’ tonight?  Working?”

“No, I’m—”

“I can’t play tonight.  I’m going to a par-tay!”

“Um, okay.  Did you call me just to tell me that you can’t come over tonight?”

“Yep.”

“Well, it’s okay.  I’m going to a movie tonight anyway.”

“Oh, really?  With who?”  He sniggered to himself.  “Autumn Rose?”  That woman’s hope definitely sprung eternal.

“No, with Rylan.”

Will sobered, his legs dropping, and frowned into the phone.  “I don’t like him.”

“I know you don’t, baby, but he’s my friend.”

Will picked at the paint on the railing and the white flakes fluttered to the ground.  “I don’t think you should call me baby.  That’s what my mom calls me.”

“And when I say it are you thinking of her?”

“No, when she says it I’m thinking of you.”

He laughed and Will clutched the phone tighter.  “Well, the damage is done then.”  Ken sighed half-wistfully.  “I wish you were here now.”

Will closed his eyes and leaned against the post at his back.  “Don’t,” he pleaded.  “I can’t not go to this party; it’s my friend’s birthday.”

“I didn’t mean come over.  I just meant I wish you were here right now so that I could give you a kiss.  Nothing more.  For now.”

Will passed a hand over his face.  This was sick.  Why did Ken have so much power over him?  He felt like he was about to faint.

“I am going out too.  I haven’t been to a movie in ages.”

Will immediately got over his rush of emotion and arousal.  That’s right.  He was going out with _him_.  But, he wasn’t going to let Ken know he was jealous.  No, he wasn’t jealous…he just didn’t like Rylan.  He didn’t think anybody should be inflicted with his company.

“Is it some artsy something or other?” he asked.

“Well, it does have subtitles.”

“Does it have explosions?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I don’t think you’re actually going to a movie.”

“Oh, come on.  Not all movies—” his voice became a little distant as he stopped speaking directly into the phone.  “Oh, hi—mmf!”

Will waited for him to come back to the phone, but there was silence on the other end.  Well, not silence exactly, but Will wasn’t going to acknowledge what he was hearing because it sounded an awful lot like sloppy kissing.  Then a deep, irritating voice came on the line.

“Hi, Will.”

Will felt his eyebrow tick.  _Rylan_.

“What the hell are you doing to my—”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Rylan cut him off.

Will could feel his body expanding; he was about to pop.  He heard Ken say Rylan’s name in disgust and then there were sounds of a struggle.  Then Ken came back on the line.

“Sorry, Will.  Just ignore him.”

“Unh-huh,” Will grunted darkly.  His mind was already whirring with all the terrible things Rylan was doing to his lover.  Right now.  While they were talking.  His hand was starting to hurt he was holding his cell phone so tightly.  “So, this movie you’re going to.  It wouldn’t happen to be showing at the Pink Poodle, would it?”

“Of course not, Will.  I don’t go to places like that.  Unlike you.”

“Uh!  Shut-up!”

Ken laughed and Will tried to relax.  It hurt too much to love this man.  He leaned back against the post and put the back of his hand to his eyes.  He was going to die because of him one day.

“Sorry, baby.  I couldn’t help but poke you a little bit.”  His voice grew faint again.  “Shut-up, you perv.  I didn’t mean it like that.”  He spoke into the phone again.  “I’m sorry, Will, but we’ve got to head out soon.  I’ll talk to you later.  Have fun at your friend’s party.”

“I will.  But you better not.”

Ken laughed.  “I won’t.  At least not until later tonight.  Call me, okay?”

Will squirmed on the railing.  It was probably a bad idea to be straddling it because it wasn’t helping him keep calm, especially with what Ken was promising him.  As much as he enjoyed to physically be with Ken, he loved it when they had phone sex.

“Okay,” Will agreed, his voice little more than a breathy moan.

Ken cleared his throat.  “All right then.  Bye, baby.  Love you.”

Will looked up as the sound of Julian’s car scraping the driveway got his attention.  “I love you too.”  He hung up and hopped off the railing.  Fortunately even though he had gotten excited, his body hadn’t gone there with him.  Not completely anyway.  He picked up Scott’s gift and walked down the driveway to Julian’s car.  He could see through the windshield that he was wearing a red shirt.  He must not be in a very good mood this evening.  Well, no, not a bad mood…he just wasn’t in the mood for a crowd.  Will didn’t understand why he always wore colors that attracted people when he didn’t want to be around them.  Oh, well.  Maybe he’d say something to make him feel better.  He opened the car door and slid in.

“What up?” he asked.

As far as he could tell Julian was more or less feeling okay, and if he wasn’t he could go hide in Scott’s room all night and play video games until the party was over.  Will, on the other hand, was busting at the seams to get it started.  He loved birthdays.  He’d never admit it but his favorite ones had been when they had been younger and the girls’ would have pony rides.  That had been so fun.  When they arrived they saw Scott and Chris in the doorway.  Will started to skip up to him.  Little baby Scott was finally turning seventeen.  The poor thing.  He wouldn’t be legally able to drink until partway through his senior year of college.  Not that legally being able to drink had anything to do with college.

“Hey!  Happy birthday, Scotty!”

Will flung himself at his friend and they stumbled inside.  Scott laughed and hugged him back.

“Thanks.”

He pulled back and turned to look at the sign Scott had been posting on the door.  He was relieved when he figured out that meant that Scott had no plans to drink tonight.  He knew he was upset about his parents, but at least he wasn’t self-destructively upset.  And while he was on the topic of destruction, it was a shame that Scott couldn’t open his present now.  He took his and Julian’s gifts upstairs like he was told even though he was super excited for the piñata.

As he skipped up the stairs he realized that the four of them would be spending the night together.  So, how was he going to call Ken?  Well, he could slip away for ten minutes for a quick, literal booty call.  Will smiled to himself as he stood on tiptoes to reach the key above the ledge of the door.  Okay, so it might be more like thirty minutes, but he could get away with it.  He got the door open and flinched at the sight of Scott’s bedroom.  Will had always been pretty neat before, but now that he was spending so much time with Ken, his neat-freakiness was rubbing off on him.  He actually felt the urge to straighten up the room a bit, but he refrained.  There were much more important things.  Like piñata time.

It seemed like the piñata, the girls’ arrival, and the party guests’ arrival all happened very quickly.  He could kind of understand Julian’s mood now.  He wanted it to be just the four of them for a while longer.  Well, they would be able to hang out after the party.  The lights were out, the music was up, and the place was jumping.  Chris and even Julian didn’t seem to mind the craziness beginning to ensue, so who was he to play devil’s advocate?  He was, however, beating a hasty retreat to the kitchen for a while.  He’d almost spilled the beans about Ken.  Well, not exactly, but he’d almost admitted that he was having sex with someone.  And unprotected sex at that.

Will hopped up onto the counter and watched the people grooving out in the foyer and dining room.  He knew that there was no excuse for him and Ken not to use a condom, even though they always found one.  But did it really matter?  He knew they were monogamous.  And the only two people he’d ever had sex with in his life had been Ken and Liz; and he and Liz had used protection.  So, he knew he was clean, but what about Ken?  He was a serious businessman and had rarely slept with the women he’d dated.  Of course, he had had sex with prostitutes.  No matter what Rylan and Ken wanted to call them, that’s what the Blue Boy employees were.  Common whores.  Well, maybe not common…but he trusted Ken.  He would never do anything that would put him at risk.

Scott pushed through the wall of people and stumbled into the kitchen.  It was kind of funny the way everyone was staying out of the kitchen like there was an invisible wire roping it off.  It must have been because there was no music playing in the kitchen.  Scott walked up to the laptop sitting beside him and adjusted some of the settings.  Then he looked at Will.

“What’cha doing in here?”

Will shrugged.  “Waiting for the dance floor to get warmed up.”

Scott laughed.  “Just don’t cause a fight in my house by getting with some big guy’s girlfriend.”

“No, I think I’ll leave that to you.”

“Geh.”  Scott made a face at him and started to walk away.

Will stuck out his leg and hooked Scott around the waist to pull him back.  Scott came willingly.  If nothing else the boy was obedient.  He dropped his leg and let it thump gently against the cabinets, but Scott was still kind of between his legs.  In the not too distant past he would have shoved Scott away and told him to be careful where he stood.  Of course, in the past, he probably never would have grabbed a boy around the waist with his leg either.  How quickly he’d gotten used to having men between his legs.

“So, do you have someone lined up to give you your birthday spanking?” Will teased him.

Scott didn’t blush or shout at him.  He just grinned and said, “Yep.”

Will felt a little worried.  He was obviously talking about Antoinette.  What Scott did in his personal life was really none of his business, but he didn’t want to see him get hurt.  How long was Antoinette going to keep playing with him?

“Aw, don’t be sad, Will,” Scott said patting his leg.  Will realized he must have let his worry show on his face.  “You can have a turn too.”

Will felt his left eyebrow shoot up.  Scott started and then put out a hand in defense of his own stupidity.

“I mean, uh, getting spanked by the one I have lined up.  Not…you spanking me.”  Scott looked even more panicked.  “Not that I wouldn’t want you to spank me.”

Will tilted his head to the side a little and gave Scott one of his panty-melting smiles.  Unsurprisingly the look worked on males too.

Scott sucked in a breath.  “Uh, I mean, I _don’t_ want you to spank me.  But not because it’s _you_.  But.  Because you’re a guy.”

Will just kept smiling.  _Keep digging, Scotty_.

Scott stood stock still, so embarrassed he couldn’t even blush.  “Never tell anyone we had this conversation.”

Will pantomimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key.

“Okay then,” Scott said, doing his best to recover, “have fun, okay?”  He slapped Will’s thighs and then looked at his hands.  He jerked them back and looked at Will to see if he was mad.  Will just waited on him to quit spazzing out.  Scott scowled.

“It’s your fault for be being so pretty,” Scott grumbled and turned to leave.  Will laughed and watched his friend stalk out of the kitchen.  Then he sighed and bounced his heels against the cabinets.  How much fun could he really have?  His honey wasn’t here.  Though Ken didn’t strike him as the type to get down and dirty to house music.  He’d never seen him at a club before though; or anywhere that had any kind of dancing for that matter.  And he didn’t know what he’d been like in college.  He’d been reserved and closeted in high school; he’d told him he’d never kissed a boy until he was in college.  And Will could only imagine how that went the first time.  College was where he’d met Rylan.  Rylan was the one who had opened him up and gotten him to admit out loud that he was gay.  As much as he disliked the man he did understand why he was so important to Ken.  He had been the first one to accept him and tell him that he wasn’t sick and that it was okay.  He was grateful to Rylan for that, but every time he thought about all the nasty things he must have done to Ken it made him want to take a baseball bat to something.  Preferably Rylan’s face.  Will wondered briefly if Rylan would be willing to tell him what Ken was like in college, but he quickly ruled out that idea.  He would probably just be irritating and describe every sexual encounter they’d ever had.  The jerk.

Will felt a little guilty for thinking about Ken.  Again.  It seemed that his thoughts were constantly consumed by the man.  Anything and everything would remind him of him.  Was that just because being in love was still so new to him?  Will was afraid that wasn’t it.  The problem was that he was obsessed with Ken.  The problem was that he was now living and dying for Ken.  That’s not what a healthy relationship should be like.  Maybe he’d realized that about himself before.  Maybe that was why he kept shutting Julian out.  Maybe that’s why he’d kept his girlfriends at a distance.  He knew that if he ever loved somebody, it would be completely.  He hadn’t been afraid for himself; he’d been worried about the strain that would put on the other person.  Will pulled his legs to his chest and hugged them tightly.  He rested his cheek on his knees.  He wondered if Ken was strong enough to accept his crushing love.  He had to be because it was too late now.  If Ken ever rejected him, he would die.

Will sighed.  How drearily pubescent of him.  He sat up and slapped his cheeks a couple of times.  Enough of that.  He hopped off the counter and made his way past the invisible barrier and into the party.  It was amazingly much louder out in the open room than it had been in the kitchen despite being connected by a large opening.  Now he was on the prowl for some hot chicks.  Fortunately they were easy to find.  Or maybe they found him.  He wasn’t sure.  All he knew was that he was dancing with them in a way that maybe someone in a serious, monogamous relationship shouldn’t.  But, they were girls, so it technically wasn’t that bad.  He wasn’t really paying attention to them anyway.  He was enjoying watching all the couples go upstairs, try all the doors, and then come back down disappointed.  Some waited upstairs for a while, hoping that maybe the rooms were just occupied and one would eventually open up, but they had no such luck.

During his vigilance he saw an interesting couple head up the stairs.  He watched with amusement as Karen tried three times to get Chris to go up with her.  This was actually a dangerous situation because Chris knew how to get into the rooms.  And it looked like he was willing to do it.  Then whoever slammed open the front door got his attention.  He left Karen standing unhappily on the stairs and Will was glad he had stopped himself.  He didn’t particularly dislike Karen, but sex was not a good reason to get back into a bad relationship.  After a little while he noticed that Karen was still on the stairs, glaring out over the crowd.  Was she watching Chris?  Was she expecting him to come back?  What the hell did she want from him?  Chris had said that she’d told him she wanted them to get back together, but the look she was giving now wasn’t particularly forgiving or loving.  Will danced away from the group of girls he’d been with and made his way to the stairs.  He stepped up next to her and waited for her to notice him.  When she did she seemed momentarily surprised to see him, and then just rolled her eyes.

“What?”

“Wanna dance?”

She gave him a look like he might have lost his mind.  “That’s okay, thanks,” she said, looking back out to the bouncing throng of people.

Will leaned forward.  “Come on, dance with me, won’t you?”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to the floor.  She didn’t fight him on it, but seemed irritated that she was having to dance with him.  It wasn’t the usual reaction he got from girls.  He couldn’t help that it ticked him off just a little.  So, he went ahead and glared at her.  When she saw his expression she shook her and kind of smiled.

“What?” she asked, sounding like she knew what he was going to say.

“Do you really care about Chris or are you plotting something?”

“Plotting?  What am I?  A wily coyote?”

Will kept his expression in place to show her he wasn’t joking with her.  She let out a huff.

“No, I’m not plotting anything.”

“Do you just want him back because you feel like you had a toy taken away from you?”

“No, that’s not it.”

He continued to just look at her.

“Uh!  Do you wanna hear me say it?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.  I love him.  I really do.  Yes, he hurt me terribly when he dumped me and I was _furious_ with him.  But then I thought about it.  And I know what kind of person I am, Will.  I know I have a long way to go before I deserve him, and I may never fully get there because a leopard can’t just change its spots.  But he makes me want to be a better person.  Not just for him, but for myself.  I want to let go of all this negativity in me.  I want to be happier.  And I want to make him happy too.”

Will was a little shocked to hear those words fall from Karen’s lips.  She was in earnest and he honestly believed every word.  And it had also hit a little close to home.  He dropped his head and smiled softly.

“I know what you mean,” he said.

He looked back up and Karen had her eyebrows raised at him.

“Has someone actually penetrated Will Harder’s protective walls?”

Will grinned.  “In more ways than one.”

“Ladies and gentleman, hell just froze over.”

“Well, now that we both know each other’s secret: that we’re terrible people who are fortunate enough to love and possibly be loved by people we don’t deserve, you wanna get naughty?”

“Sure.”

It only took a couple minutes of dancing with Karen to learn why Chris was so weak around her.  He was almost ready to take her upstairs himself.  Sort of.  Either way, it was a good thing the song ended when it did.  He waved goodbye and thought about trying to re-hydrate.  Four hands grabbed him.  He was suddenly between two very hot, practically naked bodies.  The lesbians were in tube tops and daisy dukes and they had him trapped.  Not that he minded.  For a couple of girls who claimed only to know what women liked they were uncannily good at driving men wild.  Though it was kind of ironic.  They were all gay, but they wouldn’t do each other any good.  Will stopped dancing.  Had he just managed to admit it to himself?  He felt squishily uncomfortable.  That label shouldn’t apply to him and Ken.  They weren’t like the stereotypes.  Will shook his head, disgusted with himself.  Why did he still rail against the idea?  If he couldn’t accept it, he would never be able to fully accept their relationship and Ken would be right: he’d leave him.

“Will?  Are you okay?” the brunette asked.

“I’m fine,” he said, probably not loud enough for them to hear and walked away from them.  Who was he to get all melodramatic about dying if Ken rejected him?  If anyone was going to get hurt it would probably be Ken.  He found the stairs and leaned heavily on the banister.  Why was love so difficult?  He slumped even further onto it.  Why was he nothing but a collection of sappy clichés tonight?

He raised his head slightly as he saw a couple emerge from around the corner of the stairs gesticulating argumentatively and probably yelling at each other though Will couldn’t really hear them.  It was Jake and Antoinette.  After a few more moments of ineffectual shouting, Antoinette jutted her leg out to the side and crossed her arms over her chest.  She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head, looking very irritated.  Jake gave up shouting at her and turned away.  Then he turned back and shook her arm gently to get her attention.  She made a fake “what? I can’t hear you” face and pointed to one of her ears.  Jake dropped his arms and rolled his eyes.  He turned from her and walked away.  Antoinette looked like she was about to go after him, but then she just plopped on the bottom stair and put her face in her hands.  Was she getting caught in her own lies?  She better be careful not to bring Scott down with her.

Will stepped around the banister and moved to stand right in front of her.  She seemed to sense that someone was near and looked up.  Her eyes were dry.  Will offered her a hand and she accepted.  They moved slightly away from the stairs and began to dance.  The music was like it had been all night, loud and hard and fast, but they didn’t hear it.  They moved slowly, barely dancing at all, merely acknowledging that they wanted to touch one another.  While they both knew that they didn’t have a thing for each other, they were both wildly curious.  Being two of the most popular people in school everyone had speculated all kinds of things about them even though they’d never come close to dating.  Or talking for that matter.  But they couldn’t help using this opportunity to find out what the fuss was all about.

Will found it a tad irritating that she was a little taller than him, but it wasn’t enough to make it awkward.  In fact, none of their touching or groping was feeling awkward, which was a very bad thing.  Their hands were more or less in innocent places, but their faces were very close.  Will liked the way she smelled, like sweet honeysuckle.  She leaned forward and put her lips to his ear.

“Are you going to warn me too?” she asked in an even tone.

Will didn’t have to ask what she was referring to.  He just shrugged slightly and turned his head so that his words would carry easier to her ear.

“Sure.  Don’t hurt Scott, or we’ll hurt you.”

“Ooo.  Not just a warning, but a threat too.”

“I mean it, honey.  Don’t underestimate how much we care about each other.”

“You know, I’m beginning realize just how much that is tonight.  Are you guys in love with each other or something?”

“Pretty much.  Just without the sex.”

She laughed softly.  “Well, you’re missing out,” she said, her voice changing to a physical entity that wrapped around him.  “He’s really good.”

“Oh, yeah?” Will responded, his voice imitating hers.

She shivered.  “Mm-hmm.”

She grabbed a handful of his shirt at the shoulder and held back a noise as he forced his leg between hers.  She moved her hips against him and they closed their eyes, letting the friction work a thrill through their bodies.  They bumped lightly against a wall and Will pinned one of her wrists by her head.

“H-hey now,” she said with a little moan in her voice.  “Don’t get too frisky.”

“I’m just setting up a diversion,” he mumbled against her neck.  “If Jake figures out you’re cheating on him, it’d be better if he thought it was me.”

He felt her take in a shaking breath.  “Why?  Why would you do that for him?”

“Because he doesn’t deserve it.  I don’t know how it all got started, but it’s not a game for him.  It never was.”

“I know,” she said, gritting her teeth and writhing a little against his movements.  “It’s not a game for me either.”

Will stopped what he was doing and pulled back.  Antoinette took a few moments to even out her breathing, and then she met his eyes.  Now that she had her wits about her again, she seemed to realize what she’d said.  Will was a little surprised too.  Did she actually like Scott as more than a distraction?

“I have my reasons,” she said.

Will frowned at her.  What the hell did that mean?  What a selfish bitch.

“Dude!  Get off my girlfriend!”

They turned and saw Jake standing less than two feet away.  Antoinette pushed forcibly against him and raised a hand to slap him.  He didn’t quite get out of the way in time and felt her nails graze his cheek.  He gave her a look.

“Just because all the girls swoon over you doesn’t mean you have the right to paw all over someone else’s girlfriend,” she said righteously.

Will ran his fingertips over his cheek and checked his fingers.  There was no blood.  He looked back up at her.  “Apologies.”

Jake pushed him on one shoulder.  He looked really upset.  “What the hell?  I thought we were friends, Will.”

“Sorry,” Will said, as close to sincere as he could muster, “I got carried away.”

Jake crossed his arms over his stomach.  “That seems to be going around tonight.”  He gave Antoinette a look and she did her best to look contrite.  He looked back at Will.  “Just don’t let it happen again, all right?”

Will nodded and stepped away from Antoinette.  Jake turned away from them both, and then he turned back to look at Antoinette.  He started to move his arm, and then hesitated.  Then he timidly reached out with his hand, almost as if he was worried Antoinette might not take it.  She did.  And they walked away hand in hand.  Will shook his head.  Why wasn’t Jake blaming his skank of a girlfriend for anything?  He decided he’d done his best to help Scott; it was ultimately Scott’s decision what he was going to do about it anyway.  He should go find some more responsive girls to dance with.  Then he could tell Ken all about it and make him regret ever agreeing to go see a movie with that evil pimp.

Will turned around and found a pretty little gay boy standing in front of him.  He had his hands clasped by his back and was twisting gently side to side as he smiled and batted his eyelashes at him.

“Wanna dance?”

 

 

Scott

 

Scott stood in the garage door and waved to his father as he backed out onto the driveway.

“Bye!  Have fun!”

His father stuck an arm out the open window of his Maserati and pointed a finger at him.  “You’re going to behave, right?”

“Yep!”

“Okay.  Bye.”

Scott shut the door before the window on his dad’s car was all the way up.  He hopped from foot to foot, humming to himself as he made his way to the stairs.  He bounded up the stairs two at a time, tugging his shirt over his head, and singing out the few syllables he knew to the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for your Right (to Party).”  He continued his solo as he wiggled out of his clothes and turned on the faucet in the bathroom.  He considered using the master bathroom since the stall was bigger, but decided against it.  A decision he later regretted as he banged his elbows a couples times while he danced on the slippery tile.  After having nearly slipped and fallen three times, he was finally done with his shower safe and sound.  It would have been awful for his friends to come over and find him all naked and bloody on the bathroom floor.  How embarrassing.  Thinking of his friends coming over made him wonder what time it was.  He turned the water off and heard the incessant dinging of his doorbell being pushed over and over again.  Whoops.  Had he not unlocked the door?

Scott hopped out of the shower and grabbed a towel.  He wrapped it around his lower half as he thundered down the stairs.  He opened the door with a wide smile.  It was Chris.  Scott greeted him cheerfully.  Chris just blinked at him.

“What?”

Chris’ eyes flicked down, lingered, and then flicked back up.  “Nothing,” he sighed.  “Where do you want me to set up?”

“I put the speakers where I want them,” Scott said stepping back so Chris could come in, “You just gotta hook ‘em all up.  The laptop is in the kitchen.  I’m gonna go get dressed.”

“Okay.  Um, is your dad here?”

“Of course not.  He went out.”

“So what’d you tell him?”

“I told him I was going to throw myself a birthday party.”

“And did you tell him the planned magnitude of this party?”

“No, but even if there’s a little mess he won’t have any moral high ground to stand on to yell at me.  He’s going out to bang his girlfriend.”

Scott saw Chris hesitate momentarily as he pulled out a cable.  “Oh,” he said, sounding concerned.

“It’s okay,” Scott said.  “I don’t blame him.  I mean, I’d do her.  She’s pretty hot.  For someone so old.”

“How old is she?”

“Oh, geez,” Scott said putting a hand to his chin.  He was such a bad judge of age.  “She’s gotta be, like, in her 30’s.”

Chris laughed.  “Oh, she sounds ancient—” Chris turned around and started.  “Scott!”

“What?”

“Go put some clothes on!”

“Okay, okay,” Scott mumbled.  He hurried up the stairs and wondered what Chris’ problem was.  It’s not like the towel was short or anything.  It covered everything up.  Unlike the time he’d run to the door with nothing but a hand towel to let Julian in and he’d decided to be a smartass and say he was disappointed that Scott hadn’t bleached his pubes too.  Loser pervert.  Scott smiled as he ditched the towel in his bedroom.  He loved his friends.  They were so great.  They were always there 100%.  Whether it was for good times or bad times, he knew he could depend on them to be there with him.

He pulled out the pair of jeans he’d bought one day with Antoinette and hopped into the soft fabric.  She’d told him that these particular jeans had intentionally been made this soft so that one could go au natural in them.  Tonight would be his first experiment with that.  The jeans were soft and didn’t really irritate him, but the front design wasn’t terribly supportive.  Although the fly was underwear-free friendly—buttons only.  He didn’t bother to do them up and flopped back onto his bed.  He clasped one wrist in his hand and rested it over his eyes.

If his friends were so great and understanding and dependable, why was he not ready to talk to them about the custody hearing?  Because it had been a colossal joke.  It hadn’t been a hearing about which one of his parents got to have primary custody, it was a way for them to humiliate each other publicly.  He was so grateful his mother had left his siblings with their grandmother.  Ferris and Drake would have been irrevocably damaged if they’d seen their parents going for each other’s throats.  And Joanna was probably going through enough without having to witness the complete deconstruction of their parents’ marriage.  Hell, he was going through enough that he didn’t need to be there for it either.  But, like an idiot, he’d insisted his father take him.

He couldn’t believe how much it had hurt to be used as a weapon.  It wasn’t even all the crap his parents said or what they made their lawyers say.  It had been when his father had pulled him into a hug just because his mother was watching.  The worst part was that Scott couldn’t push him away.  Physical contact with his father was still so new to him; he didn’t want to take it for granted.  But it made him feel like he was choosing sides and he was afraid his mother was so bitter right now that she might internalize it all and hold it against him the rest of her life.  He couldn’t go the rest of his life without his mother.  Why was so she so angry with him?  What had he done?  He’d had a panic attack in the middle of the hearing, scared to death that his mother knew what he was doing with Antoinette and she hated him for it.  One of his dad’s lawyers had actually escorted him out of the courtroom and he had cried on the man’s shoulder for a full five minutes.  His dad was probably going to have to pay him extra for that.  Mr. Lockett had refused to take him back inside.  He had seemed to know that things were only going to get worse.  Scott was seriously starting to believe that the judge would put them all in foster care.

After the session had ended, with a date set for another session in two months to allow his parents time to calm down, his mother had come out and yelled at him.  He’d missed his weekend visit to his grandmother’s twice in a row and she demanded to know if that’s what he really wanted: to never see his mother or siblings again.  He had, of course, broken down and started crying again.  Why was he so weak?  Why couldn’t he control his emotions like a normal human being?  He felt sick just remembering it again.  His mother had immediately regretted it, hugged him, and told him she was sorry, but it hadn’t made him feel better.  If she really loved him she wouldn’t have yelled at him in the first place.  He hadn’t cheated on her.  He hadn’t ruined her marriage.  He hadn’t chosen his father over her.  And then his father had driven a wedge back between them.  He’d demanded to know why she always blamed everyone but herself for her problems.  Then he’d forcibly ripped Scott away from his mother and marched out of the courthouse with him.

He hadn’t spoken with his mother since.  He’d been too afraid to call her on the phone and she hadn’t tried to call him.  Not even for his birthday.  He felt like shit.  He needed a loud, crowded party and he needed to stop thinking.  He’d be willing to talk to his friends after he had a chance to temporarily erase the past few days from his mind.  Alcohol or drugs probably would have worked better, but this party should help.  He felt his lips pull into a hard smile.  What he really needed was Antoinette.  He needed her to abuse him until the pain in his body covered up the pain in his heart.

Scott groaned/shouted and jumped off the bed.  Enough.  He wasn’t going to think about it anymore.  He pulled on a loose fitting T-shirt that he knew Antoinette hated and sat down on the bed to put on some shoes and socks.  He glanced in the mirror and decided he wasn’t going to do anything more for this party.  He didn’t need to look great; he just needed to blend in.  He couldn’t stop himself from rubbing the rest of the moisture out of his hair with his fingers.  No need for it to be all plastered to one side of his head.  It was now in the messy soft spikes he was used to.  He couldn’t even remember what his natural hair color was anymore.  He stared at himself in the mirror.  He looked broken.  He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and then opened them again.  He’d forced his features into their usual carefree and happy expression.  It wasn’t so hard to do, it was natural for him.  Besides, today was his birthday and his friends were coming over and he was having a par-tay!  He was already feeling monumentally better by the time he’d crossed his room and opened the door.

He was almost feeling like his usual self before the party even started.  His friends had brought him presents and given him a piñata.  A piñata with candy and condoms in it.  Will was so funny.  Scott had put the chocolate flavored one in his pocket.  It was retarded, he knew it, but he was curious himself if it really tasted like chocolate, so that was something that would have to be discovered on his own when nobody was around and the house was locked up tight.

Then the party got in full gear.  He was excited so many people had shown up; he’d been worried it would actually be a bust.  He didn’t recognize hardly anybody, but whatever.  And Chris, Will, and Julian were all completely into it.  They were responsible; they would have stopped him if they thought it was a really bad idea.  But they all just went around and found random girls to dance with.  It looked like fun, so he gave it try.  It wasn’t so hard.  He found that he could have two or three girls dancing with him at a time and they all acted like they were the lucky ones for being able to get with him.  This was such new territory for him.  He wondered if he should ask Will how to deal with multiple dance partners, but he was still embarrassed to see him at the moment.  He would think about spanking him every time he saw him for the next few days at least.  Which was the odd part: that he would be thinking about spanking Will.  How had his mind twisted it around that much?  Stupid Antoinette.  Stupid Will.  He just needed these nice girls with their nice, _gentle_ girl parts.  It was also helping him feel less gay for not throwing away Tyler’s card.

At first he’d been too surprised to do anything with it, and he’d even forgotten about it.  When he found it again he thought he’d hang onto it so that one day he’d be able to tell a funny story and show the card of a professional boy-whore.  Then he realized he’d have to be able to explain why he’d held onto it, so it turned out he could never show it to anyone.  Therefore he had no reason to keep it, but it was currently upstairs in his room underneath his math homework.  If he broke it off with Antoinette would he seriously consider Tyler’s offer?  No, definitely not.  Well, probably not.  It would depend on how desperate he got.

“Um, excuse me?”

Scott looked up at the faux-redhead he was dancing with.  “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?  I mean, you just suddenly stopped dancing.”

“Oh, I did?”  Scott laughed at himself.  There he went thinking again.  He really couldn’t think and do anything else at the same time.

“Hey, Scott!”

He grunted and staggered under somebody’s weight as they jumped on his back.  He felt the person drop back to their feet and he turned around to find Anna holding onto him and smiling up at him like she was a little tipsy.  He knew she wasn’t, but she really did look a little high.  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a bear hug, picking her feet up off the floor and swinging her side to side.

“Hello, Anna!  Are you having fun?”

“Yep.  And it’s even better now that I’m with you.  Happy, happy birthday!”

“Mm.  Thank you.”

He set her back down on her feet, but she kept her arms around his neck and swayed back and forth.  He moved with her and they danced to their own music.  She looked cute tonight with her hair in a giant puffball behind her head.  She was running the fingers of one hand lightly over the back of his neck and the other was playing with his hair.  His scalp was still a little tingly from the abuse it had taken from Julian, but he didn’t mind.  Though he was going to have trouble looking at Julian again for the next few…ever.  He was only going to be able to talk to Chris normally from now on.  Or at least until he stopped spanking Will in his head.

He felt Anna gently tap the side of his head.  “What’s going on in there?”

Scott barely kept himself from breaking down into hysterical laughter.  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

She smiled.  “I’m glad you’re having fun.  I was worried.  Because of...well, you know.”

He sighed.  “Yeah, I know.”

“You haven’t talked about it at all.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay.  That’s fine.  Wanna take your mind off it?”

“Very much.”

Anna slipped her hand between their bodies and let her thumb bump down the buttons of his fly.  She smiled up at him and bit her lip.  Scott was beginning to rethink his idea that Anna only _looked_ high.  When she reached the last button she cupped him in her hand and pulled herself up close to his face.  Even though they were eye to eye, he couldn’t see what she was thinking.  She was so close his vision was out of focus.  Then she lightly kissed his lips.  He gave her a small kiss back.  All he had to do was push forward a little bit.  She was opening herself up to him.  She would be willing to let him do anything to her, with her.  And part of him wanted to.  A very large part of him wanted to fall into her warmth and her familiarity.  A part of him wanted to acknowledge that he’d known all along that she was the perfect woman for him.  But if he changed their relationship now while he was still technically involved with Antoinette, he would be cheating on her.  He would never do that to Anna.  Nothing on Earth would ever make him do something that would hurt her.  He moved his hands from where they had slipped quite low on her anatomy up to her back and pulled away from her after a couple more kisses.

“Anna,” he breathed, leaning his forehead against hers.  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

She pushed back from him, looking very upset.  “Why?  Because of h—” she cut off and looked away.

He used his hand to pull gently on her chin, forcing her to look at him again.  “Because of what?”

Anna shook her head, tears in the corners of her eyes.  “You tell me.”

“Because I can’t hurt you.  I _won’t_.”

“But you’re hurting me now.”

Scott felt her words like a knife.  He felt tears well up in his eyes too.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t mean it.  I just, I can’t right now.  It’s not a good time.  I’m not in a good place.  With my—with my family the way it is now, I can’t give you the attention you deserve.”

“Scott, I don’t need attention.  I need you.  I can take care of you during this.  I can help you.”

“No.  Because then it will just be like it always is.  You’ll just be taking care of me and it won’t—that’s not how it should start, Anna.  When it happens, we should be ready and capable of devoting our full attention to us.”  He suddenly blushed.  “I mean if.  If it happens.  I wouldn’t want to presume that you would still want me after making you wait.  For who knows how long.”

She shook her head and took his face between her hands.  “Use ‘when,’ Scott.  When is fine.  I understand what you mean, and I can wait.  You’re dealing with a lot right now, so I know you don’t need to pile on more emotional stress.  So, take all the time you need to sort things out and tie up any lose ends.”  She gave him a pointed look.  “Get rid of any _baggage_ you might have.”

He nodded, knowing what baggage he needed to get rid of but wondering what she was referring to.  “I’m sorry, Anna.”

“Don’t be.”  She pulled him close and kissed him.  He kissed her back, enjoying how safe it felt.  She pulled back.  “Get your shit together, Scott Ramsey.”

He smiled.  “Yes, ma’am.”

She curled her fingers in the air and groaned in frustration.  “And do it fast!”

She turned to stomp away from him but he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back.  He leaned close to talk softly in her ear.

“Hey.  You’ve never really…you know…what you said earlier.  With a guy, I mean.  You’ve never…have you?”

She hugged his arms to her stomach and turned her head slightly toward him.  “Only once.  Well, technically twice, I think.”

“Anna~~h,” Scott whined.

“What?  It was just out of curiosity.  And we didn’t do anything more.  I’m still _pure_ otherwise.”

“But still.”

“Still what?  I saved my precious virginity for someone who I thought would view me as a friend forever.”

Scott couldn’t completely hold back his laugh.  “Really?  You’re saving yourself for me?”

“I didn’t say it was you,” she groused.

He nuzzled the back of her neck.  “Aww.  That’s sweet.”

“Shut-up.”  She squeezed his arms.  “Who else could it ever be but you, Scott?”

Scott gulped.  Like that wouldn’t put pressure on a person.

“Isn’t it the same for you?” she asked meekly.

Hmm.  What should he do?  Play dumb.

“Anna, I lost my virginity to myself a _long_ time ago.”

“Uh!”  She laughed and pulled away.  “Gross.”  She waved him off.  “Go take care of your baggage.”

Scott stuck his hands in his pockets and watched her disappear behind two tall basketball player types.  He had a sudden headache.  He turned and headed for the kitchen.  He needed some Advil.  Why was everything so clear when Anna was in his arms?  When he held her he was ready to devote his entire being to her, but now that she was gone he couldn’t help but wonder if that really was the best thing to do.  He shuffled into the dim, empty kitchen and opened the cabinet next to the sink.  He dumped a handful of pills into his hand and then poured all but two back.  Once he replaced the bottle back in the cabinet he got out a glass and filled it with tap water.  He walked over to the kitchen table and sat on it rather than in a chair.  He popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them both with one gulp of water.  He set the glass of water aside and put his hands behind him.  He locked his elbows and leaned back a little, allowing his head to drop back as far as it would go.

“You on display for anyone in particular?”

Scott opened his eyes and looked up.  Antoinette stood a few feet away.  His reaction was immediate.  He was happy the weight of the buttons prevented him from being completely obscene, but that was really only for people who might glance over from the kitchen entrance.  Nothing was hidden from Antoinette.  Maybe that’s what she’d meant about being on display; his legs were spread pretty wide.  But who was she to talk?  He’d seen negligees that covered more skin than her outfit.  Her hair was pulled back in a silky ponytail and her body glistened with sweat.  He imagined licking some of it off her stomach, so he looked back up to her eyes, hoping that would stem any further fantasies.  She walked over to him and hopped up on the table too.

“So, why are you hiding in the kitchen at your own party?”

“I got a headache.  The music might be a little too loud.”

“Liar.”

He looked at her and then away.  “So are you.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.  How did the hearing go?”

“Shittily.  How’s your dad?  Still going with his secretary?”

She shrugged.  “Maybe.  I’m not sure.  I kind of stopped paying attention to him.”

“Why don’t you just confront him?”

“Confront him?  And do what?  Tell him that I’m very disappointed, but I have nothing to make him stop?  I’m not going to tell my mother.”

“You could just tell him that it hurts you.  That might make him stop.”

“Maybe.  But why should I take away his fun?  If his life is so boring that he has to sleep with his secretary, I think I should just let him.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Huh?”

“Am I a way to relieve your boredom?”

“You’re in a self-pitying mood tonight.”

“Hmm.  Maybe.  Maybe I’m in a mood to be hurtful.”

“Well then, lay it on me.”

“You could tell your dad that he needs to stop fooling around because it’s turning you into a psycho nymphomaniac with abandonment issues who enjoys torturing boys.”

“Is that what you think of me?  That I’m a psycho nymphomaniac?”

Scott’s brow creased as he thought.  He stared across the kitchen at a framed doily on the wall.  “You know, sometimes, when I try to imagine my ideal woman, I keep coming up with you.  Not just how you look, but how you are, right down to your flaws.  Sometimes it seems to me that you’re exactly what I want.  What I need.  You’re the perfect woman, designed just for me.”  He looked at Antoinette.  “And then sometimes I wake up.  And I realize that it’s the other way around.”

“Isn’t that just as good?” she asked softly, running just the tips of her fingers through his hair.  “Isn’t it good to know that you’re the perfect one for someone else?”

He didn’t have an answer for her, so he just let her pet him.  It was making his headache go away.  Either that or the drugs were kicking in.

“Maybe we should have another display-of-grief makeover.”

“What do you mean?”

“About your parents and all.  We can do something else like the Spartans.”

“You really are trying to get me to cut an ear off.”

She smiled and traced the shell of his ear with a finger.  Arousal exploded through his body.  “No, not at all.  But maybe you could get one pierced.”

Scott shuddered.  “God no.  I hate needles.”

“Hmm.  Then what can we do?”

“I could bleach my pubes.”

She sucked her lips in to hold back an ecstatic smile.  “Would you?”

He moved slightly away from her.  “Oh, no.  You want me to.”

“It would be kind of hot.  Can you imagine what it would look like if I was wearing fire engine red lipstick?”  She ran her tongue over an incisor while staring at his lap.

Scott jumped off the table and moved away from her.  His jeans were getting so tight it was starting to be painful, which for them was a very bad thing.

“Bad!” was all he managed to get out.

Antoinette slid off the table and walked up to him.  “Let’s go dance.”

He kissed her briefly and then they got into their usual position: her leading him by the hand.  They made their way to the very thick of the crowd where they figured they would be most well hidden.  Because they weren’t even trying.  They were pressed together everywhere it was possible.  Their hands touched and held each other possessively.  If they didn’t calm down soon he was probably going to stain his jeans.

“Oh, yes,” Antoinette said suddenly. “You told your friends about us?”

Scott blinked.  He felt a little distressed.  Was she mad?  How did she know that?  “Um, well it was kind of an accident.  But don’t worry.  They would never tell anyone.  They’re not going to try to like, blackmail us or anything.”

She laughed.  “I know.  I’m not mad.  It’s just that they all came up to me tonight to warn me not to hurt you.”

“Really?”  Scott felt his chest flood with happiness.  “That’s so sweet.”

Antoinette shook her head, smiling.  “You guys are disturbingly close.”

Scott grinned.  “I know.”

She ran a hand through his hair and they moved together enjoying the sensations created by the heat and friction of their bodies.  Then Antoinette leaned forward and gave him a little peck on the lips.

“Happy birthday, Scott.”

“Thank you.”

“I got you a present.”

“You did?  What is it?  Come on, tell me!”

“Now, now!  Don’t be so impatient.  You’re supposed to unwrap it.”

“Well, where is it?”

She smiled.  “I’m wearing it.”

His hand clenched into a fist as he forced himself not to lose it right there in the middle of his foyer.  He got himself more or less under control and realized he was clenching her arm very tightly.  He loosened his grip.

“S-sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she panted.  She leaned forward and rubbed hard against him.  “I want you, Scott.”

“I want you too.”

“No, I mean _now_.”

He nodded.  “My room.”

They turned together, holding hands, and started to push through the crowd.  Scott was jerked back where they were joined at the hand as Antoinette was pulled back.  They turned and saw Jake holding tightly onto Antoinette’s upper arm.  They immediately released hands, and he probably didn’t see it, but he had definitely seen them dancing together.

“Why the hell are you dancing with every guy here but me?!” he roared, the volume his voice needed to be heard over the music fueled his anger.

Scott didn’t know if he should play the dumb, clueless victim or try to take the blame for it.  Jake knew he went to Calverton, so he obviously knew Antoinette had a boyfriend; he was going to have to take the blame.  But he didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t incriminate Antoinette.  Why had he not wanted alcohol at this party?  If they were drunk they might be able to get away with it.  What was their excuse now?  Scott felt a cold sweat on his brow; Jake looked violently angry.  Antoinette hadn’t tried to move or explain anything yet either.  She looked scared too.  The three of them just stood there in the middle of the bouncing crowd and the throbbing music.  Fortunately no one had noticed the impending altercation yet.  He kind of wished his friends were around and he didn’t feel like a baby for thinking it.  Jake could pound him into the floor one handed.  A little back up would be nice.

Antoinette opened her mouth to speak, and the music cut out.  Everyone let out a wordless, vocal complaint.  Then the lights flashed on and everyone groaned again as they shielded their eyes.  There was general disgruntled murmuring, but over it all a woman’s voice could be clearly heard.

“What in the hell is going on here?!”

Scott felt every muscle in his body simultaneously twitch and lock up.  He knew that voice.  He pushed past Jake and Antoinette, having forgotten either of them even existed, and forced his way through the crowd toward the kitchen.  His friends got there at about the same time he did.  He tried to remember to breathe so that he wouldn’t pass out.  His mother stood in the entrance to the kitchen.  When she caught sight of him, she stared at him incredulously.

“Scott Walker Ra—You had better start talking this _instant_.  What is going on?!  Where the hell is your father?!”

Even though she was legitimately angry, she was screaming a little louder than he thought the situation warranted.  A lot of people had started migrating toward the exit at this point, but a lot were staying to watch the show.  Mostly Calverton kids who knew who he was and wanted to stick around so they would have all the details for the next morning at school.

“Mom,” Scott said quietly, un-confrontationally, “calm down, okay?”

He saw her eyes widen and she seemed ready to tear him new one, but he stepped forward with his hands raised slightly and beat her to it.

“It’s just a party, Mom.  Just a little dancing.  Chips and soda that’s all.  There’re no drugs or alcohol or anything.”

“Oh, is that right?” his mother said sarcastically.  “Explain this!”

She held up the sign from the door.  Scott let out a short breath.  Damn.

“It’s not what you think, Mom.”

“I cannot believe this,” she said, putting her hands in the air.  “I am so disappointed with you.  I didn’t want to leave you with your father, but I _trusted_ you to be mature enough to make your own decision.  I know this divorce is difficult, but that is no reason to act out.”

“I’m not acting out!”  _Not exactly_.

Will stepped away from the thinning crowd, but Chris put out a hand to stop him.  His mother saw him and pointed an accusatory finger at him.

“Don’t you even start.  Your defense is worthless.  You three would sooner be on his side than do the right thing.”

“Being on his side _is_ the right thing,” Will snapped.

“Oh, of course.  Because who cares if he’s doing something stupid or irresponsible?  It’s all about having fun and pushing him into things he would never do otherwise.  You three have always been a terrible influence.  At this point nothing you three would do would surprise me.  I bet you’d even cover up a murder for him, wouldn’t you?”

“ _Yes_!” Will hissed.

Julian stepped forward and clamped a hand over Will’s mouth.  He hauled him back, but there wasn’t much of a crowd to hide in anymore.  Most everyone had left except for a few stragglers by the door, still trying to see what was going to happen.  Will’s defense made Scott feel happy, but he kind of wished he’d shut up because he was just making his mother angrier.  She covered her eyes for a moment and then glared at Julian and Will.

“Will you just leave?  I need to deal with my son.”

“Why are you here?”

Everyone turned toward the door in surprise.  Scott’s father was shrugging out of his overcoat and looking around the house.  Then he looked at his mother again.

“Susan, why are you here?  And why are you ruining your son’s birthday?”

“Excuse me?!  Why _aren’t_ you here supervising him?!”

“He’s seventeen years old!  He doesn’t need a babysitter!”

They were screaming louder than would have been necessary when the music had still been on.  Scott rather imagined that they’d already forgotten he was there.  His mother thrust the sign in his father’s face.

“Did you see this?!  He had a huge party with drugs and alcohol and who knows what was going on upstairs!  What the hell were you thinking?!  And _where_ were you?!  Out screwing your whore?!”

“Don’t bring Kristen into this.”

“Shut-up, David!  God!  Don’t even say her name!  I’m going to my lawyer tomorrow!  You will not destroy my son’s life!”

“Oh, get over yourself, Susan!”

The fight continued, but Scott felt arms move him away from the screaming.  He could see there were several Calverton students in the foyer.  How embarrassing.  He looked to the door and wished he could leave.  But if he just ran away it would probably make his mother go insane.  And his father would get pissed too.  He saw Antoinette looking at him.  She was standing by Jake, but looked like she wanted to come over to him.  He gave a slight shake of his head.  She gave him a sympathetic look, and then turned to Jake.  They mumbled to each other and then left.  Scott couldn’t help but to wonder how far she would go to try to smooth things over with him.  Would Jake be the one to unwrap his birthday gift?  He suddenly felt an ugly stab of jealousy tear its way through his chest.  He’d always felt guilty around Jake, and now he was feeling jealous.  This was new.  And the implication behind it was not something to be dealt with tonight.

The house had finally cleared out.  The only people left were him and his friends.  Anna grabbed his hand and squeezed it.  She kissed him on the cheek.

“Call me tomorrow, okay?  If you’re allowed that is.”

He smiled.  “Yeah, fat chance of that.”

The other girls gave him a quick hug before scooting out the door.  He turned to his three best friends.

“Sorry.  I guess the sleepover isn’t going to happen.”

“We’ll come see you tomorrow,” Julian said.  “Covertly if need be.”

“Okay.

“I’m sorry,” Will said.  “I shouldn’t have made her so mad.”

Scott shook his head.  “No, it’s okay.  You looked like a little kitten standing up to a vicious lioness.  Very cute.”

Will went red.  “Shut-up!”

Scott laughed.  It was very difficult to make Will Harder blush.  Chris patted his shoulder.

“Like Julian said, we’ll see you tomorrow.  But, you better go to the kitchen.”

Scott glanced over his shoulder.  He could see his siblings sitting at the kitchen table, staring at it like it was the only thing that would keep back their tears.  Scott groaned softly.

“Damn it.”  He sighed.  “Okay.  See you guys tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

The three of them left and Scott shut the door behind them.  He turned around and leaned against the door.  His parents had migrated away from the kitchen to the living room.  He didn’t know how it was possible but the volume had gone up on their fight.  Their throats would be raw after this.  Scott looked around the rooms.  It really didn’t look that bad.  There were chip crumbs everywhere, but other than that there were no obvious stains on the floor or marks on the walls.  It had actually been a pretty tame party all things considered.  He watched his father pace around the floor while his mother followed behind him.  They weren’t even yelling about him or the party anymore.  They were completely lost in their own hatred.  He understood why his mother hated his father so much; she had actually loved him.  But why did his father get so angry too when he claimed not to even care about her that much?

Scott walked away from the door, watching them carefully, but they took no notice of him.  He walked into the kitchen and felt sick as he saw his siblings still sitting motionless at the table.  They shouldn’t have to listen to this.  He guessed they were luckier than some kids.  A lot of times the screaming and fighting started before the divorce and the moving out.  They had been spared a lot of that at least.  There was a box on the table.  Scott turned it around and opened it.  Inside was a birthday cake.  Scott felt like shit.  His mother had brought it over for him.  She was trying to be nice and make up to him for what had happened at the courthouse.  He closed the box.  Couldn’t she have called first?

“Come on, guys,” Scott said.  He walked over to a drawer and pulled out a kabob skewer.  Then he walked to the basement door and popped the lock.  They got up silently and followed him downstairs.  The shouting was almost completely muffled now.  They could still hear it a little bit, but if they didn’t concentrate on it they might not notice it.  Scott sat on the black, leather loveseat and Drake climbed on to his left and Ferris snuggled up to his right.  Joanna sat on the adjacent couch.  Scott petted Ferris’ head.

“So, how it’s going at Grandma’s?”

“It cramped,” Drake said plaintively.

“And it smells,” Ferris complained.

“I miss my friends.”

“I miss our room.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss Dad.”

“I wanna come home,” they cried together.

Scott wrapped his arms around their thin shoulders hugged them close.  He looked at Joanna.

“How are you doing?”

She shrugged.  “I’m okay.  I mean, it sucks of course.  It really, _really_ sucks.  But, I’m actually doing okay.  We’re in a public school now, so we don’t have any uniforms.  I’ve made a couple of new friends.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”  She half-smiled.  “I even have a boyfriend.”

Scott’s first reaction was relief and elation.  He was so glad she’d found someone else to be romantically interested in.  That was definitely a step in the right direction.  Then his big brother instincts kicked in.  He scowled.

“Oh, hell no.  Who is this punk?  You’re fourteen!  I’m gonna kill him.”

She let out a little laugh.  “Relax, spaz.  He’s a total gentleman.”

“Joanna, there is no such thing as a teenaged gentleman.  We’re all perverts.”

“He’s fine.”

Scott grunted.  Then he couldn’t help but poke a little fun at her.  “Is his name Scott?”

“Wha—?  No!  Jerk.  His name is Hunter.”

“Hunter?  Feh.  What the heck kind of name is that?  I don’t like it.”

“He’s really a nice guy.  I have a picture.  You wanna see?”

“Yeah, I guess I better so that if I ever see him I’ll be able to beat him up.”

Joanna rolled her eyes and dug around in her bag.  She pulled out a picture wallet and flipped toward the middle.  At least the guy hadn’t taken precedence in the front page.  She got off the couch and walked over toward him.  He pulled Ferris into his lap so that she could sit beside him.  She curled up next to him and handed him the picture.  He looked at the picture of the geeky looking fourteen year old boy.  Then he looked at Joanna.  She sat back under his look.

“What?” she asked.  Then she looked at the picture.  Her eyebrows went up.  “Oh.”

Ferris put his hand on Scott’s wrist so that the picture tilted down enough for him to see it.

“Hey, Scotty,” he said, “this guy looks like you.”


	14. Chapter 14

Friday, October 31, 2005

 

Riley

 

Riley checked her wristwatch as she ducked down the alley formed by Calverton and the apartment building next to it.  She was less than ten minutes late.  Anna and Scott would still be later than her.  No one had called her, so as far as she knew the doorway they had propped opened earlier that day was still unlocked and they were still meeting in the elementary wing of the school.  They’d done this every year since eighth grade, but it still made her nervous because it felt like they were breaking into the school.  They were all technically invited to be there because of the Halloween dance, but still.  It felt illegal.  Maybe she just had no life.

As she walked closer to the door, she could see that it was propped all the way open.  After a few more steps she could see a sexy figure leaning on the outside wall of the entrance.  Only Julian was that tall.  It was really dark in the alley and Julian had that whole bad boy vibe about him.  If he’d been smoking a cigarette, it would have been perfect.  Riley cleared her throat and shook off her momentary admiration of his body.  Ever since their dance together at the back to school dance she’d had a few daydreams about him.  She didn’t have a crush on him or anything, but sometimes it was hard to forget what that body of his could do.

“Good evening, Ms. Mayfield.  You’re running a little late.”

“Yeah, but I’m still not as late as—”

She cut off as she stepped inside the hall.  Everyone, including Scott and Anna, were already there.

“Dammit.”  She shook her head.  “This isn’t possible.”

“I told them we were meeting here at 7:30,” Will explained.

“Ah.”

It was 8:07.  Riley moved to stand next to the other girls.  She looked over at the boys who were standing across from them.  Every single one of them had an extremely evil smile.  She held back her whimper.  She’d known that it had been a huge mistake when everyone (but her) agreed to go all out in their last year of selecting each other’s costumes.  And on top of that, they hadn’t drawn names out of a hat as usual.  There was a lot of _intent_ to the costume selecting this year.  She’d already guessed, but the other girls should have known that the boys would take it too far.  She sighed.  Who was she kidding?  She’d seen the other girls’ choices.  They’d taken it too far too.  At best they were going to get kicked out of the dance and at worst they were all going to get suspended.

And she could have been in a nice normal costume going to the dance with Nick Tripp.  He’d asked her to go, but she’d had to turn him down because she’d agreed to this months ago.  Well, years ago technically.  The best she could do was promise to save a dance for him.  Several dances.  He’d nodded and accepted her answer, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d asked someone else to go.  If he did she was totally going to punch him.  She glared at her stupid friends.

“All right, let’s get this freak show started.”

Her friends laughed at her and Chris followed her into the empty science room.  There were pictures of cells made out of candy hanging on the walls.  It gave the room such a feeling of innocence, and here they were about to spoil it.  She held out her bag to Chris and took the one he offered her.  She held it and refused to look inside.  Chris smiled at her.

“Go on, look inside.”

“I can’t,” she said with a shake of her head, “I’m scared.”

“You have nothing to worry about, Riley.  Halloween is about dressing up as something you’re not.  So, I picked out a princess outfit for you.  ‘Cause princesses are girly.  And you’re not.  Exactly.”

Riley felt relieved.  A princess outfit.  As much as she reviled anything that was pink, lacey, and frilly, it could have been much worse.  She opened the bag and the smile that had made its way onto her face vanished.  She reached inside and pulled out a gold-looking bra thingie.  She looked at Chris.

“What the hell kind of princess wears this?!”

Chris was grinning ear to ear.  “Princess Leia is a princess.”

She recognized what the thin scrap of white fabric still in the bag was now.  “She was a _prisoner_ when she wore this.”

“Yes, but she was still a princess.”

If his grin got any bigger she was going to do some dental work on his teeth.

“Put it on, Riley.  You agreed to this.”

“I did not agree to this!” she said with a shake of her first causing the bra to flail around.  Chris was laughing as well as grinning now, but she could also see the gleam in his eye.  He really wanted to see her in the outfit.  “You know, I always knew you were a geek, but I didn’t know you were a Star Wars nerd too.”

“Oh, Riley, Riley.”  The way he said her name made her want to punch him.  “Every man in the world is a fan of Princess Leia in _Return of the Jedi_.  Now put it on.”

Riley groaned.  “Fine.  But don’t watch.  Turn around and put yours on.”

“Okay,” he said, digging into his bag.  His smiled completely disappeared.  He pulled out a Red Sox hat.  “Bugger.  I hate you.”

“Ha.  Now turn around!”

Riley hid in the darkest corner she could find and cursed the entire time she attempted to put the outfit on.  For a costume not having a lot of material or pieces to it, it was surprisingly difficult to get into.  She was forced to take off her own bra because she couldn’t wear both, though she’d tried.  And she realized how lucky she was that it had been a while since the laundry had been done and she’d been forced to put on one of the high cut pairs of panties Liz and Laney had made her buy a few months ago.  She couldn’t believe how high cut the loincloth thingie was.  She kept crossing and re-crossing her arms over her stomach.  She really, _really_ felt naked.  And to add insult to injury, there was a long braided wig for her to put on.  She sighed.  At least it wasn’t the bun hairstyle.

Riley trudged out of her corner and walked toward Chris.  She couldn’t come close to looking him in the eyes and she was feeling a little faint from all the blood rushing to her head.  If she couldn’t handle Chris seeing her, there was no way she’d be able to let the whole school see her like this.  Chris let out a low catcall whistle.  Her anger helped her get over her embarrassment and she looked up at him.

“Oh shut-up—”  She cut off as she looked at him.  She rolled her lips in to hold back her smile.

“You look nice,” he said.  “You can pull it off because you’re so athletic.”

She just nodded, still staring.

“Um, so.  I get the Red Sox theme; that’s definitely you.  But, uh, did the other girls help you with this?”

Riley put a hand to her mouth to keep back her giggle.  She nodded.  He raised his arms to put on the Red Sox baseball cap and it pulled everything even tighter.  He was wearing a baseball uniform.  That’s all it was really, but about two sizes too small.  The soft cotton fabric was outlining every inch of his body.  She could see every muscle, every line, every angle.  He could have been naked.  She leaned to her left to see if his backside was outlined just as nicely.  Yep.

“You know, I always find guys in Red Sox uniforms really hot, but you’re on fire, Chris.”

He cleared his throat and held up the protective cup that had also been in the bag.

“And what’s this for?”

“It’s part of the costume,” Riley shrugged.  “It was Anna’s idea.”

Chris blinked.  “Anna’s?  Really?”

“Trust me.  We went with the tamest one.”

Chris gulped.  “Well, I’m not putting this on.”

“You have to!”

“Riley, good grief!  Look at me!  It won’t even fit down there!”

“Hey!  Look at what the hell I’m wearing!  This could be considered sexual harassment, alright?  Now put it on!”

Chris grumbled and she didn’t bother to try to hear what he was saying.  She was sure it wasn’t nice.  He partially undid his pants and then gave her a look before turning his back on her.  Like she would even want to see—Ooo.  Chris’s backside really was nice.  After some jumping around, careful adjustment, and a struggle with a waistband, Chris turned back around.  Riley burst out laughing.

“You can _not_ make me wear this!  It’s obscene!” Chris shouted, sounding very embarrassed.

“Geez, Chris, your ‘area’ is even more impressive than David Bowie’s!”

Chris let out a noise of disgust and started to undo his pants.

“No, you can’t.”

“Riley, they won’t even let me in the gym like this.”

“Okay, okay.  But you have to at least let the others see you.  Then you can take it off.”

Chris scowled.  “You guys suck.”

“Hey, I had to take off my bra for this costume.  That’s a little personal.”

“I guess.”

He stuffed his regular clothes into the shopping bag and they started for the exit.  They walked very slowly.  Neither one of them wanted to go see their friends.

“Well,” said Chris, “hopefully they’ll have even more embarrassing costumes than us.”

“Yeah.  You can count on it actually.”

Chris laughed and casually wrapped an arm around her waist; he’d done that in the past, but now his hand was on her bare skin.

“It feels weird for you to be touching me there…without like, clothes in the way.”

He pulled her against his side in a little hug.  “Well, it feels nice and soft.”

“Oh!  Shut-up!”

His moved his arm and his hand spread over her stomach.  She tensed up reflexively.

“Nice ab muscles.”

Riley forced back the instinct telling her to stomp on his foot, twist his arm behind his back, and knee him in the stomach.

“Thank you,” she said in her best Laney imitation.

 

Laney

 

Laney was trying really hard not to bounce up and down.  She was really excited for tonight.  It was the second dance of the school year and she was going with her second senior.  All her junior friends were so jealous of her.  She even had a shot at being one of the few underclassmen who got to go to the senior prom.  That kind of status would rocket her to the top of the social food chain for her senior year.  And if all that weren’t enough, she’d gotten to pick out Julian’s costume for this year.  He’d be sorry for only being half-assed about his promise to date her.  With this thought in her head she turned to where he was standing in the doorway and gave him a smirk.  He raised an eyebrow.  She could tell that he was curious, but not concerned.  Mwa-ha.

At last Riley arrived and they could all split up.  She half-skipped behind Julian into the “geology lab.”  She remembered getting to come to this class once a week when she’d been younger.  All they did was look at rocks and play in the dirt, but calling it a “geology lab” certainly made it sound more sophisticated.  And convincing so that parents would pay a fortune in tuition for their kids to get such a “first rate” education.

Laney put her bag on one of the benches and turned to Julian.  Here it was: the moment of truth.  What had he picked out for her?  What did he really think of her?  She took in a breath.

“So, what’s my costume?” she asked, preparing herself for the worst.

“A fairy,” Julian said, sliding his shopping bag toward her.

She felt crushed.  It was even worse than she’d thought.  She’d be in a tutu with a tiara on her head waving a wand around.  It was a costume for a four year old.  She sighed and looked in the bag to see if it was pink or purple.  She paused as she looked inside, and then reached in and pulled out a black and silver lacey, strappy thing.  She looked at Julian, realizing her expression must be ridiculously perplexed.

“Am I an evil fairy?”

He grinned at her.  “What about me?”

“Umm…”  Laney averted her eyes.  She was starting to feel a little guilty about hers now.

Julian looked in his bag and pulled out the big, black pointy witch’s hat.  He looked over at her.

“Ha, ha.  Very funny.  I get it.  I’m a witch.”

She smiled nervously.  “Keep going.”

He dug around in the bag some more.  “Oh, no,” he said.  “I’m an actual witch.”

Laney laughed uneasily.  “H-Happy Halloween!”

He shook his head, but he was smiling.  “All right.  We’ll see who’s laughing last.  Put your costume on so I can do your make-up.”

“Okay.”

Laney went to the far side of the room and squatted behind one of the benches.  He didn’t get to see the package until he was ready to unwrap it himself.  And wrapping was a pretty close analogy.  The outfit was straps and buckles and snaps and she almost thought she might need help with it.  The black and silver thing was a bustier and it was worn over a black mini skirt.  The accessories included ripped black stockings, knee high platform boots, black wings, and fangs.  She was a _really_ evil fairy.  But she also looked very cute.  If the skirt was puffed out with crinoline she’d have the perfect gothic Lolita costume.  Maybe Julian was trying to stay away from the Lolita theme.  That was promising.

Laney came out from the behind the bench and burst out laughing.  Julian was trying to adjust the short skirt she’d bought for him.

“It’s a little short,” he said, wriggling around trying to get the fabric to slide down a little.  When he did that, it left a wide gap of skin in between the skirt and the black halter top that was also too small for him.  He either had to have a short skirt or an exposed naval.

“Sorry, but I don’t know where the Big and Tall Drag Queen store is.  Do you know how hard it was to find fishnet stockings that would fit you?”

“They don’t.  They’re barely covering my junk.”

Laney put a hand to her mouth and giggled to cover up her blush.  He was making it way too easy to have dirty thoughts.  She bit her lip as she looked at him.

“You look more like a prostitute than a witch, even with the hat on.”

“Hah, hah.  I really hate you, Laney.”

Laney shook her head and gave a wistful sigh.  “Julian, you could never pull off being a girl.”

“I know!  I look so bad in women’s clothing.”

She gave him an amused smile.  “Have you tried it before?”

“Yeah, I have.”  He said it so nonchalantly.  He was such a weird guy.  But that was one of the reasons why she loved him.  “C’mere,” he said.  “I need to do your make-up.”

They sat down across from each other at one of the benches and took turns applying each other’s make-up.  Laney had had an apple red lipstick she was going to put on him, but he already looked too much like a lady of the night.  So, she toned it down a bit.  When they were done he gave her a small mirror so she could look at herself.  He’d given her smoky eyes and luscious lips and sparklies on her cheekbones.  She looked hot.  Especially with the sexy outfit.  She smiled at Julian and ran her tongue just on the inside of her bottom lip.

“Is this how you see me?” she asked.

“It’s Halloween, Lane.  When we dress up as things we’re not.”

She frowned at him.  “Jerk.”

“Come on,” he said, standing up and digging out a wedgie.  So unladylike.  “Let’s go see if they’ll even let us in.”

“ _We_ might make it,” she said gathering up their bags.  “But Scott and Will are another story.”

“Ooo.  I can’t wait to see.”

 

Anna

 

Anna glanced nervously at Scott’s shopping bag.  Again.  She knew that tonight she really needed to make Scott forget all about Antoinette.  Hopefully he’d already gotten rid of his baggage, but if he hadn’t, she needed to make him want to drop it right now.  But what if the stupid turd makes her dress up like Jason or something totally unsexy and gross as a joke?  And then _she_ shows up looking all hot.  Just the thought pissed her off royally.  Stupid Scott.  She turned a glare on him.  He saw her expression and looked startled, and then nervous.

“Wha—what’d I do?”

“Nothing.  _Yet_.”

He gulped and slid closer to Will for protection.  She was still grousing about it when Riley showed up, so she shoved her bag at Scott started to stalk toward the art room.  Scott ran after her.

“No!”

She stopped.  “What?”

“Um, not that room.  Let’s go in here.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the computer lab.

“But I hate it in here.  All the high pitched whining irritates me.”

“All the computers are off for the weekend.  It’s fine.”

“Speaking of weekends, you never really told me how bad the grounding turned out to be.”

“Not bad.  In fact, I’m not grounded at all.”

“Why not?”

“My mom coming over was possibly the best thing that could have happened.  My dad wouldn’t have grounded me no matter what I did just to spite her.”

Anna felt a pang in her chest as she looked at him.  He was completely trying to hide how much this divorce was hurting him.  Why would he do that?  Did he think they wouldn’t be here for him?  That they wouldn’t understand?  That _she_ wouldn’t?

“Besides, it wasn’t like I’d done anything terrible anyway.  There were no drugs or alcohol and the house was perfectly fine.  I had to vacuum the next morning and clean up a stain, but that was all.”

“And you’re not upset about what happened with your mom and dad?”

Scott laughed as he looked in his bag and pulled out a cowboy hat.

“What?  Why are you laughing like that?”  She’d noticed he’d avoided answering her question.

“Look at yours,” he said smiling and twirling the hat around on his finger.

Anna looked in her bag and laughed too.  She pulled out a cowgirl hat.  “Man, are we on the same wavelength or what?”

“Actually, I really hope not.”

“Why not?” she asked, feeling just a little bit hurt.

“Because if they’re _exactly_ the same, I’m going to be in trouble.  I don’t look good in a skirt.”

Anna laughed, relieved.  “Maybe not, but I bet you wouldn’t look bad either.”

Scott gave her an offended look and started stripping right in front of her.  He was completely oblivious to the fact that she was there.  Well, not oblivious, but it didn’t matter to him.  She walked a little away to put on her outfit.  It was definitely not a good thing that he couldn’t care less about being naked in front of her.  Sure they had been running around each other nude since they were two, and even when they hit puberty it never really bothered them.  But now they were trying to make their friendship something more.  Nudity was supposed to have a new meaning.  And it did for her.  She was definitely distracted.  Scott in nothing but his underwear was a beautiful sight.  How on earth did he have such a great body?  He was a total slacker.  Anna started to undress.  She knew that if she were to walk up to him and touch him or make him aware of her, he might start to react to their lack of clothing.  But when she wasn’t forcing the issue, he didn’t think about her in that way.  She was just “Anna” as always.  She wondered if he thought about _her_ when they were apart.  Maybe he was just shallow.  Out of sight, out of mind.  She groaned softly and started wiggling into her skirt.  It really sucked when she was hoping that her love interest was a shallow airhead.

“You okay?” Scott called out.  “Does it not fit?”

“No, it’s okay.  It’s—”  She paused as she finished zipping it up.  She tugged on the end of the skirt, but it wouldn’t go down any.  She pulled out the sketchy looking halter top.  “Am I supposed to be a slutty cowgirl?”

She tried to give Scott a look, but cognitive function failed her when she saw Scott sitting on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room.  He was already dressed in the tight jeans and worn out T-shirt she’d provided and leaning back on his hands with his legs spread wide.  The cowboy hat sat on his head slightly askew and he was smiling lazily at her as he chewed the piece of straw she’d stuck in the bag at the last second.

_Good God.  He gets sexier every time I look at him._

“And so what if you are slutty, ma’am?” he drawled.  “I, apparently, am on my way to a western themed gay bar.”

She laughed and then shrugged.  “Sorry.  Your ass looks good in tight jeans.”

“More than just my ass,” Scott sniffed haughtily and hopped off the desk.  “You need any help with that top?”

“ _No_ ,” she said, finally able to give him the look he deserved.  She turned her back to him and quickly changed shirts.  She shook her head.  If her father saw her like this…but then, that’s why they met up at school to exchange costumes.  Scott had even gotten her a hip holster with two fake guns.  It was cute.  When she was done dressing she turned and walked toward him, swaying her hips.  She was delighted to see that he was watching her very closely.  She stopped in front of him and put a hand on her hip, jutting it out a bit.

“You look hot, cowboy.”

“I look gay.  I mean look at this.  The shirt doesn’t come down enough.  And the jeans won’t fit unless they’re slung this low.”  He covered his stomach with his arms.  “You can see my naval,” he whispered.

Anna smiled.  “And it’s very cute.  Besides, I’m showing a lot more than my naval, so I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s different for girls.”

“Oh hush, you big baby.  Let’s go.”

“I can’t.  I feel really stupid in this outfit.  I mean, the hat is cool and all, but I look so…so…”

Anna bit her lip.  She could think of several adjectives to fill in that blank with and he’d probably only be happy with about two of them.  She waved her hand dismissively and walked by him.

“Don’t worry about it, Scott.  You’ll be fine.  I mean, this is nothing.  Just wait until you see Will.”

“Oh, no,” Scott murmured sympathetically.

 

Liz

 

Liz watched Will very carefully, looking for signs.  The problem was that she didn’t know what signs she was looking for.  She was 90% sure he was dating somebody and 95% sure that somebody didn’t go to Calverton.  One other irritating thing she knew was that the mystery girl was very important to him, so simply offering him sex wasn’t going to win him back.  But, it couldn’t hurt either.  Hopefully he had cooperated and had picked out a costume for her that would allow her to remind him of what she had to offer.

Liz barely even noticed Riley’s arrival and eyed Will’s shopping bag as they headed into the art room.  She could see Will scowl in the dim light.  She smiled.  He’d never liked the art room.  It was the one thing he just wasn’t good at.  She hopped up onto one of the tables and crossed her legs.  She was wearing a short skirt and liked the way it showed a lot of leg, but didn’t look trashy.  Will stood in front her.  He had a neutral expression on his face.  He could be thinking about a quantum mechanics problem or still be hung up on his mediocrity as an art student.

She felt a little sad.  If she really loved him and knew him so well, wouldn’t she be able to tell what he was thinking, no matter what?  He looked mildly amused as he watched her, and then he was back to that neutral expression.  It had only been a flash, but she’d caught the change.  He was laughing at her because he knew she was having trouble figuring out what he was thinking.  She decided to let him have his little moment of superiority; she wouldn’t tell him that she’d figured it out.  And if she could figure it out from those subtle cues, she really did know him.  She was perfect for him.  She smiled.  The mystery girl was toast.

“Sooo, what’d ya pick out for me?  A nurse uniform?  French maid?”

He smiled and she refused to react to it.  “Close.  An angel.”

“An angel?  That’s so boring,” Liz complained, digging into the bag.  Her eyebrows shot up as she saw what the costume consisted of.  “An angel with garters?”

She looked up and gave him a naughty smile.  He returned it.

“You’re so dirty,” she said, fishing around for the rest of the costume and not really finding anything.  The “costume” was nothing but lingerie.  Maybe he already remembered what she had to offer.   That was very promising.

“No way, Liz.  No fucking way.”

Liz looked up from the bag, surprised by his outburst.  Then she saw him looking into his own bag.  He looked very displeased.  She snickered.

“What’s wrong?” she asked innocently.

He pulled out a garment but held it between his thumb and index finger like it was contaminated with toxic waste.  Either that or it might bite him.  He gave her a look that let her know exactly how crazy he thought she was.

“Daisy Duke would blush to put these shorts on, Liz.”

She laughed and hopped off the table.  “Come on.  Put ‘em on.  For me.”  She bit her lip and gave him doe eyes.

“No,” he said flatly and threw the “shorts” back in the bag.

“Do it you wuss.  Look what you picked out for me!”

She held up the thong underwear.  He smiled absently when he saw it, and then tried to recover.  He realized he was simply getting a dose of his own medicine, so he snatched the bag off the table and stomped to a corner, grumbling the whole time.  Liz smiled and began to take off her clothes.  She never would have thought she’d have to take everything off for a costume, but she obviously wasn’t going to be able to wear her own underwear with it.  The entire outfit consisted of white thong underwear, a white lacey bra with wispy pieces of cloth hanging from it to where her legs met her hips, white thigh high stockings, and white stiletto heels.  She looked like she belonged in a softcore porno.  She heard Will moving toward her and looked up.  She nearly swooned to the floor.

The black boots were only ankle high, but the black leggings ran seamlessly up his legs giving the illusion of thigh high boots that almost reached the shorts that were barely covering his ass.  There was about a one inch strip of pale skin showing in between the leggings and shorts.  She was surprised he’d actually put on the man-corset, but it looked good with the belled collar, cat ears, and tail.  She was so turned on she really wished the wispy white thing wasn’t so see through because her panties were getting wet.  Will was squirming.  He was so embarrassed and so uncomfortable; it only made him hotter.  While he was busy staring intently at the floor, she pulled out her cell phone and snapped a picture.  He looked up at the sound, completely astonished.

“Now I own you,” Liz said.

“Liz!  Don’t.  Jesus.  I can’t believe you even like me like this.  You like boys dressed up as girls?  That’s kind of weird.”

She shrugged.  “Depends on the boy.”

“Hmph.  We can’t go out like this.  We’ll get sent home.”

“No shit.  Here’s your real costume.”  She handed him the second bag she’d been hiding.  He handed her one as well.  They smirked at each other and began to change outfits.  Liz saw that all she had was a white mini dress to wear over the lingerie and a pair of wings.  He was going to make her wear stiletto heels all night?  The jerk.  She put her phone up and knew she was going to have to transfer the picture somewhere safe.  As if she would ever show it to anyone.  She never wanted anyone but her to see him like that.

When she turned around again he was wearing the black leather pants and tight tank top she’d picked out for him.  He still looked hot.  He had the collar and ears on, but he’d left the tail off.  She pulled it out of the bag and handed it to him.  He whined and complained about it but attached it to his back belt loop.

“Now, let me do your make-up,” she said.

“Oh, great.  I’ve gotta have whiskers too?”

“No, I just want to make you look pretty.”

“Feh.”

Liz smiled and pulled out her make-up bag.  Will came to her reluctantly, but willingly.  He was such a good model for make-up.  His pale skin and dark hair made him look good in cool colors, but his green eyes gave him the ability to pull off warm colors.  It was virtually impossible to make him look bad.  While she worked on him, he would pick up various items and apply them to her.  She was a little worried he was making her eyes two different colors or penciling on a really fake lip, but she let him play.  When they were done they looked in her tiny compact mirror.  They both looked good with winged eyes and nude, shiny lips.  They were so avant-garde.  Their look wouldn’t be “in” for the masses until a couple seasons from now, but it was all over the runways in Paris.

“So, are you ready for this?” Liz asked smoothing down her short dress.

Will took in an exaggeratedly deep breath.  “Okay.  I’m ready.”

Liz opened the art room door and they were accosted by the sound of raucous laughter.  They hurried out to see what all the commotion was about.  The first thing Liz saw was a tall, buff guy wearing a short skirt and a halter top.  He looked like a fraternity guy at a hazing.  Then she caught sight of the witch’s hat atop his head.  She shook her head.  Poor Julian.  He really did make such an ugly woman.

Scott was doubled over with laughter, which put him at the right level for him to knock on Chris’ protective cup.  He couldn’t even get out a smartass comment because he was laughing so hard.

“What are you laughing at, Mr. Brokeback?” Chris snapped.

Scott stopped laughing.  Julian was looking Anna over.  As far as Liz could tell he hadn’t even looked at Will once.

“Mmm, Anna.  You look cute,” Julian said with something that resembled a leer.  “You know what they say…save a horse ride a—”

“Hey!”  Scott shouted.  “I told you not to be dirty with her!”

“I was gonna say cow _boy_ , sweetheart,” Julian said, giving Scott a little slap on the ass.  He jumped away and hid behind Anna.  He whispered something in her ear and she just smiled.

Liz was amazed by her friends.  She knew that she, Laney, and Anna looked hot even though they were slightly trampy, but Riley looked really good too.  Liz couldn’t believe she’d actually put on the outfit, and somehow managed to look amazing in it.  And on top of that, all the boys’ eyes kept darting over in her direction.  Boys and their Princess Leia fantasies.  It was so weird.

She was also very impressed with the boys.  They were all so smexy she was blushing from looking at them.  She was lucky to be friends with them.  Now she understood a little better some of the jealousy she got from a lot of the girls in school.

“Wow, Julian.  That’s some fairy costume you picked out,” Chris said, his eyes traveling up and down Laney’s body.

“You like what you see, Chris?” Laney asked.  She gave him a look and he seemed to understand what she was implying, but nobody else did.

“But what the hell kind of angel are you?” Scott asked, looking Liz over.  He turned to Will, awaiting an explanation.

“Charlie’s?” Will shrugged.

Then he squawked in surprise as Julian wrapped his arms around his waist and drew him close.  He nuzzled the side of Will’s face with a contented smile.  “Thanks, Liz.  This is perfect.  Every witch needs her black cat.”

Liz held back her frown.  She hadn’t thought about that connection when she’d heard what Laney had picked out for him.  Hopefully Will wouldn’t think it was funny and want to hang around with him all night.  She wanted him to spend time with her.  She’d never win him back if she couldn’t convince him that she had more than sex to offer him.  She needed to get them all moving.

“All, right, all right,” Liz said.  “Let’s get going.  I can’t wait to see if they even let us in like this.”

“One second,” Chris said, his hand down his pants.  He jumped around and finally managed to pull out the cup.  He tossed it to Anna with a glare.  “I believe this is yours, missy.”

“What?!” Scott screeched.

 

Chris

 

Chris hadn’t felt this embarrassed since the infamous Rainbow Bright costume of ’01.  But it wasn’t because he looked kind of like a male stripper just before the music started.  It was the Red Sox hat.  He had several acquaintances from the baseball team who were well aware of his loyalty to the Yankees.  They had razzed him about his costume for much longer than Chris thought it was actually funny.  Bunch of jerks.  He would have been mad with Riley, but every geek in the school was lining up and asking her to dance in order to live out the ultimate nerd fantasy.  He figured that made them about even.

Other than that, the dance had been pretty tame.  Well, some of the costumes other people were wearing were even more risqué than theirs, so that made things interesting.  The chaperones must have either not been paying attention when the students came in or they just figured it wasn’t worth the fight.  Because it wasn’t just one or two people, it was almost everybody.  Including some of the younger kids.  He was pretty sure he saw a seventh grader in a full on leather catsuit.  She looked like a child playing dress up in her big sister’s old costume.  He wasn’t attracted to her at all, which made him feel better about himself.  He wasn’t a pedophile.  Even though Sophia was young, she definitely looked mature in her belly dancer costume.  He was a touch surprised to see her in such a skimpy outfit, but pleasantly so.  He walked up behind her as she was talking to a group of friends and tapped her on the shoulder.  She turned around, smiling and looking normal.  Then she saw who had touched her and choked on her own spit.

“Oh!  H-hey, Chris!  So, you’re here, huh?”

“Yeah.  Um, I’m sorry if I’m interrupting…”

“No, it’s okay!”

“It’s fine!”

“Not at all!”

Her three friends answered for her.  They looked a little embarrassed, but not nearly as much as Sophia did.  She looked up at him, and then let out a little laugh.  Her embarrassment dissipated quickly.  The situation was too ridiculous for her to take it seriously.  Chris smiled and held out his hand to her.

“Well, since I’m not interrupting, would you like to dance?”

Sophia nodded.  “Yes, I would.”

She took his hand and he led her toward the bobbing throng of kids.  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.  The outfit was red and purple and covered in tassels and bells.  It looked pretty authentic.

“So, why a belly dancer?” Chris asked.

“Actually, it’s a cop out.  I waited too long to buy a costume, so I just wore this.”

“And what, you just have a belly dancer outfit lying around your house?” he laughed.

“Yep.  I take classes after school.”

Chris raised his eyebrows.  “Really?”

“Yeah.  I have a friend from Turkey and she got me into it.  It’s actually really good exercise.”

“I bet,” Chris murmured, noticing once again her slim, toned figure.  He’d seen her in a bathing suit before, but for some reason this outfit showed her body off better.  “So, can I see you dance a little?”

“Sure.”

She started to move her body and he was enthralled by the movement.  He almost felt like a snake being charmed.  He didn’t know anyone other than Shakira could move their body like that.

“Would you like to learn how?” she asked, dancing closer.

“Umm…I don’t know if it’s really my thing…”

She turned her back toward him and reached back for his hands.  She put them on her hips.  “Here, this way you can feel the movement.  It will help you understand how it’s supposed to go.”

Chris couldn’t help but smile (kind of like a pervert) as he just sort of swayed back and forth while Sophia undulated in his grasp and against his body.  He wanted to know how he’d not realized he was so interested in belly dancing before now.  She raised her arms up and moved them gracefully, her hands contorting into exotic shapes and occasionally brushing over his face and hair.  He was starting to wonder if he should have kept that protective cup after all.  The song ended abruptly, and they were left standing in a funny position as the next song started.  It was definitely not one you could belly dance too.  Sophia stepped away from him and smiled.

“So, how was your first lesson?”

“Very nice.  Thank you very much.”

“No problem.  Anytime you want another, just let me know.  I do private sessions as well.”

She gave him a wink and sashayed away.  Chris felt even more like a dirty, old man.  He really wanted to take her up on her offer, but she was so young.  He shook his head.  No.  She was a sophomore in high school.  That wasn’t that young.  She obviously knew what sex was and had no problem offering it to him.  Well, at least implying that she would.  He didn’t know what it was, but there was just something about her that made her seem so much younger to him.  Chris turned around, rubbing the back of his head and bumped into a white, fluffy thing.

“Oh, sorry, I—” Chris cut off and half-groaned.  Of course.  “Hi, Karen.”

“Hi, Chris.”

He looked her over to see what all the white fluffiness was about.  The dress had a fitted bodice, but it was very full in the skirt.  The bodice and capped sleeves had lace and sparkles, but it was subtle and looked pretty.  Chris finally recognized it; it was her Cotillion ball gown.  She looked beautiful in it.

“So, uh,” he said, trying to diffuse the tension.  He’d been avoiding her since Scott’s birthday party.  “I guess it wasn’t so ruined after all.”

She shrugged delicately.  “Not too bad.  But…”

She pulled the skirt out a bit so he could see the bottom.  There were faint mud stains all along the hem.  He smiled.  He bet those were still there even after the expensive dry cleaning bill.  No wonder her mother had been so angry with her.

“You know,” she said softly, causing him to lean in toward her to hear her, “I always wanted to dance with you while wearing this.”  She blinked her big brown eyes at him.  “Please?”

He half-sighed in resignation.  “Sure.”

It was a slow song.  He could never tell which was more dangerous for them; the fast or the slow songs.  But hopefully the skirt would keep enough distance between them that it wouldn’t matter.

“Did Riley pick out your costume?” she asked, raising a hand to flick the bill of his cap.

Chris grinned.  “How could you tell?”

“Though the other girls had some say in it too, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I can tell.  I’m very jealous.  Everyone gets to see what was once all mine.”

“Yes, well—whoa!”

Chris blushed as she got a cheek in each hand.  And not the ones on his face.

“Is this the way a debutant behaves?” he asked, trying to sound admonishing.

She shrugged and he looked over her shoulder, trying to get to her through the layers of the dress.

“No fair.  I can’t even find yours.”  He fluffed up her skirt and she laughed and tried to get away from him.  They struggled and collapsed into a fit of giggling.  A Frankenstein ambled by and Chris remembered where they were.  He settled down and she followed suit.  They found themselves tightly entangled in each other’s arms.  Why did he keep getting himself into these situations?  He knew he still liked Karen, and they hadn’t broken up over the physicality of their relationship.  He knew that if he wanted them to stay broken up, they needed to stay away from each other.

“Chris.”  Her voice was sad, but hopeful.  “Can we start over?  I know we have a rough history, and I know we can’t just pretend it never happened…but can’t we try again?  With a clean slate?”

Chris’ first instinct was to say yes.  So he bit his tongue.  Hard.  He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at her, but he couldn’t make himself let go of her.  Finally he opened his eyes with a sigh.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, can you at least…just think about it?”

He was drowning in her eyes.  He wanted to believe her.  He wanted to believe that she had changed.  That they both had and that they were ready to start a serious relationship.

“Yeah, I can think about it.”

She smiled brightly.  “Well, that’s something.”

Chris looked away and bit his lip.  She was so cute!

“Dude!  We’re going bowling!”

Chris stumbled forward into Karen as someone slapped him on the back.  He saw Julian running by him, which was disturbing because his skirt was so short.

“Bowling?!” Chris called after him.  Since when did Julian ever want to go bowling?  He shrugged.  Cool.  He looked at Karen.  “Well, I gotta run.  See you later, Karen.”

He ran after Julian.  He wasn’t hard to follow even through the crowd.

 

Julian

 

Julian shifted further into the shadow of the bleachers.  It wasn’t easy to embarrass him, but making him dress in drag as a witch was one way.  It hadn’t escaped anyone’s attention that the Wicca was dressed as a witch.  Of course, he wasn’t even sure if he considered himself Wiccan anymore.  He hadn’t been to a Circle in weeks.  He was still too angry to go.  It had taken him a while to define the emotion that was causing the most instability in his life.  Dr. Gorman had helped him figure it out.  It was simply anger.  He was mad that his parents had been taken from him.  The anger stemmed from the notion that his parents were _taken_ from him, not that they had been lost.  Identifying the emotion was helping him cope with it better.  He’d needed Dr. Gorman for that, and he still needed her now, but they hadn’t met since the kiss.  They’d somehow managed to avoid it with business trips on her end and organizational soccer meetings on his.  They couldn’t go on like this.  He needed her help professionally.  He knew that it would be awkward when they saw each other again, but they had to work it out.  Otherwise he was going to have to find another shrink.  And if that wasn’t enough to make him gloomy, it had been over a month and he still hadn’t heard from Rylan.  He should have known the man was just humoring him in order to get rid of him.  Honestly he was just curious about the business; it wasn’t like he really wanted the job.  But it was still kind of depressing to be treated like a bothersome child.

Julian sighed and told himself things could be worse.  He could be wearing a long green nose with a hairy wart on the end.  Laney had at least spared him that much.  And as ridiculous as he looked, Will and Scott definitely looked gayer.  Maybe Chris too.  He wondered where the three of them were anyway.  They had been drawn onto the dance floor and he hadn’t seen them since.  He’d danced with Anna once, but he really did feel silly in the short skirt and halter top.  His muscles were too big.  It was like a bad sketch comedy act.

“Hey there.  You wanna dance?”

Julian looked to his left, and then had to look down.  The auburn-haired lesbian was smiling up at him.  He blinked at her and realized she had been talking to him.

“Who, me?” he asked.

“Yes, you.”  She smiled coyly at him and pulled on his wrist, forcing him to uncross his arms so she could lead him toward the dance floor.  Julian was a tad on the confused side, but who was he to say no to a hot chick?  As if through some unspoken understanding, they danced without touching.

“You look good as a woman,” she smiled at him.

“Uh.”  He rolled his eyes.  So that’s what this was.  “Oh, shut-up.  I do not.”

She laughed and it made him laugh too.  He started to feel a little better.  She moved a little closer to him and looked to her right.

“Will looks sexy tonight, doesn’t he?”

Julian turned his head to see where she was looking.  It was almost impossible to see Will through the three girls surrounding him, but the provocative movements of his mesmeric body were hard to miss.

“Unh-hunh,” Julian agreed, practically drooling.

“Wait a second,” the lesbian said, touching his arm to draw his attention.  “I thought you liked girls.”

“Right back at cha, sweetheart.”

She smiled and glanced back in Will’s direction.  “Well, I might be willing to make an exception for him.”

Julian nodded in understanding.  “Me too.”

After the song was over, Julian started to retreat for the shadows again.  Unfortunately he saw that Eun-hee had spotted him.  And she was staring.  He made a face that he wished Laney could see, and then relaxed his features as he walked over to her.  He almost felt like he could be giving her the same look back.  She was dressed as Raggedy Ann.

He gave her a friendly smile and said, “You know, I’ve never seen an Asian Raggedy Ann before.”

“And I’ve never seen a real witch before.”

“Brrr,” Julian faux shivered.

Eun-hee laughed and touched him lightly on the arm.  It was flirtatious in nature, but it felt ordinary to him.  He wished the touch had done something to him; given him even the slightest tingle, but he felt nothing special.  Was he destined to start liking girls and then discover that they had no chemistry for the rest of his life?  But maybe it wasn’t her.  Maybe it was the bright red splotches on her cheeks that were turning him off.

“Sorry,” she said.  “No offense meant.”

“None taken.”

“I mean, at least your costume is…adventuresome.  Mine is just old.  My mother refused to give me any money for the ‘stoo-pit American horiday.’”

Julian laughed at her impersonation of her mother.  He’d never met the woman but he was certain it was spot on.  He fingered the frayed yarn hanging off her head.

“Well, I think you look cute.”

“Thanks.”

They stood awkwardly for a few moments.  And then Julian hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the dance floor.  “Do you want to…”

“Oh, yeah.  That’d be nice.”

They shuffled quickly to the floor and started to dance in order to have something to do.  He didn’t remember things being this awkward between them before.  Had Eun-hee been at Scott’s party and witnessed his dance whoring?  That didn’t seem likely.  This reaction was probably due to both of theirs discomfort with his costume.  Fortunately they were dancing close enough that neither had to look at it.  He was going to kill Laney later.

“So, um,” Eun-hee started, craning her neck back to look at him, “my friends and I have this tradition.  Well, this would only be the third year, but that’s a pattern, right?”

“I concur.”

“Well, every Halloween we go to Al’s Bowling because he decorates for Halloween and turns down the lights and turns on black lights and has a kind of haunted bowling alley kind of thing.  It’s kinda lame, I know, but it’s fun.”

“Yeah, that does sound fun.”

“Sooo…after the dance tonight, we’re all going to go.”

She continued to look at him.  He could tell she was trying to get him to understand something.  He looked back at her, not sure what that might be.

“Um, if you—”

“Oh.”  Julian realized what she was trying to say.  “You have a thing with your friends.  That’s cool.  I get it.”  She was ready to leave with her friends, so she was trying to get him to let her go.  “I hope you guys have a good time.  I’ll see you later in school, okay?”

“Um, that’s not—”

“It’s okay, Eun-hee.  I understand.”  He smiled at her and let her go.  It would be better if he got off the dance floor soon anyway.  Though, bowling did sound like fun.  He wouldn’t want to crash Eun-hee’s party at Al’s because then she might feel obligated to invite him and his friends over.  But there were tons of bowling alleys in the city.  And lots of convenience stores that had probably already put their excess candy on sale.  That settled it.  He needed bowling and candy.  Now where were his friends?

 

Scott

 

                Scott heaved a sigh and looked toward the ceiling in mid-pour.  He was at the refreshment table (which actually had punch this time) and he could hear snickering.  The same irritating hissing sounds he’d been hearing all night.  He whipped his head around with a menacing glare on his face.  The three boys dressed as skeletons quickly tried to hide their expressions and turned partially away from him.  Lame.  Why were people so lame?  It wasn’t his fault he was dressed as a white trash gigolo.

He eased up on the scowl a bit as a couple of 70’s fly girls walked by him.  They were looking him over with small smiles on their faces.  He recognized one as Antoinette’s friend who typically stood on the right and spoke third.  He wondered where the other two were and if she felt lonely and lost without them.

“Hey, Scott,” she intoned with a little wink.

Scott gave her a little wave in return.  The two girls walked away giggling and Scott turned a smirk on the three boys.  They were looking rather sullen now.  He looked at the cup of Kool-Aid in his hand.  He put it down on the table and walked away.  He didn’t know why he was feeling so restless.  He felt like he was waiting for something, but he didn’t know what.  He skulked around the edge of the gym, looking at the people and the costumes.  He paused in alarm when he saw a drag queen dancing with Anna.  Then he realized it was just Julian.  Scott would have been concerned at the slight raunchiness of the dance, but he trusted Julian not to do anything inappropriate even though he always yelled at him for being fresh.  Though maybe that hand was a little _too_ fresh.

Scott gnawed on his thumb and narrowed his eyes.  Was he going to have to go over there and intervene?  And why wasn’t he dancing with Anna anyway?  They were a cowboy and cowgirl; they belonged together.  They were Scott and Anna; they belonged together.  Tonight would be a good night to let all their doubts fall aside and explore their relationship.  They could use the freedom of the holiday to push through that glass ceiling they’d created for themselves.  But then again, he still had his baggage weighing him down.  Why couldn’t he end it with Antoinette?  Why was he such a slave?  No, he couldn’t think like that.  It wasn’t something he was stuck with and had no control over; he’d been digging this hole for months now.  If he really wanted to know how deep his relationship with Anna could be, he needed to stop dicking around and be a man.

Scott took in a deep breath and took one step toward Anna.  Then a trio of caped vixens (and that was the only word for them) burst through the gym doors.  Everyone turned to look at them for a moment, and the then the drama was over.  For the girls anyway.  Most of the boys were still watching the triumvirate sweep into room, wondering what was under the capes.  The black velvet covered them from neck to toe, and their faces were gorgeous though somewhat frightening in dark, hard colors.  It was Antoinette and her to the left and in the middle friends.  Once they were out of sight of the chaperones, Antoinette’s two friends threw back their capes.  They weren’t wearing much under them but black, slutty outfits and spiked heels.  They smiled and revealed fangs.  Of course, they were vampires.  Or would that be vampiresses?

Scott looked toward Anna, but then decided he had to see what Antoinette was wearing first.  He crossed his arms and watched intently as the three girls moved further away from the nearest chaperones.  Antoinette raised her hands and undid the clasp on her cape.  She let it fall away from her shoulders and tossed the fabric into a corner.  Every nerve in his body jumped in different directions.  She was going to get kicked out.  It wouldn’t take long for them to spot her.  She would be the chick in the full on dominatrix outfit: straps, buckles, leather, and not much of it.  As much as he appreciated how much skin she was showing, it was the thigh high boots that did it for him the most.  Ordinarily he would feel vain making the assumption, but the costume was obviously for his benefit.

Feeling almost like a large cat stalking across a chaotic plain toward his beautiful, blonde prey, he wondered what it was he had suddenly forgotten.  It was strange to feel like the pursuer for once, but he’d been taken over by a sudden rush of desire.  He walked by her without making eye contact and mumbled in a low voice, “Can I see you in the art room?”  He kept walking without checking to see if she heard or acknowledged him.  He pushed through the doors that led into the darkened halls of the school.  The air felt cool against his skin, and he didn’t think it was because the gym had been hot.  He made his way toward the elementary wing and groaned softly when he saw that the door they had propped open was now closed.  That meant the janitor had been through, and sure enough, all the doors were locked.  Scott pouted and leaned against the art room door.  Where could they go?  How long would he have to wait for her to—

“So, you said you wanted to talk to me?”

Scott moved just his eyes.  She stood a couple feet away, not really striking a pose, but it was hard not to in a get up like that.  The leather must be oiled; he hadn’t heard her approach.

“Who said anything about talking?” Scott asked as he pushed off the wall and reached for her.

She helped him close the distance and their tongues touched before their lips did.  The force of their coming together caused his hat to fall off and their teeth to clack together, but it was easy to ignore.  The only part of his body he was feeling was much lower.  He gripped her waist and slung her around toward the wall.  He found the door-length window and propped her up on the narrow sill.  Their hands were just as active as their lips.  Through touch alone they managed to wrest openings in their tight clothing.  Antoinette pulled back from the kiss and placed a foil wrapper against his lips.  He bit one corner and she tore the package open.  Scott spit the foil piece out of his mouth and kissed her lips again.  She was so hot she was making him melt.  He encouraged her to hurry by using his hands on her inner thighs to spread her legs apart.

“Eh!  Eww, eww!  Antoinette!”

“What?”

“I told you.  I hate the kind with lube on the inside.”

“Sorry.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” he sighed, finding his way through her binding clothes.  She let out a small sound as he entered her and he let his forehead fall to her shoulder.  “So good,” he breathed.

The hollow thud of the window was surprising him.  Considering how often and loud it was coming, he was being pretty aggressive.  And it was great.  It was the first time he’d ever been on top, which this time may not count since they were technically standing, but he was going to ignore that detail.  He felt one of her hands on his shoulder and grabbed it.  He pushed it back against the glass and held her wrist in place.  If he’d had the capacity he might have been embarrassed by his soft grunting.  They were bordering on two animals rutting rather than two people having sex.

“Unh.  Gosh.  I—nn.  I thought this outfit would appeal to your submissive side.  Ah.”

“I know, right?  I can’t help it.  Ng.  I just saw you and I had to do this to you.”

“God, keep doing it.  Mm.”

“I’m surprised they even let you in like this,” Scott grunted, moving her legs a little more apart.

“They didn’t think to—”  She cut off for several seconds, only capable of making barely restrained noises.  “They didn’t look under the cape.”

“Your parents didn’t either?”

“I—unh—I got dressed at a friend’s house.  God, Scott!  How can you be so calm at a time like this?!”

He smiled and moved harder.  “Do I seem calm to you?”

She didn’t respond with anything intelligible.  He felt a slight twinge of his masochism.

“What did Jake think of your costume?”

He didn’t even need her answer.  That ugly stab of jealousy pricked through his body and he took it out on her.  He started to become concerned that she was going to be heard all the way back in the gym, over the music and the talking.  Then he realized she was actually trying to talk.

“Huh-he—he said he didn’t—nn…didn’t like it.  He wanted meeeeeee ah.  To change.  He’s so connnn-trolling.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“He—he said I looked like a whore.  Uhhh.”

“Well.  That’s not very nice.”

“N-no.  It’s not.  I think—I think I—oh, God—I think I’m going to break up with him.  Ah!  Scott!”

Her words stunned him.  He stopped moving, but it didn’t matter.  Antoinette’s body tensed and she pulled him over the edge with her.  Scott’s world narrowed down to the pleasure rocketing through his body.  For the next few moments it was all he could do to keep standing and supporting Antoinette’s weight.  As he came down off his high, he swallowed thickly and concentrated on evening out his breathing.  He turned his face into Antoinette’s neck and inhaled deeply.  He loved her scent.  That sweet, familiar honeysuckle.  It was strange to be holding a woman dressed as a hard dominatrix, and yet she smelled so soft.  But that dichotomy was quite typical when it came to Antoinette.

Finally he felt more or less like a human being again, but he didn’t want to move away yet.  Antoinette spoke and her voice sounded like it was coming down a long cave.

“Would you ask me out?”

Scott pulled back just enough so he could look at her face.  “Huh?”

“If I break up with Jake, would you ask me out?”

Scott took in a short breath in irritation.  Why was she doing this?  They’d just had amazing sex, were reeling from the aftermath of it, and she was testing him.  She was so worried he was taking it too seriously and that he would try to shove another commitment down her throat.  Well, if she needed reassurance, he would give it to her.

“Of course not,” he said.

He pulled out gently and turned away from her.  He kept his back to her as if the reason was because he didn’t want her to see him cleaning up and putting things away.  The real reason was so that his face or eyes wouldn’t betray him while he said what he needed to say.

“I mean, what we have doesn’t really have anything to do with Jake.  Well, I guess for you it does since you wanted to know what it was like to cheat and all.  But don’t worry.  I haven’t let it go to my head.”

He finished zipping up his jeans and tossed the used condom in a trash can.  He didn’t even care if people would be able to see it.  He turned around, hoping that he wasn’t showing the disappointment he was feeling.  Antoinette was leaning against the sill with an irritated expression.  She stared at him for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together.

“Well, that’s a relief.”

The sarcasm in her voice wasn’t lost on Scott though he had no idea why it was there.  She pushed away from the window and walked away from him without a second glance.

“I hope you enjoyed your fuck.”

Scott stood completely stunned.  All he could do was watch her form retreat down the hallway.  She didn’t look sexy or sassy or confident.  She was walking heavily and slowly.  What had he done wrong?  How had he failed the test?  Could she hear in his voice that he didn’t mean it?  He put a hand to his temple.  But if he didn’t mean it, what did he want?  He thought he wanted out of the relationship so that he could pursue Anna with a clear conscience.  And he did want out.  He didn’t like their relationship the way it was.  And one way to get out of it was to end it.  Of course, another way out of it was to make it something more.  Which one did he want more?

Scott trudged down the hallway, heading back toward the gym.  It didn’t matter if he was curious about trying a real relationship with Antoinette; she didn’t want that.  So, if it couldn’t be serious, it had to end.  It was that simple.  The generic sounds of a high school party reached his ears and he hesitated just outside the gym doors.  He peeked inside to see what other people were doing.  It looked like every other high school dance ever in the history of the world.  Except for the giant Nemo running around the floor.  He stepped inside the gym and then stopped in his tracks when he saw Anna and Antoinette squaring off.  They were yapping away and throwing in head jerks and hand gestures.  A few people had taken notice, but it didn’t look like they were taking it as seriously as the last time.  He was not going to get involved.  Whatever their problem was, he needed to stay out of it.  But he couldn’t imagine what it might be.  They barely knew each other.  In fact, the only thing he could think of that they had in common was him.

Wait a minute.  Did Anna know about Antoinette?  Did Antoinette view Anna as competition?  That didn’t make sense.  Why would Antoinette be jealous?  That would mean that she wanted more from him.  And how on earth would Anna know about Antoinette?  No one knew.  They’d been careful and his friends wouldn’t have ratted them out.  Especially not to Anna.  The girls delivered their final comments before stomping away from each other.  Scott watched with a quirked eyebrow.  Were they fighting over him?

“Nah,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.  Where did he come up with these ideas?

“Dude!”

Scott turned and then yelped and ducked away from the man-witch running up to him.  A male stripper in a Red Sox hat was behind him.

“We’re going bowling!” Julian called out.  “Find the others!”

Julian’s and Chris’ energy instantly transferred to him and he forgot everything that had happened in the last few minutes.

“Okay!”

 

Will

 

“Dude!  We’re going bowling!  Get a move on!”

Will watched Scott streak by him, the girls in tow.  He could see Julian and Chris already heading out of the gym.  He turned to the girls surrounding him.

“Sorry, gotta go.”

Will ran after his friends and was all too glad to ditch the dance.  Despite being with girls most of the night, he’d been teased mercilessly the entire time.  There were dozens of people dressed up as cats for the dance.  He had been the only male one.  And not only had boys made catcalls at him and “Here, kitty, kitty”-ed him, even the girls had poked fun at him.  There was only so much a man could take and he’d reached his limit around the tenth time his tail had been tugged on.

He was so mad at Liz.  Had she picked out this costume because she was still angry with him?  Or was she just into cat boys?  He’d suspected she would have a joke costume for him, which was why he had bought her one as well.  But hers had been…Well, to be honest it had been frightening.  Was she really into that kind of thing?  Or did she just like to humiliate him every now and then to teach him the value of being humble?  Like he needed that lesson.  Did the David have to concede that the Venus de Milo was pretty too?  Even though she had no arms?  Feh.

The eight of them got some curious looks and more than a couple leers on the streets and while riding the metro.  There were a few other people running around in costumes, but they definitely looked the most like a Halloween Gone Wild video.  The woman who collected their money at the bowling alley didn’t have much to say; she just gave them dry looks.  The guy renting the shoes was a lot more vocal about his appreciation of the girls’ sexy costumes.  Will put a hand on Scott’s shoulder to keep him from defending Anna’s honor by smashing a bowling ball in the man’s toothy grin.  Riley was spared some of the attention because Chris had leant her his jacket.  She’d claimed she was cold outside, but she didn’t take it off in the stuffy bowling alley.

They asked for a lane at the end of the alley, as far away from the bar as possible in order to avoid the smoke, but it didn’t really help.  The six men next to them were all competing for the longest running chain smoke.  And they were actually wearing flannel shirts and camouflage or John Deere hats.  Will didn’t know that hicks of that caliber would come all the way into the city just for bowling.  Maybe there weren’t any alleys out in the sticks?  He doubted that and wished they would go there.  They were making him nervous.  The girls and the other boys were drawing their attention of course, but it was only on him that their stares lingered a little too long with dark intent.  He’d thought it had been in his head at first, but they were definitely giving him unfriendly and hostile looks.  No matter how gay friendly the media appeared to be, the reality was that a lot of people out there hated homosexuals to the point of murder.

Will tried to be inconspicuous even though he knew he stood out even when he wasn’t dressed as a cat.  And in between his turns bowling he would sit on the railing separating the lanes from the eating area and pull Liz close to him.  He put her in between his legs and they would smile and laugh and flirt and pet.  Once the hick guys saw the hot girl touching him in an overtly sexual way, and he was obviously responding, they began to grouse a little.  It was very possible they didn’t realize they were high school students and they had actually considered the idea that they might have a shot with the girls.  He was glad his flirting was making the men back off a little and pay attention to their game, but he felt guilty as hell.

Not only was he leading Liz on horribly, but he was simply doing it so that people wouldn’t think he was gay.  But definitely in practice if not yet in theory, he _was_ gay.  So why did he feel so ashamed of it?  He now better understood Ken’s reluctance to come out of the closet.  He was someone who had accepted his sexuality and no longer denied to himself who he was.  But even being wealthy, powerful, and respected couldn’t protect you from certain stigmas.

Scott won.  From sheer dumb luck.  He whined the whole time that he didn’t know how to bowl, so he would just get up and toss his ball onto the lane.  It would weave and wobble its way down, almost fall into the gutter, and then catch just enough of one of the end pins to cause them all to cascade into each other.  He almost bowled a perfect 300.  It had been thwarted by them all demanding he actually try to bowl correctly the last time.  He got a gutter ball.

Will came in fifth.  He hated bowling.  He remembered liking it better last time they went.  He was pretty certain he had won that time.  He blamed his failure on the tail getting in the way.  But even after he had taken it off, he still sucked pretty hard.  As they returned their shoes Will could feel Liz hovering around him.  He should have known better than to give her even a glimmer of hope.  She had thought she had won him back.  Maybe he should just tell her he was seeing an older man.  Maybe that would convince her he wasn’t interested in her anymore.  Or maybe it would disgust her enough that she would leave him alone.

“Are we going somewhere?” someone asked as they entered the relatively clean air of the city night.

“We need candy,” Julian said.  “We should have gotten some before we went bowling.”

“What time is it?” Riley asked.

“After eleven,” Chris answered, looking at his watch.

“I’m gonna have to go home soon,” Anna said glumly.  “And by soon I mean I need to make it home by midnight.”

“You’ll never make it by metro,” Laney said, pointing out the obvious.

“You guys could take a taxi,” Liz said.  “If you split the bill it shouldn’t be too bad.  And if you guys would drop me off first, that would be great.”  She smiled hopefully at the others.

“I still want candy,” Julian pouted.

“We can get some back in town,” Scott said.  “My dad didn’t give me a curfew, so I’ll go hunting for a 24 hour store with you.  But we should get Anna home.  I don’t want her to get in trouble.  Doesn’t anyone else have a curfew too?”

“I do,” Riley said.  “Even with a taxi I’m not gonna make it.”

“Same here.  Way past screwed,” Laney said.

“Why didn’t you guys say something earlier?” Chris asked.

They shrugged.  Liz called to them from the curb.  She had hailed a taxi, but it wasn’t an SUV or minivan kind.  It was the normal car kind.

“We’re not all going to be able to fit in there,” Riley said.

“Sure we will,” Julian said.  “Liz and Laney sit up front together since you’re the smallest.  Chris, Scott and I can sit in the back and the other three can sit in our laps.”

He smiled at Will.  Will put his hands on his hips and huffed in annoyance.  “Sure, fine.  Why not.”

“Why can’t Will and I sit up front together?” Liz asked.

“Yeah,” Laney agreed.  “I want to sit in Julian’s lap.”

The taxi driver honked at them.

“Too late.  It’s already been decided,” Julian said, grabbing Will and pulling him toward the car.  “Besides, a cat should stay with his owner.”

“Exactly,” Liz glared at him.

They made faces at each other, but it was in jest.  At least Will hoped it was.  He didn’t want Julian and Liz to get into a real fight over him.  Especially since there would definitely be no winner.  They squished into the car and the driver drove straight through the middle of the city.  It was technically the shortest distance to Liz’s apartment, but with all the traffic it would take them longer and run up the fare.  This driver wasn’t new.  Once they stopped at a busy intersection and they all pointed and laughed as they looked out the windows.  There were tons of people in costume.  The city looked like one from a science fiction movie.  And Will recognized exactly where they were.

“Hey, guys, I’m gonna get out here.”

He had murmured it, and no one really understood what he meant until he started to open the door.  Julian didn’t try to force him to stay in the car, but his hands trailed heavily over his body as he got out.

“Wait, what?  Where are you going?” Liz demanded from the front, unable to move much because Laney was in the way.

He couldn’t even begin to think of a plausible excuse, so he didn’t bother to try.  He just waved to them and shut the door.  The light changed and the driver took off.  Liz got her window down and yelled out at him, “Don’t think you’re getting out of your share of the fare!”

She was angry.  And not about the money.  He could hear it in her voice.  She probably suspected where he was going more than the others did.  Of course she wouldn’t know exactly who he was going to see, but she was probably guessing that he was seeing someone.  Someone older.  She was pretty perceptive.  At least she was when it came to him.

Will pushed thoughts of his friends aside.  He had other things on his mind now.  He had the shopping bag that contained his normal clothes with him, and he wondered briefly if he should change before going inside Ken’s building.  But, where was he going to change?  He’d have to go back across the street to a café and run into their bathroom.  It wasn’t even worth it.  He walked up the steps, punched in the code, and tried to enter the lobby as nonchalantly as possible.  Maybe he should have taken the ears off.  At least the tail was gone.  One of the guards couldn’t be bothered to look away from the television.  Jeff was on the night shift again.  Will gave him a brief smile and hurried to the elevators.  He pushed the call button and waited.  He rocked back and forth on his heels as he waited.  It seemed to be taking a lot longer than normal for the stupid lift to come.  Finally it arrived, thankfully empty, and Will stepped on.  He turned around to punch the button for the seventeenth floor and glanced outside the closing doors.  Jeff was looking at him with a bemused smile on his face.

Will dropped his head and couldn’t hold back his small smile.  Jeff had to know.  If he hadn’t been suspicious before, Will showing up late at night in a sexy cat outfit—Halloween not withstanding—was a little too obvious.  The doors shut and a thought occurred to him.  He only had a split second to decide if he was going to go through with it.  He knew that he shouldn’t.  He wouldn’t have enough time before he reached the 17th floor and there were probably cameras in the elevator, but he was already undoing his pants and toeing his shoes off.  He quickly stripped off the leather pants inside out and shoved them into the bag.  He forced his mind to go blank as he pulled the short shorts up his legs.  He couldn’t do it if he allowed himself to acknowledge what he was doing.  They went up pretty easily because there wasn’t much material to them.  The leggings had more material and were formfitting, but they were soft and pliable so they rolled up quickly as well.  He didn’t even consider putting on the corset—that was just messed up.  He shoved everything else back into the bag just as the elevator dinged.  He held his breath and waited for the doors to open.  He was almost certain everyone who lived on the 17th floor would be waiting for the elevator.  Along with his parents.

The doors opened and the hall was empty.  Will sighed in relief and stepped into the hallway.  He quickly put his boots on and looked down his legs.  It really was amazing how Liz had perfectly matched the color of the leggings and the boots.  He supposed he should be grateful she hadn’t actually found him thigh high boots to wear.  They probably would have been harder to walk in.  Not that he would even notice the boots with the shorts riding higher and higher with every step.  It made him feel like a colossal pervert, but it felt kinda good to have the crotch rubbing against him.  He reached Ken’s door and rapped sharply on the wood to make sure it would be heard anywhere in the condo.  He didn’t want to stand in the hall for very long.

He knew Ken should be home.  He’d made no plans for Halloween, of course, and Rylan’s party was Saturday night.  Will’s nose wrinkled just remembering the conversation they’d had about Ken’s planned attendance.

 

“So, I guess we won’t be going to a Halloween party together,” Will said.  “Unless I tell everyone at my school that you’re a middle schooler with the best costume ever.”

Ken chuckled and combed his fingers through Will’s hair.  Will closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the pleasant sensation.  He re-settled his cheek on Ken’s bare chest.

“And I can’t go to one of your corporate thingies.  Because I’m sure you guys can barely stand to have the annual ‘holiday’ party.  Are you too grown-up for Halloween?”

“I like to think so.”  Ken moved his free hand to rest behind his head on the soft pillow.  He continued to stroke Will with the other.  “Of course, I will be going to Rylan’s little shindig.”

Will sat up and looked down at the crazy man.  Because he had to be crazy if he just said what he thought he’d just said.

“What’s that look for?” Ken asked with a knowing smile.  He raised a hand and ran his fingers down Will’s cheek.  He continued to follow the line of his jaw, the curve of his neck, and then splayed his hand over his chest.  Will shivered, grateful his lower half was still under the covers so Ken couldn’t see him beginning to stir.  He knocked the hand away.

“Don’t try to distract me.  What kind of ‘shindig’ is this going to be?  And why didn’t you ask me to go?  If it’s Rylan’s party they obviously know you’re gay, so you can bring me.”

“They know I’m gay; not that I’m dating a minor.”

“Oh, please.  I can pass for eighteen.  Even nineteen.”

“Will, sometimes you look like you’re fifteen.”

“Wha—?!”

“And sometimes you act like you’re twelve.”

Will’s eyes crossed he was so irritated.  “Oh, yeah?  Well, you like me, so what does that say about _your_ emotional maturity?”

Ken just laughed.  Will scowled and picked at the sheet laying across Ken’s stomach.

“So what do you do at these ‘shindigs’ of Rylan’s?  Instead of bobbing for apples do you bob for donuts around some guy’s junk?”

Ken laughed again.  “You have some bizarre ideas about the homosexual lifestyle.”

“Am I wrong?”

“The last time I witnessed donut-dick-diving it was at a frat party.  Where the girls were doing it to the guys.”

“Mm-hmm.  So what are you going to wear?”

“Nothing.”

“What?!”

“I mean, I’m not going to wear a costume.  Sorry to disappoint.”

“What kind of Halloween party doesn’t require costumes?”

“It’s a party for Blue Boy.  The clients don’t have to dress up.  Just the employees.”

“ _Oh_.  So you’re going to a Blue Boy party as a client where a bunch of prostitutes are going to be practically naked except for their chocolate-glazed goodies?”

Ken laughed and rose up on one elbow.  “Baby, are you trying to imply that you don’t trust me?”

“Well, why can’t I go?!”

“Will, you said it yourself.  The party is going to be dirty, old men and a bunch of half-naked prostitutes.  Do you really _want_ to go?”

“Do _you_?”

“Okay, it’s not really going to be like that.  Well, not exactly anyway.  I’ve been going to Rylan’s parties for years.  He’s my friend.  We hang out, we drink, we have a good time.  That’s all.”

“Ken, you go hang out and drink and have a good time with your ex-boyfriend and I’m supposed to be okay with that?”

“Rylan’s not my ex-boyfriend.”

“But he said—”

Will cut off.  He didn’t really want to know what their twisted relationship was like.  Ken sat up more and cupped Will’s face with his hand.  He kissed his cheek.

“It’s just a Halloween party.  And you wouldn’t want to go.”  He kissed his cheek again.  “You know they’d want to tease you.”  His next kiss lingered on his cheek, one hand moving to find Will’s chest.  Will jerked slightly as one of the man’s fingers brushed over something sensitive.  “And you know what a temper you have.”

 

“What a temper I have,” Will groused.  He knocked on the door again.  “I’ll show him a temper if he doesn’t open this door soon.”

Will instantly forgot his ire the second the door opened.  He reviled corniness above all forms of humor or romance, but he couldn’t help himself.  He looked cutely up at Ken and let out a plaintive, “Meow.”

Ken just stared at him, but not in a dumbfounded kind of way.  His eyes were roaming up and down and Will could see his brain whirring.  He shifted, getting more and more turned on as he thought about the kinds of things Ken was doing to him in his head.  He didn’t want him to stop, but he also didn’t want to be standing in the hall any longer.

“Can I come in?”

Ken moved wordlessly aside and Will stepped across the threshold.  He dropped his bag off on the kitchen floor and turned a little shyly toward Ken.  He didn’t know what to do next.  He hadn’t exactly thought this seduction through.  Fortunately, Ken had the situation under control.

“Go stand by the dining table,” Ken said softly, evenly.  He shut the door gently.

“Huh?”

Ken turned to look at him, but didn’t repeat himself.  Will fidgeted with his fingers but walked over to the dining table.  He turned around and waited for further instruction.

“Bend over and put your forearms flat on the surface.”

“What?” Will squeaked.

Ken just crossed his arms and didn’t say anything.  He always refused to repeat himself.  Will was hot with embarrassment, but he did what he was told.

“Spread your legs more.”

“Ken!”  Will turned a glare at the man over his shoulder.

“What?  You come over here in that outfit and expected what exactly?”

Will turned away and closed his eyes.  He couldn’t look at Ken when he got in this kind of mood.  He felt mortified, but he shifted his legs apart.  The movement separated the leggings and shorts a bit more, revealing more pale skin.  It also made the shorts hike up even further if that was even possible.  He must look so obscene.  He waited, shivering from embarrassment and arousal.  Nothing happened.  He worked up enough courage to look over his shoulder again.  Ken hadn’t moved, his arms still crossed, his eyes glued to him.

“Please don’t just stare at me,” Will said weakly.  “I feel humiliated.”

Ken walked slowly to him.  He reached out a hand, but he didn’t quite touch him.  The breath Will had been holding came out in a frustrated groan.  This was so unfair.

“Turn around.”

Will obeyed immediately.

“Sit on the table.”

Will hopped up and spread his legs without being asked.  He was so worked up his chest was heaving, and he couldn’t get his breathing under control.  He could see Ken’s composure slipping.  The man leaned close, placing his hands on the table on either side of Will’s body.  He brought their faces together and gave him a sweet, innocent kiss.  Will’s body went rigid, as if Ken has done more than give him that chaste kiss.  He opened his eyes and glared at his lover.

“God, I hate you.  You’re going to make me beg for it, aren’t you?”

Ken put his lips to Will’s ear.  “All night,” he whispered.

Will got the edge of the table in a death grip and his knees jerked up involuntarily.  His head fell back and he choked back a cry as he almost came on the spot.  He sucked in a breath and kept digging his fingers into the hard wood of the table.

“Kiss me,” he breathed.

Ken kissed him and it wasn’t innocent at all.  It was sloppy and noisy and more than a little desperate.  By concentrating on the intense pleasure of the kiss, Will managed to regain control of his body.  He played with Ken’s tongue, silently begging him to give him more.  Ken moved closer to him and the table creaked as they put strain on the screws.  Their hands were pretty active and Will knew it wouldn’t be long before most of their clothes were gone.  Though Will had to wonder if Ken was going to make him leave the boots and leggings on.  Regardless, he decided to speed things along and reached up to slide the cat ears off his head.  As he pulled them down, he felt Ken’s hands cover his.  Then the man slid the ears back into place at the top of his head.  Will broke the kiss and pulled back enough to look at him.  He gave him a little smile.

“Pervert.”


	15. Chapter 15

Julian

 

Friday, November 11, 2005

 

Julian had woken up more than half an hour ago, but he was still hunched under his covers, curled into a limp ball.  The bedspread was still partially over his head and he’d been staring at the same triangle of carpet and nightstand since he’d opened his eyes.  For some reason he was having trouble getting out of bed this morning.  Somehow, today it was harder to get up than any other day since the accident.  Why was that?  What was today?  He finally moved enough in order to see the calendar hanging on his wall.  It was still on July.  His hearing date heavily circled in black looked back at him like a one-eyed monster.  But he knew what today was.  It was his birthday.

Julian forced his feet to the floor and sat up, feeling like there was something pulling him back down.  Thankfully he wasn’t achy or in pain; he was just tired.  He shuffled toward the door and reached a hand back to scratch his butt as he yawned and stretched with the other arm.  As he scratched he realized he was naked.  Had he gone to bed naked or had clothes come off in the middle of the night from his tossing?  He wondered if he should even bother to get dressed.  Probably should.  You never knew when something might happen and often times you didn’t want to be naked when it did.  He pulled on a pair of sweatpants.  That was close enough.  He lumbered down the stairs and tried not to anticipate anything.

In more ordinary families, when a kid came downstairs on his birthday, his parents would be waiting for him with cake and presents or maybe a special birthday breakfast.  His family tradition had been that his mother would have set up the items necessary for him to perform the Wiccan birthday ritual.  This morning, there was no one waiting for him.  Nothing had been prepared in his honor.  Not even his friends were around.  He’d told them he wouldn’t be able to see them at school because he was skipping it in order to go to an appointment with Dr. Gorman.  He didn’t actually have an appointment, but he did intend on seeing her today.  It was time they cleared the air.  He couldn’t decide if he was sad or relieved that he said he wouldn’t see his friends until after school.  He was too depressed to act happy around them, but it was awfully sad to be all alone on his birthday.

Cornelius nudged his leg to remind him that he wasn’t completely alone.  Julian patted his head and fed the dog his breakfast.  While he was chomping away at his bowl, Julian went to the hall closet.  He opened it and looked sadly at his collection of birthday markers.  Eighteen orange topaz gems (his birthstone) glittered in the sunlight streaming in through the front windows.  They were in a jar next to a jar of rubies for his father and moonstones for his mother.  But with only eighteen stones, he couldn’t do the ritual, and he’d forgotten to get one for himself.  He’d never had to before.  His mother had always bought him one.  Then he saw a small black box behind the jars.  He pushed them gently aside and picked up the velvet covered jewelry box.  Inside was a new stone.  His mother had already bought one.  Months ago.  Possibly months before she died.  He had his nineteenth stone to represent the upcoming year of his life.  He felt like he should perform the ritual for his mother’s sake if nothing else.

Julian closed the box and took the jar off the shelf.  On his way to the basement he saw Cornelius dancing by the back door.  He let the dog out and then tromped down the uncarpeted stairs, making a lot of noise as he went.  He turned on all the lights and rolled back a large carpet in the middle of the floor.  Etched permanently into the concrete was a perfectly symmetrical pentacle.  He put the markers down and went to the locked storage closet.  Inside were candles, herbs, crystals, tools, and other paraphernalia used for Wiccan rituals.  It hadn’t been opened since the last time his mother had opened it.  He managed to find the crystals and candles he wanted and some essence of sage.  There wasn’t much of the oil left, but it was enough for what he was doing.  He set up the markers and the tea lights on the points of the pentacle and in the center.  Then he placed a crystal and a touch of sage oil under each candle.  He lit them in the correct order, invoking a certain god, goddess, or spirit for each area of his life.  Then he sat on a pillow and got comfortable in order to meditate.  He was going to have to keep it up until the small candles burned completely out.

It was hard to concentrate.  It was too quiet.  His parents used to wait upstairs for him because the ritual was solitary.  They would keep quiet for him and have his presents waiting when he came up.  But the silence made by people being quiet was different from the silence that existed because there was no one around.  He inhaled deeply, and let the air out slowly.  He allowed his mind to sink into a deep, dark, cool place.  Now he felt relaxed.  He felt like he could concentrate.  Like he could stop thinking.

The ringing phone was so jarring he actually felt like he was physically pulled out of his calm mental state.  His parents had always taken the phone off the hook as well.  He could have sworn he’d stopped paying the landline bill.  Julian got up and walked over to the basement phone.  He wasn’t supposed to stop the ritual, but technically he hadn’t.  It could go on without him.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Julian, this is your grandmother.  And your grandfather.  He’s on the line too.”

It had to be the Mormon grandparents if his grandmother’s English was that good.

“Hi.  How are you?”

“We’re fine.  Fine.  We just wanted to call to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Oh.  Thank you.  I got your card yesterday.  It was very kind of you.  And more than generous.  I feel like I can’t accept it.”

“Oh, please do.  It’s not that much.  And I really wanted to send you an actual present, so you’d have something to unwrap.  But…I just didn’t know what to get you.”

“Ah.  Well, thank you very much.  It actually made me feel really good when I received your card.  I know I’ve been bad about keeping in touch.  I’m glad you still think of me.”

“Of course we still think of you.”

Julian had an internal “whoops.”  She sounded like she was starting to cry.  He hadn’t meant to make her feel bad.  He thought she’d be happy to know that he was happy to hear from her.

“You’re constantly in our thoughts and prayers, Julian,” his grandfather said.

“I know.  Thank you.”

“How are you?”

“I’m okay.  Today is pretty rough, but I’m going to see my therapist today.”  There was silence.  “That’s a good thing.  You know, because she’ll help me deal with what I’m feeling today.  And I’m going to meet up with my friends later and we’re going to do something to celebrate.  So, I’m actually doing pretty well.  I’m not alone.”

“That’s good.”

He talked with them for a few more minutes and then hung up with the promise that he would be better about keeping up with his communications.  He went ahead and put the phone back in the hook, pretty sure no one else would call him on the home phone.  All his friends called his cell phone and his other set of grandparents had sent him a care package in the mail with a lot of food in it.  There had also been a note saying they would be out of the country on his birthday, and the next time they planned a trip to Greece he had to go with them.  He thought he might actually go.  He’d never been before and it might be nice to meet some nice, pretty, hairy girls.  He was already eighteen after all.  According to that side of the family he should be getting married soon.  Heck, according to the Mormon side too.

Julian returned to his pillow and tried to regain the momentary peace he’d found earlier.  He couldn’t quite get back there, but he did manage to relax and mellow out during the three and half hours it took for the candles to burn out.  When the last one went out he cleaned up by simply tossing the using crystals back into the closet without cleaning or sorting them.  His mother would have had a fit if she saw it.  But, she wasn’t here to see it.  And the ritual had been done a little half-assed, but at least he had done it.  Or was that not the point?  If he was really going to do something for his parents, shouldn’t he do it and mean it?  Well, he didn’t have time for that today.

Julian clomped back upstairs and went in search of food.  He should have eaten before he started the ritual.  His stomach had been growling through the last half of it.  He pulled out some of the sweet breads his Greek grandmother had sent and poured himself a glass of orange juice.  As he chewed slowly so that he wouldn’t make noise in the overly quiet kitchen, he wondered what was bugging him.  Something wasn’t right.  He ate and he pondered, but he still couldn’t figure out what seemed to be wrong.  When he was done he scooted his chair back toward the side.  He always did this now because Cornelius would sit with his head on his leg the entire time he ate.  And when he got up, if he pushed the chair straight back, he would run over his tail.  So, he’d gotten in the habit of pushing his chair to the side to avoid tail injuries.  This time there was no dog to avoid.  Cornelius wasn’t there.  Where was he?  He always shared meals with him.

Julian jumped out of his chair and ran for the backdoor.  He opened it and Cornelius was lying on the stoop.  He looked up and wagged his tail.  He still didn’t make any noise.

“Why didn’t you bark, you stupid dog?!”  Julian yelled in anger, but it was directed at himself.  He’d left the dog outside for nearly four hours.  Julian knelt down and Cornelius sat up to accept his hug.  He wrapped his arms around the dog’s scruffy neck and buried his face in his fur.

“I’m sorry, Cornelius.  I’m so sorry!”  For some reason, the thought of the dog waiting patiently and loyally for him for four hours broke him.  He started crying—sobbing—into the dog’s fur.  He pulled the dog close and could hear himself wailing like someone who had lost a loved one.  Maybe two loved ones.  Cornelius didn’t try to get away.  He just sat there and let Julian squeeze him awkwardly, unconcerned about the tears, snot, and saliva getting on his coat.  That’s why dogs were wonderful.  They loved you unconditionally.

After a while, Julian managed to settle down.  He pulled back and wiped at his nose as he sniffed.  Cornelius started to lick his face.  He petted the dog and pushed him gently away.  He scratched him behind the ears and smiled at him.  He felt better.  The crying had let him release a lot of tension.  He had needed that.  He’d been afraid today would be god awful, but remembering what his parents used to do for him on his birthday actually made him happy.  He was lucky he had had such wonderful parents.  Then the happiness slipped back into the hollowness.  That’s why he felt so heavy.  All the good emotions were piling up inside this deep cavern in him, weighing him down.  But, at least he knew they were still there.  And that they could still claw their way out.

Julian stroked Cornelius on the head and said a soft thank you.  He was glad that the only witness to his bawling would never be able to tell anyone about it.  He better go get himself cleaned up before he went out into public.  And Cornelius could probably stand a good scrubbing himself.  Julian stood up.

“Okay.  Let’s go get a bath.”

The dog darted back out the open door.

“Cornelius!”  He stopped in his tracks.  “Get back here.”

Cornelius hung his tail and slunk slowly back to the house.  By the time he got back to the door his belly was brushing the ground.

“Come on, it’s been a long time since you had one.  But don’t worry; I’m not going to do anything weird to you like Mom used to do.”

He had to fight with Cornelius all the way up the stairs, but once he saw that Julian was going to get in the tub with him, he seemed happy to get a bath.  After the dog was clean and dry enough that he wouldn’t drip all over the house, Julian let him go and hopped in the shower.  He was taking extra care to clean himself up today.  Why?  Just because he was going to see Dr. Gorman?  Maybe.  Or maybe he just felt like being clean.  His hair and make-up took the usual amount of time.  Fortunately his hair was cooperating today and the gel wasn’t drying _too_ crunchy.  Now for clothes.  Should he go with all black?  Would Dr. Gorman think he was being depressed on his birthday?  But he did wear black before the accident.  All the time.  While his relatives had been around he’d discovered just how comfortable jeans were.  He’d always thought they were too stiff, but denim really was comfortable.  So, he decided to wear jeans and a black T-shirt.  That would be okay.

As he was lacing up his boots his cell phone rang.  He glanced up at the clock.  It was the middle of the day.  His friends should still be in school.  So, who was calling him?  He rolled over his bed and picked up the phone where it was charging in the far corner.  He didn’t recognize the number but decided to answer anyway.

“Hello?”

“Happy birthday, Julian.”

The voice surprised him.  It wasn’t one he immediately recognized, but it was very deep.  There was only one person he knew who had a voice that deep…and might be calling him.  But, it had been two months since then.  Could it possibly be…

“Mr. Treviño?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Oh, wow.  It’s been so long.  I thought you weren’t going to call.”

“Two months in the business world isn’t a long time.  There’s your first business lesson.  Plus I had to wait for your eighteenth birthday.  Emancipated or not, I wasn’t hiring a minor.”

“Oh.  But, how did you know today was my birthday?”

“I had your name and number.  Didn’t need much else to track you.  I did also look up your emancipation hearing.  There aren’t usually many of those.  It’s public record you know.  Your address, phone numbers, social security number.  It’s all available if you know how to access it.  Welcome to the Age of Information.”

“I see.  Wow.  Well, that’s a little frightening.”

“I have a job for you tomorrow,” Rylan continued without segue.

“Wait, tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ve been putting it off too.  Waiting for you to finally turn eighteen.  It would have been much more helpful if your birthday had been earlier.”

“Um.  Sorry.”

“Do you remember where the Blue Boy office is?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll meet you there tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.  There’ll be some paperwork for you to fill out, and then you can do your first assignment.  I’ll see you then.”

“Um, should I bring any documents or something?”  Julian was talking to dead air.  “Well.”  He looked at the phone in offense.  Couldn’t the guy even say goodbye?  He supposed that wasn’t really Rylan’s style.  So, this was crazy, but kind of cool.  And there was paperwork involved, so that meant he hadn’t signed his soul away yet.  He could still back out if he wanted to.  And as abrasive and domineering as Rylan was, he didn’t seem the type to force anybody into doing something they didn’t want to.  He probably considered that an inefficient way to do business.

Julian stood up and looked himself over.  He was now dressed.  What was he doing?  Oh, yes.  Dr. Gorman.  He found his wallet and decided he’d just take the bus to the metro.  He hurried downstairs and gave Cornelius some dog treats.  Hopefully that would help him forgive Julian for washing him earlier.  He knew he’d probably be late getting home that night, so he went ahead and filled up Cornelius’ bowl.

“Now, don’t eat that until it’s dinnertime.”

Cornelius gave him a little wag of the tail and Julian waved back.  As he stepped outside he thought the weather was on the cool side, but he felt fine in his short sleeved shirt.  He held this opinion until he was waiting at the bus stop and a gust of wind blew by.  He shivered and hugged himself.  He debated about going back to the house to get a jacket, but he didn’t know if he would have enough time before the bus came.  Of course, the bus was ten minutes late so he would have had plenty of time, but since he’d decided to wait, he got to freeze for an extra ten minutes.  Stupid karma.  What had he done to it lately?

The trip into the city was uneventful and aside from a chilly walk from the metro station to Dr. Gorman’s office building, he was feeling pretty good.  He was nervous about seeing Dr. Gorman, but excited as well.  He was dying to see the look on her face when she first saw him.  It was the first time anyone had ever been in love with him.  He didn’t count Laney because that was a crush that had evolved into adoration.  It wasn’t the same thing as meeting someone and then falling for them.  What would it feel like to see that in her eyes?  Then he gave himself a stern warning as he rode the elevator.  He didn’t need to be thinking those kinds of things.  He needed to apologize to her and ask if she could recommend someone else as his therapist.  He needed to leave her alone.  He’d probably freaked her out enough for one lifetime.

Inside her office the receptionist at the desk was a woman in her late twenties who he didn’t know very well.  She’d only worked on Tuesdays twice that he could remember, but even from those brief encounters he could tell that she had a no-nonsense personality.  She wasn’t someone who could be persuaded with a smile, which was a shame because she was cute.  Julian looked her over as she sat primly in her chair and typed away at her keyboard.  Even Will might have trouble with this one.  She looked up as he approached.  She smiled politely.

“Hello.  May I help you?”

“Hi.  My name is Julian March.  I don’t have an appointment, but I really need to see Dr. Gorman.”

“I’m sorry, but she’s booked solid today.”  She had already looked away and was looking something up on the computer.  “I might be able to squeeze you in two weeks from Tuesday.”

“No, I need to see her today.  It’s an emergency.”

The receptionist gave him a look.  She apparently wanted proof that it was an emergency.

“My parents died suddenly about six months ago.  And today is my birthday.”

She chewed on the inside of her lip as she looked at him.  She was debating whether or not that was worth disturbing her employer.

“Oh, come on.  Don’t make me threaten suicide here.”

“Okay, okay.  Wait one moment.”  The receptionist picked up a phone and dialed three numbers.  She gave Julian a semi-polite smile as she listened to the phone ring.  “Hello, Dr. Gorman.  I know you’re busy this afternoon, but I have a young man out here who claims he needs to see you right away.”  She paused, and then covered the mouthpiece.  “What did you say your name was again?” she asked him.

“Julian March.”

She returned to the phone.  “A Julian March.  He says it’s his birthday and he’s threatening to threaten suicide.”  She paused again.  “Unh-huh.  Unh-huh.  I see.  Yes.  I understand.  I’ll inform him.”

She hung up and Julian was worried.  Had Dr. Gorman told her to get rid of him?

“She can see you now.  Right through that door.”

He smirked at the receptionist.  “Not so booked after all, huh?”

“Actually you’re taking up her lunch hour.”

“Hmph.”

Julian walked away from the snooty receptionist and wondered if he should knock on the office door.  He probably should.  He knocked lightly to let her know he was coming in, and entered without waiting for a response.  What if she had a mouthful of tofu or something?  He should take her out to dinner again and make her eat a hamburger or something.  She was a little on the skinny side.

Dr. Gorman was sitting at her desk with her palms flat on her brown blotter, her eyes focused on the stapler.  Julian shut the door and walked over to her.  Once he was standing in front of her desk, she took in a little breath and raised her head.  It was a struggle for her to get her eyes to follow, but she managed.  It was the first time he had even seen her since the kiss.  She was wearing the grey skirt suit she had worn the first time he’d met her.  Before he realized what a fashion disaster she was.  Her hair was pulled back into its tight bun and her glasses were nearly flush against her face as if she had just pushed them up her nose.  Her brown eyes looked worried and distressed.  He didn’t want to make her feel this way.  He felt terrible.

“Hey,” he said softly.

She shot straight out of her chair and startled Julian a bit.

“Hello, Julian.  I’m glad you’re here.  There are some things we need to discuss and we put them off for far too long.  Now, I understand that you are going through some difficult times and I haven’t exactly been as strict with you as maybe I should have.  What happened at the restaurant was a terrible mistake and should never have happened.  Not that I’m blaming you.  I’m not.  I’m the adult.  I should have taken control of the situation.  Though you did push me against a wall and you are quite a bit bigger than me…but!  I’m not saying you forced yourself on me.  I was a willing participant too.  Which I shouldn’t have been.  I must have confused you terribly.”

She continued her rambling all while she paced in a jittery circle.  Julian had sat lightly on the edge of her desk and watched his therapist frazzle herself into a tizzy.  She was quite amusing.  Her circle kept getting wider and losing its shape as she bounced from place to place.  He wasn’t even listening to what she was saying anymore.  She probably wasn’t even aware of what she was saying herself.  At last she came close enough for him to reach out and grab her.  He took her gently but firmly by the elbow and made her stand still.  She stopped talking and stayed facing away from him.  He turned her slowly toward him, taking her other arm in his other hand.  He knew he had come here to apologize and move on, but for some reason he wanted to kiss her again.  So, he did.

Julian pulled the shaking woman closer, and she refused to look at him.  He released one arm to place a finger under her chin.  He forced her to look up.  He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips.  He pulled back slightly.  Her eyes were averted to the ground.  She was blushing and obviously ashamed.  But the shame wasn’t from taking advantage of someone or not being strong enough to push him away.  She was trembling because she wanted him so badly.

He pulled her close and kissed her hard.  He didn’t want her to be able to come to her senses anytime soon.  She reacted in mild surprise, and that allowed Julian to slip inside.  He tangled one hand in her hair to hold her still while he pushed his way further into her.  She did nothing to fight it.  He undid the clip holding her hair up and turned them around to lean her back on the desk.  He didn’t get to sweep anything aside, but he slid her glasses off as she lay back on the desk without protest.  He pulled back to look at her.  With her hair down and glasses off she looked younger and absolutely beautiful.  He was glad she kept herself so together for the rest of the world.  He didn’t want anyone else to see her like this: flushed and panting and vulnerable.  It was turning him on.  He was definitely feeling a spark now.  But whether it was because of her or simply the physicality was making him all tingly, he didn’t know.  But at the moment, it didn’t matter.

He leaned over again to kiss her, but she stopped him with a gentle caress on his face.

“Can that come out?” she asked, her thumb lightly playing over his lip ring.

He nodded and quickly removed the piercing.  He set in on the desk and leaned down.  He kissed her lightly.  She kissed him back with no hesitation.  She might regret it later, but right now she obviously didn’t care.  He took a step forward and found his leg pushing in between hers.  The hem of her skirt hit his leg.  He leaned forward and the skirt slid up.  She had his face in her hands and was kissing him deeply, so he couldn’t look down.  But, he could feel.  One hand he left braced on the desk and the other he moved to her leg.  The textured pantyhose felt a little strange on his fingertips, and then he felt skin.  He had reached her inner thigh.  And she had to be wearing thigh highs.  That was sexy.  As if he had to tell himself that.  His groin had already let him know it knew that.  He wasn’t quite sure what to do now.  He’d never gone this far with a girl before.  He’d always assumed a girl would slap him before he could get this far.  But Dr. Gorman wasn’t stopping him.  She was simply massaging the inside of his mouth with her tongue.  It felt fantastic.  But was it weird that he still thought of her as “Dr. Gorman?”  She broke their kiss, for which he was somewhat thankful: they both needed air.  She kissed his jaw and wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him close.  That seemed like encouragement to him.  He moved his hand.

It was hot.  That was the first thing he noticed.  She was hot.  And then he felt the soft cotton of her panties.  Why was she wearing cotton underwear?  Wasn’t that unsexy?  _No, definitely not_ , his groin disagreed.  He couldn’t believe he had his erection pressing into a woman’s leg and she wasn’t making him move away.  He couldn’t believe his hand was lightly brushing over…

“Juliannnn.”

Her moaning voice bypassed his ears and all other brain functions.  It went right between his legs and he had to dig his fingers into the hard desk.  He gasped softly and his hips moved against his will.  He rubbed against her leg and her fingers clenched in his shirt.  Is this what sex felt like?  No wonder people went so crazy for it.  He wanted to say her name too, but just couldn’t think of her first name at the moment and he had little doubt calling her Dr. Gorman would ruin the mood.  And he hadn’t even gotten to touch a breast yet.  He was going out of order.  He’d gotten to the really sensitive areas before the basic ones.  Would she mind if he backtracked a little?  Of course, who said he had to stop with the other hand?

He moved the hand on the desk slowly over.  He was giving his back muscles a workout to keep himself poised over her.  He couldn’t think of a cool way to ease into it, so he just grabbed.  She arched against him and her hips pushed forward.  His hand suddenly discovered that panties really didn’t make much of a barrier.

“Um—Oh!”

They turned their heads toward the door.  The receptionist stood awkwardly, trying to both look and not look at them at the same time.  Julian moved away quickly and kept his back to her.  His jeans were way too tight for this.  Dr. Gorman struggled to sit up and pulled her skirt down.  She was breathing hard and groping on the desk for her glasses.  Once she found them she smashed them onto her face and cleared her throat.

“Why didn’t you knock?” she asked.

Julian smiled.  That was the best thing she could come up with to say?

“I did,” the receptionist said, amusement painfully evident in her voice.  “I also buzzed you twice, but you didn’t answer.  I’m very sorry to interrupt your…session.  But your three o’clock is here.”

“Thank you, Melissa.  You can send him in in ten minutes.”

“Are you sure ten is enough?”

The appreciation in her tone made Julian turn his head over his shoulder to look at her.  She was looking him over and he grinned at her.  She smiled back, not so polite this time.  Dr. Gorman just gave her a glare.

“Sorry,” she said and backed out, shutting the door behind her.

Julian turned back to Dr. Gorman.  She was wrenching her hair back into its tight bun.  “Julian, I’m sorry.  I don’t know what came over me.  Well, I do, but I should have stopped it.”  She dropped her hands and smoothed down her skirt again.  She still wasn’t looking at him.  “I’m the adult.  I have a responsibility to…”

He had walked to stand right in front of her.  She cut off as he leaned down and gave her a light kiss.  She heaved a resigned sigh.

“This is such a bad idea,” she half-laughed.  “I mean, you can’t even call me by my first name.”

“Camellia.”  She looked up at him.  He smiled.  “Camellia, I think it’s worth exploring.”

She fought back a smile and looked away from him.  “I guess.  But I really should have put up a better fight before giving in.  It’s really kind of pathetic when you think about it.”

Julian tucked a single stray hair behind her ear.

“I still need therapy,” he said.

“I really agree.”

“But, it can’t be you anymore.”

“I _really_ agree.”

He took her hands in his.  “Can you recommend someone?”

She gently massaged his hands with hers and they bent their arms up so that they could lace fingers.

“Yes,” she said after some thought.  “I know someone whom I really trust.  I think he’ll actually be a big help to you.  I’ll have my receptionist set up an appointment for you.”

“Thanks, Dr. Gorman.”

She laughed and leaned against their arms.  “You’re already calling me Dr. Gorman again.”

“Well.  Give me some time.  It would be like my friend Will suddenly saying he’d decided to go by Liam.  Or Billy.”

“Oh, my.  I can only imagine what he would be like if his parents had called him Billy.”

“If his parents had called him Billy, they wouldn’t be the kind of parents they are and he wouldn’t have turned out the way he is.”

“And you like him like that?  An emotionally warped egomaniac.”

“I love him like that.  But I think he’s getting better.”

“Really?  He’s just suddenly starting to transform?”

“No.  There’s been a trigger.”  Julian could feel sorrow creep into his voice and face.  “I think there’s a person in his life.  Someone new.”

Dr. Gorman released his hands and held his face, running her thumbs over his cheek bones.  “Don’t make that face when you think about him.  I hate feeling jealous.”

“Sorry.”

He leaned down and kissed her.  His arms slid around her waist as hers slid around his neck.  They were in it more for the hug than the kiss, but both were quite nice.

“Mmm.  Julian.  Go on.  I have work to do.  And you have truancy to catch up on.”

“This doesn’t count as truancy.  It was a legitimate emergency visit to my shrink.”

“Unh-huh.  Go on.”

She patted his butt and stepped away from him.  He could tell by the expression on her face that she had already moved on to thinking about her three o’clock appointment.  And quite possibly had partially forgotten he was even there.

“Bye, Camellia.”

“Out.”

“You’re so unromantic.”

“Don’t forget this.”

She held out his lip ring to him.  He took it from her and gave her a little smile.

“You busy tonight?”

“Maybe,” she said noncommittally.  Or maybe she just meant that she would be busy depending on whether or not he called her.  What a saucy wench, playing hard to get.  He let it slide and left her office.  The receptionist looked up from her phone call and struggled to keep from grinning.  She turned to a mousey looking man in the waiting area.

“Mr. Lambert, you can go in now.”

He jumped when he was addressed.  Then he got up and skirted in an arc as far away from Julian and the receptionist as he could get.  He watched them suspiciously as he backed up to the office door and then slipped inside and slammed the door shut.  Julian raised his eyebrows.  Interesting.  And possibly dangerous.  He didn’t like Dr. Gorman working with a bunch of whack jobs.  He shrugged it off.  Knowing her she probably had a ton of security measures set up.  He waved to the receptionist as he headed for the elevators.

“It’s not really your birthday, is it?” she asked, hanging up the phone.

“No, it is.  I’m eighteen today.”

“Oh.  I see.”

She gave him a wink as he stepped onto the lift.  Apparently she was someone who was more loyal to her employer than the Hippocratic Oath her employer was supposed to uphold.  Though Dr. Gorman hadn’t violated it.  She hadn’t harmed him in any way and she was going to make sure he got the help he needed.  He wondered who his new shrink would be.  He noticed she had used a male pronoun when referring to him.  He wondered if she really had chosen the best doctor for the job or if she was trying to keep him away from other female shrinks.  It was probably the former.

Julian almost skipped off the elevator when it arrived at the lobby.  He was excited.  He was about 95% certain that this thing with Dr. Gorman was just that, a thing.  But there was no reason why they couldn’t enjoy each other for awhile.  They’d probably be good for each other.  She would definitely be good for him.  He had every intention of visiting her later in the evening.  It was about time he ditched his virginity.  How embarrassing that he was the last one among his friends to do so.  Well, he wasn’t exactly embarrassed.  It hadn’t been a race or anything and they didn’t think he was weird for not having done anything yet.  But it kind of needled him that Scott had had sex before him.  _Scott_.  He cuts his hair and all of a sudden he’s screwable?  Well, Julian had to agree with that.  His new hair had made him awfully sexy.  He briefly wondered how he would look as a blond.

It was a little early to meet his friends, so he went into a Starbucks and used the mirror in the bathroom to reinsert his piercing.  Then he ordered a latte and bought a copy of the _New York Times_.  He sat down to drink his coffee and read his paper and felt like such an adult.  The coffee was a bad idea though.  He was already jittery due to the prospect of sex with Dr. Gorman and his new job the next day.  Now he was wired, excited, and nervous.  Should he tell his friends about either?  It would be nice to talk about it, but maybe these were things he should keep to himself for a while.

At 4:30 he emerged from the entrance to the metro station where he said he would meet his friends.  The three of them were already there.  They were about fifteen feet away, huddled together from the chilly wind.  He was struck by the chasm between them.  They were in their school uniforms and talking and laughing with each other.  They were still high school students.  Normal kids still waiting to grow up into normal people.  He didn’t feel like one of them anymore.  Maybe when he put his uniform on come Monday the feeling would go away.  He wished it would go away.  It was depressing

“Hey guys,” he got their attention with a wave of his arm.

They shuffled toward him in their formation and stood around him.

“Man, it got cold suddenly,” Chris said.

“I know, right?” Scott agreed.

“Where the hell is your jacket?” Will demanded.

“I didn’t wear one.  I didn’t think I’d need one today.”

“Well, wear mine,” Will said, taking his bag off his shoulder.  He started undo the button on his blazer.

“It’s okay.  You’ll be cold then.”

“I’ll be fine.  I have a long sleeve shirt on.”

“But it’s really thin.”

“It’s okay.

“Will,” Chris said.  “I think he’s trying to be polite.  There’s no way he’ll fit in your tiny jacket.”

Scott suppressed a giggle.

“It’s not tiny!”

“He can wear mine,” Chris said.

“Guys!  I’m not a girl.  Besides, we’re not going far.  So, let’s just start walking rather than standing here and freezing.”

They agreed with his logic and started walking with him down the sidewalk.

“So, what are we doing for your birthday?” Will asked.

“Well, I’m going to get a tattoo.  I thought you guys might want to be there.”

There were various noises from his friends.  They ranged from surprised oo-ing to disgusted blehs.

“You don’t have to watch of course.  But, I wanted you guys there with me.”

“Oh, I’m coming,” Will said.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Chris said.

They all waited and then turned to look at Scott.

“What?  I’m gonna go.  But that doesn’t mean I have to lie and say I want to.”

They laughed at him and headed into a seedier part of town.  It wasn’t the ‘hood or anything, but it definitely had an elevated sketch factor.  He led them up to a shop called Insane Ink.  It was little more than a hole in a wall.

“Um, don’t you think we should go somewhere more…”  Scott trailed off.  “Does this place have a good reputation?”

“Yeah, that’s why I chose it.”

“But just because it has a good artist doesn’t mean it’s safe—hey don’t leave me out here by myself!”

Julian was already through the shop entrance.  Nothing dinged to alert anyone to their presence.  A pretty girl with more piercings in her face than he sat at a counter flipping through a magazine.  Tattoos covered her arms and neck.  She smacked her gum and raised an eyebrow as she looked at them.  It was questionable whether or not Julian belonged there, but his preppy looking friends definitely did not.

“So, are you guys here for gang tats or something?”

“No,” Scott said, not catching on that she was teasing them.

“Look, I’m supposed to say you have to be eighteen,” a deep voice said from behind them.  They turned around and saw a bald man dressed in leather and covered in ink.  He stepped through a black curtain that partitioned the front of the store from the back.  “But I don’t really care.  You do have to sign some waivers though.”

“It’s just me,” Julian said stepping forward.  “And I am eighteen.  I’d like to get two tonight if I can.  Are you busy?”

“Nah.  Most people don’t come in until later.  Depending on how complicated they are, we could probably squeeze in two.”

“They’ll actually be pretty simple.  So, do I have to pay up front?”

“No.  You don’t pay unless you’re satisfied with the results.  They are permanent after all.”

“Yeah.”  Julian wondered if he was trying to scare him or feel him out to see if he really wanted one.  “So, where do I sign?”

The man went to a cabinet and pulled out some forms.  “My name is Jim, by the way.  I own the shop and I’m going to need you to sign these.  Feel free to read them if you want.  It’s just an acknowledgement that a tattoo is permanent and we’re not liable if you don’t follow post care instructions and get an infection and die.  Or if you’re allergic to the ink for that matter.”

Julian turned to the back of the forms and signed and dated them.  The man took them from him, obviously not concerned that Julian wasn’t concerned and placed them in a box marked “in.”  Then he got Will to stop flirting with the cashier since it appeared that she was his girlfriend.  Julian followed the bald man through the black curtain and he could hear his friends whispering to each other as they scampered behind him.

In the back room there was a stool, a dentist-looking chair, and what looked like a masseur’s table.  A young man, also bald, was sorting through various attachments for the tattoo gun.  He had quite a few interesting designs running up and down his arms, but he wasn’t nearly as decorated as Jim.

“This is Skizzle,” Jim said, patting the stony-looking man on the shoulder.  “He’ll be the one doing your art this afternoon.”

Julian wasn’t sure if he should, but he stuck out a hand to Skizzle.  “Hi, I’m Julian.  Don’t mind them,” he said indicating his friends with a nod of his head.

Skizzle looked him over, and then shook his hand.  “So, what are you getting tonight?”

“I want a blue septagram on my back.”

“You got a specific image in mind?”

“Yeah.”

Julian dug a picture out of his pocket and showed it to Skizzle.  It was the symbol used by Blue Star Wiccans, which was the branch his parents had adhered to.

“This is pretty simple.”

“I know.  It has sentimental meaning.”

“Do you need it to be this color blue?”

“I’d like it as close to that as you can manage.”

“No problem.  I like mixing blues.  How big and where exactly on your back?”

“Pretty big.  I want it to cover the space between my shoulder blades.  And when you do it, I want my arms up so that my shoulder blades are pushed in.”

“If we do it like that,” Jim said, “it’ll be all stretched out and possibly distorted when you’re standing normally.”

“That’s the idea,” Julian said absently.

Jim and Skizzle exchanged looks.  “And for the other one?” Skizzle asked.

Julian fished out another paper from his pocket.  “A circle with a sideways crescent on it.  All black.”

“What?  What’s that?” Chris asked.

“It’s the symbol for the Horned God.  It’s for masculinity, the hunt, sexuality…stuff like that.”

“I thought you weren’t really sure about all that anymore,” Will murmured quietly to him.

Julian shrugged.  “It’s a symbol.  It has meaning even if you don’t believe in it.”

“I see.”

“Okay,” Jim said.  “While Skizzle is mixing the blue, why don’t you take your shirt off and lay down on the table.  I’ll get something to hold your arms up.”

“Okay.”  Julian pulled his shirt over his head and heard Chris scoff at him.

“You still shave under your arms?”

“Yes, it’s gross.”

“Whatever.”

Julian lay on his stomach on the masseur table.  Jim returned from digging around in a cabinet with some leather restraints.  Whoa.  The man started to strap one onto his arm and he didn’t dare look back at his friends.

“Isn’t this dangerous?” he heard Scott ask worriedly.

“Which part?” Skizzle asked.

Scott ignored him and came closer to Jim.  “What if he needs to move?”

“I’m just using this as a way to hold his arms up so that he won’t get tired doing it himself.  He’s not in any danger.  It’s not like we’re going to need a safe word here.”

Chris and Will snickered, but Scott wasn’t satisfied.

“I’m just saying, you’re strapping him down.  It’s not safe.”

“Actually, I’m strapping him up.  And look here,” Jim said, showing the other restraint to Scott.  “The metal part here has a safety clasp.  You pinch the two sides and it falls away without it having to be unbuckled.”

“Oh, really.  That’s interesting.”

Julian glanced over at Scott.  He was examining the restraints pretty carefully.

“And why is it interesting?” Julian asked.

“No reason,” Scott said snootily and turned away from him.

Jim put the restraints near his elbows so that his shoulder blades scrunched in.  He didn’t make them go as far as possible; he lined them up with his shoulders.  He tied the restraints to two thin metal poles attached to the end of the table.  The poles had obviously been installed by Jim or Skizzle.  He wondered what other purposes they served.  He probably could have just left his palms flat on the table like he’d done a push up all the way to the floor and gotten the same effect, but this would keep him from moving.  Which was probably the idea.  Jim rolled the table over to Skizzle who had his tattoo gun ready to go.  Julian had his face turned to the side so that he could see him.

“He’s a virgin, Skizzle,” Jim said.  “Be gentle with him.”

“Mm.  It’s been a while since I’ve had untainted goods.”  He licked his lips and moved his eyes just enough to meet Julian’s.  “You wanna know what it feels like first?”

“No.”

“Good boy.”

Skizzle used his gloved hand to swath Julian’s back with alcohol.  “Good.  No moles or freckles.  That will make this easier.  And not nearly as gross.  Do you remember that one time that guy’s mole popped like a zit, Jim?”

“Oh, yeah.  That was a fun night.”

Julian heard a nauseated whimper.  That was Scott.

“Shouldn’t you, like, draw a picture first?” Chris asked.

“Nope,” Skizzle said.  “I’m just that good.  I’m starting now.  Don’t jump.”

Julian nodded and waited.  Then Skizzle started.  It felt like he was being scratched by a tiny little needle.  Then it moved and a mild burning sensation followed in its wake.  He waited for the pain, but it didn’t really come.  He felt something, but it was more like irritation than pain.  He felt an urge to reach back and swat it away, but he couldn’t say it was really hurting him.

“How thick you want the lines?”

“Thick enough to be seen at a distance, but not as wide as a finger or anything.  Less than a pinky even.”

“Okay.  Got it.  I’m gonna outline the whole thing and then go back and fill it in.”

“Okay.”

The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the tattoo gun.  Then someone whispered, “Does it hurt?”

“No, not really.  It’s just kind of—ahh~~~!”

His three friends jumped and screamed in pain with him.  Jim looked over at them and contemplated tossing them out.

“I thought you said it didn’t hurt!”  That was Will.

“Well, it didn’t until he went over the spine.  Gyaaa, that hurts.”

“Tattooing over bone usually hurts the worst,” Skizzle said.  Then the needle passed off his spine and it was an irritation again.  Of course, after feeling the pain of the needle running over his spine, this was nothing.  Then the irritation stopped and Skizzle dabbed at his back with a gauze square.

“Omigod,” Scott gagged.  “You’re bleeding.”

“Don’t throw up in my store,” Jim grumbled.

“I’m okay.  I’m okay.”

It took about forty-five minutes for Skizzle to outline and fill in the septagram.  Julian’s shoulders were killing him.  And the filling done over his spine had nearly brought tears to his eyes, but he managed to remain quiet.  At last his arms were released and he lay on the table feeling exhausted in a way.  Then Skizzle poured something onto a gauze and moved to apply it to his back.  Julian tensed, waiting for the burning of the alcohol.  But, it didn’t burn.  It felt cool and very soothing.  It made him relax instantly.  Then Skizzle pulled out two mirrors and angled them so Julian could see his back.

“Like it?”

The septagram stretched across his back, the top point ending at the base of his neck, the side points touching the edges of his shoulder blades, and the bottom points reaching toward the middle of his back.  The design was taut, but not distorted on his skin.  The blue color was brilliant and vivid.

“I love it.”

“Good.”

Skizzle began to tape some gauze squares into place and Jim came over to inspect.

“I’ll prepare some instructions for you on how to care for it for the next couple weeks,” the store owner said.  “You’re going to need some help with this one though.”

“I’m sure my friends won’t mind helping me out.”

Julian sat up carefully and turned around slowly.  He finally got to look at his friends.  They were scrunched together and looking pretty wide eyed.  Was it really that big of a deal?

“What do you guys think?” he asked.

They were silent.  Then Will said, “It looks very symmetrical.”

“And the blue is an awesome shade,” Chris said.

Julian shook his head with a small smile.  His friends were such goobers.  He looked at Scott.

“Dude, did you know you were _bleeding_?”

“Yeah, I gathered that when you nearly threw up.”

“I didn’t throw up!”

“Now, where’s this horned god thingie going?  Shoulder?”  Skizzle looked at him expectantly, getting the black ink ready.

“Not exactly,” Julian said.

He started to undo his jeans and his friends all made noises, occasionally forming words such as, “Oh, hell no.”

“Not the butt!” Will said.  “That’s so cheesy!”

“No.  Not the butt,” Julian said.  He pushed his jeans and underwear down his hips just enough to reveal the spot he wanted it.  He tapped his finger on his skin just above the base of his penis.  “Right here.  It only needs to be a couple inches big.”

Skizzle looked at the spot and ran his fingers over it.  “Jim, can you get me a straight razor?”

“Sure.”

Jim left and Skizzle moved the dentist looking chair closer to his work station.  “I don’t want your jeans or underwear to get in the way or get caught up in them while I work, so you’re gonna need to push them down to your knees.  Or just take them all the way off.”

“Okay.”

Julian pushed down his jeans and underwear and stepped out of them.  He placed them on the stool and waited for Jim to come back with some other supplies.  He put down a towel for Julian to sit on and then placed a brace on the top of the chair so that when Julian leaned back, his back wouldn’t be pressed against the chair.  Julian could hear Scott whispering to Chris and Will and wondered what he saying.  Then Skizzle applied baby oil to his skin and leaned forward with a straight blade.

“Dude,” Julian said, finally feeling nervous, “couldn’t you use a normal razor?”

Skizzle smiled.  “I _could_.”

He began to shave the area and Julian stared at the ceiling.  He had tried to take care of this himself earlier to avoid this exact situation.  It was a little awkward even for him.  After a few expert swipes, Skizzle put the blade away and looked at the design Julian had given him one last time.  Then he picked up his gun and leaned forward to begin work.  Julian was nervous.  There wasn’t any bone right there, but then again, it was a much more sensitive area.

He gritted his teeth when the needle first bit into his skin.  It wasn’t so bad, but it did hurt more than his back.  He kept trying to push his hips down to get away from it, but he couldn’t actually move because he was sitting in the chair.  He clenched the armrests with his hands and took in deep breaths.  He’d said it only needed to be two inches.  He wondered if he could change his mind to one inch.  It was such a bizarre feeling.  In a way, it was actually a little stimulating, but the pain was deflating.  At least he wouldn’t embarrass himself by getting an erection.  It hurt way too much.  He looked down.  It felt like it had been going on for a long time, but Skizzle barely had the circle outlined.  He dropped his head back and took in another deep breath.  Then he looked at his friends.

Scott looked sickly grey.  He pointed a finger at him and Will and Chris turned to look.  Scott dropped like a rock and they tried to catch him.  Chris only had him by the arm so Scott’s full weight fell into Will and they both wound up on the floor.  Julian was momentarily distracted from the pain by the humor of the situation.  And he was a little worried.  Scott hadn’t just gone woozy, he’d completely lost consciousness.

“There’s a couch out front,” Jim said.

“Thanks,” Will grunted, attempting to pick up Scott’s front end.

“We’ll take care of him,” Chris reassured Julian and then he and Will carried Scott between them back through the black curtain.

Now without his friends to distract him, the tattoo was hurting again.  He wasn’t sure if Skizzle noticed this, but the man began talking to him.

“So, are you into any other body modifications?  Your hardware is a little tame.”

“Yeah, I know.  And sadly it’s almost trendy.  I just don’t think I’m at the point where I need _real_ body modifications, you know?  Not yet anyway.”

“Hmm.  I see.  You seem like you’re on the edge though.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, if you want, I can attach a chain from your ear to your lip ring.  That’s a way of getting away from the trendy look.”

“Yeah, but then won’t I just look emo?”

“No.  The emo boys just like to get their tongues pierced.  They don’t want to ruin their pretty faces.”

Julian laughed.  “I see.  But I better not.  I go to a private school and they hassle me enough with these piercings as it is.  Maybe I can think about it after I graduate.”

“Okay.  But, hey,” Skizzle said, stopping his work a moment to examine it.  Julian appreciated the reprieve.  “When you want a Prince Albert, come see me again.”  He lightly flicked the head of Julian’s penis and then began working again.

Julian let his head roll back, trying to ignore the pain.  And Skizzle was out of his mind if he thought he would ever get a Prince Albert piercing.  Well, never say never, but he didn’t want to run the chance of having to start sitting down while peeing.

Julian couldn’t believe it took half an hour to do the tattoo over his groin, but he was thankful when it was over.  And this time truly relished the cool sensation of the liquid dabbed over the throbbing area.  The skin was red and irritated, but Skizzle assured him it would go down after a couple days.  While Skizzle cleaned and sterilized his equipment, Jim carefully went over the instructions for the proper care of his tattoos for the next couple of weeks.  Julian wished he’d worn loose fitting pants.  As it was, he left them unbuttoned and had to use his shirt to cover that fact.  Even if it hadn’t been advised against in the instructions, the throbbing pain was bad enough that Julian figured sex was out of the question.  He guessed he wouldn’t be seeing Dr. Gorman again today after all.  Oh well.  He’d have to be a virgin a little bit longer.  That was very disappointing.  Just in case, he thought he’d ask anyway.

“So, really, sex would be a bad idea for a while, huh?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Jim said.  “You have to think of your tattoo as a raw wound.  It can get infected pretty easily.”

“Yeah, and a lot of chicks don’t keep too clean down there,” Skizzle lamented.

Julian smiled.  “For some reason I think this chick would be immaculate down there.”

“Well, it’s your choice,” Jim said.  “I’ll go draw up the bill.  It’ll be $150.  How you gonna pay?”

“Cash.”

“Excellent.”

Jim left and Julian turned to Skizzle.

“Thanks a lot.  I really like them.”

“Yeah, they are nice.  It’s good to practice some that require me to be exact and symmetrical, like your friend said.  But it was kind of boring to do.  Think about your next one, something more intricate, and I’ll make it nice and pretty.”

“Thanks.  See you around.”

“I’m sure you will.  They are addictive, you know.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Julian shook his hand again and then went through the black curtain to the front of the store.  He pulled out his wallet and started to count out the bills.  He glanced over at the couch.  Chris was sitting on an arm and Scott and Will were sitting on the cushions.  Scott looked a much healthier color now.  On his way to the counter he stopped by the couch and ran his fingers through Scott’s hair.

“Are you feeling better?”

“A lot better.  Sorry for…well.  You know.”

“Don’t worry about it.  It happens.”

Scott stood up slowly and smiled sheepishly at him.  Julian smiled and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close.  He walked toward the counter, dragging Scott with him.

“Though you know,” he continued softer, “that second one is right up your alley.”

“Stop teasing me about that,” Scott growled.

“I can’t help it,” Julian laughed.  He tousled Scott’s hair.  “It’s just so much fun.”

Scott blushed and gave him a light shove.  He moped by the door while Chris and Will went up to the counter to watch him pay the bill.  They must have been curious about how much it cost.  Chris let out a low whistle as Julian produced bill after bill.

“Well, happy birthday to you,” Will said.

“I know.  So, what did you guys get me?”

Chris and Will exchanged looks.  Julian couldn’t tell if the look they were sharing indicated their gift was better or worse.

Outside the wind had really picked up and Julian was starting to wish his friends would offer up their clothes to him again.  They pulled their coats tighter around themselves.  Looked like that plan was out.  They stood awkwardly on the sidewalk, shivering.  A few moments of silence passed.

“So.  Thanks for coming with me,” Julian said.

“Sure,” Scott said.  “Um…not to invite ourselves but can we, like, go over to your house or something?”

“You guys wanna hang out still?”

“Of course,” Will said.

“Yeah.  There are presents,” Chris said.

“And a cake!” Scott shouted.

Chris and Will hit him with the backs of their hands.

“A cake?” Julian asked.

“Well, I mean,” Scott backpedalled.  “Like, a metaphorical cake.”

Will and Chris groaned, slapping their foreheads with their hands.  Julian laughed.

“Oh, a metaphorical cake, huh?  I guess I’m not expecting a real one at all then.  We should head back to my place.  We can have a full-on middle school sleepover.”

“Good.  ‘Cause I missed having one at my birthday,” Scott said.

“Give me those instructions,” Will demanded as they started to make their way to the metro station.  Julian dug the folded up paper out of his back pocket and handed it to him.  Will examined it closely.

“Do you have rubbing alcohol at home?”

“Um.  Maybe.”

“Well, we should pick some up then, just in case.”

“Rubbing alcohol?” Chris asked.  “Won’t that hurt like a bitch?”

“Without a doubt,” Will said.

“Well, it has to be done if it’s on the instructions sheet,” Scott said with a slightly retaliatory look on his face.  “Don’t worry, Julian.  I’ll make sure it gets done no matter how much it hurts.”

Julian gulped uneasily.  Maybe he _had_ teased him a little too much.  The boy was a pushover until he decided to push back.  And that was nothing short of frightening.  He tried to be as nice as possible to Scott until they got back to his house.  He had a feeling it probably wasn’t going to do him any good.

As the four of them camped out in the den, Julian couldn’t help but think that this was a good birthday.  All they did was share some pizzas and talk for five solid hours.  He didn’t need a party or a lot of presents.  He just needed to feel like he had a place in the world.  And a six layer cake hand baked by his goofy friends wasn’t bad either.  It looked an absolute mess, but it was impressive.  It was a full six layers, if slightly sloping to one side.  And they were the first to remember that it was time to disinfect his tattoos and practically pulled his clothes off.  He laughed as they examined his tattoo (the one on his back), until Scott kept to his word and made sure every square inch of sensitive, irritated skin got doused in rubbing alcohol.  They let him do his other one himself.

Around midnight he informed them that he probably should go to sleep soon.  He felt terrible for lying to them again, but he couldn’t tell them about Blue Boy yet.  He had to check it out and determine if it really wasn’t sketchy.  Well, _really_ sketchy.  There was a chance he might even decide not to do the job, and then he would have worried and freaked them out for nothing.  So, he told them that Dr. Gorman hadn’t been able to fit him in that morning but had agreed to see him first thing Saturday morning.  They complained about her quite a bit for that.  He kind of forgot how much they really didn’t like her.  They might have actually taken the news about Blue Boy better.  And of course that discussion kept them up and evolved into a different conversation and so on until two hours later only he and Chris were still awake.  Chris laughed softly at their two friends so as not to wake them up.

“Weren’t you the one who wanted to go to sleep?” Chris asked.

“Yeah.  I really do.  But I kind of don’t want to.”

“Was…”  Chris picked at the old woolly blanket that he’d claimed for his own from Julian’s mother’s collection.  “Was today really hard?  We were kind of worried all day.”

Julian shrugged.  “Yeah, you know, it was rough.  But I’m doing okay.”  He petted Cornelius’ head where he snoozed beside him on the floor.

“Yeah, I get that you’re doing okay.  But…I mean, there have to be times when you’re not doing okay.  What do you do then?  Do you talk to Will?  Or Scott?  If you don’t feel comfortable talking to me, that’s fine.  But, as long as you’re going to someone.”

“That’s what I pay $100 an hour for: to see a shrink.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I know.  But it’s been like six months.  People start to get over things.”

“Yeah, and if I thought you were over it, I wouldn’t be asking you about it.”

Julian looked at Chris.  He wasn’t looking at him.  “I think you’re seeing something that isn’t there.”

“If you say so.”

“What?  Do you think I’m suicidal or something?”

“No, I don’t.  But I’m not convinced you’re healing.”

“I am.  I promise.  It’s just going really slowly.”

“Maybe because all you have is a shrink and friends.  I think you need family, Julian.”

“I don’t have—Look, Chris.  It’s really complicated.  Okay?”

“I get that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I do.  I know what it’s like to have a fragmented family.”

“Not the same.”

“You see, that’s the problem.  You keep isolating yourself.  You just seem to think that nobody can possibly understand what you’re feeling.  As deeply as we can feel, human emotion really doesn’t have that wide of a range.”

Julian laughed softly, and a little derisively.  “You sound like Scott.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

They were quiet for a long time.  When they spoke again, it was as if their previous conversation had never happened.  Eventually, they lay down and went to sleep.  Julian had to sleep on his side, which he hated doing.  He liked to sleep on his stomach, but the tattoo prevented him from doing that.  Maybe he should have only gotten one at a time.  He shifted uncomfortably.  He wanted to itch his back.  The tape holding the gauze in place was irritating him.  And he could feel the symbol on his back.  He could feel the exact design tingling along his skin.  A constant and permanent reminder of his lost faith.  He was bearing the symbol like a cross upon his back.  Now was that ironic or what?

 

Saturday, November 12, 2005

 

Julian shifted against his pillow.  It was soft, but kind of hard down the middle.  He woke up without opening his eyes.  He felt good.  Like he’d finally had a really good night’s sleep.  He felt warm and safe.  Usually when he woke up he felt just a little bit ill.  Only for a moment, and then the feeling would pass.  But today he didn’t feel that at all.  He had a moment of feeling like he had before his parents had died.  He wondered why that was.  Was it getting over a major hurdle like his birthday?  Was he finally starting to accept what had happened?

Julian opened his eyes.  He was staring at a human body part.  He wasn’t sure which part it was, but it had to be one of his sleeping friends.  They’d fallen asleep parallel to each other last night, but apparently all of them were restless sleepers.  He raised his head and realized his soft but hard down the middle pillow was Scott’s leg.  He sat up further and saw that they weren’t all curled up in a ball, but sprawled all over the place.  The only thing was that they were all overlapping in some way.  He didn’t really mind it that much, but maybe they _were_ a little too comfortable with each other.

The grandfather clock in the dining room began to chime.  Julian put his head back down on Scott’s leg and listened to the birds chirp outside in his backyard.  Something kicked his butt.  Cornelius snorted and rolled over, kicking him in the rear again.  Julian smiled.  He was so happy to have his friends with him.  What would he do without them?  Then a sudden bad feeling washed over him.  He couldn’t define exactly what it was, but it made him uneasy.  The feeling passed and Julian hoped it wasn’t a premonition or anything.  It was probably nothing.

The clock kept chiming.  Julian’s brow creased with concern.  Why wouldn’t it stop?  He was counting the tones and the number kept going up and up…finally it stopped.  After nine chimes.  Julian sat up.  He leaned over Cornelius and searched under Will for his watch.  The grandfather clock was right.  It was nine o’clock.  He was supposed to meet Rylan at the Blue Boy office.  At nine o’clock.

“Omigod.”

Julian leapt up and thundered up the stairs.  He turned on the shower and then ran into his room.  He started to pull clothes out of his drawers trying to figure out what outfit to wear.  Nothing came to mind so he panicked and dropped all of his clothes.  He stripped and ran back for the shower.  He stuck his head under the water to wash his hair quickly and then ran a wet washcloth over his body to wipe away yesterday’s grime and funk.  It was a four and a half minute shower and he hadn’t even gotten completely in.  He didn’t have time to change the gauze on his back.

He ran back into his room and decided he was going to have to wear his fat jeans so that it wouldn’t bother his tattoo.  He put them on and a long sleeved T-shirt.  He dried his hair with the T-shirt he’d worn yesterday and attempted to put his socks and boots on with one hand.  When he was done he stumbled into the bathroom again and carefully applied some make-up to his eyes.  He put on a little eye shadow along with the eyeliner.  If he was gonna be late he better be looking pretty.  He checked his ears to make sure none of his earrings had fallen out during the night.  Everything was still in place and he tapped his eyebrow to loosen the piercing a bit.  He quickly brushed his teeth, making sure to scrub his tongue really good.  He hadn’t brushed before going to bed last night; his mouth must be really funky.  Then he grabbed his wallet and keys and took every third stair back down to the main floor.

“You guys!  I am so late.  Can one of you feed Cornelius and let him out?  Thanks.  Also, there’s some homemade stuff from the Greek grandma in the kitchen.  Help yourselves.  Later!”

There were some vague grumblings from the den, but he was already out the door.  He jumped into his dad’s car and checked to make sure it had some gas in it as he started it up.  He definitely didn’t have time for the metro this morning.  He made it into the city in record time, but he only knew how to get to one parking garage.  He didn’t want to risk getting lost and wasting even more time, so he just parked in the downtown garage and had to run twelve blocks north to get to the Blue Boy building.  He was gasping for breath by the time he made it to the big, ornate doors.  He checked his watch: 9:53.  Damn.  He was almost an hour late.  He could imagine what Rylan would do to him.  But then again, knowing Rylan, he’d probably do nothing.  He just wouldn’t acknowledge that they even had an appointment.  He’d brush him off like an insignificant speck of dust and never speak to him again.  Julian would rather get yelled at in front of a lobby full of strangers.

Once he could breathe through his nose again, he pulled open one of the heavy doors and stepped into the stark white marble hall of the Blue Boy front lobby.  He swallowed the lump in his throat as he walked toward the front desk.  The receptionist was the only one whose eyes flicked toward him.  Rylan and the man he was talking to continued their conversation.  The receptionist was the same one he’d met the first time, and he was smiling smugly to himself as he did something on his computer.  He was probably playing Minesweeper or something.  Julian waited patiently beside the two men; he didn’t think it would be good to interrupt them.  They seemed to have little concern that he was there and kept on talking.  If there had been chairs he would have gone to sit down, but there was nowhere to go.  And he was standing too close to them to simply back up now.  It would draw more attention than him just standing there.  So, he just waited.  He kept his head down a little, but was too curious not to look at the other man.

He was kind of familiar in a way, like Julian had seen him somewhere before.  He was ridiculously handsome.  Like the kind of handsome you see on TV, but not in real life.  He was a couple inches taller than Julian, which meant he was a tall man, but he was still shorter than Rylan.  He wondered if he was a Blue Boy client or if he was simply an accountant or something.  They were talking business, but it sounded like an actual business conversation.  Not the kind of conversation one might imagine would transpire between two people setting up a “date.”  It was a really long conversation too.  They must have kept him waiting for twenty minutes.  Of course, he had made Rylan wait an hour for him.  He kept zoning in and out because the terms were too technical for him to understand.  He started paying more attention toward the end because things got a little more interesting.

“Well, then,” Rylan said, “maybe it’s time we went public and started trading.”

The other man laughed.  “You must be joking.”

Rylan grabbed him under the jaw and forced him to look up.  It looked a little uncomfortable.  “Do I ever joke?” Rylan asked evenly.

The man just smiled and turned his head to get out of Rylan’s grasp.  “Fine.  Just don’t expect me to work on it.”

Rylan grunted in unhappiness and then they both turned to look at him.  Julian stood up straight and hoped he wasn’t looking like a scared teenager.

“You’re late,” Rylan said gruffly.  “You’re wearing jeans.  You’re wearing make-up and unorthodox jewelry.  Is that really how you show up to a job interview?”

Julian blinked.  _What?_   “This is an interview?  I thought it was just a job.”

“I’m letting you do this job to see if you can handle it.  Your permanent employment is contingent upon successful completion of the assignment.”

Julian kind of nodded.  “Oh.”

The other man smiled, but it wasn’t mean spirited like the receptionist was doing.  It actually made Julian feel a little better.  He was smiling in amusement over Rylan.  Obviously this man knew Rylan well enough to know that his thorny nature wasn’t rooted in malice.

“All right, come with me,” Rylan commanded.

Both Julian and the man hopped to and began to follow him toward one of the hidden hallways.  The hallway was long; the building was much deeper than it looked.  They walked about a quarter of the way down the hall and stopped at an elevator.  It opened immediately and the three of them stepped on.  Rylan pushed the button for the second floor.  The elevator rose quickly and stopped.  It was the fastest elevator Julian had even been on.

“You know where the room is, right?” Rylan asked.

It took Julian a moment to realize he was talking to the man.

“Yeah.  I’ll get started.”

“Okay.  I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

The man got off, the doors closed, and Rylan pushed a button for the sixth floor.  The buttons went all the way up to the twentieth floor.  Blue Boy must own the entire building, which made sense since the lobby didn’t advertise any other businesses.  Once again the trip was nearly instantaneous and the doors opened onto a very plain looking hallway.  Rylan stepped off and Julian had to walk at a swift trot to keep up with his long legs.  He looked around him as they headed—wherever—but there wasn’t much to see.  This was obviously a floor that the clients must never see.  Julian wanted Rylan to slow down, and the only way he could think of to get him to do that would be to get him to talk to him.  But he was going to need a topic that would get his attention.

“That was him, right?” Julian called out.

“That was who?”

“The one who wrote the note.  The one who’s not the client.  The one you wish you hadn’t given up.”

Rylan stopped walking altogether and turned back to give him an indignant look.  Julian put on the brakes and tried not to squirm.  He hadn’t meant to get his attention that much.  He needed to smooth things over.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.  “He’s hot.”

“That’s not the reason I—”  Rylan glared at him.  “I want you to be able to read people _for_ me.  Don’t do it _to_ me.”

“Sorry.”  Julian gave him a smile.  “Boss.”

Rylan rolled his eyes and turned around to continue down the hall.  Julian jogged after him.  He stopped so abruptly Julian would have run into him if he hadn’t been so far behind.  They walked into a room with several desks and no windows.

“William!” Rylan roared.

The feet Julian hadn’t noticed on the far desk started and an office chair turned around.  A young man hopped up and came running.  He had a pretty face and his longish hair was pulled half back.  It gave him a cutely playful look.  He wore jeans and a Green Day T-shirt.  As he got closer Julian was surprised to find that he was only a little shorter than he was.  He had looked much smaller across the room.  Maybe it was because he was so skinny.

“What’d I do?” he asked, not really sounding worried or concerned.

“Nothing.  This is Julian.  Get out his paperwork and help him fill it out.”

“But Ry—”  He glanced over at Julian.  “Mr. Treviño, I have an appointment.  I was just watching the office for Jay.”

“What appointment?  I told you you were to remain off duty until I’m confident you’re better.”

“I am better,” the young man said exasperatedly.  “What do I need to do to prove it to you?  Sleep with you?”  He smiled and stepped close enough to twirl his finger around in Rylan’s tie.  “Because I’m totally willing.”

Rylan smoothed his tie down, subtly pushing the man’s hand away.  “Just help the kid out, will you?”

“But I’m tired of breaking my appointments.”  His voice was slightly raised.  “I’m going to lose all my clients.”  He lowered his voice.  “And besides.  Today is nothing.  It’s just a meet and greet.  Nothing more.”

Rylan shot him a look that made Julian flinch.  “I said no.”

Julian was glad that look hadn’t been directed at him.  The young man took a step back and looked away.  He crossed his arms in irritation but didn’t try to argue further.

“Julian, I’ll be back in a bit.  He’ll help you take care of things.”

Then Rylan was gone and Julian was left standing in the office with a very displeased male prostitute.  Maybe he should start thinking of them as escorts.  If he was going to be working with them, he shouldn’t look down on them.  The man turned toward him with a forced smile, but it was friendly.

“So, Julian, right?  I’m Tyler.”

He stuck out his hand and Julian shook it.  “Tyler?  I thought he said William.”

“No, William _s_.  It’s my last name.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“That’s okay.  Easy mistake to make.”  He clapped his hands together and looked around the office.  “Okay.  So, paperwork.  Let me find it for you.”

Tyler kind of danced over to a file cabinet and Julian scratched the end of his nose.  He supposed he should get used to hanging around guys who were flaming.  He knew there had to be gay people in his high school (other than the lesbians), but they were pretty subtle about it.  Even Jaymz wasn’t all that bad.  Well, neither was Tyler.  He was just kind of quirky.  If he hadn’t known he was gay, he might not have thought so just from their brief encounter.  Of course, he didn’t know for sure Tyler was gay.  This could just be a way for him to make some easy money.

“You can sit here,” Tyler said and dropped a humongous stack of papers on a desk.  He smiled and patted the top.  “You better get crackin’ on these.  Who knows what Rylan’s definition of ‘in a bit’ is.”

Julian gaped at the pile.  “Seriously?” he asked, running his thumb up the side.

“Rylan’s very thorough.”

“Unh-huh.”

Julian shrugged and sat down.  He held out his hand and Tyler gave him a pen.  He cracked his knuckles and pulled the first form off the top.  “Name,” it asked.  No problem.  He definitely knew that.

The first set of forms looked like a normal employment application, and then there came a bunch forms that talked about confidentiality and how his ass would get sued if he tried anything stupid.  Then there came what seemed to be a questionnaire in short answer format.  At first Julian thought it was a psychological analysis in disguise, but then the questions just started to get weird.  And a little personal.

“Um, Tyler?”

Tyler didn’t look up from his PSP game but said, “Yeah?”

“Are you sure I need to do these forms too?  I mean, I’m not here for an escort position.”

“I know.  But Rylan makes everyone fill out the same stuff.  Even the IT guys.”

“Oh, really?  Wow.  Okay.”

He started to fill out the bizarre questions as best he could.  Honestly, he didn’t know what some of the terms meant, so he just had to wing it.  In some cases he just had to leave it completely blank.  He was going to have to look some of this stuff up when he got home.  After a while his hand started to cramp.  He sat back in the chair and shook it out.  He felt like he was taking a marathon English test.  Well, an English test where the reading list had consisted only of trashy romance novels.  He glanced at his watch and his eyes nearly popped out of his head.  He’d been doing paperwork for almost two hours.  Just then Rylan came back into the room.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but…wait, are you still filling out paperwork?  Are you slow or something?”

“Hey!  You’re the one with all the endless, weirdo questions!”

Rylan made a face and snatched a paper off the desk.  He looked it over a second before turning on Tyler and waving it at him.

“Tyler, what the hell are you having him fill out?”

Tyler was sitting in a nearby office chair with his feet propped up on a desk.  He finally looked away from his game and gave a little half-shrug.

“I’m just curious to know what he’s into.”

His eyes flicked over to Julian, and he sat back a little from the look the escort was giving him.  It wasn’t hard to figure out what that look meant.  Tyler wanted to sleep with him.  No, that was too innocuous for the look he was giving him.  Even “have sex” or “screw” seemed too innocent.  Tyler wanted to fuck his brains out.  It was both flattering and unsettling.

Rylan was shuffling through all the forms on the desk and pulled out a couple.  He checked to make sure they were signed.

“Well, these are the important ones.  The non-disclosure ones.  Did you read these or just sign them?”

“I started to read them, and then sort of skimmed them.  But, I got the gist.  For sure.”

“Good.”  Rylan put his hands on the desk and leaned forward to put his face very close to Julian’s.  He wished he could back away from him.  He was scary.  “I offer a very personal service to very important, high profile people.  I have to be very careful that I don’t hire some idiot who can’t keep a secret.  Or even worse some idiot who thinks he can make a quick buck by trying something stupid like blackmailing someone.”

Julian shook his head.  At least he thought he did.  He might have been too petrified to actually move.  Rylan’s eyes promised all kinds of pain.  And not the good kind.

“I am so not that kind of idiot,” he breathed.

Rylan reacted to him.  It was almost a laugh, but he cut it off.  He stood up clearing his throat.  “I’m very glad to hear that.  Now let’s go.”

Julian hopped up and worked out some kinks as he followed Rylan to the door.  He looked back over his shoulder to wave goodbye to Tyler, just to be polite.  Tyler waved back and then returned to his game with a little smirk on his face.  He and Rylan started to head back toward the elevators.

“If you want to work here, you need to get used to men looking at you like that.”

“Like they’re going to kill me?”

“Not the way I was looking at you, the way Tyler was.”

“Ah.  I see.  So, how many of your employees want to sleep with you?”

Rylan looked at him as he pushed the elevator call button.  He didn’t appear upset though.  In fact, he seemed a little amused.  The doors opened and they stepped on.

“At least half,” Rylan said, pushing the number eighteen button.  “But there are definitely some who have no interest.  They only top.”

“Oh, so you could always be the top?  Maybe I could do it eventually.”

The doors opened and Rylan stepped off with a little snort.  “Being a top doesn’t preclude you from giving blow jobs or rimming.  Could you do that?”

Julian’s nose wrinkled.  “Um, probably not.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Rylan walked to the first door on their left and opened it.  Inside was what looked like a hotel room minus the bed.  It was clean and well decorated with a large couch in the middle of the room along with a matching chair.  “Okay, so there are three potential clients I want you to interview.”

Julian walked across the room and looked out the window.  There was a great view of downtown.

“Are you listening?”

Julian turned around.  “Yes.”

“There’s no set amount of time for how long the meetings should last.  So, go for as long as you need to in order to form an opinion.  The first one will probably like the make-up and jewelry, but you’ll have to take it off for the second one.  Change clothes too.  The third one is the one I’m kind of leery of.  Really pay attention to the questions he asks.  Like if he asks about your age or if you’ll dress up in certain outfits or if you shave your pubic region.”

Julian kind of laughed.  “You think he’ll ask something like that?”

“Maybe.  But you might need to draw it out of him.  I’m afraid he’s a bit of pedophile who wants to use my boys for a legal illegal fantasy.  His background checks out, but I have some reservations.  I’ll be back for that one.”

“Wait.  Back?  Where are you going?”

“I have some business to take care of.  Don’t worry.  You’ll be fine with the first two; they should be okay.  At least I think so.  That is your job to find that out after all.  Besides, would you be more or less nervous to know I was watching?”

He had a point.  “More nervous.”

“Exactly.  And…” Rylan walked to the end of the room and knocked on a mirror.  It produced a hollow thudding sound.  “This is a two way mirror.  Someone will be monitoring the meetings to make sure nothing fishy happens.”

Julian nodded and started cracking his knuckles.  What the hell had he gotten himself into?

“Two things,” Rylan said walking over to him.  “Well, three.  Don’t do that.”  He slapped Julian’s hand away and forced him to stop cracking his knuckles.  “They can say whatever they want to you.  Make suggestions, tell stories, be as vulgar as they like.  You’ll just have to deal with it.  However, they’ve been explicitly instructed not to touch you.  Some take it so literally they won’t even shake your hand, like they think it’s some kind of test.  But in general, they shouldn’t touch you.  Now if you get a hand on the knee or something, let it slide.  But if they do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable—and I mean even as a heterosexual male—tell them to stop.  If they don’t, help will come in.  But don’t worry,” Rylan said with a smile.  “We rarely have problems like that during the in person screening process.”  He slapped Julian on the shoulder.  “Our background checks are quite thorough.”

“O-okay.”

“All right then.  Get to it.  I’ll see you later.”

Rylan left the room and a very large, muscular black man waved from the door.

“Hi.  My name’s Dave.”

Julian cocked his head.  His voice was too high for that body.

“I’ll be watching from the next room.  Just let me know if you need my help.”

“Okay, thanks.  Um.  How should I let you know I need help?”

Dave shrugged.  “Scream or something.”

“Ah.”

“I’ll let reception know your first appointment can be shown up.”

Dave shut the door behind him and Julian took in a breath.  He started to pace nervously.  His heart was jumping around.

“Get a hold of yourself.  What are you nervous for?  What’s the big deal?  Some guy’s gonna come in here and talk to you.  No big deal.  Just figure out if he’s a sexual freak.  This should be fun.  You’re not in danger.  You’re not in trouble.”

Julian stopped pacing and glanced over at the two way mirror.  Could Dave hear as well as see?  He should probably stop talking to himself.  He took in a breath and sat on the couch.  He was fine.  Hadn’t he been waiting for this opportunity for two months?  He’d been waiting and waiting for Rylan to call him, and now he had.  How many people got to screen rich important people to figure out if they were too weird to be allowed access to high class call-boys?  Julian laughed softly.  It was actually pretty funny.  Now that he had found the humor in the situation, he wasn’t so nervous anymore.  Then someone knocked on the door.  Julian nearly choked on his heart.  Was he supposed to let him in?  Was he supposed to say he could come in?  He really couldn’t talk at the moment.

The door opened and a man entered.  At first Julian thought he was one of the Blue Boy employees.  He was wearing a suit and glasses and had a very serious expression on his face.  He was kind of attractive, but he was so sharp and severe that it was very off-putting.  The man closed the door and stood stiffly by it.  He straightened his jacket and wouldn’t look at Julian.  His nervous behavior let Julian know this was not someone who was comfortable being there.  It must be his first…client?  Was he allowed to call them that?  Seeing how anxious the man was put Julian at ease.  He would be the one in control of the situation.  He stood up and crossed the room.  He stuck his hand out and hoped his smile looked natural.

“Hi, I’m Julian.”

Now that the man had something familiar to latch onto, he straightened up and gave Julian a firm handshake.

“My name is Harris.  It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Uh, yeah.”  Julian bobbed his head.  “Do you want to sit down?”

“Yes, thank you.”

They moved to the couch and sat down.  Harris sat on the very end of the couch and tightened his tie.  It looked pretty tight already.  Julian sat on the middle cushion.  There was no reason to appear standoffish.  The man wasn’t looking at him again.  Neither of them was talking.  Was he supposed to start?  What was he supposed to ask?  Maybe he should have asked for a few more details before he started his job.  He opened his mouth, and then closed it.  What should he ask?  Pleasantries?  Or should he get right down to business?  Julian opened his mouth again, but started a little when Harris suddenly leaned forward and buried his hands in his face with a small moan.  Julian looked toward the mirror.  What should he do?  He looked back at Harris as the man mumbled something.

“Pardon?” Julian asked.

Harris sat up and leaned back on the couch.  He dropped his head back and let out a quiet, sad laugh.

“I’m gay,” he said.

Julian started to say something, and then stopped.  He was already supposed to know that, so there must be more.  He should wait and let him talk.

“But I can’t be.”

Julian settled into the couch and looked at the unhappy man.

“Why?”

“I just can’t.  My family…it’s just the way things are.  I hid it all my life.  And now I’m married.”

Julian raised his eyebrows but kept his comment to himself.

“The first few months weren’t so bad.  I like to…”  He blushed.  “I like to be on top.  So, it really wasn’t _so_ different.  But now…it’s getting to the point where I’m working late every night.  I’m making up ridiculous excuses.”  He laughed humorlessly.  “I actually told her I had a headache one night.  I’m afraid this is going to cause problems in our marriage.  I thought that if I had an outlet of some kind, I’d be able to perform my husbandly duties.  So, I need a discreet go between.  That’s why I came to Blue Boy.”

It must have been very hard for Harris to be able to admit this out loud.  However, since he said it so easily to Julian, he must have already told all this to someone else.  Julian didn’t really need to know the reason why the client needed Blue Boy.  Then he realized what exactly it was that his job entailed.

“I see,” Julian said.  “But this is all stuff you’ve already told Mr. Treviño.  That’s why you _need_ Blue Boy.  What is it you _want_?”

Harris finally looked directly at him.  Julian was leaning one arm on the back of the couch and holding his head up by resting his temple against his knuckles.  The position had been nice enough a second ago, but now he was feeling uncomfortable.  Harris was looking at him with a neutral expression, but his eyes were reflecting the same desire Tyler’s face had shown him earlier.  It was odd to be sitting on a couch with a complete stranger who was being rather open about his lust.  But then again, Julian _had_ asked him what he wanted.  Harris swallowed thickly and then licked his lips.  It wasn’t a sexual gesture; Julian could tell his mouth had gone dry with nervousness.

“I want…”

He went quiet.  Julian gave a subtle lift of his left eyebrow.  He waited expectantly for Harris to spit it out.

Harris sighed partially in embarrassment and partially in resignation.  “I want someone…bad.”

Julian held back his smile.  Now he knew why Rylan had said the make-up and jewelry would be good for the first interview.  He parted his lips just a little and used his tongue to play with his lip ring.  He stared at Harris and kind of enjoyed how intently the man was watching him.

“How bad?” Julian asked.

Harris’ breath caught in his throat and he sat up quickly, clearing his throat.  He crossed his legs to try to hide his erection.  He didn’t seem capable of answering the question because he was concentrating very hard on trying to get his body back under control.  Julian tapped his index finger on his lips and looked Harris over.

“It’s been a while, huh?”  Julian was a little surprised by the seduction in his voice.  But knowing that he could drive this man wild and there was nothing he could do to stop him or retaliate, kind of made him excited.  Maybe it was power he was hearing in his voice.  He didn’t know he had this dark side to him.  His mother would be so disappointed.

“Yes,” Harris said ashamedly.

“How long?”

“Three and a half years.”

Julian let out a low whistle.  “I guess you really do need it.”

Harris jumped off the couch and walked toward the door.  He had his hands on his waist underneath his suit jacket.  “I’m sorry.  I can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“Honestly?”  Harris turned just enough to look at him.  “You look like a child.”

“A _child_?” Julian asked incredulously.

“Well, not a child exactly.  Don’t get me wrong.  You’re big and handsome and…”  He laughed uneasily.  “Completely my type.  But I guess I want someone…experienced.  You just look…young.  Although,” he continued, mostly musing to himself.  “I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re inexperienced.”

“Don’t worry,” Julian said, cutting off his rambling.  “There is a wide variety of men who work here.  I’m sure we can find someone for you to punish.”  He sounded a little more disappointed than he meant to, but it was never pleasant to be rejected by someone even if you didn’t want them.  What he _had_ intended to do was use the word “punish.”  He was wondering what exactly it was Harris wanted to do with his “bad boy.”  It could be a problem.

“Huh?”  Harris allowed himself to laugh a little.  “Punish?  Oh, no.  Not like that.  When I say ‘bad,’ I just mean someone edgy.  Independent.  I like to calm him down…and take him.  You know, make him drop the tough guy act and enjoy being…loved, I guess.  To spread him—”

Harris stopped like someone had hit the off switch.  He looked up at Julian, flushed with embarrassment.  “I’m so sorry.  I should stop.  I shouldn’t say such things.”

“Especially in front of a child?”

“Ah, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” Julian said with a smile.  He stood up and put his hands in his pockets.  It was possible this guy was putting on an Oscar worthy performance, but Julian didn’t think so.  He wasn’t a bad guy.  He was just a closeted gay man trapped in a marriage who liked to bang arrogant, misunderstood troublemakers.  He was harmless really.  Tyler might actually be perfect to play the part of the troubled youth for him.  When he got better of course.  He wondered what was wrong with him anyway.

“I think Blue Boy will be able to help you out,” Julian said.  “Ultimately the decision is Mr. Treviño’s of course, but I’ll give you a good recommendation.”

Harris tilted his head a little.  “Recommendation?  I thought I was just supposed to tell you what I’m interested in so the company could find a suitable partner for me.”

 _Oh crap._ Apparently the clients didn’t know this was part of the screening process.

“Uh, yeah,” Julian said, ever the smooth operator.  “Well, I mean.  I’ll be able to recommend you to the ones who would best fit your…needs.”

Harris smiled.  He obviously knew what was going on.  “I see.  Well, I appreciate your time.”

“No problem.  Good luck with your wife.”

The man chuckled and Julian closed his eyes, feeling like an idiot.

“Thank you.”

He opened the door and Julian took a step forward.

“If you want,” he got the man’s attention, “while you’re banging her tonight, you can think of me.”

The expression beet red was not quite right, Julian always felt.  Beets had just a bit of purple to them.  They were kind of maroon in a way.  But however you chose to describe the color, Harris’ face looked like a beet.

“Um.”  He had a hand over his mouth.  He couldn’t speak.  He just spun around and walked out the door.  Julian laughed.  Closeted guys really were so much fun.  But when had he become so sadistic?  The door opened and Julian wondered if he’d pushed Harris too far and he’d come back to jump his bones.  It turned out to be someone he’d had never met before.  He was the stereotypical queer.  Skinny, dressed strangely, but somehow pulling it off, one arm up with a limp wrist, and a permanent expression on his face that seemed to be saying, “ _Honey_!”

“Hello, honey, I’m Lennox.  I’m the stylist around these parts.”

He even had a lisp.

“If you’ll follow me I’ll get you all cleaned up for your next appointment.”

“Okay.”

Julian started to follow him.

“Oh, my gosh, honey, I don’t know what you did to that poor man, but he was redder than a Versace model after snorting some bad blow.”

Julian smiled.  He wasn’t sure how red that was, but it must have been close to a beet.  They walked into a large room that was essentially being used as a giant closet.  Lennox laid out a pair of khakis and a button down dress shirt for him.  He picked up the pants with a grimace.  They were going to make him dress like Chris on a date with Karen.  Uck.

“Now you can put your pretty little bling right here on this tray and I’ll keep it nice and clean for you.  Hm.  Well, it could probably stand to be sterilized.  But you are fabulous.  It’s hard to find straight boys who know how to put on makeup.  Sadly, it has to come off.  I have here a Ponds makeup remover.  It gets everything out of the pores but it won’t dry your skin at all.  It’s a wonderful product.  But, honey, please, those boots?  Are we back in the mid nineties with our little _Party of Five_ vibe?  Here.  Let me go get some shoes for you.”

Lennox disappeared and Julian frowned as he began to change clothes.  He wondered what this second guy’s deal was that he couldn’t deal with someone in jeans.  He felt like a sheep in wolf’s clothing in the preppy outfit and he was not happy about having to smear all his careful work off his eyes.  He made a face as he looked in the mirror.  He looked disgusting.

“Come on, Lennox.  Let me put a little eyeliner back on.  I know how to do it really subtly.  He’ll never even notice.”

“No.  If he won’t even notice it then there’ no point.  Look, honey, I understand what it’s like to be caught without your makeup on.  It’s ghastly!  But, you have nothing to worry about.  You’ve got clear skin and gorgeous eyes.  Aah!”  He slapped Julian’s face away.  “Don’t look at me.  I’m liable to fall in love!  And I tell you what, I’ve fallen in love with straight guys before and it only leads to heartbreak and lawsuits.  _Trust me_.”

Julian rubbed his cheek and sat down to put on the shoes he’d been given.  Lennox was babbling away as he folded and arranged Julian’s belongings.  He only caught about half of what the crazy, over caffeinated man was talking about, but he could rarely understand what it meant.  Then he was led back to the meeting room and left to grouse to himself on the couch.  He hated wearing clothes like this.  He hadn’t even put on this stuff when his relatives had been in town.

There came a sharp rap at the door and Julian looked at himself in the two-way mirror.  He made a face.  He looked so ordinary.  Who would be interested in something so ordinary?  The door opened and the man who came in appeared to be someone who preferred something ordinary.  He didn’t look like he could handle much else.  He was so cookie cutter businessman that Julian had to wonder if people like him had ever been children.  That was his first thought.  His second was that he recognized the man.  But he didn’t know who he was.  He didn’t feel like he’d ever met him, but he was positive he recognized him.  A teacher he’d never had at Calverton?  A parent of one of his soccer teammates?  Most likely not since the man looked at him without the slightest hint of recognition.

Julian stood up and approached him.  He took a better look at him as he crossed the room.  While he was very conservatively and blandly dressed, it was an expensive, well-made suit.  He was an average-looking guy with short dirty blond hair and large brown eyes.  His sideburns were a little on the long side, but he was clean and well-groomed.  There was something about him, but Julian couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Hi, I’m Julian.”

“Hello, Julian, I’m John.”

They shook hands and it was perfectly executed.  It was strong, but not overbearing, and long enough for them to make eye contact, but not so long that it would creep someone out.  Julian waved toward the couch and followed behind John suspiciously.  Who could shake hands so perfectly like that?  And the way he sat on the couch.  If finishing schools still existed he’d obviously gone to one.  It was difficult to sit elegantly on a couch, but he was managing it.  He knew how to cross his legs but still appear masculine.  He had his hands folded on top of his knee.  Prim and proper were two good words to describe him.  So was dignified.

  Julian plopped onto the couch and the man was forced to partially uncross his legs and use his hands to steady himself on the bouncing cushions.  He recovered and returned to his pose.  Julian shrugged mentally.  They might as well get on with it.  But this time he needed to keep the screening part to himself.  He just needed to find out what his fantasy was and hopefully it wasn’t anything to do with the slight serial killer vibe he was giving off.

“So, John.”  The man turned politely toward him.  Julian quirked an eyebrow.  He was sitting so formally and yet he was being non-confrontational with his body language.  It was so familiar.  Who was this guy?  “What are you looking for?”

“Someone attractive with a nice body,” he stated plainly.

Julian strummed his fingers on the back of the couch.  “Everyone wants someone attractive with a nice body.  Unfortunately, not everyone can have that.  However, here at Blue Boy everyone is attractive with a nice body.  It’s a guarantee.”  He didn’t know that for sure, but if even the receptionist was good-looking the escorts must be.  “The question is once you have someone attractive with a nice body, what are you going to do?”

“Have sex with him.”

Julian mentally fell off the couch in exasperation.  In reality he just lightly nodded his head and rolled his lips in to keep from saying something that might be construed as rude.  What was wrong with this guy?  He was so _dry_.

“I get that,” Julian said, trying to be diplomatic.  “But you see, we have different kinds of bodies with different kinds of personalities with varying degrees of willingness to do…things.”

“Oh.  Am I a top or a bottom?”

“Well, that would help for starters.”

“I’m versatile.  I can do either.  I prefer not to top men bigger than myself and conversely I prefer not to be topped by men smaller than myself.  But in general it won’t much matter.  I rarely get in a mood when I specifically want one or the other.  I just do whatever would work best in any given situation.”

Julian stared at him.  What was going on?  No way had he practiced that speech before, so how was it that he was capable of making an unrehearsed speech sound rehearsed?  And how could he make it seem like he had answered the question without actually doing so?  He sounded like…a politician.  Then it dawned on him where he’d seen the man before.  Whenever the mayor of the city was on TV, he always had an entourage in the background.  Depending on where he was and what he was doing, the people would vary, except for one man.  This man.  He was always lurking around somewhere in the background.  He must be the mayor’s personal assistant.

John seemed to sense that something was up because Julian was hesitating in responding.  He cleared his throat and relaxed just the tiniest fraction.

“You see, I have a job where not only is not okay for me to have these desires, but it is very difficult for me to engage in such activities without calling attention to myself.  I need Blue Boy for security, not kink.  I just want to be able to enjoy sexual relations with a discreet man with relatively little fear of being caught.”

“I see.  So, you just want a white bread American male to toss the sheets around with.”

“Yes.  Of course, I don’t mean he has to be Caucasian.  We don’t discriminate based on race, religion, or gender.”

John glanced away and sort of laughed at himself for giving one of his practiced, generic answers.  Julian grinned at him.  He was funny.  It might actually be a good idea to give him someone a little wild.  He may not be here for kink, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use any.

“I think we can find someone just right for you,” Julian said.  “There may be a few more things Mr. Treviño would like to go over with you, but we’ll begin compiling a list of potential companions for you.”

John smiled to himself.  “Companions,” he mumbled with amusement.

They stood up and began to head toward the door.  John re-buttoned his suit coat and turned to shake Julian’s hand again.

“Thank you for meeting with me.”

Julian half shrugged.  “Sure.”

“Um.”  John dropped his eyes and smoothed his tie down with a hand.  Then he gathered his courage and looked back up making direct eye contact.  “If it’s not too bold of me—and hopefully I’m not out of line—may I request that you add your own name to that list?”

Julian was genuinely surprised by the question.  “Who, me?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound like he was flirting or something.

John nodded and smiled at him.  “Yes, you.”

“Oh.  Uh.  Well.  I’m not really available…for that sort of thing.”

“Ah, I see.  Apologies.  No offense was intended.”

He turned to open the door obviously thinking that Julian just wasn’t interested in him, which he wasn’t, but for different reasons.

“It’s not that…” Julian spoke before he could think about it.  “It’s not that I don’t want to be on your list, I’m just not…allowed.  I’m still in training.”  Why was he trying to make him feel better?  He’d get over it.  “They just don’t like to send out inexperienced employees.”

“Oh.  But, aren’t there some clients who might… _enjoy_ that kind of inexperience?”

“Well, you can teach someone to act inexperienced.”

“That’s true, I suppose.”

“But, hey, you know…”  Julian forced through the brakes his brain was trying to apply.  “It might be a while.  A _long_ while.  But if I ever get to the point where I can have sex with men, I’ll come see you.  If you’d still want me, of course.”

John reached up and placed two fingers gently under Julian’s chin.  He slightly raised his head.  “Looks like I’ll have to apply for the lifetime membership to make sure I’m still around when that happens.”

Julian was impressed.  That was pretty slick.  He obviously didn’t need Blue Boy because he couldn’t pick up guys.  John dropped his hand.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you.”

“It’s okay.  I won’t tell on you.”

John smiled.  “It was nice meeting you, Julian.”

He opened the door and left.  Julian leaned against it when it shut.  He heaved a little bemused sigh.  What a weird day.  Not only had he met three men who liked to have sex with other men, but they had all indicated that they would specifically like to do it with him.  Had he always been this attractive to men?  Did this mean he was just as attractive to women?  If that was the case, why was he still a virgin?  Lame.

Julian felt around for the knob and then stepped away to open the door.  He needed to head back to Lennox’s closet and change clothes.  He needed to get out of the khakis.  They were freaking him out.  Thankfully Lennox was elsewhere and he was able to change back into his own clothes and put his jewelry back on in peace.  He hadn’t taken his tongue ring out and he wondered if John had noticed it.  If not, would he change his mind about wanting him when he did?  So what?  It’s not like he was ever going to get to the place where he could have sex with men.  At least, he didn’t think so.  Well, he was going to have to do it with a woman before he even considered any alternatives.  It was just a prerequisite.

Julian shifted uncomfortably as he walked back toward the room.  His lower tattoo was starting to irritate him a bit.  He thought about leaving his jeans undone, but his shirt wasn’t long enough to hide it.  Dave was waiting for him by the door.

“Hey.  Rylan’s not back yet.”

“Oh, so should we wait?”

“Well, ordinarily I’d say yes, but this guy is being really insistent.  He says he’s got business to take care of and can’t wait around on us all day.”

“Business?  It’s a Saturday.”

“Yeah, well, the super wealthy never stop working.”

“Hmm.  Well, it would probably be bad to piss him off.  And you’ll be watching everything, right?”

“Yep.  I’ll be right next door.”

“Okay, well send him up.  I don’t think anything’s gonna happen.  And Rylan already told me what he wants to ask him, so I know what to do.”

“Okay.  I’ll call down to the waiting room.”

Julian headed into the room.  The first two hadn’t been bad at all.  Really, how bad could the third guy be?  Okay, so Rylan suspected him of being a pedophile, but if that was the case then he certainly wouldn’t have any interest in him, right?  After a few minutes someone marched straight into the room without knocking.  He was pushing sixty and sporting quite a bushy mustachio.  He was wearing a suit that was straining around his beer gut.  His coke bottle glasses hadn’t been updated since the mid 60’s and he was giving off the worst sketchiness vibe ever.  Julian’s first instinct was to send him away, but he should give him the benefit of the doubt.  The bad feeling might just be coming from his poor physical presentation.  He couldn’t judge someone by their looks alone.  He had been leery of Riley for a long time before finally realizing that he liked her.  And for a few years there Scott’s hair had driven him nuts.

The man sat on the couch, closer to Julian than he was comfortable with, and started rubbing his hands together.  The motion repulsed Julian; it reminded him of a fly.  And there was a weird gleam in his eyes.  He could see it even through the thick lenses of his glasses.  It was so icky.

“So…so I’m supposed to tell you what I want, right?” the man asked, a little spittle getting left behind on his lips.

Julian hoped he wasn’t making a face.  Apparently this guy wasn’t interested in introductions.  Julian shifted away from him and tried to make it look like he was just trying to get more comfortable.  He looked the man over again.  Ick.  He clenched his hands in his jeans and tried not to initiate eye contact.

“Uh, yeah.  Sure.  Go ahead.”

The man jumped right into his fantasy, explaining every little detail of what he wanted to do with his “boy.”  It made Julian so uncomfortable, and unfortunately it was his job to listen.  But the man was being so explicit and so vulgar.  He couldn’t imagine even a gay man being okay with some of the things he was suggesting.  It almost seemed like he didn’t necessarily want to do all these things, he just wanted to describe them to see his reaction.  Julian kept shrinking further and further back into the couch.  And if the words themselves weren’t bad enough his voice was kind of high-pitched and infused with a false sweetness that made everything all the more disturbing.  It just got to be too much to handle.  He’d let the man talk for over twenty minutes; he really didn’t need to know every single disgusting detail.  And even though Rylan had said they were allowed to talk all they wanted, he’d also said that if anything made him uncomfortable, he could make them stop.  And he had to do that now.  It was just getting to the point where he wasn’t describing sex anymore but the degradation and humiliation of another human being.

“Okay, okay,” Julian interrupted him.  He started to put out a hand to signal him to stop, but he didn’t want to put it any nearer to the man, so he put it back in his lap.  “I get the picture.  You can give the details to the one who you choose later.  But, in order to give you that choice, I need to know what kind of preferences you have.  Body type and physical appearance.  That sort of thing.”

Not that it mattered what he wanted because he would definitely not be recommending that this man be let near any of the escorts.  The stuff he wanted to do went beyond kinky.  He didn’t know for sure whether or not there was that big a freak working for Blue Boy, but he wasn’t going to encourage it.

“Well,” the man said, running his fingers over his mustachio, “I do prefer smaller, skinnier boys.  But you do have a cute face.  A baby face.”

Julian ran his tongue over a tooth in mild disgust.  He did _not_ have a baby face.  What was this guy getting at?

“How old are you, boy?  Mr. Treviño indicated that all his employees are of drinking age, but you are not twenty-one.  I can tell.”

Fabulous.  What did Rylan say about drawing answers out of him?  “How old do you think I am?”

The man leered and groped him with his eyes.  Julian repressed a shudder.

“Or rather, how old do you want me to be?”

“Well, that’s the key isn’t it?  Isn’t doesn’t matter how old you actually are; actions can be taken to make a boy to my liking.  I really don’t like body hair.  I’d like for my boy to be shaved everywhere.  Underarms, chest, arms, legs.”

Julian wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t.  “Does that include the pubic region?”

The man shifted a little closer, his eyes on Julian’s crotch.  “Are you smooth down there?”

The lust in his voice creeped him out more than the actual words.  And he was still leaning forward.  Julian slid around the arm of the couch and took a few steps away.  He couldn’t let himself be touched by him.  He was so vile he would probably taint him in some way.

“Um, you know, I think I know what you’re after.  So, I’ll just let Mr. Treviño know and he can handle the rest.”

The man had followed him off the couch and Julian backed toward the far end of the room.

“I’ve already spoken to Mr. Trevino.  At great length.  And filled out more paperwork and forked over more money than I’m sure this little visit is worth.  But, I guess he did the best he could.  So, it’s not someone who looks young, but actual youth.  That might be better.”

“Um, I think you misunderstood what this meeting is for.”

Julian had reached the far end of the room and ducked behind a large floor plant.  Maybe its leaves could protect him a bit.  Although now he was trapped in a corner.

“What’s there to understand?” the man asked.  He stood in front of him and his only escape would be to dive through the plant back toward the couch.  “I paid my money, so now I expect to have some services rendered.”

Julian had a sudden flash of confused anger.  Had Rylan set him up?  Had he promised this man something more than a meeting?  While those thoughts were going around in his head, the man lunged forward and pushed him up against the wall.  He was pretty strong for an old geezer.  He tried to kiss him, but Julian was easily able to block the movement and push him away.  He was stronger after all.

“Look, dude.  I believe you were told no touch—”

He had put out a hand to keep the man at bay, and it was that wrist that the man suddenly grabbed and used to yank him around.  He kicked the back of Julian’s knee and he collapsed involuntarily.  The man kept a hold of his wrist and twisted it behind his back, sending a jolt of pain up his arm.  Julian let out a small cry of pain.  It was in part due to the arm and in part because he was shoving that arm into his tattoo.  Then he pushed on the back of his head and his face got smashed into the wall.  He couldn’t talk and he couldn’t move his upper body and he couldn’t move his legs because the man had knelt on his calves.  The man leaned forward and started gnawing on his earlobe.  He tried to jerk away, but couldn’t really move.  The man began to run a hand up and down his torso, cruelly pinching a nipple before slipping his hand underneath his shirt.  Julian tried to twist away and call out for help, but he felt paralyzed.  The man had him under such perfect control, and he was scared.  Suddenly the hand on his stomach plunged down his pants and grabbed him.  Julian let out a guttural shout and used all the strength in his body to shake him off, but he was unable to.

“Enough of this act,” the man whined in his ear.  “Do your damn job!”

Julian could feel tears prick his eyes.  He couldn’t believe how helpless he was.  He couldn’t get away and the man’s hand was clammy and it was pulling painfully on him.  His only consolation was that he was definitely not responding to the man’s attempts to get him up.  What the hell was going on?  Where the hell was Dave?  Why wasn’t he helping him?  Julian felt two tears make their way out of his eyes and his next breath was a sob of wretched distress.

Suddenly the man was pulled away from him.  His calves stopped screaming in pain and his released arm brought relief to both his shoulder and back.  Julian turned around to see what had happened.  The man had been slung around to his knees and Rylan had a hold of him by the collar.  He looked down at Julian with an odd expression.  Julian couldn’t interpret it.  Then Rylan forced the man to his feet and shoved him toward Dave.  Dave got a firm hold on his arm.  Rylan didn’t offer a hand to Julian; he just turned toward the fuming man.

“Mr. Jarvis, I think we need to have a discussion in private.”

“Yes, we do!  What the hell is wrong with him?!”

Julian made a face at the man as he stood up wincing a little.  The man was wearing a gold bracelet and when he’d reached down Julian’s pants, it had bunched up the gauze over his tattoo and rubbed against the sensitive skin quite painfully.  Rylan glanced over at him, and then gave the man a dark look.

“But first, why don’t you have a little chat with my associate?”

“Is this how you treat your clients?!”

“You are not a client, Mr. Jarvis.”

“Rylan Treviño,” the man said, trying to sound intimidating, but his voice was too silly to pull it off.  “Do you know who I am?”

“Quite,” Rylan snapped.  “But I think it’s time you learned who I am.”

Dave and Julian shuddered at his tone.  It was possible Mr. Jarvis had wet himself just a little.

“Dave, escort him to a holding room.  Julian, come with me.”

Julian didn’t really want to.  He was scared of him at the moment.  But if his options were staying one second longer in the same room as Mr. Jarvis or following a man who could put the fear of God into an atheist to some unknown location…he was going for the latter.  He trotted after him and didn’t look back.  He wanted to forget that man’s face.  Rylan led him to the elevators and they got on.  He pulled out a key and inserted it into the panel.  He turned the key and pressed the button for the twentieth floor.  He had yet to look at him or speak to him.  Julian was starting to wonder if he was in trouble.  Probably.  Rylan would obviously be pissed that he’d lost a client.

The doors opened and Julian’s lips parted in surprise.  It wasn’t a hallway, it was a room.  A giant room that took up the entirety of the top floor.  There were a couple places walled off, but otherwise he could see all the way to the other end of the building.  It was about half a football field away.  The room was about the same width.  Rylan was heading off to a corner.  Julian followed him.  The space was decorated kind of like Rylan’s apartment.  He caught a glimpse of a desk over by a wall of windows.  Was this his office?  Talk about excessive.  Were all business owners like this, or just the…unique ones?  The corner Rylan was leading him toward was one of the walled sections, but it wasn’t completely closed.  There was a door-sized opening and inside the walls were a medium sized sitting room and a full-sized bar.  He wondered if Rylan kept a fulltime bartender employed.  He didn’t currently see anyone else in the room though.  Rylan stopped in the middle of the room and turned around to look at him with his hands on his waist.

“Take off your pants,” Rylan said.

Julian froze.  Say what?  That seemed like a good question.  “What?”

“He hurt you somehow, right?  Let me see.”

Julian relaxed.  “Oh.  No, not exactly.  It’s nothing.”

“How did that even happen anyway?” Rylan demanded.  Julian knew it; he was upset.  “I know he’s not stronger than you.  I thought you could handle yourself.”

Julian didn’t feel like being reprimanded.  And Rylan was making it sound like it was _his_ fault.  It made him a little angry too.

“I’m sorry, but weren’t you supposed to be watching that sketchy meeting?”

“You started before I got back.”

Touché.  “Yeah, well, where the hell was Dave?”

“When I came in he said he didn’t know what was going on because you were behind the plant.”

“And he didn’t think that was suspicious?”

“He said you were the one who led him back there.”

“Well…I guess, kinda sorta.  But it wasn’t like that!  I was—”

“Take your pants off.”

“Uh…”

Julian hesitated, so Rylan started to reach for him.  Julian backed up, using his hands to fend him off.

“Okay, back off.  I’ll do it.”

Julian let out a noisy, irritated breath and unzipped his jeans.  He carefully pulled them down a little and saw that the gauze had bunched up.  He peeled it back and looked at his tattoo.  His skin appeared to be okay.  The swelling from last night had actually gone down and it wasn’t red anymore.  It was just still smarting from having the metal bracelet scratch over it.

“How fresh is that?” Rylan asked.

“I got it last night.”

“Of course.  No other more cliché way to celebrate an 18th birthday than to get a tattoo.”

“Bite me.”

Rylan almost smiled.  “Hold on, I’ll get some alcohol for it just in case.”

“So,” Julian said, lightly tapping his finger on the tattoo.  “Mr. Jarvis…I recommend that he _not_ be allowed anywhere near any of your employees.”

“I agree with your recommendation.”  Julian looked up.  Rylan was walking back with a bottle of vodka.  “Sit down.”

Was he supposed to drink the alcohol?  Is that what he’d meant?  To make him feel better about the situation?  Julian sat down on a comfy leather couch and wondered if he’d be able to drink vodka straight up.  He was still a newbie to the whole drinking thing.  Rylan sat beside him and pulled a pristine white handkerchief out of his back pocket.  He uncapped the vodka and poured a little onto the cloth.  When he started to reach toward him, Julian put a hand to his wrist.

“I can do it myself.”

“Let go.”

Julian let go.  Rylan began to dab the tattoo with the dampened cloth and Julian clenched his jaw as it started to sting.  But he didn’t react otherwise, for which he was quite proud of himself.  Rylan was definitely like an alpha wolf.  He didn’t need to show any more weakness to him than necessary.

“I’m sorry, Julian.”

Julian did the audio version of a double take.  Had he heard him correctly?  He looked up from Rylan’s hand to his face.  He was leaning forward slightly and his eyes were looking at what he was doing, but they seemed unfocused.  He was speaking very softly.

“I try so hard to protect them.  I screen the clients and do background checks and set up a safe environment where they can meet.  But sometimes…there’s nothing I can do.  It’s rare, but sometimes things go too far.  Someone gets hurt.  And I can’t always keep them safe.  When it boils down to it, they’re just prostitutes.  And I’m just a pimp.  I can never do enough.”

Julian was hinging on a total freak out.  This was so unlike Rylan: the soft voice, concerned eyes, and compassionate expression.  It didn’t seem like it was a side of him that he showed many people.  Maybe he simply forgot Julian was there.  He was kind of absently rubbing the handkerchief now.

“Um, Rylan?”

Rylan snapped out of his trance and looked up.  “What?”

“The tattoo doesn’t go down that far.”

The both looked down at what Rylan’s hand was wrapped around.  He pulled his hand back.

“Oh, sorry.”

Julian laughed softly.  “Pervert.”

“Does that really come as a surprise?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Put that gauze back on it.  I don’t think I have any up here, but you can stop on the sixth floor and ask Tyler for some.”

“It’s okay.  I’m heading home.  I’ll change it there.”

“All right then.  Run along.”

Rylan got up and headed toward the bar.  Julian placed the gauze back over the tattoo and gingerly pulled up his pants.  He stood up and wondered if Rylan was going to ask him about the other two clients.  He’d put the vodka back up and had pulled out a bottle of scotch.  He poured himself about two fingers of the stuff and sat on a stool, taking a rather large sip and swallowing it down with no apparent discomfort.  He looked over at Julian and seemed surprised to find him still there.

“You can leave.  The elevator down works without a key.”

“Don’t you want to hear about the other two?”

“I videotape all the meetings.  I’ll watch them later and decide for myself.”

“But, I—”

“You really think I’m going to trust what some high school punk says?  There’s a reason your position is called a ‘test dummy.’  Now get gone.”

He was completely back to normal now with his signature scowl in place.  Julian was incensed.  He couldn’t even get a word out.  Rylan noticed his silent sputtering.

“I’ll call you if I have another job for you.”

“But—”

“Go on.  Scram.  I’ve got work I’ve got to take care of.”

“So, that’s it?”

“Yep.  That’s it.”

“Okay, fine.  So when do I get paid?”

“Every other Friday just like every other employee.  We do direct deposit only, so you better get your bank account information to us by the end of next week or you’ll miss your payment.”

“Wha—?!  And exactly how much is my pay?”

“16.75 an hour.  You worked about an hour and twenty minutes, but we’ll round up to an hour and a half.  After taxes I expect you’ll get about eighteen dollars.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!  After what I went through today?  And you have to include that two hours I spent filling out weird ass paperwork!  And I can’t believe how cheap you are!  16.75?!  No wonder the poor other guy switched over to being an escort!  You drive them into prostitution!”

Rylan just continued to sip his scotch through Julian’s tirade.  It made him angrier.

“It’s not fair!  I did three interviews today!”

“True.  But you’re the one who made them so short.  I told you there were no time constraints.  You could have made one last all day if you wanted to.”

“Well, I didn’t know I was getting paid hourly!”

“You should have read your contract more carefully.  It’s in there.”

Julian bit back his retort.  What argument was there to that?  Shit.  But what was he _really_ upset about?  It wasn’t because of the money.  He was upset that Rylan was dismissing him outright.  But knowing the abrasive man, he should have seen it coming.  And he shouldn’t take it personally.  But it was hard not to.

“Go, on.  Get out of my building, breeder.  I’ll call you when I need you.”

Julian stood infuriated, and then turned to leave.

“Oh, one thing before you go.”

Julian turned back.  Rylan was smiling at him over his drink.

“Zip your pants up, son.  It’s dangerous to walk around here with an open invitation like that.”

 

Will

 

Friday, November 11, 2005

 

The bunnies were screeching at him.  And they’d been so happy before.  Why were they screeching?  And why didn’t they sound like rabbits?  It sounded familiar, but that’s not what a screaming rabbit sounded like.  A screaming rabbit might actually be less annoying.  Ugh.  Why wouldn’t it stop?

Will jerked to his left and managed to get his groggy eyelids up to half-mast.  They slammed shut on him again, but he pulled his arm out from under his body and reached his hand out to feel around his nightstand.  He found his alarm clock and slapped his hand around until he found the snooze button.  The alarm went silent.  He sighed in exhausted relief.  He felt himself falling asleep again and forced his eyes open.  He glanced over at the clock: 5:59.  He’d slept through his alarm for a full fourteen minutes.  He was getting worse.  And it was probably because he was having trouble sleeping at night.  Correction: he was having trouble sleeping _alone_ at night.  Whenever his parents were out of town, he would stay at Ken’s.  His bed was as familiar to him as his own now.  And while he wasn’t a cuddler, he would always wake up in the morning in some kind of contact with Ken.  Sometimes it was just that his hand was touching him, or maybe his leg was stretched out over him, or sometimes he was completely sprawled on top of him.  No matter how he might be touching him, he knew that he was there.  And when he slept alone, he spent most of the night tossing and turning and reaching out for something that wasn’t there.

This week had been rather unpleasant.  Not only were his parents out of town, but so was Ken.  He wasn’t getting back until today.  So, he’d been forced to be alone all week.  He should have just stayed at Ken’s anyway and kept Joyce Greene company.  Or in truth, let her keep him company.  He’d never really minded being alone before.  Whenever his parents left, he’d felt fine.  Even if he didn’t get to see his friends during that time.  It wasn’t until he met Ken that he understood what it meant to be lonely.  It sucked.

Will forced himself out of bed and turned off his alarm so it wouldn’t start screaming again while he was in the shower.  He was going to have to go through his routine pretty fast this morning.  Usually if he was ten or more minutes late getting up in the morning he would just go about business as usual and skip breakfast.  But he’d run out of cash this week and had to either eat breakfast or make lunch himself.  He could miss one or the other, but not both.  That was the one very good thing about going to a school with uniforms; when you were in a rush you didn’t have to worry about thinking of what to wear.

Will slung his tie around his neck and picked up his blazer and messenger bag.  He left his room and started down the stairs, kind of dancing and humming as he went.  It was ridiculous.  He was in a good mood simply because he would get to see Ken today.  Is this what it was like to be one of those annoying people in love?  He hated people like himself.  He dropped his coat and bag off at the door and danced his way into the kitchen.  It was still dark outside so the only light in the room was the weak light above the stove.  It cast strange shadows over the person standing underneath it.  Will yelped in surprise.  It was almost like he’d seen himself twenty years in the future.  His father smiled at him, not surprised by his entrance or outburst at all.  Maybe he’d heard him coming with all the singing and dancing.  That was an embarrassing thought.

“Morning,” his father said, stirring something in a frying pan.

“Um, yeah.  Why are you here?”

“Um, I live here,” he imitated him.

“But you’re not due in until Sunday.  I’m supposed to pick you up.”

“Yeah, we finished early and I don’t really like Detroit, so I caught an earlier flight home.  Do you have time for breakfast?”

Will glanced at his wristwatch.  “I’ve got about fifteen minutes.”

“Excellent.  Have a seat.”

Will sat down and sniffed the air.  He didn’t smell anything too funky.  His dad was a really good cook, unless he decided to experiment.

“Why didn’t you call me?  I would have come to get you.”

“Oh, we didn’t land until after one in the morning,” he said, dumping the contents of the pan onto two plates.  Then he started to pour a red sauce over it.  “I figured you were asleep already since you get up so early.”

“Oh, yeah, I was.”

His father carried the two plates over to the table and put one in front of him.  Will looked at the red mess and raised an eyebrow.  His father went to the silverware drawer.

“Besides, you probably wouldn’t have heard the phone ring anyway.”

Will smiled.  “Probably not.”

“I worry about you,” his father said as he handed him a fork and then walked to the refrigerator.  “Do you hear fire alarms?”  He pulled out the grapefruit juice and went in search of clean cups.  Will hadn’t run the dish washer all week.  He used his fork to nudge the item on his plate.  Thankfully, it didn’t move.

“Well, I haven’t heard any yet, but maybe that’s just because none have ever gone off.”

“Hmm,” his father made a disapproving noise and set down two glasses of grapefruit juice.  He joined Will at the table and took a bite of his creation.  Will watched him carefully for his reaction.  He was actually very good at masking his disgust so that his wife and son would have to always try at least one bite.

“What is this?” Will asked.

“An English muffin, eggs, Canadian bacon.  It’s like a Mexican version of Eggs Benedict.”

“Unh-huh.  So, what makes it Mexican is the red stuff.  What is it?”

“Ranchero sauce.”

“Does it taste like ranch?”

“No.”

Will made a face.  “It looks gross.”

“Just try it.”

Will cut out a small piece and put it into his mouth.  He chewed quickly and swallowed.  Then he wished he’d taken his time; it was good.  His father twisted his fork in his fingers and watched him.

“Do you like it?”  Will took a sip of his grapefruit juice.  “I’ll take your sullen silence to mean yes.  You know, you’re old enough now to admit when you’re wrong.”  Will just scowled and ate his breakfast.  “So, what’s going on in your life these days?  And don’t tell me I’ve never been involved in your life before so why start now.  I’m your father and I can ask about you anytime I like.”

Will let out a half-laugh.

“What’s that for?”

“Well, sometimes you seem more like my mom’s gigolo.”

It wasn’t very funny, and he didn’t really mean to make a joke.  His father wasn’t laughing either.  The man used his fork to push his food around on his plate.

“Sorry,” he said softly.

“No, Dad, it’s not you.  It’s just because you’re young.”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m young or old; I should still feel like your father.”

Will talked with his mouth full as he ate.  “You do, Dad.  You’re my father.  You set rules for me to follow.  They may be few in number and not very stringent, but you are an authority figure.  You support me financially and I know how much you take care of me.  I mean, shoot.  I even have memories of playing soccer with you in the backyard.  It’s the reason I got so into it.  Soccer was something you liked, so I thought if I did well at it, you would take an interest in me.  I did that because you’re my dad and I wanted your attention.  I still want your attention in some ways.  So, that feels like a father to me.  You know, I remember when I used to idolize you just because you’re my dad.”

“Used to?”

“Well, I’m seventeen.  I’m not supposed to like either of you right now, right?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly.  He still hadn’t eaten his breakfast yet.  Will had cleaned his plate.

“It was good, Dad.  I’m gonna go brush my teeth.”

“Okay.  I’ll take care of the dishes.”

“Thanks.”

Will left the table and ran upstairs.  He tried to shake off the eerie feeling their conversation had induced in him.  He’d never felt awkward around his parents before.  They would exchange information when necessary, but they never just… _talked_.  And strangely enough he talked more with his mother than his father even though his father was at home more.  He watched the toothpaste form a white foam in his mouth as he scrubbed his teeth hard.  He didn’t have a close relationship with either of his parents, he knew that, but why were he and his father so much more distant?  Maybe he had been gay all along and his slight preference for his mother was how his “obsession” with her manifested.  Nah.  Will spit and rinsed and headed back downstairs.  He could walk out the door now, but should he say goodbye to his father?  Or should he just call out goodbye?  What did normal people do?  He decided things had been awkward enough between them, so he just shouted from the door, “Bye, Dad!”

“Wait, come here,” his father called out from the kitchen.

Will was surprised.  His parents didn’t give him commands.  He figured he might as well follow this one request.    The bus was usually late in the mornings anyway.  He left his bag at the door and walked into the kitchen.  He poked his head inside and saw that his father was still sitting at the table.  He hadn’t gotten up to take care of the dishes.

“Did you need something?”

“Come here.”

If they had been in a cartoon there would be question marks dancing over his head, but he obeyed his father.  When had he become so obedient?  He blamed Ken.  As soon as he was in reaching distance, his father grabbed a hold of him and pulled him into his lap.  Will squawked in alarm and was so surprised he didn’t think to struggle.  His father wrapped his arms all the way around him and put his face to the side of his head.  Will sat stiff as a board, beyond weirded out.

“Dad.  What are you doing?”

His father hugged him tighter.  Now he was feeling worried.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“Your mother has been in New York so much, and I’ve been so busy I couldn’t even fly out to see her.  I haven’t seen her in over a month.”  His father turned his head slightly, nuzzling his nose in Will’s hair.  “I miss her.”

Will finally relaxed, partially out of irritation.  “So you’re using your _son_ as a replacement for your _wife_?  That’s sick, Dad.”

He laughed.  “I know.”

Will fully relaxed against him, slumping down in his father’s lap until he could rest his head on his shoulder.  He picked up one of his father’s hands and began to play with his fingers.  Like him, his father wasn’t a big man, but his hands seemed so big and strong compared to his.  Maybe somewhere deep down he stilled idolized him a little bit.  But that didn’t make their current positions any less weird.  He wouldn’t sit with his mother like this and he never really had with either of his parents when he was a child.  So, why did it feel good now?  Because he was used to snuggling with grown men?  No, he wouldn’t do this with anyone other than Ken or his dad.  And the feeling he got from the two of them was different.  Thank God.  Will thought about how he’d felt after Julian’s parents had died.  He’d felt, or at least thought he’d felt, that he couldn’t care less if his own parents died.  But…

He didn’t do this sort of thing with his father.  He hadn’t in the past and he probably never would again in the future.  But if something happened to his father and he no longer had the option, he would be sad.  Will turned his face into his father and wrapped his arms around his neck.  He would be devastated.  His father returned his hug.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding so much like a father.

“Nothing.  I’m happy.  I’m really, _really_ happy.”

“But what is it?  There’s something.”

Will inhaled deeply.  He needed to tell someone.  All the anxiety and secretiveness and even the joy were weighing on him.  He needed to tell someone, but of course, he had to tell it slant.

“I’m dating someone.”  No reaction so far.  “And I’m—I’m like, in love.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re getting married.”

“Heh.  No.  Definitely not.”

“Oh, no.  Don’t tell me I’m going to be a grandfather before I turn—”

Will sat up.  “Dad!  Seriously!  How come every time someone my age says they’re in love adults always assume that means someone’s pregnant?!”

“Okay, sorry.  My mistake.  So, you’re happy you’re in love.  What’s the problem?”

Will settled back down onto his shoulder.  “Um.  Well.  It’s someone I don’t think you and mom would approve of.”

“Don’t you think your mother and I are very open-minded people?  I’m sure it won’t matter to us who she is as long as she makes you happy.  Well, unless she’s an airhead or something.  It wouldn’t really bother me, but I don’t think your mother could abide a dumb blonde.”

Will smiled.  “No worries there.  But, it’s not like it’s just you two.  It’s like…society…might not like it so much.”

Will looked up, though from his position he couldn’t see his father’s face.  Was that too much of a hint?

“Well, of all the things society doesn’t approve of, there’s only one thing I can think of that might give you pause.”

His panic grew.  His father was a very smart and intuitive man.  What had he done?  He’d just meant to lighten the burden, not lay it all out for everyone to see.

“You must be dating an older woman.  A _much_ older woman.”

“Uh…”  He was right on one count.

“I guess you have to know I have no problem with younger men being interested in older women.  You probably got it from me anyway.”

They both laughed.  Then Will had a thought.  The only thing his father thought would make him uncomfortable would be an older woman.  So, did that mean he thought Will would be totally fine with dating a guy?  Or did he just not even think to go there?

“Well, don’t worry about age so much,” his father said in as close to a lecturing voice as he’d ever heard from him.  “It doesn’t really matter.  However, your interests do.  Even if the sex is great, if you don’t share any interests at all outside of the bedroom, it won’t work.  And a lot of the time age differences result in significantly different personal interests.”

Will took that in.  That was a very good point.  Did he and Ken have any common interests?  They did enjoy their time together.  Even before they’d started having sex, they’d been able to keep each other entertained.  Or had it only been one way?  Had Ken just been tolerating him?  That didn’t seem likely, but maybe he should talk to him about it.  They were still in the honeymoon phase, but it was never too early to start worrying about the long haul kind of stuff.  It was really good advice.  His dad was so smart.  But like hell he was going to say that out loud.

“Of course,” his father said suddenly, “I am your father so I’m going to pretend that this conversation never happened.  Bring it up again when you’re eighteen.”

Will laughed.  “Okay.”  He glanced down at his watch.  “Ah, crap.  I gotta go.”

“Do you need a ride?”

“No, I should still be able to catch the bus if I run.”

He sat up and his dad kissed him on the temple.

“Uck!  Gross!”  Will jumped out of his grasp.  “Now I remember!  I blocked it!  You _did_ hug me when I was little—trap me more like it—and gave me those gross, slobbery, ticklish bear kisses!”

“Oh, that’s right.  I remember that too.  You were so cute.   You would always squeak like a mouse and run for your mother.”

His father smiled at him.  Will got a sinking feeling in his stomach.  He turned on the ball of his foot and sprinted for the door just as his father launched himself out of the chair.  Will didn’t make it two steps.

“No!  No!  Stop!  Ahhh!  Don’t!  Noooooo!  Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

 

Will could feel the scowl furrowing his brow.  He’d been scowling so much his face had started hurting a long time ago.  And it was all that stupid man’s fault.  Why did he all of sudden decide he wanted to be a dad?  And give him one of those nasty kisses—and he used the term loosely—on the back of his neck?  Will glowered even darker.  And make him squeal like a girl?  It had been terrible.

“Dude!  You’re doing it again!  I finally got you to stop scowling and you started again.”

Scott was looking very displeased with him.  Will took in a breath and forced his face to relax.  The incident had occurred hours earlier, but the horror was still fresh in his mind.  The three of them were huddled together at the entrance to the metro trying to fend off the wind that had picked up quite a bit since morning.

“Yeah,” Chris agreed.  “I would have thought soccer practice would have made you feel better.”

“No, that made it worse!  We had tryouts today and the ones from the JV team suck even more than the ones from the year before.  There was this _eighth grader_ who’s pretty good.  It’s the kind of thing where at a normal school he’d be put on JV and watched carefully until he was ready for varsity.  But he’s probably going to wind up as a first stringer on varsity.  That’s how much our team sucks.”

“Poor Will,” Scott said, patting his head twice.

He was in a bad enough mood that he might have snapped his arm off, but it was too cold to take his hands out of his pockets.  He turned to Chris instead.

“So, what did you do after school today?”

“Nothing!”

Will and Scott exchanged looks.  “Um…okay.  How about you, Scott?  How’s the Academic Team?”

“Oh, it’s just great.  Every week it’s the same thing. ‘So, have you asked your friend, Will, about joining yet?’  Dammit, I’m on the freaking team.  And I’m totally smart.”

“You know, you _haven’t_ asked me about joining the team.”

“I don’t _want_ you on the team.”

“Ah.  Are you currently the smartest one on the team?”

“No, third.”

Will laughed.  “So, then what would it matter if I joined?  You’d be fourth.”

“Right, I’d drop out of the top three.  That’s off the podium.  Fourth place sucks almost as much as second place.”

Will and Chris both laughed at him.

“How are you even third?” Chris asked.  “There must be a lot of people who haven’t joined the team.”

They laughed some more and Scott yelled at them to shut-up.  Then Julian called to them as he emerged from the metro entrance.  They shuffled over to him and Will couldn’t believe he was running around without a jacket on.  His mother never would have let him out of the house like that.  He’d promised he would take care of himself.  And now on top of that, he wanted to get a tattoo.  But, this really couldn’t be construed as acting out.  Will had little doubt that if his parents had still been alive he would have gotten a tattoo on his eighteenth birthday anyway.  What would be most telling about his state of mind would be his choice of design.  He seemed okay at the moment; he was almost skipping he was so giddy.  And that seemed a little overkill just for getting a tattoo.  What had he done all day?  Something had happened to him.

“What are you so excited for?” Will asked, glancing around as the townhouses around them started to have bars on their lower windows.

“I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for a while.  I’m just excited about it.”

“No, there’s something else.”

“Well, I’m nervous,” Scott said, saving Julian from having to acknowledge Will’s prying.

“I’m the one who’s getting it.”

“So?”

The tattoo parlor was pretty standard issue: neon signs and a dark interior.  The girl sitting at the counter was what one would expect of someone who works in a tattoo parlor.  But even with all the tattoos and piercings, she was quite pretty.  She smiled at Julian, and then scoffed a little at Chris and Scott.  It looked like she wanted to scoff at him too, but she couldn’t help but flick her eyes up and down and give him an involuntary smile.  He smiled back and hers widened.  He loved how he was every girl’s fantasy whether he was her type or not.  And she was funny too.  Though poor Scott was a little slow on the uptake.  Will stepped up to the counter and leaned on it.  She leaned forward too, bringing them closer together and giving him a clear view down her tank top.  She was small, but she wasn’t wearing a bra.  Nice.  He heard Julian talking with some other guy, so he might as well keep himself entertained until it was time to go back.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“So, how far down does that stem go?”

The girl had a rose tattooed on the side of her neck and the thorny stem trailed down her neck, over her clavicle, down her chest, between her breasts, and disappeared somewhere he couldn’t quite see.  She gave him a flirty smile.

“All the way to the grass of course.  How else would it grow?”

Will let out a silent “ooo” at the image that brought to his active imagination.  “Does your boyfriend have a watering can tattooed on his penis?”  She laughed.  “Because I would totally be willing to go through that for you.”

“Oh, yeah?  You don’t strike me as the type who can handle much pain.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Will said, his eyes looking away.  He’d actually learned to tolerate pain quite well being with Ken.

“Hey you,” the bald man said.  Will looked over at him.  “You want to come back with your friends?”

“Yeah.”  He turned back to the girl.  “May I ask your name?”

She smiled, biting her lip a little, and pointed toward the man.  He looked over and the large man flexed his arm.  His bicep bulged, revealing a delicate trail of bright green ivy that read: Ivy.  Will laughed nervously.  He stood up straight to put a little distance between him and the store owner’s girlfriend.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Ivy.”

“Uh-huh.”

Will got at the end of the line to follow his friends through the black curtain.  He hadn’t really done anything to be concerned about, but all the same it would probably be best to keep some distance between him and the man with the giant biceps.  He was relieved to find that the back room wasn’t just a chair and a needle.  There was a table covered with a disposable blue cloth with sealed sterile needles and instruments.  On a counter there were a box of latex gloves, alcohol swabs, gauze, and other reassuring materials.  No matter how excited Julian was, if he’d felt uncomfortable with the place he would have gotten the other two to help him drag him bodily out of the shop.  He was a little suspicious of Skizzle, but he seemed like a professional.  Well, at least until he started to salivate over the prospect of giving Julian his very first tattoo.

The three of them huddled together, leaning forward slightly, trying to see what was going on.  It was kind of strange to watch.  Skizzle was drawing on Julian’s skin, and it looked just like marker or something…but this was never coming off.  Ever.  And it was a strange choice.  The blue septagram of his, well, his parents’ religion.  And the Horned God’s symbol too.  It was true that symbols had meaning even if you didn’t believe them, but to have them tattooed onto your body?  There was something else at work here.  Maybe it was just a tribute to his parents.  Hopefully there wasn’t any deeper meaning to it, but he couldn’t be sure.  He’d been preoccupied with Ken a lot lately.  He didn’t feel he’d neglected Julian at all, but maybe they weren’t being as open with each other as they used to be.  It was possible Julian sensed that he was hiding something and therefore couldn’t completely trust him anymore.  He was going to have to convince Julian that he was still 100% there for him.

Maybe he should tell him about Ken.  He wouldn’t judge him.  But he might get really pissed to learn that after all his protesting and rejecting Julian’s advances that he’d given in to a man after all.  But it wasn’t his fault!  He could explain the circumstances.  But they were such embarrassing circumstances.  And what if Julian insisted he go to the police?  He didn’t truly believe that he would, but protecting Ken was the most important thing to him.  It was a risk he wouldn’t take.

He heard Scott gag a little and glanced over at him with a smile.  His color was a little off.  Hopefully he’d be able to hold it back.  He looked back at Julian.  The design was really starting to take shape.  He’d freaked out for a moment when Julian had cried out in pain.  He’d wanted to attack Skizzle for hurting him, but managed to keep his feet rooted to the ground.  Once Julian got used to the needles going over the bone, he seemed to be able to handle it better, but he winced every time Julian did.  He’d told Ivy he’d be able to handle the pain, but would he?  Could he get a tattoo?  And what would it be of?

Then he had to wonder if it would bother Ken considering what one of his favorite activities was.  Ken liked to do a lot of embarrassing stuff—which he didn’t know why he had been so surprised to find out how dirty he was—but it wasn’t the kinky stuff that made him uncomfortable.  Ken liked to make him strip down to nothing and lay down on the bed.  Whether it was on his stomach or his back depended on Ken’s mood.  And then he would just look at him, lightly trailing his fingertips over his skin, up and down his body.  Would he think a tattoo would be marring his skin, and then he wouldn’t want to look at him anymore?  He didn’t want that.  Even though the activity embarrassed him and he always had to keep his eyes closed, he liked it.  He didn’t want to do anything that would make Ken look away from him.  But maybe if he got a green tattoo…

Despite taking forty-five minutes to complete the septagram, Will’s feet didn’t hurt from standing and he wasn’t bored at all.  He’d been transfixed, watching Julian’s skin be transformed.  It was such a strange phenomenon for some reason.  He’d seen a lot of people with tattoos before and never thought much about it, but it was different seeing it done to someone he knew so well.  He knew what Julian’s back looked like.  He’d seen it a lot over the past twelve years or so.  And now it was permanently changed.  He was still kind of shell shocked, so he wasn’t able to give him much of a compliment.  He’d have to explain his experience to him later.

Then Julian dropped a bombshell.  He wanted his second tattoo in a very private area.  Was he serious?  Apparently so since he just took his pants and underwear off right in front of all of them.  Julian was often normal enough that sometimes it was easy to forget that he had been brought up to be very comfortable with nudity.  The revelation had been a shock to his little twelve year old self when he’d been so proud that he’d gotten a hold of his first porno magazine and Julian had announced that he’d seen naked women in the flesh all his life.  A lot of Wiccan rituals were performed “sky clad.”  He’d heard the term before, but didn’t understand what it meant until that day.  In Julian’s version of church, people ran around naked in the woods.  He’d wondered that if his parents had known that they wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss religion.

As Julian situated himself on the towel Jim had provided him, Scott leaned close to Will.

“Hey, can I ask you a dumb question?” he asked very quietly.

“Are any of the questions you ask ever not dumb?”

“Tch.  So, um, am I abnormal, or does Julian not have a lot of hair?  Down there.”

“He probably shaved because he knew he was going to get the tattoo there.”

“Oh, right.”

He leaned away from him and whispered to Chris.  Will couldn’t hear what he asked, but he was sure it was dumber than the first question.  He watched with morbid fascination as Julian let Skizzle down there with a straight razor.  He was a much more trusting soul than he.  When Skizzle started actually working on the tattoo, he could tell from Julian’s expressions that this one was much more painful.  He could also tell he was trying his best not to squirm.  Will bent forward just a little to get a better look.

“Do you do that spot often?” Will asked Skizzle.

“Actually, tattooing the penis is more common than a solitary design at the base.”

“Oh, really.  So…how do you do that exactly?”

“I’ll talk you through it, but only if I’m doing it to you.”

“Ah.  Well, I suppose it can remain a mystery for now.”

Skizzle smiled.  He’d hadn’t taken his eyes off his work the entire time.  Will looked at Julian again.  He was clenching the armrests pretty tightly.  He wanted to catch his eye and make a face at him, but he was concentrating too hard.  When at last he did look up, he pointed to something.  Will turned to his right, guessing that was about where Julian was pointing.  He saw Scott.  He’d gone nearly as white as his hair.  Will turned in order to steady him, but this was completely different from the time at the grave.  He didn’t just get dizzy, he fainted dead away.  Will moved to get under him, but he wasn’t prepared for a complete dead weight.  He collapsed under Scott and they fell to the floor.  He did his best to protect Scott’s head, though he couldn’t imagine much being able to damage his thick head.  Or was it hollow?  Maybe he should have let it hit the floor to see if it thudded dully or had a nice ring to it.  Chris had been useless.  He was still standing up and holding onto Scott’s wrist, but he hadn’t taken any of his weight.

Will moved one shoulder in order to nudge Scott’s head a little.  “Scott?”  He was still out cold.

“There’s a couch out front,” the store owner said.

“Thanks,” Will grunted as he tried to get to his feet.

“We’ll take care of him,” Chris said, picking up his legs under the knees.

Will got a hold of him under the armpits.  This was so embarrassing.  What was Ivy going to think once they made it through the black curtain?  Will shuffled backwards and adjusted his grip as they walked.

“He’s not that heavy,” Chris said, more like an observation than a comment on Will’s struggling.

“That’s easy for you to say.  You didn’t get the heavy end.”

They waddled toward the couch and Ivy looked up from a magazine.  She tried to hold back her laugh.

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Will said.

“He still hasn’t woken up,” Chris said tightly.

“I know,” Will said, trying not to let his own worry show.

Will sat down at the end of the couch and Chris laid Scott’s legs out.  They took his jacket and tie off and Will put his head in his lap.  Then he put his hand to his forehead.  He felt warm and clammy, but a little color had returned to his face.  He brushed his hand back through his hair a couple times and then lightly patted his cheek.  Scott moaned softly and turned his head a little.

“Scott?  Can you hear me?”

He groaned again and his eyelids fluttered opened.  He stared at Will a little blankly, and then he closed his eyes and put his hand to his head.

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

“Oh, God.  That’s embarrassing.”

“Yeah, it is,” Chris said.

“Geh.”

“You okay?” Will asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Can you sit up?”

“I can try.”

Will helped him sit up slowly and he managed to stay upright.  He slumped down into the couch and rested his head on the back.  He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Then he glanced at Chris and Will.

“Sorry,” he said embarrassedly.

“It’s okay,” Will said.  “It was a little squicky.”

“Yeah, but…I can’t believe I fainted.  I mean, I was out, right?  Because we’re not in the back anymore and I don’t remember walking here.”

“Yeah, you were completely out,” Chris said.  “You fell on top of Will and you both hit the floor.”

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s Chris’ fault.  He had a hold of your wrist, but he didn’t do anything to keep you from falling.”

“His feet went out from underneath him.  There was nothing I could do!”

“Did you guys carry me out here?”

“Yep.”

“Ugh.”

“But don’t worry,” Will said.  “It wasn’t like a princess carry.  It was like a downed athlete kind of carry.”  He patted his knee.  “Your dignity is still intact.”

“Yeah.  I’m thinking not so much.”

Will and Chris laughed gently.  They didn’t want to make him feel worse.  Ivy brought him a soda.  “Just in case it was his blood sugar or something,” she said.  They talked absently about meaningless topics until Julian came out.  He ruffled Scott’s hair.

“Are you feeling better?”

“A lot better.  Sorry for…well.  You know.”

 “Don’t worry about it.  It happens.”

Scott stood up slowly and smiled apologetically at him.  Julian smiled and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close.  They walked toward the counter together and Julian must have said something to get him to stop thinking about it because Scott bristled up like a cornered cat.  Whatever it was put him in a sulky mood and he waited at the door while Will and Chris watched Julian pay the bill.  After realizing that Julian’s birthday jaunt set him back $150, he reconsidered his green tattoo.

“Well, happy birthday to you,” Will said.

“I know.  So, what did you guys get me?”

Will looked at Chris and warned him silently not to spoil it.  Julian seemed to notice something was up, but there was no way he could know what exactly.  After they left the tattoo shop, they all decided to go hang out at Julian’s for the night.  Will was perfectly willing and excited to go, but he couldn’t help but have a fleeting moment of self-pity.  He would have to wait until tomorrow to see Ken.  He hadn’t seen him in six days, but one more wouldn’t hurt.

At Julian’s house they reverted back to junior high maturity.  Every burp, fart, and reference to the female anatomy resulted in unparalleled hilarity.  Will couldn’t believe how good it felt to act stupid and spend a full two hours discussing the intricacies of video game plotlines.  Maybe he had grown up too fast, or maybe he was trying too hard to be grown up lately, but apparently all it took was one night with his friends and no adult supervision to negate all that.  Will also felt that all four of them needed it.  Things used to be so simple.  When did their lives become so complicated and serious?  Of course tonight, serious was gagged and tied up in the closet.

He’d been feeling pretty tired all day, but their playing and activities kept him awake and going.  It didn’t become a problem until they settled down in the fort they’d made in the den.  He was starting to feel way too comfortable on the thick down duvet he’d pulled off one of the beds upstairs.  He tried to stay focused on the conversation, but he kept slipping further and further into the welcoming bliss of oblivion.  He stayed aware of some of the conversation after his eyelids betrayed him, but soon he realized the conversation was being carried on by the bunnies.  He’d completely fallen asleep.

 

Saturday, November 12, 2005

 

Will woke up feeling refreshed and well-rested.  It was the best night of sleep he’d had in a week.  Hopefully it wasn’t because he’d been spooned by Scott all night.  He was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen asleep like that, so how had they wound up curled around each other?  He glanced around.  Both Chris and Julian were gone.  Had they put them together like this?  Maybe.  He rolled toward his back, forcing Scott to roll over too.  He grunted and let go, flopping onto his back.  Will turned more until he was on his side facing his friend, and then he nudged his shoulder.

“Hey.”

“Nn.”

“You know what time it is?”

Scott groped blindly above his head until he found his watch.  He handed it to Will.  It was almost eleven o’clock.

“I think I’m gonna head out.”

“Okay.”

It seemed like it should have been left at that, but somehow he got roped into one of the weirdest and most awkward conversations of his life.  After that ordeal, he went upstairs to shower.  He’d spent so much time at Julian’s over the summer, and even during the school year, that he kept a few toiletries at his house.  He’d noticed toward the end of the summer the other two had joined him in slowly making their permanent presence felt.  There were four toothbrushes in the toothbrush holder.  The real question was which one was his?  He guessed as best he could and brushed his teeth in the shower.  Scott absolutely hated that he did that, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Once he was feeling clean and detoxed from all the pizza and cake and soda he’d ingested last night, he headed back downstairs into the kitchen.  He remembered hearing something about Greek food somewhere.  As he searched for it, he knew he shouldn’t.  Soccer season had started up and he needed to keep in shape.  Last night had been terrible.  He’d broken his no dairy or high fructose corn syrup rule.  He couldn’t eat the Greek food today, no matter how good it may be.  He needed to get back on track.  Some people swore off certain food items for lent, he swore them off for soccer season.  He cut up an apple, a banana, and an orange instead.  It wasn’t really shocking that Julian had that much fruit in the house, but it was a pleasant surprise to find that it hadn’t all gone bad yet.

He patted Cornelius on the head on the way out the door and yelled goodbye to Scott.  He didn’t get a response.  Once he was outside he headed for the bus stop.  He could jog the four miles to the metro station, but he was wearing his uniform.  He didn’t keep spare clothes at Julian’s.  Maybe he should start.  He wasn’t wearing his tie, but he kept his blazer on because he was too lazy to carry it.  It would just be awkward to run in that.  He sat down on the dirty bench of the bus stop and pulled out his cell phone.  Had Ken called?  A light was blinking; he had a message.  Will smiled and opened his phone.  It was a text message from his father.  His _father_...had sent him a _text message_.  Now that was just unnatural.

“Did you stay at Julian’s?”

The message was dated for that morning.  His father hadn’t worried that he hadn’t come home last night; he’d only just noticed that he was still missing this morning.  And he hadn’t called all worried, he’d simply texted him.  Of course, if he’d still been in Detroit like he was supposed to be, he wouldn’t have known Will had stayed out.  This meant he had noticed and was at least curious if not worried.  That was something.  It was kind of his fault too.  It hadn’t even occurred to him to call his father.  He texted him back and told him he had been at Julian’s and that he would be running some errands in the city but he would be back for dinner.  That was his subtle hint that his father should cook for him.  It was the least he owed him for the trauma he’d put him through yesterday morning.

The bus arrived and Will was on his way to Ken.  Should he call and let him know he was coming?  Or should he just surprise him?  He debated all the way into the city, so by the time he got to Ken’s building, it would be kind of a moot point to warn him that he was on his way.  He might as well just go up.  He said hi to Phil, one of the weekend guards and hopped on the elevator.  He danced by himself, rocking out to the elevator music in his head.  When the door opened he tried to cover up what he had been doing and smiled at the old couple who lived on Ken’s floor.  They raised an eyebrow at him and got on the elevator.  They eyed him suspiciously as they pushed their button.  Will ignored them.  Ken said they looked at everybody like that and just suspected everybody of wrong doing.  Of course, that didn’t mean they were wrong.  Everybody had something they didn’t want to be public knowledge.

He forced himself to walk—as opposed to dance—down the hall and pulled out his keys.  The door behind him opened.  He didn’t look over his shoulder.  He didn’t want to talk to her.

“Hiiii, Will.”

Will sighed.  He hadn’t found his key yet so he couldn’t turn the lock, say hi, and disappear inside.  He turned around and smiled at the irritating woman.

“Hi, Autumn Rose.  How’s Fluffster?”  Sometime last month she had found out about Joyce Greene.  Three days later she’d adopted her own kitten.  He felt sorry for it.

“Oh, he’s great.  He and Joyce Greene just love to play together.”

“I bet.”

“Oh, I should let you know.  I saw Ken, I mean Mr. West, yesterday.  He’s back from his trip.”

“Okay.”  He already knew that.  Wouldn’t he know that?  He was the housesitter.  But, oh right.  He was _just_ the housesitter.  If Ken was back, he had no reason to be coming over.  “Oh.  I, um, left one of my textbooks in his place.  I need it to do my homework this weekend.”

“Oh, I see.  Wow you must study so hard.  You’re always leaving books over here.”

Will laughed uneasily.  How many times had he used that excuse?  “Yeah, I um, I’m trying to get into an Ivy League school, so I really need to stay ahead of the game.”

“Wow.  That is so impressive.  You know, I went to Yale.”

Will raised his eyebrows, involuntarily impressed.  “Really?”

“Mm-hmm.  I studied psychology and women’s studies.  I was going to be a victim’s counselor at a women’s shelter or halfway house or something.  I totally had every intention of being a Good Samaritan.  But, I needed some nest money before I started doing non-profit work.  That’s why I started working for AIG.  I have no idea how I got the job honestly, I was completely under qualified.  Maybe it was a wise decision to wear that short skirt to the interview.”

She laughed and Will realized it was a joke.  He laughed a little belatedly.

“Yeah, so.  Then I got promoted and I just kind of liked the work, and I got roped into the lifestyle.  Mr. West and I talk all the time about how addictive it is.  I guess we’re both control freaks and that’s why we enjoy doing this kind of work.”

They talked _all_ _the time_ did they?  That was interesting news.

“But, I don’t want you to think badly of me.  I did get involved with charity work.  In fact, the Women and Children Unity Brigade, of which I’m vice chairperson, is having a formal event the first week of December.  Mr. West has kindly offered to escort me.  Maybe you could watch Joyce Greene and Fluffster for us.”

Will kept his face neutral but the hand behind his back was clenching his keys so hard the pain was tingling up his arm.

“A brigade, huh?  That sounds serious.”

“Oh, yes, we take our work very seriously.”

“So, do you happen to know if Mr. West is in?  I do need that book and if he’s not here I’ll just run in and get it.”

“Well, I did see him this morning, but he was still in his pajamas.  So, I’m not sure if he’s gone out yet.”

_Let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go._

“Well, I guess I’ll just knock first.  I don’t want to keep you.”

He turned away from her.  Had she been trying to imply that she’d spent the night?  He knew it wasn’t possible.  There was no way.  But had she seen him?  Or was it a complete lie?  It sounded made up because Ken didn’t wear pajamas.  Had she just said pajamas because she didn’t want to say “in his underwear” to the _kid_?  He pounded on the door in frustration.  He could see Autumn Rose give him a slightly surprised look out of the corner of his eye.  He had knocked a little hard.

“Well, have a nice day, Will.  Good luck with your studying.”

“Thank you,” he said, still facing the door.  He didn’t return the valediction.  Maybe his behavior could be taken as rude or inexplicably hostile, but he couldn’t help it.  He was the jealous type.  He was the possessive type.  He was the jump to all the wrong conclusions type.  Ken had said so before.  So, maybe he was sick of having to deal with him.  His immaturity.  His childishness.  Maybe he wanted someone more mature.  Someone who had gone to Yale.  Someone with big tits and a great job.

Will jammed his key into the lock and hurried inside.  He slammed the door shut and leaned against it.  What was wrong with him?  Why was he the most insecure piece of trash on the planet?  He was jealous…of Autumn Rose?  Did he really think Ken would get so fed up with him that he would turn _straight_?  And why did he keep thinking Ken wouldn’t want him?  Would get tired of him?  Was it the conversation he’d had with his father?  Was it because he knew this wasn’t really going to work out between them?  Will slid down the door and put his face into his knees.  He didn’t want to start crying, but his chest was hurting.  His heart was breaking.  Why was their relationship like this?  It was too passionate.  It was too intense.  What was that quote?  “These violent delights have violent ends…Therefore love moderately.”  That would never be Ken and him.  Did that mean they were doomed to failure?

“Meow?”

Will looked up.  Joyce Greene was rubbing against his knees, her fluffy tail hitting him in the face.  He scooped her up into his arms and stood up.  Why was he such a drama queen?  There were some serious issues they needed to talk about in their relationship, but why did he always escalate everything to the stratosphere?  Forget the stratosphere.  He was somewhere out in the heliopause.  He rubbed the kitten’s head and headed into the kitchen.  He put her down on the island and went into the pantry to get her some kitty treats.  While she happily crunched away at the tuna flavored dog shapes, he leaned nearer and petted her neck.  He ran his hand down to her back and gave her a good scratch.  She raised her butt into the air, but didn’t stop eating.  With her tail out of the way, he could see the piece of paper she had been sitting on.  He picked it up.  Written in Ken’s handwriting were two words: Missed you.

Instantly all the angst and drama he’d created in his head disappeared.  He felt monumentally idiotic.  He never had any reason to doubt Ken or their relationship.  And at that moment, he didn’t.  He never felt surer of anything in his life.  It put him in the good mood he’d felt yesterday and he was back to humming and dancing.  He couldn’t wait for Ken to get home.  He wouldn’t bring up the thing with Autumn Rose just yet.  They could have their hot and sweaty reunion before he started asking his lover why he was taking a woman out on a date.  Lame.  She had probably said “offered” when she meant “agreed.”  He was positive escorting Autumn Rose hadn’t been Ken’s idea.  He patted the kitten again.

“I’m gonna go change clothes, but I’ll be right back.”

He left her mewling pitifully on the island and walked into the bedroom, careful to shut the door.  She knew she wasn’t supposed to go in the bedroom, but if someone left the door open, she would.  Will changed into his favorite boxers and Dartmouth T-shirt.  It was funny how he thought of those items as his now.  Joyce Greene was waiting for him outside the door.  He kept her from darting inside and walked over to the couch.  She trotted expectantly after him.  After he was lounging comfortably on the couch, she curled up on his stomach and started to purr herself to sleep.  Her soothing, rhythmic cadence soon had the same affect on him.  A little more sleep could be a good thing.  He needed all his energy today.  A week was a long time to go with nothing but his own hand.  Being sexually frustrated sucked more than worrying if he’d irritated Ken to the point of heterosexuality.

The bunnies were quiet today.  They were sitting still and purring contentedly.  Of course, that may just mean they were plotting something.  Then one hopped up to him and touched him gently on the forehead.

“Hey, get up,” it said in its high pitched voice.

Will came out of his dream, but he was still partially asleep on the couch.  A person standing behind the couch—and not a bunny—had touched him.  He reached up blindly for the tie he knew would be there.  Even though it was a Saturday, Ken would be wearing a suit.  He twisted his hand around in the silk and pulled the wearer down close.

“I am up,” he said with a smile and kissed Ken.  They kissed sweetly for a moment, but Will didn’t have the patience for that.  He opened his mouth and pressed his tongue to Ken’s lips.  He let him in.  He’d had red wine with lunch.  Will didn’t mind Ken’s slight wine obsession.  Being with him he’d developed a taste for the stuff.  Quite an expensive taste at that.  But sometimes wine—especially red wine—would have a flavor strong enough to cover up _his_ taste.  Will liked to drink him in.  Almost literally sometimes.  He would deliberately kiss him and stimulate him to the point where he produced a copious amount of saliva, and then he would tilt their heads back and swallow.  It grossed Ken out when he did that.  If they were kissing and he figured out that that was what he was trying to do, he would stop him.  Will couldn’t understand how _that_ grossed him out, but he was all for wanting Will to swallow after fellating him.  How was one less disgusting than the other?  Will didn’t really mind either.  Which might be a slight psychological aberration, but he was okay with it.

Will tightened his hold on the tie and encouraged Ken to come into his mouth too.  Once they were equally lapping at each other, he was already getting a high off the endorphins.  He hummed his pleasure, hoping Ken would take the hint and start rubbing him in other places.

“Hey, when you’re done tonguing my boyfriend, can you take a look at this?” Ken asked from the kitchen.

Will froze.  His hand released the tie and he opened his eyes.  The person he’d been kissing pulled back.  Rylan licked his lips and gave him a little smile.

“Thanks,” he said and walked into the kitchen.

Will kept staring at the ceiling, his hand frozen in the air.  He was still trying to process what had just happened; his brain was rejecting reality.  He could hear Ken and Rylan talking in the kitchen, but it might as well have been in Swahili for all he understood.  He sat up so slowly.  The kitten was gone from his stomach.  She must have woken up when the door opened and gone over to greet Ken.  He was staring at the door now.  The next step would be to get his head to turn to the right.  Inch by agonizing inch it turned until he could see Ken and Rylan standing at the island reviewing some documents.  Ken looked over at him, his expression blank.  Will wasn’t sure if his face looked upset, traumatized, or if he was somehow begging Ken not be angry with him.  Ken just gave him a small, amused smile.  It didn’t make him feel any better.

He sat on the couch, too mortified to move or say anything.  After a little while Rylan announced he was going to the bathroom and left them alone in the room together.  At last Will found the courage to move and slinked into the kitchen.  He stood by Ken, but kept his eyes focused on his toes.  Ken ruffled his hair and patted the top of the island.  Will hopped up onto it and finally looked up to Ken’s face.  He was smiling sympathetically at him.  He gently rubbed his thighs and leaned forward to give him a peck on the lips.

“You okay?” he asked, trying to sound sympathetic but coming off as amused.  “You’re not traumatized, are you?”

Will said very sullenly, “No.”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll make it better.”

Ken kissed his upper lip, and then his lower.  They continued the kiss and produced soft smacking sounds.  Their tongues touched occasionally, but almost outside of their mouths.  It felt so good to be near him again.  To touch him and be touched by him.  A week was too long.  Way too damn long.

“Hey, when you’re done tonguing your boyfriend, can we finish this?”

Ken pulled back with resigned annoyance.  “Sure.”

They started to review the document again, not caring that Will still sat beside it.  He swung his legs a little and listened a little closer to the conversation this time, but he still didn’t understand it.  He discreetly looked at Rylan.  He should have known right away it wasn’t Ken, right?  What with all the chain smoking.  How had he managed to cover up _that_ taste?  The wine wasn’t that strong.  Had he quit smoking?  Or did he really not smoke that much at all?  Or were there treatments that actually worked for ashtray breath?  Ken glanced up at him.

“Aw, come on, Will.  You’re not going to be like that the rest of the day are you?  Are you upset that you couldn’t tell it wasn’t me?”

“I’m not upset.”

“I can see your eyes from here, baby.”

Rylan looked over at him.  Will wondered when Ken had figured out that his eyes gave away his emotions.  He still wasn’t entirely sure he believed it.  Everyone always said they changed color when he got upset, but it couldn’t be as dramatic as they claimed.

“Well then, that’s not what I’m upset about.”

“Then what is it?”

Will looked at his fingers and fiddled a bit.  Then he sulkily looked up at them.  “He’s the one who taught you how to kiss, isn’t he?”

Ken blushed and Rylan grinned.

“You never knew you’d be thankful to me for something, did you?” Rylan laughed.

Will grumbled and crossed his arms in irritation.

“You know,” he said, softening his voice and moving closer, “I taught him much more than just how to kiss.”

“Rylan,” Ken said his name like a warning.

Rylan just moved closer and put his hands on the counter on either side of Will.  Will looked unflinchingly back at him.

“Everything he does that makes you shiver and gasp and moan and writhe underneath him…he learned by letting me do it to him.”

“Rylan, stop.”

“But as I’m sure you know, smart boy that you are, receiving a second generation version causes it to lose some integrity.  Wanna feel what the real thing is like?”  Rylan barely touched his fingertips to Will’s hair, and then ghosted them down his cheek.  “Don’t worry.  I won’t do anything too bad.  How about if I give you head?”  He whipped one hand to Will’s knee and used it and his hip to push his legs apart.  The hand that had been making its way down his body stopped long enough to tweak a nipple through the thin T-shirt.

“Ah!”  Will jerked involuntarily.

Ken had put a hand on Rylan’s shoulder, but didn’t go through with stopping him when he saw Will’s reaction.  He just watched them, and Rylan continued to touch him.

“So, you wanna know?” Rylan asked, darkly sexy.

“I never, _ever_ wanna be touched by you.”

“But don’t you like to do things for your _lover_?  He’s not trying very hard to intervene, is he?  In fact, he kind of looks turned on, don’t you think?  You wanna make him feel good?”  The hand that had been playing with his nipple dropped between his legs.  Will used both his hands to fight him off, but he was sadly losing quite badly.  “You wanna watch him as he watches you get sucked off?”

Will’s body jerked again; he was trying so hard not let his body give in to Rylan.  But he’d been deprived for a week, and he wanted it.  He looked at Ken.  He wasn’t saying anything, just watching them carefully with a strange expression on his face.  And he looked a little turned on.  Did Ken enjoy watching him get molested?  It kind of seemed that way.  And sadder still, just seeing the lust build up in Ken was having a similar effect on him, almost to the point that Rylan’s hand would have been unnecessary.

“I think he wants it more than me,” Rylan murmured smugly.  “What are you going to do with such a freak for a boyfriend?”

Will found the strength to push a little more insistently on Rylan’s hand.  He looked at him defiantly.

“I trust him.  He would never make me do anything I don’t want to.”

“Really?”  His hand flipped Will’s out of the way and then fully grabbed a hold of him, rubbing harder.  “You really trust him not to give in to what he _wants_ and not push you too hard?”

“Nnm.”  Will bit his lip.

“How _deep_ does your trust go, Will?”

“Unh.  Ah.  Wh-what do you want me to do, Ken?”

“Let him do it to you.”

Will met Ken’s eyes.  They stared at each other for a couple seconds, and then Will leaned back.  He propped himself up on his elbows and pulled his feet up onto the counter.  Then he dropped his knees, completely exposing himself to them.  For a moment Rylan looked flabbergasted, which would have been funny, but Will’s frame of mind was far away from funny.  The man glanced back at Ken, almost as if checking to see if he really had his permission.  Ken didn’t look at Rylan; he just stared at Will.  Rylan shrugged and used one hand to push Will’s shirt up and the other to yank his shorts down.  He dipped his head and Will tensed in anticipation.

Ken grabbed onto Rylan’s hair and wrenched his head up.

“Oh, don’t even.  Did you really think I was going to let you touch him?”

Rylan frowned and Ken pushed him out of the way.  He slid his hands around Will’s back and pulled him up.  Will’s legs locked around his waist, his groin rubbing impatiently against his abdomen.  Will was so worked up he was willing to accept dry humping, but he wanted to come _now_.

“You both are teases,” Rylan groused.

They smiled at each other, being way too involved with each other considering there was a third party in the room.

“Don’t we have work to do, Ken?” Rylan complained.

“I don’t think it’s going to get done today, Rylan.  Call me tomorrow.”  Will arched his back and moaned shamelessly.  “Maybe Monday,” Ken panted.

“What?!”

“Besides, don’t you have your new employee to get back to?”

“Oh, yeah.  It’s getting late.  Hey, Ken,” he tried vainly to get the man’s attention.

“Y-yeah?”

“Thanks for lunch.”

“Sure.  Any—”

Rylan pulled hard on Ken’s shoulder and forced him and Will apart.  He grabbed a hold of the back of his head and under his jaw and gave him a nice long smooch.  Then the smooch turned into something a little more and Will could feel his eye twitch.  He reached out with a hand for the knives that he knew were behind him.  Without looking, Ken raised a hand and grabbed Will’s wrist, pinning it to the countertop.  At last Rylan pulled slowly away, making it disgustingly obvious that his tongue had been deep inside of Ken.  He gave Will a wink and then headed for the door.

“See you around, Will.”

Then the irritant was gone.  Will turned a glare on Ken.

“Why are you friends with him?”

“Oh, come on.  Don’t you have any friends that you’re embarrassed of but you still like them anyway?”

Will thought of Scott keeling over at the tattoo parlor yesterday.  “Yes,” he grudgingly admitted.

Ken held him again and smiled at him.  “I missed you,” he said feelingly.

“I missed you too.”

They kissed.  Just a couple of happy to see you kisses.  But enough of that; Will was ready to go.  He pulled him close and deepened the kiss.  Ken leaned forward and they fell back onto the counter.  Their hands were starting to catch up with the rest of their parts.

“Meow.”

Will opened his eyes and looked to his left.  Joyce Greene had jumped up onto the counter and was looking at them.  They laughed softly and Will smiled at her.

“Aw, I’m sorry, sweetie.  Do you feel neglected?”

“Well, it’s a shame if she does,” Ken said, “she’ll just have to wait her turn.”

Ken licked Will’s jaw and then began to bite his neck in the same rhythm his hips were creating between his legs.

“Mm, Ken, wait.  I can’t do this.”

“What?”  His voice was muffled in Will’s throat.

“I can’t do this while she’s watching.”

Ken let out a noise and pulled back a little.  He undid his tie and then placed it over Will’s eyes.  He tied it around the back of his head and then picked up where he’d left off.

“I said while she…ohhh.  Watches.”

“You want me to blindfold the cat?”

Oh, he didn’t care.  She was a frickin’ cat.  No more delays.  Then he felt her nuzzle against his cheek.  He laughed and kicked his legs.

“That tickles!”

“Go away, you slut, he’s mine.”

“Ken!”

Will continued to laugh and thrashed his limbs around.  She rubbed about the top of his head and her tail swished across his face.  Ken sputtered.  It sounded like he’d gotten a mouthful of cat tail.

“Okay.  That’s about enough of that.”

Ken pulled away and then Will was completely disoriented as he was slung over Ken’s shoulder.  Ken started to walk in what Will assumed was the direction of the bedroom.  He could just imagine the look of indignation on both Ken’s and Joyce Greene’s faces.

 

Chris

 

Friday, November 11, 2005

 

Okay.  This was easy.  Very simple.  He was just going to go in, get his paycheck, and get out.  Okay.  Chris took in a breath and walked into the dark entrance of the Abercrombie and Fitch store.  The throbbing music vibrated gently in his chest.  It was Friday evening and getting near Christmas shopping season, but the store wasn’t too busy.  There was a line at the register however, and only one person appeared to be manning them.  He slunk around the far side of the store past the women’s fashions and then ducked behind the display of ugly, oversized sunglasses.  No one called out to him as he made his way toward the back.  He darted inside the stock room and then hung a quick right into the employee break room.  He slammed the door shut behind him and waited, his heart pounding.  No one knocked on the door.  He glanced about the room; it appeared to be empty.

“Shwew.”  Chris faux wiped away some sweat from his brow and walked over to his little cubbyhole.  Things were still looking up because he could see a white envelope waiting for him.  He opened the envelope and pulled out his paycheck.  $389.91.  Chris sighed wearily.  He’d worked over fifty hours the past two weeks and he still made less than $400.  Taxes sucked.  No wonder his dad had been into crime.

“Oh, Chris!”

Chris whirled around.  Becca came from behind the cubbyhole wall where they kept their jackets.  It was the one place he couldn’t see from the door.  She tugged on her black turtleneck and tossed her weirdly bob-cut hair.

“I didn’t know you were working tonight, but thank goodness you’re here!”

“I’m _not_ ,” Chris said emphatically.  “I just came here to pick up my paycheck.”  He waved it in the air.

“Well, since you’re here anyway, can you pull an extra shift?”  She walked over to the lunch table and started shuffling through some papers, barely paying attention to him.  “Christmas shopping starts earlier and earlier every year.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.  I asked for this night off a month ago.”

“Please can’t you help us out?” she asked, sitting down and writing something.

“I can’t.  I have plans.”

Chris just started to leave.  If she was going to talk to a wall, he’d let her.  Once she saw him heading for the door, she jumped up and blocked him.

“Chris, please.  It’s really desperate out there.  There’s only one person on the registers and nobody is even working the floor.  I’ve been trying to do both, but I have this stupid inventory form due by Sunday.  Greta called in sick, so it’s just poor Stephanie out there by herself.  The line isn’t very long, but it’s constant.  She hasn’t had a lull for an hour and a half.  Please?  Can’t you just help out until the line goes down?”

“Becca, it’s not that I’m not sympathetic; I would want help if it were me.  But I have to be back in the city by 5:00 and I’m taking the metro, not driving.”

“Come on, Chris.  Not even for an hour?”

Chris was about to protest, but Becca looked at her watch and then said, “Half an hour?  I’ll pay you time and a half.”  She smiled coaxingly at him.

“For half an hour?  Is that even worth it?”

She looked pleadingly at him for a moment and then got an idea.  “You’re working next Saturday, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll only have to work six, but I’ll pay you for eight.”

Chris hesitated before saying no.  He could get two hours off next Saturday for working half an hour today?  He should have just enough time to pull it off.  Even if he got there late, they would just wait on him.  No big deal.

“So, those two hours for only half an hour today?”

“Yes.”

“And I still get time and a half for today?”

She made a face and looked like she was going to say no rather nastily, but instead said, “Yes.”

“Alright.  I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.”

She went back to her papers mumbling to herself.  Chris ignored her and hung his blazer and tie up on a hook before getting his nametag out of his cubbyhole.  He sighed as he pinned it on and headed onto the floor.  He hated working registers.  He walked toward the dratted machines and was surprised to find that the line had tripled since he’d passed it earlier.  The girl working the register was doing her best to make each transaction speedy, but every time she looked up she slumped a little in despair.  Her name was Stephanie and she went to high school in one of the local, public schools.  Chris didn’t know her that well, he’d only worked with her a few times, but she was friendly enough.  And she looked at Chris like he’d come to rescue her from a burning building when she saw him.

“Oh, good!  Becca finally got a hold of someone.”

Chris punched his code into the second register and smiled apologetically at her.  “Don’t get too excited.  It’s only for half an hour.”

“That’s all?  Well, I’ll take what I can get.”

“I can help the next customer over here,” Chris said, hating himself as he did.  What was he doing here?  Was it really worth two hours next Saturday?  He was still going to have to close.  And the people were insane.  Everybody had an issue they needed to discuss or debate.  This price wasn’t right or this item had a slight pick in it and there were definitely no others left, so could they get a discount?  And some people thought about opening a credit card account and some people had to think about what they wanted to buy once they got up there.  Why couldn’t they do that while they waited in the long ass line?  Or, here’s a thought: decide _before_ getting into line.  People were so stupid.  Or maybe it was just the people who shopped here.  Why did he still work here?  He needed to quit and get a job at an electronics store.

At last the line dwindled down to almost nothing.  He checked his watch for the first time.  Twenty-five minutes had passed.  The time had really flown.  Since everything was back under control, he figured that was close enough to his thirty minutes.  He started to sign out of his register, but since Stephanie was already helping someone, a couple walked up to him.  He still technically had five minutes.  He should take care of these two, and then he was outta there.  Chris looked up and his smile and greeting kind of froze on his lips.  He knew he was staring.  He needed to stop.  He blinked and forced his face to finish the smile.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Green.”

His greeting was returned with stony silence.  Mr. Green dumped a wad of clothes onto the counter and then looked at some point behind his head.  Mrs. Green just barely glanced in her husband’s direction and then smiled at Chris as he began to ring up the items.

“Hello, Christopher.  How are you?”

“Um, I’m fine.  And you?”

“Oh, we’re doing just fine.”

As he searched in a small, girly top for a tag he realized all this stuff must be for Karen.  Should he give them an employee discount?  Would Mr. Green lose it and start yelling at him if he did?  It seemed likely.  Maybe he should just do his job like they were any other customers, which technically they were.  He had no connection with them anymore.  Well, that wasn’t true.  They were his ex-girlfriend’s parents.  He couldn’t erase his history with them, no matter how much he wanted to.  He kept his head down and kept scanning, folding, and stacking.  Good grief, how much were they buying her?  This had all better be for Christmas.  He glanced up once by mistake.  Mr. Green wouldn’t even look at him, but Mrs. Green looked like she wanted to say something.  He kept his head up since she had gone through the effort to make eye contact.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I know it’s not my place, but…and I don’t mean to pry…”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t say anything at all,” her husband admonished softly.

Mrs. Green ignored him.  “But, I was wondering if you only broke up with Karen because of us, or what happened that night.  Because, I know sometimes it’s difficult to have a relationship when people don’t approve of it, but really you only end up hurting yourselves.  So, I just thought, if that was the case you might reconsider…”

She trailed off and took in a breath.  Mr. Green was rolling his eyes.  Chris felt bad.  How did he tell someone that he dumped their daughter because he didn’t like her anymore?

“Oh, um, well…that wasn’t the…only reason.  Actually, it wasn’t even one of the reasons at all.”

“Oh.”

Chris nodded.  Awkward silence followed.  He turned to the register and totaled the sale.

“That’ll be, um, two hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents.”

Mr. Green handed him a credit card and he started the money transaction.

“Well, it’s just...” Mrs. Green wouldn’t give up.  “She’s been so sad.  She still acts like herself and goes out with her friends, and she still smiles.  But, it’s not really her.  There’s something missing.  Like she’s incomplete.”  Mr. Green mumbled something to himself.  “And she’s been that way since…you…left her.”

Mrs. Green stared meaningfully at him.  Chris stared back, and then turned to Mr. Green holding out a pen and a receipt.

“Sign here please.”

“I know I can’t tell you how to feel,” Mrs. Green carried on while her husband signed the receipt.  “And she would die if she knew I was saying this to you—”

“So, maybe you shouldn’t say it,” Mr. Green grumbled, dotting the period after his middle initial hard enough to leave a dent in the paper.

“And I wouldn’t want you to do it out of pity, of course, but if you still care for her at all…”

“Ebony, that’s enough.”

Mrs. Green looked at her husband and seemed aware for the first time that he was there.  “Oh, Christopher, I apologize.  I shouldn’t be so nosy.  It was good seeing you,” she said earnestly as she took one of the two bags of clothing.  “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

The Greens left the store and Chris let out the breath he’d been holding for the last five minutes.

“Whoa,” Stephanie said, having been free to eavesdrop for most of it, “those are your ex’s parents?  That’s heavy.”

Chris shot her a look.  “Well, thank you Marty McFly.”

“Would you have preferred Great Scot instead?”

“All right.”  Chris plucked off his nametag.  “Peace out.”

“Nooooo!  Don’t leave me!”

“You’ll be fine,” Chris said, waving a dismissive hand.  He walked back toward the employee break room.  Why had he had to run into them today?  Or any day for that matter.  It was making him even more confused.  He knew Karen said she wanted him back, but was she really sad that he was gone?  It was one thing to try to behave better and give the relationship another go, but was she really unhappy without him?  He wasn’t that good for her.  He wasn’t someone special or extraordinary.  He was just a guy.  But then again, supposedly, he was the reason why Karen wanted to change.  What was he supposed to do?

Chris dropped his nametag off and stuffed his paycheck into his pocket.  As he walked around the cubbyhole wall, Becca said, “Oh, Chris, I was thinking.  It’s really not kosher or fair to exchange half an hour for two hours.  So, I feel you should work your full hours next Saturday.”

Chris turned slowly on his heel and looked at Becca.  She saw his expression and gulped.

“Well, of course, I am the boss and nobody needs to know.  So, I guess it’ll be fine.”

Chris grabbed his coat and tie and left the break room.  That was it.  He was quitting.  It would be easy enough to find another job during the holiday rush.  He didn’t need an evil manager or the potential for running into his ex, her parents, or her friends.  He didn’t want to see any of them, so he needed to work somewhere that almost everybody who visited there used an inhaler.

By the time he was on the metro on his way to meet his friends, he’d kind of worked himself up to almost being upset.  Now that the shock had worn off, he was reeling from what Mrs. Green had said to him.  Why was this happening to him?  He had broken up with a girl.  People did that every day.  Did it haunt them forever too?  Was there really no such thing as a clean break?  And the last thing he needed was more proof that Karen was serious about him.  He had wanted to believe that she was conniving and trying to get back at him.  But would Karen get her mother in on the scheme?  No, never.

“Argh!”  Chris vigorously rubbed his hands over his head.  He didn’t look around to see if people were watching him.

How did he feel about Karen?  Would it really hurt to give them another shot?  Quite possibly.  Maybe it would help if he just cleared his mind.  She was always around him.  And now he was running into her parents.  Did he just need to stay completely away from her for a while?  Would that help?  Did he _want_ to stay away from her?  Was this how Scott felt about Antoinette: wanting something he knew was bad for him?  Maybe he could help him since he was kind of going through the same thing.  But Scott hated Karen; would he be able to be impartial?  Definitely not, but that might be a good thing.  He could unequivocally tell him to stay away.  But what if he told him that if there was any chance for regret at all that he should give it another try?  That advice would be going against both their better judgments, so wouldn’t that mean he should really do it?

“Agh!”  Chris flopped back against the seat and glared at the rocking ceiling of the metro car.  Should he just take a poll?  Why couldn’t life be like a choose your own adventure book and you could peek at both options before deciding what to do?  Some people might say that’s not how you were supposed to read those kinds of books, but Chris didn’t like surprises.

He yelped and jumped a foot as his cell phone rang.  Someone nearby chuckled.  That’s why he hated surprises.  He pulled out his phone and checked the time.  He wasn’t late yet so it better not be one of his loser friends.  The display flashed that it was his mother calling.  Fantastic.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Chris, what is this scribbled nonsense you left me on the table?”

“Oh, I’m staying out tonight.”

“Staying out?  What exactly does that mean?  What are you doing?”

“It’s Julian’s birthday and we’re gonna hang with him and probably spend the night at his house.”

“Probably?  Where will you be if you don’t?”

“I’ll come home.  I just meant that we haven’t discussed it yet, but my assumption is that we’re not going to leave him home alone on his first birthday since his parents’ deaths.”

“Oh.  Yes, of course.  You can stay out.  Just, don’t stay in the city really late, okay?  I know you boys feel all street smart and savvy because you go to school behind a big chain-linked fence, but don’t be stupid.”

“We’ll try.”

“And don’t let Julian buy you all alcohol and get trashed and have the police call me to come bail you all out since I’m the only one of all the parents who would be around to do it.”  She paused.  “Isn’t _that_ a sad fact?”

“Mom, he’s turning eighteen, not twenty-one.”

“Oh.  Well, don’t let him buy you any pornography.”

“I’m hanging up now, Mom.”

“Be good.  And tell him I said happy birthday.”

“Bye, Mom.”

He closed his phone and then stared blankly at it.  That was a normal conversation.  They’d been having those almost all the time now.  Maybe things weren’t permanently disrupted between them.  It was possible they were just choosing to ignore what they didn’t want to think about, but it was mutual.  Both of them wanted things to go back to normal, so they were willing to do what it took to get there.

Chris was right on time as he made his way out of the metro tunnel.  He glanced around the sidewalk and saw Scott and Will standing by the sign post for the station.  His brows furrowed in curiosity as he approached them.  They were facing each other and it looked like they were holding hands.

“What are you two doing?” he asked as he joined them.

“I’m trying to do that thing where you twist your fingers and they don’t get caught,” Scott said.  “It’s not working.”

Chris wasn’t entirely sure what he a referring to.  “Don’t you need string?” he asked.

Scott looked like he was thinking hard.  “No,” he said uncertainly.

“So why are you doing it?”

Will shook his arms to free his hands from Scott’s grasp.

“We were bored,” Scott said.  “And I’m trying to get him to stop scowling.”

They discussed Will’s mood for a bit, and when he asked what he had done after school, he’d panicked and practically shouted, “Nothing!” at them.  They had given him weird looks and moved on with the conversation.  He didn’t know which bothered him more: being asked by his ex-girlfriend’s mother to reconsider his decision or getting roped into doing a half an hour of work.  Hadn’t he intended to ask his friends about all this stuff anyway?  Why was he trying to hide it from them?  Was it really that embarrassing to admit that he liked Karen Green?  Or used to.  Wait a minute…Chris shook his head.  It was stupid.  He felt _guilty_.  He didn’t know why; he hadn’t done anything wrong.  He’d broken up with Karen because she made him feel like crap.  So how come it felt like he was the big jerk who had broken some poor, little girl’s heart?  At least he wasn’t some goober who ranked himself among the other nerds on the Academic Team.

“Hey guys.”

They turned around and saw Julian walking up to them.  He’d wondered why Julian had asked to meet them at this particular stop, and it all became clear with his announcement.  A tattoo.  The boy was insane.  They were going to kick him out of Calverton.  Hopefully he’d get it somewhere that could be covered by clothes.  Chris himself didn’t understand the appeal of tattoos.  It would be nearly impossible for him to pick out something that he knew he would want to keep with him the rest of his life.  And they were so easy to distort with age and body fluctuations and one cut or burn in the wrong place would leave the design all messed up and funky looking.  And he was sure it would hurt to get it.  He’d seen people happily chatting away while getting tattooed on TV, but surely that was to distract themselves from how much it hurt, right?

The tattoo shop had an acceptably low sketch factor.  Of course he hadn’t seen the place where the actual tattooing would be done yet, but the front of the shop was clean and organized.  He was little bit scared of the counter girl and definitely scared of the big bald guy, but he was going to play it cool.  While Will and Julian dealt with the scary people, he and Scott looked at the montage of Polaroids on the walls.  A lot of people had come to the shop and apparently left as happy customers.  He was pretty amazed by the skill and intricacy of some of the designs.  He knew some of them must have taken hours to do.  He wondered who did them.  Scott nudged him.

“Look at this one,” he said, pointing to an elegant crouching leopard sprawled across some girl’s back.

“Wow, that’s cool.  This guy’s pretty good.”

Scott grinned as he looked over the wall.  “Should I get one?”

“Yeah.  You can get ‘bitch’ tattooed across your forehead.”

Scott shot him a nasty look.  “Screw you.  You were pussy whipped pretty bad yourself.”

“Yeah, the operative word being ‘were.’  Past tense.”

Scott put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him over slightly.  “Well, word around school is that it’s not so past tense anymore.”

Chris felt his viscera slide down his insides.  “Eh-heh.  Well, that’s.  I mean.  We just have the same lunch.  And sometimes talk in the halls.  And after school.  And before school.  And sometimes outside of school.  And at the dances.  And we kind of still have a physical thing for each other.  And we kissed.  Like once.  Well, twice.  Or was it…well, anyway.  It’s nothing.  It’s just, you know.  I mean, we’re not dating or anything.”

He glanced over at Scott.  He was smirking at him.

“Unh-hunh.”  He cracked an air whip and provided the noise himself.  Chris scowled and looked away.  Damn.

Julian whistled at them and they turned around.  Apparently it was already time to head back.  That was strange.  On _Miami Ink_ the customers usually gave the artist a basis for a design, and then the artist would send them away while they drew up a transfer.  Was that not gonna happen?  What did Julian even want?

He and Scott got to have a brief moment of vengeful sniggering as Will got busted by the shop owner for sniffing around his girlfriend.  For once Will’s flirting didn’t get him a date, it got him in trouble.  Their mirth soon dissipated as they passed through the black curtain.  Scott was holding onto the back of his blazer.  He elbowed him off.  The back room wasn’t too scary looking.  It probably would have been scarier if he’d been the one getting the tattoo, however.  Will checked the place out carefully and didn’t demand that he and Scott help him drag Julian out, so he must be okay with it.  And if Will was willing to let Julian go through with it, then it must be okay.  He wouldn’t let anything happen to Julian.

Chris had watched several episodes of _Miami Ink_ before, but watching someone get a tattoo in person was quite different.  Whenever the artist on TV would wipe their work with a cloth, he’d always thought it was just excess ink.  But some of it turned out to be blood.  It wasn’t a lot, but it was definitely making Julian bleed.  He didn’t know why he was surprised to learn that; it did make sense.  And aside from jumping the first time the needle passed over his spine, he seemed perfectly fine.  He even looked relaxed, like he was getting a massage or something.  The blue looked brilliant against skin and the design, though simple, drew the eyes and held them.  He was confused at first by Julian’s choice.  He thought the pentagram or pentacle was the symbol Wiccans used, but this star had seven points.  Then he remembered the necklace his mother always used to wear: it was a blue septagram.  He’d never really asked much about Julian’s religion, so he could only assume that the septagram was an associated though unorthodox symbol.  The horny god thing, or whatever it was called, was a little weird.  But was so Julian.  At least it could be a conversation starter with his girlfriends.

And most definitely _only_ with his girlfriends Chris discovered once Julian dropped his pants.  Sometimes Chris didn’t know how he’d wound up with these three as friends.  He was so normal.  He could have had such a boring, easy, normal existence.  But instead he got stuck with the neurotic crybaby, the sociopathic playboy, and the frickin’ penis-tattooing witch.  It was just hard to tell who was going to turn out weird when you were in second grade.

Chris’ eyes were focused on the ceiling.  It was the only safe place to look.  No matter where else he looked, somehow, Julian was hanging out in his vision.  Peripherally he saw Scott lean over and ask Will something.  Something dumb he was sure.  Then he leaned over toward him.  Good Lord.  He could only imagine what the boy was going to ask him.

“Dude…what’s wrong with his thing?” he whispered softly.

Chris didn’t even have to look to know what he was talking about.  “We’ve been over this before, Scott.  Every two to three years something happens and we all see each other naked and every time you ask the same thing.  He’s just uncircumcised.  That’s all.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Dork.”

Chris heard the gun start up and he had to look.  There was no way he couldn’t.  Skizzle’s hand was kind of in the way, so he leaned forward.  Will was leaning with him.  It didn’t appear Julian was enjoying this one quite as much as the first one.  He couldn’t blame him.  It did not look pleasant.  And he couldn’t look away.  There was something grotesquely intriguing about it.  He kind of wanted to know what it felt like.  But he was just gonna have to settle for asking Julian how it felt.  He really didn’t need firsthand knowledge.

He thought he saw movement from Julian, and when he ripped his eyes away from his friend’s groin, he was pointing at something.  He turned too late to be able to do anything about it.  Scott was already falling over.  He reached out and snatched his wrist, but the blond went down.  There was no stumbling or graceful bending at the knees and kind of sitting down; he just crashed into Will.  Whether it was intentional or not, Will managed to cushion his fall and prevent him from hitting his head.  He didn’t respond when Will nudged him.

“There’s a couch out front,” the store owner said.

“Thanks,” Will grunted as he tried to get to his feet.  Chris moved to help him and grabbed Scott under the knees.

“We’ll take care of him,” he said.

They made sure they had a good grip and hoisted him into the air.  He weighed nothing.  Yeah, he was skinny, but he should have had some heft to him.

“He’s not that heavy,” Chris voiced his thought aloud.

“That’s easy for you to say.  You didn’t get the heavy end.”

Maybe it _was_ just because he was only carrying his legs, but Chris was pretty sure it was more than that.  They made their way to the front of the store and the counter girl laughed softly.

“Is he okay?” she asked with amusement.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Will said.

“He still hasn’t woken up,” Chris voiced another pointless thought out loud.

“I know,” Will said curtly.

That meant he was worried too.  They laid him out on the couch and Chris was a little surprised that Will kept his head in his lap and petted him gently until he woke up.  Would Will do that for any of them, or did Scott just invoke parental instincts in people?

The knot in Chris’ stomach loosened as Scott managed to right himself and the color returned to his cheeks.  He made a smart ass remark about his fainting, but that was only to keep Scott from knowing how worried he’d been.  He didn’t want to freak him out by letting him know they’d actually been concerned by the length of time he’d been out.  The counter girl brought him a soda, and Chris decided she was pretty nice after all.  And she was probably right on the money.  Chris was almost certain it was his blood sugar.  Scott was a goober and he wouldn’t be surprised that he fainted from watching someone get a tattoo, but that was a secondary reason for this.

Had the other two noticed?  Scott was tired all the time. He yawned constantly throughout the day and dozed off every time he was still for more than five minutes.  He obviously wasn’t sleeping at night.  And after carrying him, his suspicions were confirmed; he’d lost weight.  A significant amount.  It was hard to tell with their uniforms, but he’d first thought something was up when he saw him in the towel at his birthday party.  Yes, he looked muscular for someone who didn’t work out, but he looked thinner too.  He wasn’t eating either.  When had Scott stopped sleeping and eating?  Why hadn’t he noticed sooner?  Why hadn’t the other two noticed at all?  Just because Scott smiled and acted the way he was supposed to, how did they not realize that he was depressed?  Had Anna even noticed?  Or was she too wrapped up in her own trip?  Had Antoinette noticed?  Was she trying to take care of him at all?  He was so worried about Scott he didn’t even care if it had to be Antoinette who had to help him.  Just as long as somebody did before something terrible happened.

Scott and Will talked for the next twenty minutes or so, but he had a hard time joining in.  What could he do for Scott?  Nothing.  If he brought it up with him, he’d deny it and then just try to hide it from him.  If he told his parents, it would just add more fuel to the fire concerning their divorce hearing.  He couldn’t tell someone at the school.  What would they do?  It wouldn’t warrant social services.  All they could do was force him into counseling sessions with the unqualified guidance counselors.  And then Scott would be pissed with him.  All he could do was nothing.  Was he really so useless that he couldn’t help one person?  He hadn’t been able to help Julian so far, and who knew what was going on in Will’s head.

Chris stopped feeling sorry for himself when Julian came out.  Scott wasn’t going to die or implode tonight, so he might as well try to have fun with the rest of them.  Though Julian said something to Scott that made him grumpy.  So at least three of them could have fun.  And Julian would need something to take his mind off the fact that he’d just paid a man named Skizzle $150 to draw on him with a needle.  Hopefully his birthday “cake” would accomplish that.  And their gift to him was sure to keep him smiling for at least a week.  And if it didn’t he would tell him to pretend and smile for a week anyway.

The party was pretty low key.  For them anyway.  There were no explosions or nudity or weird condiment concoctions that they would force down to see who could drink the most before gagging and/or throwing up.  It was mostly just talking and laughing and one ill-advised dance competition.  Chris sat that one out and watched his friends try to have the “most bad ass dance” and the “most pheromone inducing (in females) dance” and the “most gayest dance.”  Scott won the last one hands down.

He had a moment of concern when he saw Scott picking at his one piece of pizza, so he dropped two slices on top of it and forced him to eat all three.  After his initial reluctance and claims that he wasn’t hungry, he ended up wolfing down all three slices and a huge slice of cake.  Chris was glad he hadn’t truly lost his appetite.  It seemed more like he had forgotten or didn’t realize that he had to take care of himself.  His mother wasn’t around and Chris knew his father was too self-involved to remember that his son was still a child.  If all it would take would be some simple reminders, he could keep Scott fed.  Getting him to sleep would be another thing.  Though tonight it was no problem.

The four of them had been sitting up and talking and Will and Scott had kept yawning.  Little by little they had gotten closer to the floor until they were curled up in balls between him and Julian.  They both appeared lost in a deep, peaceful sleep.  It was happening again.  Julian and Chris were sitting up and watching over their boys.  They even had something close to a fight, which was something they only did when Scott and Will weren’t around.  He didn’t mean to piss Julian off on his birthday, but he wasn’t going to ignore that he wasn’t coping well.  And he wasn’t going to hide that fact from Julian.  If he realized he wasn’t fooling everybody, he might have to start really working through his grief and anger.  But he didn’t want that unease to be hanging over them for the next few days.  Wasn’t that the old cliché advice?  Don’t go to bed angry.  It was really disturbing that he defined a lot of his relationship with Julian in the same terms as a married couple.

“They’re not sleeping well, are they?” Chris started.  “I know Scott isn’t.”

“I don’t think Will is either.”  Julian reached a hand out and combed it through his friend’s dark hair.

“Are they okay?”

“I’m pretty sure Will is.  I don’t think his lack of sleep is due to stress.  It’s something else.  I’m not entirely sure what, but it might have something to do with gobs of sex.”

Chris gasped and said, “Really?”  Then he felt like an idiot because he had totally sounded like a gossiping girl.

“Like, for real,” Julian said, teasing him.

Chris ignored the friendly jab.  “But, not with Liz.  Definitely not.  Right?”

“No, not Liz.  But I cannot figure out who with.  Really, it’s just a guess.  It may be something else all together.”

“Like all night cram school or something.”

“Quite possibly.”

“Dork.”

“I know, right?”  He said it with a smile as he gazed down at the boy in question.  His hand was still caressing his hair.  Just how little pretend was in Julian’s pretend crush on Will?  “How about Scott?” Julian said, looking back up at him.

Chris shrugged.  “I’m not sure.  But honestly, he has the personality that after he’s angsted for a while, he’ll be able to bounce back.”

“Angsted?”

“It’s a word.”

“No, it’s not.”

They smiled at each other.  Their earlier tension gone.

“Well, you need to get up, right?  You’d better go to sleep.”

“Yeah.”

Julian shifted down a little so he could lay beside Will.  Chris stayed up until Julian’s breathing deepened and evened out.  He didn’t remember when he lay down himself, but he slept well.

 

Saturday, November 12, 2005

 

Chris stirred as he heard someone moving around.  He cracked an eye open and saw Julian running around the hall crazily.  He was shouting something about Greek food, and then he was out the door.  Cornelius stared at the closed door.  He pranced his feet around and then sat down, straining his head forward like it might help bring Julian back.

“It’s okay, Cornelius, we’re still here.”

The dog looked at him, and then back to the door.  Apparently they weren’t good enough.  Chris started to sit up, but there was a weight on his stomach.  He looked down; Scott was using him as a pillow, one arm draped over his waist.  Chris made a face and grabbed his friend by the shoulders.  He pushed him off and rolled him over.  Scott flopped to his other side and landed against Will.  Will leaned back against Scott and they snuggled together.  Chris put a finger to his mouth and chewed gently on it.  Whoops.  Should he try to un-snuggle them?  He moved closer quietly, and then froze as Scott struggled to get his arm out from between their two bodies.  It popped out and landed around Will.  They snuggled even closer.  Chris bit his lip to keep from laughing.  Oh well.  They would just have to work things out for themselves when they woke up.  Hopefully Scott wouldn’t have the same embarrassment Chris had experienced when he’d woken up with Scott in his arms.  The four of them really needed to start sleeping further apart during their sleepovers.

Chris really would have liked to have gone back to sleep, and be present for the surprise awakening of his two friends, but he had chores he had to take care of today.  The gutter around back of the house was clogged and the downstairs toilet had to have the chain replaced.  Plus he had to check to make sure all the weatherproofing was still in place on the windows and doors.  They couldn’t afford to let any heat escape during the winter; the gas bill was already too expensive.  He wondered if Julian thought about any of these things.  Did he even have to?  How much money had his parents left him?  Maybe Mrs. Harder was the one still handling all of it.

Chris dragged himself up and barely conquered the stairs.  He brushed his teeth and then hopped in the shower.  He wasn’t sure who used Pantene Pro-V, he thought it was a women’s shampoo, but he was going to have to borrow some.  Since he’d cut all his hair off again, he tended not to wash it often because he didn’t need to.  It also saved money on the grocery bill.  But every now and then it became evident that a little soap up there wouldn’t hurt.  Thus his use of the girly shampoo.  Hopefully it wouldn’t make him smell all girly.

He hated putting on the same clothes from yesterday, but he didn’t have much of a choice.  And it was especially questionable today because he hadn’t washed his uniform all week.  He had two sets that he usually alternated from day to day, but this week he’d just worn the same one.  He gave himself a sniff.  He didn’t smell anything bad.  And he was going straight home so he’d be able to change when he got there.  As he left the bathroom he saw a mostly empty bottle of cologne sitting on the sink.  He picked it up and gave it a sniff.  Was this Julian’s or one of the others?  He didn’t remember any of them wearing cologne.  Chris shrugged and sprayed a small amount into the air and stepped into it.  It smelled pretty good, and now he wouldn’t offend any passersby on the way home.  He checked the label; it was a Banana Republic brand.  It must be expensive whoever’s it was.

Feeling more alive now Chris ambled downstairs and found the promised Greek sweetbreads.  He loved Julian’s grandmother.  She really ought to send stuff once a week.  Maybe he could write her and say that he was worried Julian wasn’t eating right, so she needed to send weekly meals to him.  Then he could help Julian eat them all since the portions would be astronomical.  It sounded like a good plan to him.  He glanced into the den as he started to leave.  Will and Scott were still happily snoozing away.  Chris patted Cornelius on the head as he opened the door.  He wondered if that dog stayed sitting in front of the door all day every day until Julian returned.

Outside the temperature was warmer than yesterday and the wind wasn’t blowing.  It actually felt quite pleasant.  He considered taking the bus home, but it wasn’t really that far to walk.  And all he had waiting at home for him was chores, so he might as well take his time.  He stuffed his tie into one of his blazer’s pockets and then hung the jacket over his arm.  He walked around to the back of Julian’s house and cut through the light wood separating that swanky neighborhood from the posh one behind it.  The one bad thing about taking the nice leisurely walk was that it gave him time to think.  And lately only one thing had been on his mind.  He sighed.  Karen.

What was he going to do about her?  Not only was she working hard to get them back to together, but now her mother was too.  And her cousin, Greg, had verified his belief that her intentions were honest.  And he believed them.  He believed all of them.  Karen seemed to be in earnest and he enjoyed the time they spent together.  It felt good to talk with her and be around her.  At this rate the next time she asked him if they could start over he was going to say yes.  What reason did he have to say no?  He kicked a stick from the edge of the wood onto someone’s property.  Then he tromped through the well cared for grass and didn’t care if someone came out and yelled at him.  He knew perfectly well what the reasons were to say no.  He didn’t want to go through the same thing again.  He just couldn’t get himself to believe that if he dated Karen again that things wouldn’t wind up exactly the same way.  He didn’t want that again.  He shook his head.  It didn’t sound very convincing in his head.  Maybe if he said it out loud.

“I don’t want that!”

“Don’t want what?”

Chris started and turned to his left.  He was in some stranger’s yard, but the person talking to him was standing at the mailbox for the house next door.  Sophia finished putting some mail in the box and pulled up the red flag.  Chris hurried out of the neighbor’s yard and stood on the sidewalk.  She was wearing a blue skirt that came to just above her knees and a white girly tank top with blue hearts on it.  She looked cute and the weather was nice, but it seemed a little too chilly for that outfit.  He also noticed she was barefoot.  She must not be planning on going anywhere today.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she responded, fidgeting with the handle to the mailbox as she kind of looked at him.

They stood in silence.  An uncomfortable silence.  Then Chris pointed vaguely toward the house.

“So, um, you live here, huh?”

“Unh-huh.”

Chris nodded.  “I, uh, I don’t live here.  Well, _here_ here.  I was just walking home from a friend’s.”  He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the woods.

Sophia glanced in that direction and nodded.  She looked back at him.  The silence was filling up the air around them again.

“Um.  So, do you live around here?” she asked, seemingly grateful that she’d come up with something to say.

“No.  Not exactly.  I’m a few miles that way.”

“Oh.  Did your car breakdown?  Do you need to use a phone?”  She indicated her house.

Chris laughed and waved a hand.  “No, it’s okay.  I’m just walking.  I decided not to take the bus since it’s so nice out.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  It is a good day for a walk because…it’s so nice out.”

She looked away from him, completely embarrassed.  She looked like she wanted to melt into the ground and Chris walked closer to her.

“Sophia, how come you’re always so nervous around me?  I’m just a guy.”

“No,” she said, unable to look at him, “you’re a cute guy.  A nice guy.  You’re a guy I like.”

“Oh.  Right.  Well, if you _really_ got to know me you’d realize that I’m not all that special.”

Sophia shook her head.  “No, you are.  That’s why I like you.  I just think the reason why I get nervous is because I feel like there’s so much separating us.”

“Like what?”

“Well, social status.  Ex-girlfriends.”  She laughed softly.  “Eleventh grade.”

Chris smiled.  “I see.  That is a pretty wide chasm.  Maybe it would help if we got rid of some the separation between us.”

He realized that suggesting they get rid of some separation could be taken two different ways.  Hopefully she wouldn’t think he was trying to be dirty.  She glanced shyly up at him.

“Yeah, that might help.  Especially having a conversation that lasts longer than five minutes.”

Chris laughed.  “Yeah, we haven’t really had one of those yet, have we?”

“Are—are you busy today?”

She went red in the face and couldn’t look at him again.  Chris felt a bizarre sense of pride.  She’d managed to ask him something without her friends or Karen there pushing her into it.  That was progress.

“Nope,” he said, smiling, but not helping her out.  It had been a yes or no question.  He was going to make her ask him something again.  While she gathered up her nerve Chris remembered that he technically had some work he needed to get done, but he had Sunday to do it too.

“Do you—do you wanna come in?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She turned abruptly and started up the driveway.  He followed her.  She was twisting her fingers together anxiously, but he could see the happy smile on her face.

“My uh—my parents took my sisters to their equestrian event today.”  She paused.  “The house is empty.”

“Oh, really?” he said trying to sound casual and not like he was thinking that she was trying to imply anything or that he was trying to infer anything.  It was just a statement.  Nothing more.  Though it was some interesting information.  He couldn’t let that be the last thing he said, so he attempted to start a conversation.  “So, you didn’t go with them?”

Sophia opened the front door and let him in.  The house smelled like vanilla and was clean, but a tish cluttered.  It looked lived in and thus had a feeling of coziness and hominess.  This was probably one of those rare two-parent, normal-children households he’d heard so much about.  It really was amazing.

“No, I don’t really like to go.  They’re kind of boring.  And smelly.  There’s a lot of waiting around and then you get to watch someone ride for like two minutes.”

“I see.”

“Would you like something to eat or drink?”

“Ah, no thank you.  I’m okay.  I just ate at my friend’s.”

“Oh.”

They rocked on their heels.  How quickly that silence kept tramping back in.

“So, older or younger sisters?” Chris asked.

“One of each.”

Chris looked down as he felt something rub against his leg.  A black cat was rubbing his left leg and an orange one was sniffing his right shoe.  Sophia stepped forward to shoo them away.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you allergic?  We can sit outside.”

“No, I’m fine.  Karen has a cat.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it outside of a photograph, but I know there’s hair and stuff over there and I’ve never had a reaction before.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”  _Change the subject from Karen, you ass_.  Chris squatted down to pet the black one.  “These cats are so friendly.  That’s rare, isn’t it?  For cats to come out when strangers are around?”

“Well, it depends on how socialized they are.  We’ve had them for like ten years, so they had to get used to three rowdy little girls.”

Chris gave her a smile.  “Dare I ask what three rowdy little girls named them?”

“I didn’t do it.  My older sister did.  She named them Mitsy and Muffy.  You’re petting Muffy.”

“Cute names.”

“If by cute you mean stupid, then okay.  My sister has no imagination.”

Chris stood up.  “Is she in college?”

“No, she goes to Calverton.  She’s in your grade.”

“Oh, really?  What’s her name?”

“Natalie.”

Chris didn’t think he knew a Natalie, which was kind of sad because there were only eighty-three people in the entire senior class.

“She’s really sweet,” Sophia said, “and very nice.  But, she’s not really the brightest student, you know?  You probably don’t have a lot of classes with her.”

“What’s she look like?”

“Kind of like me.  Only taller and with darker hair.  Maybe you’ve seen her hanging around Antoinette Bixby since everyone notices Antoinette Bixby.  Actually, it’s kind of funny.  She has these two friends, Samantha and Bebe, and the three of them are always following Miss A-B around and they usually stand together in the same way.  Natalie tends to stand on the right.”

Chris knew there were a lot of people who followed Antoinette around, but he never really noticed them before.  He wasn’t sure who Natalie was.  Maybe if he knew their last name, but Chris felt a little awkward asking for it now.

“So, what’s with the ‘Miss A-B’ thing?”

“Oh, it’s a nickname a lot of the underclassmen use to refer to her.  It just started off as standing for Antoinette Bixby.  And then sometimes it’s for Absolutely Beautiful.  And sometimes it’s for Annihilator of Boys.  And sometimes it’s for Absolute Bitch.  It depends on how insecure you’re feeling that week.”

Chris scratched his nose to hide his amused and slightly scared smile.  Girls could be vicious.  He actually felt a little sorry for Miss A-B.  She wasn’t the type of girl who intentionally drew attention to herself; they had some of those at school.  Antoinette was just one of those people you _had_ to notice, which made it easier to notice her flaws.  Or then again, maybe she was better at it than he realized.  She managed to draw attention to herself without making it seem like she meant to.  That was a slippery slope to start down; he didn’t want to start thinking badly of her while Scott was still involved with her.  She hadn’t been treating him the best, but in some ways she had been the best thing for him.  Now if ever there were a more complicated and dangerous relationship than his and Karen’s, it would be Scott’s and Antoinette’s.  All he needed now was for Will and Julian to find someone.  He had little doubt their relationships would be even more complicated.  Of course, didn’t Julian say he thought Will was deeply involved with someone already?  Will was a braggart.  He would tell them about every conquest he’d ever had.  If he was keeping one secret…oh dear.  What had Will gotten himself into?

“Anyway,” Sophia said, regaining his attention, “that’s who she hangs out with.  Today she’s at the horse show with my parents and younger sister, Alex.”

“Huh.  That’s kind of funny; that the hobby skipped you.”

“Well, technically, it didn’t.  I used to ride when I was younger, but one day I fell off my horse and hurt my back really badly.  After I recovered I still complained about the pain.  My parents spent a fortune on chiropractors and massages and stuff.  Eventually I had to tell them that I was just afraid of horses.”

“Oh, that’s sad.”

“Yeah.  But my parents and sisters helped me get over my fear.  A little bit.  I just never wanted to ride again.  To this day.”

“I’m sorry.  It must have been hard to give up something you loved.”

She shrugged.  “Ah, well, I was never really into it as much as my sisters are.  Did I mention the smelly part?  You own a horse and part of the responsibility is mucking out his stall.”

Chris stared at her.  “You _own_ a horse?”

“My family owns three.  We used to have four, but my parents sold mine a while back.”

Chris nodded.  “Hmm.”  Wow.  Rich people really were something.  Owning horses like regular people owned…cats.

“You wanna see a picture?”

“Of what?”

“My horse.”  She looked like she felt stupid for offering.  They were taking a step back.

“Yeah, I’d love to.  As long as you’re in it too wearing pigtails.”

Her cheeks tinged pink and she looked surprised.  “How did you know I’m wearing pigtails?”

Chris grinned.  “All little girls wear pigtails when they ride a horse.”

“Oh, whatever,” she said smiling.  “Come with me.”

She led him up the stairs and along the way Chris looked over the family portraits ascending the wall.  First there was one little girl, and then a second, and then a third.  The three of them were cute, freckled things.  Chris tried to remember if Sophia still had her freckles.  He looked at her face a lot, why couldn’t he remember?  At the top of the stairs was the latest picture.  He stared at the oldest girl.  He thought she looked kind of familiar, but he had no idea who she was.

Chris followed Sophia into a large bedroom and she quickly ran over to the bed and knocked some stuffed animals onto the floor out of his sight.  He smiled.  She was cute.  He hung his blazer on the doorknob and looked at the pictures on her dresser.  He picked up the one of her on a brown horse.  She was even cuter when she was younger.  Her hair was indeed in pigtails and she was wearing a small straw hat.  She was grinning and missing a tooth.  He glanced over at her where she stood watching him nervously.  She still looked young.  If you put her hair in pigtails she might pass for twelve.  She stepped closer to him and pointed toward the picture.

“His name is Barley.”

Chris looked back at the picture.  “Like the grain?”

“Yeah.  Weird, right?”

“Better than Brownie.”

She laughed.  “That’s true.”

Chris put the picture down and looked at some of the others.  In one she was standing beside her father in galoshes and he was helping her hold up a large trout.  Chris wondered if there were ever any pictures of his father and him fishing together.  Had his mother burned them all?  He put the picture down.  Maybe his mother hadn’t burned all of them after all.  She was still in love with him; wouldn’t she want to keep something?  He wondered if it was too soon to ask about it.

He turned around and saw that Sophia had sat on the end of her bed.  He walked over and sat beside her.  He’d simply meant to put them on the same level so she wouldn’t have to look up at him while they talked, but she froze up when the boy sat on her bed.  He felt a little like the big bad wolf.  Had he scared her?  Should he move?  He wasn’t sure if he stood up now if she would be hurt by it or not.  And once he did stand up, what would he do?  Put his hands in his pockets and just smile?  She was staring at the floor, not moving or talking.  This was so ridiculously awkward.  He should just leave before the situation became really unpleasant.

“Hey, Sophia…?”

“Chris!”

She turned toward him and shouted his name.  Chris blinked in alarm.  What had he done?

“Um, yes?”

“Can—Can I—”  She looked like she was in physical pain as she tried to get out her question.  She shut her eyes tightly.  “Can I kiss you?!”

He was glad her eyes were shut.  He was holding back his laughter, but he was cracking up.  “Sure,” he said.

He waited.  She didn’t move.  So, he waited longer.  Finally she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“Um,” she said tensely, “are you going to do it?”

“You asked if _you_ could kiss _me_.”  He gave her a teasing smile.  “Go ahead.”

She looked at the bedspread and gripped it tightly with one hand.  “Oh, don’t be so mean,” she said in a breathy whisper.

“Okay.”

He leaned forward until their faces were close.  He put the side of his finger under her chin and raised her head just enough so that he could put his lips on hers.  He gave her a little smooch and lingered there for a moment.  Then he pulled back just enough so that he could look her in the eyes.  She looked completely starry eyed.  It was kind of a turn on to be adored.  He put his common sense on a back shelf and leaned forward again.  He used his kiss to get her head up straight so it would be easier to prolong it.  He put a hand to her cheek and helped guide her through the process.  She was kissing him back, but she was being very hesitant about it.  She was unsure and tentative, but completely focused.

It was so different from kissing Karen.  They had both been a bit experienced before they went out, and it didn’t take long for them to figure out what the other liked.  So kissing with them was always easy and perfect.  These awkward and timid kisses from Sophia were obviously very different, but they were inexplicably sexy.  Even though it wasn’t quite an openmouthed kiss yet.  She was being a little reserved.  So, he used his mouth and hand and pushed forward a little bit, forcing her lips apart.  He tilted his head and moved closer to give her a real kiss.  She didn’t tense up or start back; in fact she responded quite well, kissing him back eagerly.  Apparently all she had needed was a little tutelage and encouragement.  It started to feel really good.  Without thinking he flicked his tongue inside her mouth.  He immediately pulled it back.  Was he going too fast?  He pulled back and touched her nose with his.

“Is it okay?” he asked.

“Huh?” she responded vaguely.

“Can I—”  He swallowed.  “Can I use my tongue?”

“Uh…”  She sounded dazed.  “Sure.”

He kissed her again, his tongue already thrusting inside her.  He held her face in his hands to keep her from moving away.  She didn’t try to nor did she do anything back, but she made small pleasure-filled noises and dug her fingers into his jeans.  Chris liked this.  He loved this.  He loved being the aggressive one, the one in control.  It was so much better than constantly fighting for dominance.  His hand fell to her waist and he pulled her closer.  She was completely pliable under his touch and one of her legs hooked over his.  He turned slightly and leaned forward, putting himself further between her legs.  He pulled back slightly to catch his breath as he kissed her face.  She half-gasped/half-moaned as he moved more on top of her.  Then he plunged back into her mouth.  She kind of tasted like sweet lemons.  She wrapped her arms around his neck, finally kissing him back again, but still not using her tongue.  That was okay; his was pretty busy anyway.  And he didn’t mind doing all the work.

Chris leaned forward very slowly.  He inched them closer and closer to the bed, allowing her plenty of time and opportunity to stop them.  She didn’t seem to care.  Either that or she didn’t notice.  Well, she’d notice if he put his weight on her, and then she could stop him if it bothered her.  So, he fell onto the bed, but kept his knees bent so that he wasn’t laying completely on top of her.  He moved his knee forward and pushed her blue, satiny skirt up her thighs while forcing her legs apart.  He really didn’t mean to be a horny bastard, but she felt good.  And it had been a while since he’d gotten any.  He was totally prepared to get slapped in the face.  It would be worth it.  His hand found her breast.  She was smaller than what he’d grown accustomed to, but she appeared to be more sensitive in that area.  She let out short moans and jerked under him with every touch.  Her nails were lightly scratching his neck.  He needed air again, so he moved to her jaw and neck.  The noises she was making grew louder and they had a very strong effect on him.

He kind of forgot where he was and sort of who he was with.  This position was familiar to him, so he continued on in what was a normal course for him.  He slipped his hand under her shirt and squeezed her through her lacy bra.  If it had been silky or satiny, he might have stayed above the cloth, but the lace was scratchy so he pulled the cup down and fondled her bare skin.  She gasped and arched against him.  He ran his thumb over her nipple, enjoying how she whimpered every time he did.  She was a lot more sensitive there than he was used to.  He did it faster, getting harder with every cry he drew out of her.  He moved the leg that was between hers and ran his other hand up her thigh.  He returned to her lips, a lot of his weight going into the kiss.  He teased the inside of her thigh; he could feel her growing warmer.  He kissed her chin, and then her throat, and then began to kiss his way down her collarbone as his hand slid to the crux of her legs.  His fingertips found the soft satin of her panties.  She was _so_ hot now.

Suddenly, everything felt different.  Her body was rigid, completely locked up.  She’d tensed up so quickly and so tightly she was trembling.  He rose up slightly and looked at her face.  It was blotchy with redness, there were tears in the corners of her eyes, and she looked upset…and afraid.  He immediately let go of everything and moved away.  She lay still, but moved a hand to cover to her mouth.  Her brows were creasing and the tears fell over her temples.

“Oh, God, Sophia.  I’m so sorry.”

Upon hearing his voice she choked back the tears and lowered her hand.  He could tell that she was trying really hard to appear as if nothing was the matter.  That was a joke.

“What for?” she asked.

It was so ridiculous.  He let out a short laugh.  “Are you kidding me?”

She licked her lips and took in three short, irregular breaths.  Then she managed to relax a little.  Chris put his hands in his lap and scooted a bit further away.

“I’m sorry I got carried away.  I wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing.  I’m sorry for being an asshole.”

She sat up, wiping the tears off her face.  The blotchiness had gone away and she was recovering quite well, though he still felt like a colossal perverted jerk.  Especially after she tried discreetly to adjust her bra.

“I-I didn’t tell you to stop,” she said with a tiny waver in her voice.

Chris knew he shouldn’t be smiling, but this was absurdly endearing.

“Not with words you didn’t.”

She shook her head.  “No.  I was just…just…”

“It’s okay.”  Chris rubbed the back of his head a little ashamedly.  “You’re just a lot younger than I thought you were.”

She sniffed.  “I thought you knew I was a sophomore.”

He looked at his hands.  “That’s not what I mean.”

“Oh.  Sorry.”

“Don’t do that!”

She forgot some of her distress at his forceful command and looked at him wide-eyed.  “Don’t do what?”

“Never apologize to me or any other guy.  If you don’t want to do something, you don’t want to do it.  And that’s that.  No matter what some guy says, you should never feel bad or guilty for telling him no.  Okay?”

She nodded, like a pupil listening with rapt attention to her teacher.  Then she glanced down at her lap and saw that her skirt was still bunched up some.  She smoothed it down and it made Chris feel bad again.  What had he been thinking?  Or more precisely, what had he been thinking _with_?  She looked back up at him.

“I understand what you’re saying, and you’ve got to be like the nicest guy on the planet.  But, it’s not because I don’t want to, you know.  I’m just…”

“Scared?”

“Terrified.  Actually.”

Chris chuckled.  “Well, then you don’t _really_ want to.”

“ _Well_ ,” she said, cutely defensive, “I do someday.”

“Yeah, but that’s not today.”

She shook her head.  “No, sorry.”

“Hey!  What did I say about apologizing?”

“Oh, sorry.  I mean.  Uh.  Well, I was leading you on.”

“No, you weren’t.  I was pushing you further than you’d given me permission to go.”

“Oh.”  She fidgeted and seemed to be thinking about something.  He let her work through it.  When she finally turned to him again, he noticed that she was having an easier time meeting his eyes now.  Was that a little backward?  “What did you mean…well, I know what you mean, but why did you think I was ‘older’ than I am?”

Chris laughed nervously and glanced away.  “Uh, well.  Your dancing is a bit…mature.”  She ducked her head a bit, but seemed more pleased than embarrassed.  “And most of the time you are innocently sweet, but sometimes you transform into…well…”  How did he put this nicely?

“It’s because of her,” Sophia said.  “Because of Karen.  I just get so angry when I see her because I know she’s trying to get you back.  But she doesn’t deserve you,” she said fiercely.  “Everyone knows how mean she was to you.”

Everyone knew that?

“And I just feel like—I don’t know.  I kind of feel like I want to protect you.  And my anger makes me forget about being shy and nervous.”

Chris hoped he didn’t have a scared expression on his face.  “I see.”

“I like you _so_ much, Chris.  I’ve had a crush on you for like, two years.  Most girls don’t even get the chance to talk to their crushes let alone be noticed by them.  It kind of feeds the fire.”

“You see, that’s the problem.  I’m your crush.  You idealize me.  That could never be an equal relationship.  I think as long as you see me as this unattainable goal, I could never be your boyfriend.  Plus…I think the gap in our maturity level is too much.  I’m not saying you’re childish or anything, you’re not.  That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You mean sex.”

Now Chris understood a little better what it felt like for a parent to hear their innocent child say a word like that.  He hung his head.

“Yes,” he mumbled.  “But, I don’t mean I won’t date you because you won’t have sex with me.  That’s not it.  Well, it is, but I don’t mean it in quite such an asshole way.  I mean.”  This was so frustrating.  “I know that I want…things.  And you’re not ready for that.  And I’m worried that I would keep pushing you and pushing you until I would end up hurting you.  Not physically, of course, I would never do that.  But I think it would bother you that I kept wanting to do things…and you would end up hating me.”

“Listen to yourself, Chris.  You’re so kind and considerate.  I could _never_ hate you.  And besides, even without the whole sex thing a relationship between us would never work as long as you’re still in love with your ex-girlfriend.”

Chris started in alarm.  “Eh?!”  He looked at Sophia with despair.  “Not you too.”

“See?  If it’s me _too_ , then everyone else can tell.  Why can’t you?”

Chris couldn’t answer her.

“Oh,” she said quietly.  “You _can_ tell.  So, you were using me.”

“No, not at all!  That’s not what happened here today.”

“Chris,” she said, smiling and looking at him admonishingly, “how am I supposed to stop idealizing you if you keep being such a nice, perfect guy?”

“Oh, yeah.  Right.  I was totally using you to forget about my girlfriend.”

She laughed and covered her eyes.  “It wouldn’t even matter.  Even if I knew that were true, I’d still let you.  You’re an _amazing_ kisser.”

It was finally his turn to blush.  Geez.  He couldn’t handle being told stuff like that.

“Well, that’s all relative, you know.  Maybe I’m okay compared to some guys.”

She lowered her hand and played with the bedspread.  “No, you don’t have to be experienced to know if someone’s good.  If they make you feel good and all tingly…in certain places, it’s pretty obvious.”

Chris could feel himself blushing hotter.  Why was this embarrassing him?  Karen had told him often enough that she thought he was good.  And besides, he was a guy.  Shouldn’t hearing something like that go to his head and make him all cocky?  Certainly not modest.

“I mean,” Sophia continued, “that was my first kiss and I know I’m gonna have to kiss a lot of guys before I find another one as good as you.”

“What?!” Chris yelped and turned so quickly toward her that he nearly slid off the bed.  “Your first kiss?!  You really thought it would be okay to have your first kiss and lose your virginity on the same day?!”

She shrugged.  “Well, it didn’t actually occur to me that that last part might even happen until I felt your hand on my…”  Her eyes went unfocused and she smiled.  “Wow.  A boy’s hand was on my—”

Chris clamped a hand over her mouth.  “Don’t say it.”

Her eyes moved to look at him.  He pulled his hand away.

“Sorry.  I should go.”

“Okay.  But you should know I’m not going to give up.  I still like you.  Go back to your ex if you like.  I’ll be waiting for you when she breaks your heart again.”

Chris hoped his flinch remained internal.  That comment had struck a nerve because that’s exactly what he felt would happen.

“Thanks,” he said.

He started to stand up but she gently pulled on his sleeve.

“Just, one thing before you go.”

He sat back down.  “Yeah?”

“Um, can I have one more kiss?  You see, I’m gonna have to tell my friends about this.  You understand that, right?  And while they’ll be super excited to hear about it and squeal when I tell them you Frenched me, they’re gonna laugh and call me stupid for not doing it back.  Can I try?”

“Uh.”  Chris shrugged.  “Sure.”

“Okay.”  She moved closer to him and pulled one leg up on the bed so she could face him squarely.  “So, how does this work?”

“Wha—?”  Chris suddenly felt nervous.  “I don’t know.  You just do it.”

“That’s all you can tell me?”

“Well.  Okay, it’s an old movie, but have you seen _Cruel Intentions_?”

She nodded.  “Yes.”

“Okay, well, do you remember what Buffy said to the mean chick from _Legally Blonde_?”

“Yes.”

“Do that.”

“Okay.”

She scooted forward and Chris leaned back just a hair.  Her eyebrows creased with worry.

“Chris, do you not want to?”

“Well!  Now that you’ve put all this pressure on me, what if I don’t ‘amaze’ you this time?”

She giggled.  “Not possible.”

She took his face in her hands and pulled him forward slowly.  She already had her eyes closed.  He better keep his open to make sure they didn’t miss their target.  Once they were lined up, he kissed her briefly, and then allowed her to pull him back.  Like before, they worked their way slowly into a deeper kiss, which was dangerous for him because the longer he kissed her the more he _really_ started to enjoy it.  She didn’t try to use her tongue, so he reached forward with his to prod hers.  Once she felt it she pushed back gently.  Then they took turns exploring each other.  It was nice.  She wasn’t very good and kept doing the same thing, but her inexperience and innocence was a total turn on.  He was going to always be the guy who gave her her first kiss.

It was getting to be too much of a turn on.  She was still holding his face, so he couldn’t pull back without being very forceful about it, and he was itching to touch her again.  His hands started to reach forward, but he stopped them.  He wiggled his fingers in the air and then clenched them into a fist.  _Don’t do it, don’t do it_.  He put his arms behind his back and laced his fingers together.  _Behave yourself!_

At last Sophia realized that they needed air.  She pulled back and they sucked in a breath with a loud gasp.  They continued to breathe rapidly and looked each other in the eye.

“Oh, wow,” she said.

“You’re telling me.”

They looked at each other for a moment, their heaving chests making them feel even more worked up.  She pulled him close and kissed him again.  His will power was gone.  He wrapped his arms around her and leaned forward.  She moved the leg that was on the bed and let it wrap around his waist as he pushed her down.  They fell back onto the bed and he was perfectly situated between her legs with one of them hooked around his.

“Sophie!  We’re back!”  A door shut downstairs.

Chris sprang away from her and missed the end of the bed.  He wound up on the floor with a soft thump and hoped nobody downstairs had heard that.  Sophia leapt off the bed, straightening her skirt and looked as panicked as he felt.  There were footsteps on the stairs.  Sophia helped him to his feet and before they could make it out of the door a tweener jumped in the frame.

“Sophie!  Guess what?  I got second place!”

The girl looked at Chris and her eyes went wide.

“Aww—”

Sophia wrapped her arms around her sister’s head and hissed at her to be quiet.  She let go of her and grabbed Chris by the hand.  They started to head down the hallway and then she turned back suddenly.  He crashed into her and they whisper yelled at each other as they headed back.  She grabbed his jacket off her bedroom doorknob and handed it to him.  Then they started back down the hall with the little sister trailing after them.  They tiptoed down the stairs and Sophia pulled him around the corner so that they came into the kitchen from a side entrance.  Her family was there in the midst of dropping things off here and there as they came in from the garage.

“Hi, Sophie,” her mother said as she emptied something down the sink.  “What did you do all day?”

The older sister put a hand on her hip and looked Chris over.  “Yes, what _have_ you been doing all day?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” she said with a pointed look for her sister.

Her mother turned to look and seemed surprised to see Chris.  She must not have seen him yet.

“His car broke down,” Sophia explained.  “And we were looking up tow trucks on the Internet in the study.”  She pointed toward the door they had come from.  That’s why she had led them around the back way.  Chris was impressed.  She was a quick thinker.  He should let her do all the talking; his lying skills seemed to fluctuate from situation to situation.

Her sister crossed her arms and shook her head smiling.  She obviously didn’t believe her, but didn’t say anything.  Her mother dried her hands off on a towel and gave Chris one of those polite mom smiles.

“Well, that’s a shame that his car broke down, but who is he?”

“Oh, sorry.  He’s a friend from school.  This is Chris.  Chris, this is my mom, my sister, Alex, and my sister, Natalie.  My dad must still be outside.”

“Hi,” he said with a little wave.  The younger sister was grinning at him and the older one was examining him closely.  With the way these two were acting, was their mother being intentionally dense or was she really not catching on?

“Oh,” Natalie said with a sudden realization.  “I know you.  You’re Scott Ramsey’s friend, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

What the—?  He was used to being “one of the people freaky Julian March probably wouldn’t brain fry,” or “that guy who hangs around Will Harder,” or even “Karen Green’s bitch,” but since when did he become “Scott Ramsey’s friend?”  This was unacceptable.

Natalie moved a little closer to him and glanced over at her mother.  She was distracted by helping her husband carry in a large ice chest.  Then Natalie tried to appear disinterestedly casual as she asked, “So, do you know if he’s seeing anyone right now?”

Chris shot his eyes away.  If he said no he technically wasn’t lying.  “Um, not exactly.”

“Well, tell him I said hi.”

She smiled suggestively at him and quirked an eyebrow.  Then she headed off down a hall.  Chris was confused.  Did Scott know her?  He was sort of dating Antoinette, but it was a secret, right?  Her friends shouldn’t know him.

“So, Christopher,” Sophia’s mom said as she left her husband to continue the struggle alone.  Chris couldn’t believe it.  It had happened again.  Sophia had introduced him as “Chris;” why did parents feel the need to call him Christopher?  What if Chris wasn’t short for Christopher?  What if his name had been Christian or something?  “Do you need a ride back to your car to wait for the tow truck?”

“Oh, no ma’am, that’s okay.  It’s not far away, but I should probably get going.  Thank you though.  And thank you, Sophia, for your help.”

“No problem.  I’ll walk you to the door.”

“Okay.”

They walked down the hall and Chris resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to see if the whole family was watching him.  He’d been more than eager to leave once he saw that the dad was now done unloading things and able to come talk to him.  He and girls’ dads did not get along well.  Even Anna’s dad disliked him for some reason.

When they reached the door he opened it and turned back to say goodbye to Sophia.  She was looking up at him and biting the smile on her lip.  Chris didn’t have the luxury of allowing himself to respond to her; Mom and Dad were watching from the kitchen and he was facing them.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered under his breath.

“Like what?” she asked innocently.

Chris gave her a reproachful smile and said, “I’ll see you at school, Sophia.”

As he pulled the door shut behind him he heard Sophia’s mother say, “So, you’re going by ‘Sophia’ now, hmm?”

“Mooooom.”

He laughed to himself as he headed down the driveway.  He couldn’t believe he had a thing for jailbait.  He was such a cradle robber.  And it was sad to think that that was the case because they were only separated by two years.  It was just that when he’d been fifteen, he’d been a lot more experienced than she was now.  There would have still been a gap between them.  Of course, if they hadn’t been interrupted, Sophia’s sexual maturity would have been raised quite a few levels.  They probably wouldn’t have gone all the way, but he would have gotten a lot farther before she tensed up again.  He was glad that crisis had been averted.  Especially since everyone, including her, was trying to push him back toward Karen.

What was he supposed to do about her?  He couldn’t just jump right back into a relationship with her.  He didn’t really know what it was like to be without her.  Almost immediately after they had broken up, she had been there trying to get him back.  He spent so much time with her now, it almost seemed like more than he’d spent with her while they’d been dating.  He was going to have to tell her that he needed some space.  That she needed to leave him alone for a couple months.  He needed to sort things out in his head by himself, and then he would be able to tell if he missed having her in his life.  If he loved her so much that he wanted her back despite the fear of going through another break-up, then they were just meant to have a rough and tumble, push and pull kind of relationship.  But first he had to figure out if he really wanted that with her.

It took him much longer than he thought it would to walk home.  It must have been past noon and he’d passed through a low field that hadn’t quite dried up since the last rain.  His shoes were muddy and his socks were soaked.  The bottom of his pants must be pretty gross too.  Good thing he had to do laundry this weekend.  When he got to his townhouse he walked around to the back so he could hose his shoes off.  They were already wet anyway.  He pulled his socks off and tried to dry his feet off by prancing around on the concrete stoop.  Hopefully no one was watching this.  He stepped closer to the door and as he switched his socks to his other hand he looked through the pink curtains.  He paused with his hand just off the knob.

His mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a stranger.  She didn’t look very happy.  The man was wearing a suit and looked cool and detached.  His legs were crossed and his hands were poised elegantly on the table.  Chris peered closer.  He knew this man.  It was his father’s lawyer, Mr. Richardson.  Why was he here?  It obviously had something to do with his father, but why did he have to come in person?  Before his mind could even start to wildly speculate all the things that could be wrong, Mr. Richardson’s whole demeanor changed.  He looked compassionate, concerned, and a little hurt as he leaned forward.  He reached out to take his mother’s hand where it lay on the table.  It looked like a familiar gesture.  His mother immediately pulled her hand away from his.

Chris backed up so he couldn’t see them anymore.  What was going on in there?  Now that he couldn’t see it anymore, he wasn’t really sure what he had just witnessed.  Had he even seen anything at all?  What were they talking about?  If they had been talking about his father before, the subject had changed with that one gesture.  There was something else going on.  Could he just walk in on it?  No.  He didn’t want to know what that had been about.  He bent over and picked up his shoes.  He banged them together loudly and watched little pieces of mud fall to the stoop.  After several loud slaps he put them down and reached for the doorknob.  He rattled it a couple times, like he was having a bit of trouble with it, and then opened the door.

Mr. Richardson was cool and collected again on his side of the table.  His mother still looked upset, but not in the same way she’d been when Mr. Richardson had reached for her hand.  Had he not looked through the windows before coming in, he never would have guessed that he’d missed something very personal pass between them.  They both looked at him.  Mr. Richardson smiled.

“Hello, Christopher.”

“It’s Chris,” he snapped.  At least here was one adult he could correct.

“Pardon me.  Chris.”

“Why are you here?”

His mother didn’t tell him to mind his manners or change his tone.  She must not care if he treated Mr. Richardson poorly, which made him want to do it more.  Mr. Richardson smoothed down his tie with one hand, unperturbed by Chris’ prickliness.

“I have some good news to report.  The parole board was moved by your testimony and took into consideration that your father turned himself in.  They’ve sentenced him to jail for as many days as he violated his parole to be served retroactively from the time of his re-incarceration.  So, he’ll be out in time for Christmas.”

Chris was relieved and almost thankful to Mr. Richardson.  He’d probably played a part himself in getting the light sentence.  But, he was being grabby with his mother.  Chris blinked at him.

“Is that it?  I mean, that’s great, but why did you come out here to tell us that?  You could have just called.”

“Because unfortunately he won’t be out in time for Thanksgiving, but he wants to see you.  I’m trying to convince your mother to fly back to Chicago with you.  Or at least give me permission to take you there myself.  If that’s the case, there are some papers she’d need to sign.”

“Oh.”  Had that been what he’d seen?  Had Mr. Richardson been trying to play to her emotions and she hadn’t fallen for it?  Maybe.  “But,” Chris said hesitantly.  “Thanksgiving…at a jail…?”

“We’ll be permitted to bring our own food and have a private meeting room.”

Chris let out a small laugh.  “One of the perks of working for the mafia?”

Mr. Richardson just smiled in answer.

“Mr. Richardson,” his mother said, “I won’t agree to this.”

“Does Chris have a say?” he asked coolly.

His mother pursed her lips and looked over at Chris.  She seemed to be asking him to turn Mr. Richardson down, but he really wanted to see his dad again.  Could he wait until Christmas?  Yes.  Did he want to?  He looked at his mother.

“Are you working on Thanksgiving again this year?”

She sighed.  “Maybe.  Maybe not.  I don’t have a project at the moment.  I’m still on probation, but my boss indicated he was willing to give me another chance very soon.  In which case I need to work extra hard to prove myself again.”

“Well, we usually do Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday or Sunday anyway, right?  I have both Thursday and Friday off from school.  I can fly out and come back in time for our meal together.”

His mother looked like she wanted to argue, so she tried to come up with something to deter him.

“How will we afford it?” she asked.  That worked as a big determent.  His mother had won this battle.  “We can’t afford a plane ticket, and you know it, Chris.  I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

“Chris.”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Richardson cut in before they could start fighting.  “We would cover the costs.”

“We who?” his mother mumbled.

Chris looked at Mr. Richardson.  “Really?”

“Yes, your father wants to see you very much.”

The man was looking at him pretty intently.  Chris could barely nod.  “I—”  he glanced at his mother and then back to the lawyer.  “I want to go.”

“Excellent.  I’ll make the arrangements.”

 

Scott

 

Friday, November 11, 2005

 

Scott turned over and settled his head against the pillow.  He finally felt comfortable.  His body relaxed slowly and he could feel himself slipping away into sleep.  Then he heard a soft click.  The DJ for the local rock station started laughing in his ear.  Then his partner continued on with the story about the celebrity saying or doing something dumb in public.  Scott groaned wearily.  He couldn’t believe it was time to get up.  He’d tossed and turned all night and hadn’t been able to settle down until just now.  He hadn’t had a nightmare, but his brain had refused to quiet down.  He had just kept _thinking_.  About everything.  His parents, his friends, school, the college applications deadlines that were coming up, the test he’d taken on Wednesday, his brothers getting into trouble at school, his sister’s boyfriend.  It was all in there.  Maybe he’d been thinking about all that other stuff because whenever he thought of Anna or Antoinette, something would pop up and make him forget about it for a moment.  It must have subconsciously been intentional.  Which was stupid because his subconscious should have been frickin’ asleep.

Scott reached a hand out and silenced the braying DJs.  He sat up and felt tired, but there was really no point in falling back into bed because he knew he wouldn’t sleep anyway.  He went about his business and got ready for school.  He was proceeding right on schedule.  He didn’t know why his friends always made fun of him.  He was never late to school.  Just to everything else.  Which he didn’t really feel was his fault.  There were just other things to do in life than to worry about where you were supposed to be at a certain time.  That’s why people had so much stress in their lives; they were slaves to clocks.  He twisted the watch around his wrist, feeling it growing ever tighter.  He would have loved to have never worn the stupid thing but it was a very expensive present from his parents.  And his friends had threatened to super glue it to his forehead if he didn’t at least keep it on him at all times.  They knew it wouldn’t help him to not be late, but they thought it was important for him to be aware of just _how_ late he was.

On his way downstairs Scott tried to be as quiet as he could.  It wasn’t because he had to worry about disturbing his father though.  Despite it still being very early, his father was long gone to work.  The problem was that it was too quiet, and he felt weird about disturbing the silence.  He also felt a little nervousness about heading into the kitchen.  He and his father had neglected the refrigerator for so long that something had started growing in it.  Scott wasn’t sure if had become ambulatory yet, but they had been forced to cover their faces with towels as they disposed of it.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad now.  They rarely went food shopping, so there was probably nothing in there.  Scott remembered buying milk a few weeks ago.  If that was still in there it could be dangerous.

He swung the door open on the large side-by-side stainless steel fridge and braced himself for the worst.  He was surprised to find that there was food inside.  And it looked fresh.  Maybe his dad had gone shopping.  Stranger things had happened.  He saw a container of orange juice sitting on the top shelf and pulled it out.  He stood in front of the open refrigerator door and drank directly from it.

“I’m sorry!”

Scott choked on the juice in alarm and did his best not to spill any as he spun around.  He stood frozen, with the orange juice container in one hand and the cap in the other.  His mouth was still full of juice.  He stared at his father’s mistress.  She was dressed in short shorts and a sports bra.  Her platinum blonde hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and she was holding a glass out toward him with both hands as she squeezed her eyes shut and kept her head slightly bowed.

“I know this is your house and I am in no position to tell you what to do at all.  But, it’s just…I just hate backwash!”

He stared at her.  Why was she here at 6:30 in the morning?  Why was she here when his father wasn’t period?  He swallowed the juice in his mouth and took the glass from her.  She raised her head and opened her eyes.  She looked very apologetic.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s fine!” she said waving her arms.

“No, it’s not.  You probably bought this, right?”

“Well, yes.  But you can have some of course!  That’s why it’s there.  I noticed there wasn’t a lot of food in the house, so I thought maybe you guys were too busy to shop.  I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to take over or replace anybody.  But.  You guys have gotta eat.  Something other than fast food.”

“Yeah.  Uh.  Thanks.”

Scott put the lid back on the container and put the juice back in the refrigerator.  He shut the door and walked over to a cabinet to put the glass away.  He didn’t really like orange juice anyway.  He stayed by the cabinet.  He didn’t know what to do now.  There might be some cereal in the pantry still, but if he ate that he would need some milk.  Had she bought some of that too?  It didn’t matter.  He wasn’t that hungry anyway.

“Oh, um, I just got back from my morning run and was about to make a power shake.  Would you like one?”

He turned around and watched her rush around the kitchen.  She grabbed some fruit and vegetables and put it by a large canister that appeared to be filled with a powdered supplement.  She stood on her tiptoes and reached for something in the cabinet above her.  Scott crossed an arm over his stomach and used it to support his other arm as he placed a finger over his mouth.  Her body was stretched out and the shorts rode up, giving a hint of her non-rosy cheeks.  Scott put the finger in his mouth and bit on it as she struggled a little bit.  He couldn’t believe it.  He was vaguely aware that his father was an attractive man, but was he _this_ attractive?  She belonged in the Playboy Mansion.  It occurred to him that he should probably help her rather than just stare, but then she got the juicer down from the top shelf.  How did she know where the juicer was?  He didn’t even know they owned a juicer.  Maybe she had brought it over herself.  As she started to prepare things for her concoction, Scott allowed her earlier statement to sink in.

“Um, did you say that you just got _back_ from your run?”

“Unh-huh,” she said brightly.

“What time did you get up this morning?”

“About 5:30.  I don’t take very long runs.”

She was busy cramming the vegetables and fruits whole and unpeeled into the juicer, including the bananas.  Then she started dumping the beige powder on top of it.  Scott tried to do the math.  5:30.  Had she run here from her place?  No, of course not.  She lived in an apartment in the city.  She was here this early in the morning because she’d spent the night.  He’d suspected she’d done so in the past, but she always left before he got up.  Either that or she hid until he left.  She turned the juicer on and the loud grinding broke the calm peace of his house.  He moved to sit at the kitchen table and watched her.

He’d met her only a couple times before, but she seemed nice enough.  He wondered why he didn’t dislike her or resent her.  Or blame her.  He guessed it was because he really didn’t think about her.  His father didn’t talk about her and until today he’d had no real signs that she’d even been in his house.  She turned the juicer off and poured the orange-ish drink into two glasses.  She walked over to the table smiling.  What was she so happy about?

“I used to put an egg in it,” she said.  “But, then my mom scared me with all the salmonella and stuff.  So, that’s why I started using the powdered protein.”

She set the glasses on the table and Scott reached slowly out to take one.  So, she had a mother.  Did her mother know she was seeing a married man with children?

“I hope you like it.  But it’s okay if you don’t!  Don’t force yourself to drink it or anything.”

Scott took a small sip.  It was a bit thicker than he expected and surprisingly room temperature.  He was probably just thinking it should be cold because juice normally was.  It didn’t have much flavor as far as he could tell.  She tapped her manicured nails on the side of her glass and watched him.  When she saw him look up, she smiled brighter.

“So, you’re going to school, huh?”

He nodded.

“Wow.  It’s really early.”

“Yeah.  It takes an hour to get there.”

“Oh, I see.  That’s really impressive that you have the discipline to do that every morning.”

Scott put a hand to his head.  A sudden headache had hit him.  “Look, Kristen, you don’t have to try so hard, okay?  It doesn’t matter what I think of you or if we get along.  My dad won’t stop seeing you.  Not even if I tell him to.”

He rubbed his temple, grateful he’d managed to get her to shut-up for a minute.  The headache subsided as quickly as it had come on.  He took in a breath and looked back up at her.  She was staring at her untouched power drink.

“What if we get married?” she asked softly.

“So, what, you’re auditioning for the role of stepmother?  I thought stepmothers were supposed to be mean.”  She started to reply but he said, “Besides, do you _really_ think he’s going to marry you?”  Scott stood up.  “Well, I’ve gotta go.  Thanks for the drink.”

He left the full glass on the table and walked into the foyer to grab his bookbag and blazer.  He walked out the door and slammed it shut behind him.  He hadn’t intended to be mean to her, but he was tired of performing for women.  They all claimed they just wanted him, but that wasn’t true.  They wanted something _from_ him.  He doubted even Anna would be satisfied with just him.  Maybe the solution to his problems would be to stay away from all women for a couple months.  He didn’t need sex; he needed sanity.

School was a haze.  The classes, the people, the time.  It had been that way for a while now and he was worried he wasn’t retaining any information.  The test he’d taken on Wednesday had been a little foggy too.  He was worried about the grade he would receive on it.  Maybe he should submit his college applications early so that the selection committee wouldn’t be able to see him affected by senioritis.  Though this wasn’t senioritis, and he knew it.  But what could he do?  He barely had control over anything in his life.  The only way to regain control was to stay away from people.  But he didn’t like to be alone.  Did that count as a Catch-22?

After the final bell, he let his body go through the motions without forcing his brain to get involved.  He managed to get downstairs, go to his locker, and walk out the back hallway all without having to think.  The problem with that was that he was almost to the end of the student parking lot when he remembered that he had an academic club meeting.  Ordinarily he would just skip it, but he had to meet his friends later in the city for Julian’s birthday.  If he went home he would have to leave in half an hour to make it back.  He groaned and turned around abruptly to head back to the school.  He crashed into someone and sent both her and her books sprawling to the ground.

“Oh my gosh!  I’m so sorry!”

Scott knelt down and reached for her hand and one of her books.  He realized he couldn’t lift both without pulling awkwardly on her arm, but it would be stupid to put the book back on the ground, so he stopped moving.  She didn’t move either.  The one good thing in all this was that she was smiling.  And that she hadn’t noticed that her panties were showing.

“Um.”  Scott finally dropped the book and grabbed both her hands.  He helped her to her feet and she laughed as she regained her balance from his awkward tug.

“Thanks.”

Scott bent over to get her books.  He was such a dweeb.  She walked over and picked up a thin book that had gone flying a few feet away.  Once everything was recovered they stood in front of each other.  She was smiling.  Scott wasn’t sure what his expression was like.

“I am so sorry,” he said again.  “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine.  I mean, really, it was my fault.  I was walking too close behind you.”

“No, I was a total spaz.  It’s all on me.  Um, are you going to the metro?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll walk you there.”  He held out his hand for the smaller book.  “And I’ll carry your books.”

She laughed and got a little twittery.  “It’s all right!  It’s only a couple blocks away.”

“No, I insist.  It’s the least I can do for laying you out flat.”

She shrugged daintily.  “Okay.  My dad always said it’s pointless to argue with a gentlemen once he’s decided to be chivalrous.”

“Yeah.  That’s probably a truism.”  He took the small book from her and made sure he had a good grip on the rest of them.  He turned toward the direction of the metro.  “Shall we?”

They started to walk together and it was a little awkward.  They didn’t really know each other.  Scott recognized her as one of Antoinette’s friends, but that was about it.  She was short, around Laney’s height, and had dark wavy hair.  Her eyes were dark blue and there were a few freckles sprinkled over her nose.  She was one of the few people he’d ever seen who kept their complete uniform on and buttoned up even after school was out.  Scott glanced to the side.  Since when had the walk to the metro ever taken this long?  He cleared his throat.

“Uh, I’m Scott by the way.”

“I know,” she said.  “You’re in my Spanish class.”

“Oh.”  He felt bad now.  He’d recognized her as one of Antoinette’s friends, but he’d never noticed her in class before.

“We actually kind of met once.  At the mall?  You were tutoring Antoinette.”

“Oh, yeah…” Scott said as if he was remembering.  He technically already knew who she was, he just didn’t know her name.

“Though I guess we weren’t properly introduced.  I’m Natalie.”

“Hi, Natalie.”

Scott reached out to shake her hand and the books slipped out of his grasp.  They fell to the ground with four individual thuds.  He bent down and picked them up.  He shook his head in embarrassment before standing back up.  Natalie was just smiling at him.  It was all she’d done since he’d slammed into her.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay.  They’re textbooks.  Sometimes I think they deserve it.”

Scott laughed.  “Me too!  I totally enjoyed it when I dented my math analysis book.”

They started walking again.

“Oh, you’re in math analysis?  I thought there was only one class, but you’re definitely not in mine.”

“Oh, it was last year.  I’m taking calculus this year.”

“Oh, right.  You’re like really smart and all.”

“Well.  I wouldn’t go that far.  Have you seen me today?”

“Being clumsy has nothing to with being smart.”

Scott groaned softly.  “That’s true.”

She nudged him gently.  “I’m playing with you.”

They stopped at the entrance to the metro and he handed her books back to her.

“Thanks for walking me.  And for carrying my books.”

“No problem.”

“So, it was nice to meet you officially.”

“Yeah.  It’s good to know your name.  I always just thought of you as the one on the right.”

Natalie laughed.  “Omigod.  We totally do that.  Don’t we?”

They smiled at each other.  Then Natalie chewed on her lip for a moment, looking thoughtful.

“So, uh, Scott.  Are you still tutoring Antoinette?”

 _Tutoring.  Is that what we’re calling it?_   “Well, technically, yes.  Though I’m not sure for how much longer.”

“Ah.”  She continued to look at him and seemed as if she wanted to ask him something else, but then she just shook herself slightly and smiled.

“Well, thanks again.  I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Okay.  Bye.”

“Bye, Scott.”

She smiled and walked away from him.  The way her hips were swaying made him pretty certain she was doing it on purpose to keep his attention.  It worked.  That was called flirting.  She was flirting with him.  That was interesting.  Maybe if Anna got sick of waiting for him and Antoinette got tired of him, he and Natalie could have a go of it.  Wait a minute.  Wasn’t he supposed to be swearing off women?  That had lasted all of eight hours.

Scott returned to school feeling pretty confident that he would be able to keep his mind off girls while in the Academic Club.  There were only two girls on the team and neither of them were exactly the kind he would be interested in.  Or they in him for that matter.  He’d heard one of them tell the other once that he was kind of cute and smart enough, but he had no ambition.  They’d both agreed that was a huge turn off.  Hearing that hadn’t really motivated him to be more ambitious.  He was willing to wait for the girl who was a little more “go with the flow” like him.  So why did he like Antoinette?  She was ambitious according to every definition of the word.

Scott took the stairs two at a time as he headed for Mrs. Guzman’s classroom.  She was a history teacher and he’d never had her, but she was the one who sponsored the Academic Team.  It was probably a good thing that she didn’t know him that well.  She knew he was smart, but not that he was a whiny slacker.  His teachers always told him that they thought he was a nice, smart, sweet boy, but he whined too damn much.  Some of the teachers said it nicer, and some actually said it meaner.  He really didn’t like Mr. Lockhart.  He neared the end of the hallway and could hear a conversation.  He heard his name just before he rounded the corner, so he stopped and stayed behind the wall to listen.

“I can’t believe you’re still going back to Scott Ramsey,” voice one said.

“Look, I know I said before his looks weren’t enough, but that was when he had that nasty stringy hair,” voice two said.

Scott made a face.  He was going to grow it back out just to spite everyone.  It hadn’t been _that_ bad.

“So, just because he’s ‘hot’ now?”

“He was always hot.  Have you seen him without a shirt on?”

“No!  Have you?”

“Unh-huh.  It was during one of the soccer games and he was lined up with some other dorks spelling out Calverton.  He was like the L or something.”

“See, I’ve never been to a lame soccer game.”

“Well, I had to go because I was dating Ryan.”

“He was like third string!”

“So?  He was still on the team.  Besides, Will Harder is fucking fabulous.”

“Fabulous being the key word.  He’s too pretty to be straight.”

Scott put a hand over his mouth to hold back his laugh.

“He’s totally straight.”

“How do you know?”

“Because two-thirds of the female population has gone out with him.”

“Overcompensation.”

Scott was dying, but he had to stay quiet.  Were they going to go back to him?

“Anyway, we’re talking about Scott.  He’s hot.  And smart.  And straight.  And single as far as I can tell.  That’s hard to find.”

“Right, but who wants some guy who is going to be a professional student for the rest of his life?  You know that’s what he’s going to be.  He’s going to be a five or six year senior in college, and then he’ll get a Masters or two before spending ten years getting his PhD.  Who wants to have to support that?”

“Look, I told you.  I’ve seen him without a shirt on.  I am totally willing to be his sugar mama.”

They both laughed and Scott looked at the ceiling.  He was smiling, but it was a little embarrassing.  He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised girls talked about boys like that; he certainly did the same thing to girls when he was with his friends.  Should he let them know he heard them?  He slid around the side of the wall and posed like a super hot model.

“Hello, ladies.”

They gasped and then squealed before running toward the classroom.

“Scott, you’re such a jerk!” one of them yelled.

“But I’m still hot, right?”

“Ugh!”

The super tall skinny girl on the Academic Team paused before going inside the classroom.  She looked back at him and nodded to the affirmative with a grin.  He laughed and clapped his hands as he followed them.  Awesome.

Unfortunately the rest of the Academic Team meeting wasn’t nearly as awesome.  All they did was quiz each other with little trivia questions and pester him about asking Will to join.  They didn’t _need_ Will.  While their school sucked at sports, they almost always won the academic competitions.  Besides, just because Will was smart didn’t mean he knew a lot of trivia.  Of course he would be really useful for the math questions.  They already had someone who could do the chemistry stuff super fast, but they all were a little on the slow side when it came to working out the algebra or geometry questions.  Will could probably answer them without even thinking about it.  Scott wondered what his IQ was.  Maybe he should suggest all four of them take one of those online tests just for fun, and then he could find out how much smarter than him Will Harder really was.  If they were close then he could show everyone that he was smart too.  Will just _seemed_ smarter because no one expected pretty people to be smart.  Or Will could be a freaking genius.

Scott pondered this as he rode the metro to the station where they were meeting.  How many signs of genius did Will exhibit?  If he was really that smart, he would have skipped some grades, right?  Maybe he had.  He was short.  Maybe he was younger than them and they didn’t know it.  In which case, it would be scary considering how young he was when he started messing around with girls.  He obviously had a photographic memory, but that didn’t necessarily translate to genius.  That would simply explain why he could do so well without studying.  But did it explain why he knew how to do stuff before it was taught to him?  Scott rubbed his chin.  Will was way too vain to hide something that would show his greatness.  What would be able to overcome his vanity?  What did Will like more than himself?

Before he could think of an answer to that the engineer announced that they were at his stop.  He jumped up and pushed his way through the crowd and stepped onto the platform.  He checked the evil wristwatch.  He was nearly twenty minutes early.  That was an amazing feat.  He was going to scream if he was still the last one there.  It turned out he was the first on there.  Maybe that was why he was always late.  If he was late, he never had to stand around all alone like a loser.  And he had to stand around quite a while before Will showed up.  When he spotted him Will gave him a very irritated look.

“What?” Scott asked defensively.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Um.  We have a meeting.  Sorry I’m not late.”

Will just stared at him with his lip jutted out in annoyance.

“What?!”

“I waited for you for ten minutes outside the locker room because you were supposed to meet me there so we could come here together!”

Scott remembered that conversation.  “Oh, yeah.  Sorry.  I forgot.”

Will slapped his forehead with a hand.  “Scott.”  He didn’t say anything more.  Then he shrugged it off and stuck his hands in his pockets.  They stood around silently.  Then Scott started to yawn.  He tried to keep it small, but then Will yawned too and his turned into a full-blown jaw cracking yawn.  When he finished he glared at Will.

“Don’t do that!”

“You started it!”

Will crossed his arms in a huff and his scowl furrowed deeper.  Scott hadn’t said anything about his nasty look because he’d had that expression all day, but now it was getting worse.

“Why are you frowning?  You’ve been grumbling to yourself all day.”

“My dad is retarded,” Will grumbled.

“Un-huh.  What’d he do?”

“Nothing bad.  Just embarrassing.”

“So what was it?”

“Like, why would I tell you?!”

Scott better do something about this.  It was Julian’s birthday.  Will needed to be in a better mood.  If their little group of friends was a band, then Will was the front man and lead singer.  And everyone knew that if the lead singer ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.  He poked him in the shoulder a couple times to get his attention.  Will gave him a look that let him know it was a pretty dumb idea to poke the already angry animal.

“Can I show you trick?” he asked, smiling the way he did when he wanted something from Anna.

Will’s expression softened just a little bit.  “Okay.”

“Cool.  Give me your hands.”

Will scowled at him.

“What?”

“It’s cold.”

“You’re a soccer player.  Your hands aren’t important.”

He pulled his hands out.  “The ladies would disagree.”

“Blow me.”

“Now, Scott.  While I do think you are a very attractive guy, I just don’t—”

“Shut it.”

Scott took Will’s hands and then just held them.  How was he supposed to twist them together?  You tangled them somehow and then when you pulled them out and they came free.  Or something.  Did he need string for this?

“Um, dude?  Is this just an excuse to hold my hands?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.  I’m hot stuff too.”

“I know.  Jake was griping about you during practice.  He said you’re an honor-less motherfucker who hits on other guys’ girls.”

Will didn’t make any noise, but it looked like he was saying “ow.”  Maybe it was because he had suddenly gripped his hands very tightly.

“What?!  Does he know about us?!”

Will looked pitiably at his hands and Scott eased up.  Will sighed in relief.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t think so.  I think he’s just pissed and kind of taking it out on people.  He and Antoinette have been fighting.  Even in school.  He was a little peeved about what happened at your birthday.  About what all four of us did.”

“Still?  That was like a month ago.”

“I know.  But from what I heard you were _all_ up on her.”

“She was all up on _me_.”

“Unh-huh.”

“Wait a minute.  What did you three do that night?”

“Nothing,” Will said quickly.

 _What had they done?_ Scott wondered with a suspicious eyebrow furl.  Then Will jiggled their hands.

“How does this thing work?”

Scott remembered he was supposed to be showing him a trick.

“Oh, yeah.  Um, hang on.  Let me think.”

He never did remember how to do the trick. He probably did need string or something.  He wished he could leave and go look it up.  One of the last things on his list of “fun things to do” was watching someone getting a tattoo.  But he would be there for his friend.  He wasn’t sure in what capacity he was supposed to be serving, but he would stand around and look supportive unless instructed otherwise.  That task was harder than he thought it was going to be.  The tattoo place was sketchy as hell.  It was dingy and poorly lit and the counter girl was mean and scary.  The whole thing gave him butterflies in his stomach.  He wondered how Julian was feeling.  He was nervous and he wasn’t even getting a tattoo.  Surely Julian wasn’t as calm as he looked on the outside, was he?

“Dude,” Chris nudged him.  “Are you really that nervous?  You’re shaking.”

Scott looked where Chris was indicating.  He’d pointed to a picture on the wall and his finger, his whole hand actually, was trembling.  That was strange.  He didn’t really feel _that_ upset or nervous.  But why else would his hand be shaking like that?  He pulled it back and just shrugged it off.  Even when he was nervous he’d never been shaky about it.  Maybe this was just a whole new level of anxiousness for him.

However, the most nervous one appeared to be Will after he got in trouble for flirting with freaky, scary girl.  He really didn’t have a type.  Just “female” was good enough for him.  Sure, Scott acknowledged about himself, he dated neurotic, controlling women, but at least he was consistent about it.  Just like he consistently kept his eyes focused on anything but the tattooing.  It hadn’t been so bad at first, but once he realized Julian was bleeding, he freaked out.  Now just hearing the constant buzz of the gun was driving him nuts.  He wondered if Julian would be offended if he left and waited out front.  He would have asked to go, but then he remembered he would be alone with mean, scary counter girl.  He didn’t want that either.  So, he spent his time looking at the walls.  There were posters on it for proper tattoo maintenance, with some gnarly pictures of what would happen if you didn’t take care of them.  That was almost as bad as looking at the actual tattooing process.  He had to end up staring at the ceiling and floor a lot.  How on earth could one little star take so long?

At last it was over.  He looked at Julian’s back and had a hard time believing the bright blue design would never come off.  It looked a little fake, like it had been airbrushed on.  It looked good now, but what if the color faded?  Hopefully it wouldn’t turn all gross like the tattoos he saw on old biker guys in movies.  Maybe the ink nowadays was made better.

Then Julian decided to be a gianormous freak.  Who on earth would get a tattoo there?  What was his problem?  And if he was willing to do that, why did he make fun of him so much for his slight penchant for pain?  He obviously had some issues of his own.  And he was very unhappy that both Chris and Will made fun of him.  He had asked legitimate questions; it was important to know things like that.  Otherwise he might seem like an ass in front of other people.  His friends were supposed to be the understanding ones who taught him these things so he wouldn’t embarrass himself later.  Bunch of jerks.

Then Skittle—which Scott thought was a silly name for someone who might want to appear tough—started to work on the second tattoo.  This time, Scott’s eyes remained glued to Julian’s skin.  This was fascinating.  What did it feel like?  Julian looked like he was in pain, but that was because he had normal responses to pain.  What would it be like if he were getting it done?  Would he be getting hard?  Maybe.  When he’d discovered that actual pain turned him on, he’d always assumed that if the pain got anywhere near his groin it would have the opposite effect.  Sadly, it didn’t.  It tended to magnify what he was feeling.  So, even if getting that tattoo there or ever lower really hurt, it would probably get him to react.  It was a disturbing thought punctuated by the fact that he now really wanted to know what it felt like.  What if he got one there?  Would Antoinette like it?  Probably.

Then Skittle dabbed at his work and the gauze came back mostly black, but there was just a bit of crimson red.  Oh, no.  Now that was just one place you shouldn’t bleed.  It was just too close to…Scott looked away and took a step back.  A wave a sickening heat washed over him.  He felt really hot.  He wanted to sit down.

Scott felt groggy, almost like he was waking up after a night of taking off-brand cold medicine.  He felt miserable, but he felt safe.  Someone was near him.  They were petting his head with cold fingers; it felt really good against his flushed skin.  He could tell that person was trying to talk to him.  Then the cold fingers tapped his cheek.

“Scott, can you hear me?”

The voice came down a tunnel, but he was getting closer to the end of it.  He realized he was lying down and he was more than a little disoriented.  His head didn’t hurt, but it felt thick and hazy.  He thought he raised an arm to his head, but he wasn’t sure.  What was going on?  He figured he might as well ask.

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

He recognized Will’s voice now, and that reminded of him of where he was.  He’d fainted in a tattoo parlor.

“Oh, God.  That’s embarrassing.”

He hadn’t realized he’d said that out loud until Chris said, “Yeah, it is.”

He made a face and hoped Chris was in a position to see it.  Then Will asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Can you sit up?”

“I can try.”

Scott called on all the power in his muscles to raise his tired body.  He finally opened his eyes as he did and realized that from Will’s position he must have been lying with his head in his lap.  The cold fingers had belonged to him.  This was a tish… _humiliating_.

“Sorry,” he said embarrassedly.

“It’s okay,” Will said.  “It was a little squicky.”

They continued on with the conversation, but Scott couldn’t stop feeling like a goober.  Squicky or not he couldn’t believe he’d passed out from simply watching Julian get a tattoo.  It hadn’t been _that_ bad.  The posters on the wall had been worse.  Was he really that pathetic?  Or maybe he was just tired.  He did feel a little weak as he rested on the couch.  He was surprised when mean, scary counter girl brought him a soda.  Maybe she wasn’t so mean after all.  The sweet drink made him feel a little better.  And so did his friends.  They didn’t razz him the rest of the time; they were pretty nice about it.  Which meant he had worried them.  Had it really been that bad?  He’d been completely out the entire time they carried him.  That probably wasn’t a good thing.

When Julian emerged he felt embarrassed again.  Julian had come here to get a tattoo and was being all cool and stuff and he’d been the dorky friend who kind of ruined it for him.  And because he was feeling bad, he let Julian mess with his hair when he came to stand beside him.

“Are you feeling better?” Julian asked with a concerned smile.

“Yeah.  I’m really sorry about this.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Scott stood up slowly and smiled apologetically at him.  Julian smiled in return and gave him a little half hug.  He pulled him toward scary counter girl.

“Though you know,” Julian murmured in his ear, “that second one is right up your alley.”

“Stop teasing me about that,” Scott groaned.

“I can’t help it,” Julian laughed.  He tousled his hair.  “It’s just so much fun.”

Scott could feel his cheeks growing warm and pushed himself away from Julian.  He was starting to become very aggravated with his teasing.  He knew Julian wasn’t being malicious about it, but it was very personal.  And something that he wasn’t really okay with.  He did believe he was twisted.  A sexual deviant.  He didn’t need his friend telling him how much he enjoyed the fact that he was a freak.  Though he supposed he should always look on the bright side.  It _was_ better to have a friend that thought it was funny and kind of interesting as opposed to one that thought it was sick and disgusting.  He wondered how the other two might react if they found out.  Not that they _ever_ would.

Back at Julian’s it felt like old times.  It seemed strange that as a seventeen year old he had lived through enough changes that there was an “old times.”  Though their topics of conversation hadn’t changed much over the years.  It went from girls are icky and Nintendo is cool to girls are awesome and the Playstation kicks the Xbox’s butt.  Well, that latter debate was between Will and Julian.  Scott didn’t much care which console he was using just as long as he was winning.

He did care, however, that proper credit was given when it was due.  He specifically pointed out which two layers of the cake he had baked because they were definitely fluffier and better looking than the other four.  It was a pretty good cake too.  And the pizza was some of the best he’d ever had in his life—probably because he was starving.  At first he didn’t even feel hungry and would have preferred not to eat anything, but Chris forced three pieces on him and stood beside him until he began eating.  He didn’t know why he was being such a mom about it though, it wasn’t like he was refusing to eat his vegetables; it was just pizza.  But once he’d taken a couple bites his stomach demanded more.  It made him realize that aside from that one sip of power drink he’d had that morning, he’d had nothing else to eat.  He’d skipped lunch to finish his math homework and hadn’t even thought about food all day.  Was that strange for a teenage boy?

After a rather rambunctious evening they settled down in the collapsing pillow fort they’d made in the living room.  He remembered talking for a little while, but then he was mostly just aware of the thick, cushy pillow he was holding onto.  He was more than happy to fall asleep.  He felt confident that tonight at least he would get to sleep and not be plagued by his thoughts or nightmares.

 

Saturday, November 12, 2005

 

Scott woke up when Julian did.  His friend was using his leg as a pillow.  Then for whatever reason he jumped up in a panic and when he pulled his arm out from underneath him, it forced him to roll over.  He found a new place to settle into and fell asleep.

Scott woke up again when Chris woke up.  Chris’ torso was like a comfy, heated pillow.  He would have happily stayed there, but Chris dumped him over onto his other side.  He curled up and fell asleep.

Scott woke up for the third time when Will pushed against him and made him flop from his side to his back.  He felt chilly now that he was deprived of Will’s heat.  The entire front of his body could feel where the extra warmth had gone missing.  Which meant they must have been pressed together down the full lengths of their bodies.  Well, it had finally happened.  He had now awoken curled up with all three of his male best friends.  Well, what could you do?

“Hey,” Will said as he nudged his shoulder.

He was still sleepy, so words were not an option.  “Nn.”

“You know what time it is?”

Yeah, like he would know because he hadn’t just woken up either.  He vaguely remembered tossing his watch above his pillow last night, and he had been lying next to Will then.  So, in theory, it should be above his head.  He flung his hand up and felt around until he found the watch.  He handed it to Will without a word.

“Hm.  I think I’m going to head out.”

“Okay,” Scott said, rolling over to his side again.

He opened his eyes and found that Will was still lying on his side facing him about six inches away.  He didn’t appear to be in any hurry to commence with his “heading out” plan.  Scott didn’t say anything to rush him on.  Once he left, he would be alone.  Of course, if they were the only two in the house, waking up all snuggly like that was a little suspect.

“Sorry,” Scott said.

Will’s brows creased in confusion.  “Why?”

“For like.  You know.  How we woke up.”

“Whatever.  It wasn’t on purpose.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “Was it?”

“No.  I think Chris rolled me into you.”

“Ah.  I thought it was something like that.  So, no big deal.”

“Really?  I mean, we’re two guys all alone with no excuse like there was no room for me to stretch out or we were really drunk last night.  Like what happened when me and—uh, well, you know when stuff happens.”

“You mean when you and Chris woke up on the couch together after Julian’s hearing?”

“You saw that?”

“Yup.”

“Great.”

Will laughed softly.  “Yeah.  You know, whatever.  If it was someone other than the three of you I might take issue, but seriously.  At this point, what haven’t the three of us done together?  Aside from one very obvious thing.”

Scott smiled.  “I hope there’s more than one thing on that list.”

“Yeah, but it’s dwindling every year if you notice.”

“Chyeah,” Scott said, remembering his kiss from Julian.

“Besides.  Even if people caught us like that they might believe you threw yourself at me, but not the other way around.”

“Whatever,” Scott said, offended.  “I’m totally hot.”

“And apparently good in the sack.”

Scott’s jaw dropped.  “Who told you that?”

“How many people are you sleeping with?”

“ _Antoinette_ said that?!”  Scott felt weirdly happy.  “Why?” he asked.

Will turned his face toward the floor.  “Heh.  It’s a long story.”  He picked at the blanket they were both half lying on.  Then he looked up at him.  “So, what’s going on with that anyway?”

Scott groaned softly.  “I don’t know.  But, I can’t keep doing this.  I just have to make a freakin’ decision.”

Will gave him an unsympathetic expression.  “Well, no argument here.”

“Uh.  Why not?”

“Scott, you can’t know the outcome of your decisions ahead of time.  Otherwise life wouldn’t be worth living.”

“Okay.”  Scott chewed on his lip.  Was it really that simple?  No.  “Can you help me?”

Will sort of laughed and closed his eyes.  He was still for a long moment and Scott wondered if he’d fallen back asleep.  Then his eyes snapped open and Scott was startled by the brightness of the green of his irises.

“Okay.  What are your options?”

Ah.  Will had found a project.  A problem to solve.  No wonder he was excited.

“Well, option the first.”

“Don’t be gay about it.”

“Fine.  Option one.  I completely break it off with Antoinette and date Anna.”

“Sounds simple enough.  You know that Anna likes you, so there’s no risk in asking her out.”

“Yeah, but what if we’re only supposed to be friends?  If we date and break up—and even if it’s an amicable break up—we’ll never be able to go back to the way things were.  I don’t think our friendship would survive that.  I don’t want to lose her.”

“Right.  But if she pines after you and can never have you, it’ll make her miserable to the point of not wanting to be around you.  Your friendship would end anyway.”

“Ugh!  I know!”  Scott vigorously scratched the side of his head.  He thought talking about it with someone would help, but he was still going in circles.

“Is there a reason why you think it won’t work with Anna?”

He sighed.  “Not exactly.  It’s not the relationship stuff that I’m worried about.  It’s like…I just never saw her in that way before now, so I don’t know if I _feel_ about her in that way.  I mean, it never even occurred to me that our relationship would be anything other than platonic until she initiated it.  So, are the feelings I am feeling just there because she’s a girl and girls make me all tingly?  Or had I been suppressing it all these years because I thought it could never be?  I need to figure out which one it is.  But that’s hard to do.”

Will just looked at him for a moment.  And then he said, “There is a third reason.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re just _more_ interested in someone else.”

Scott could feel his face growing warm, so he turned toward the floor and hid from his friend.  For once he wasn’t clueless when someone wasn’t being explicit with him.  He knew Will was talking about Antoinette because that’s who he was interested in.  He couldn’t help it and he couldn’t deny it anymore.  He really liked her.

“Scott?  Do you want to _date_ Antoinette?”

He kept his face hidden and clenched the blanket in his hand.  “I could never ask her,” he mumbled, hoping Will couldn’t hear or understand him.

“Why not?”

Scott was having trouble breathing, and as long as Will had ears like a bat, he might as well not suffocate himself.  He turned his head back and rested it on his arm.  He looked at Will’s Adam’s apple because he couldn’t look him in the eyes.

“Because I’m not 100% sure she would say no, but if she says yes and we go out…there’s a high probability that it would end in disaster.  And that would suck.  I don’t want it to end badly.  I really don’t.”

“Well, it’s the same risk you would take with Anna.”

“No, it’s different.”

“Why?”

Scott covered his face with a hand.  “Because.  The worst case scenario isn’t her saying yes and us breaking up.  I can’t bear the thought of her telling me no.  I don’t want to know that after all our time together I don’t mean anything to her.  If she laughed at me…I might die.”

Will hesitated before responding.  “Do you think she would?”

He dropped his hand dejectedly.  “She probably wouldn’t laugh outright at me.  But I just don’t know what I mean to her.  I don’t want to be something she can toss aside.”

“Wow, Scott.”  Scott finally looked up and met Will’s eyes.  “I had no idea you liked her that much.”

Scott tried to smile, but he felt like it came out more as a grimace.  “Neither did I.”  His voice wavered just slightly.  Maybe Will hadn’t noticed.

“You know, if you really care about her that much, you should talk to her about it.  Tell her how you feel.”

“But what if she doesn’t feel the same?!  I can’t know that!  I’d rather never know than have her reject me.”

“Well…maybe she wouldn’t.”  Will wasn’t looking him in the eyes anymore.  “I don’t think she would.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that, if you tell her how you feel, she might surprise you with her feelings.”  Will was still avoiding meeting his eyes.

“Why do you think that?” he asked, a little suspicious.

Now Will looked at him and Scott shrank back a little from the annoyance he was radiating.  “I don’t know,” he griped.  “I’m just trying to help you grow a spine like crazy shrink lady said.  Take a chance, you wuss.  Yes, you may crash and burn, but you know what?  You might not.  It may be the best thing you ever do.  But it’ll _never_ happen if you don’t _do_ it.”

Scott made a face at him.  “Oh, yeah?  That’s some advice coming from you.  What risks have _you_ taken lately?”

Will inhaled sharply.  Scott wondered what he was thinking about.  He looked almost ill.  Then he closed his eyes and let the air out.

Will spoke softly, “I told someone that I loved them.”

Scott was gaping again.  “Really?!  Who?!”

Will had the same expression on his face when he was trying to work out a difficult math problem in his head.  Then Scott remembered what he’d been upset about yesterday.

“Oh.  Was it your dad?”  Scott laughed.  “That was it, isn’t it?  You blurted it out and he got all sappy on you.  I realize it must have been a shock to your system; parental love and all that.  I can’t believe that’s why you were so upset yesterday.”  Scott reached out with his hand and combed his fingers through Will’s hair.  “You’re funny.”

Scott meant it to be more of a noogie gesture, and he certainly only meant to do it once, but his hair was so soft.  He petted him again, enjoying the feeling of his silky hair slipping between his fingers.  Will didn’t open his eyes or move at all.  He seemed to like the sensation as much as Scott did.  Seeing him looking relaxed and at ease was almost something new for Scott.  He rarely saw Will with his eyes closed; his eyelashes were really long.  God he didn’t want to admit it, but he was so beautiful.

“Will, would you hate me or hurt me if I said sometimes I wish you were a girl?”

Will didn’t flip out and shove him away or hit him.  He remained still, letting Scott continue to pet him.

“What do you think?” he asked with just a hint of a growl in his voice.

“I believe you would.”

“So, why did you ask?”

“I didn’t.  I said _if_.”

“Hmph.”

“I just think you’re the one who would be best for me.  Chris and Julian actually take better care of me, but that’s because sometimes you make me take care of myself.”  He paused.  Should he say his next thought?  Aw, why not?  “I like having you in my life.”

Will was quiet.  And then he said, “O—kay.”

“And also.  I mean, you’re just so…”  Scott couldn’t say it out loud.  Will _wasn’t_ a girl after all.

“Scott.  Having Julian hit on me is enough.  I don’t need it from you too.”

“I’m not hitting on you.  Unlike Julian I can’t see past your boy parts.”

Will opened his eyes with a frown and swatted Scott’s hand away.  “So you focus on my gender-neutral parts?”

“Nah.  I just kind of don’t focus on you at all.  I mean.  You are a guy.”

“Thank you,” he said, still frowning.

“But.  If you _were_ a girl, I’d have made you mine a long time ago.”

Will blinked in surprise.  His cheeks turned pink.  It was quite an accomplishment making Will Harder flush out of something other than anger or irritation.  He recovered quickly, however.

“As if I would have you.  I’d probably be dating Layla.”

“Who’s Layla?”

“The dark-haired lesbian.”

“Oh.  I never knew her name.”

“Okay.  Well, this has been sufficiently weird.”  Will struggled to his feet.  “I think I’ll be heading out now.  I’m going to shower first, but don’t let the thought of me all wet and naked take over your better judgment and go charging up the stairs to have at me.”

“Oh, what _ever_.  Get _over_ yourself.”

“Hey, you’re the one who just admitted you’re in love with me.”

“I did _not_!” Scott declared loudly, sitting up.

Will pitched his voice high and clasped his hands together.  “Oh, Will, I like having you in my life.  You’re so beautiful.  If I could I would make you mine!”

“That!”

Scott fumed as Will laughed and left the room.  He crossed his arms and grumbled to himself.

“That was a deliberate exaggeration of what I said.”

Scott flopped back down into the pile of blankets and waited for Will to finish in the bathroom.  Technically there were two showers, but he wasn’t sure if even Julian used the master bathroom.  He wouldn’t acknowledge his jerky friend when he said goodbye to him and left through the front door.  He could only stand sitting alone in Julian’s house for a couple minutes.  It was just too weird.  So, he hopped up and went to take a shower too.  When he was done he got ready to brush his teeth and stared in horror at the four toothbrushes.  Only one of them was wet.  And it was his.  Even if only one of his friends had brushed his teeth (he was pretty certain all three had) he had still used his toothbrush.  He could use one of the dry ones…but those weren’t his.  Dagnabbit.  Scott whined as he applied the toothpaste to his toothbrush.  He guessed here was one more thing to check off the list that the four of them did together.

He had to borrow some money out of Julian’s sock drawer to pay for the bus ride back home, but he would pay him back.  Eventually.  Plus, it was possible Julian owed him some money anyway.  Scott looked at his reflection in the large, dingy windows.  He leaned forward and squinted at his hairline.  Was it just the grime on the windows or did he need to touch up his roots again?  How long would he be able to pull off this look?  What age did he have to stop doing it before people started looking at him like he was having a mid-life crisis?  He was sure his friends would let him know because he was sure he and his friends would still be together that far down the road.  Even if they went to college in different places, they would all move to the same place to settle down.  Right?

Scott enjoyed the short walk from the bus stop to his house.  The weather was quite delightful.  Of course, he knew it was a bad sign.  When it got really cold and then suddenly warmed up for a couple days, that meant that it was going to turn ass-cold again and stay that way through the duration of winter.  He better enjoy these last few days while he could.  He considered all the things he could do outside one last time as he half-skipped up the driveway.  He felt so good.  He’d finally slept.  Sleep was so good.  It’d been so long since he’d had any that he’d forgotten how great life could be.  He pounced on his door and almost felt like singing “Zippity-Doo-Dah” as he hopped into his foyer.  He was hungry.  Why hadn’t he eaten at Julian’s?  Didn’t he say he had something good?  What was it?  Oh well.  He could toast a frozen waffle or something.

He refrained from singing as he made his way into the kitchen, just in case his Dad was sleeping.  As soon as he entered the kitchen, his good mood left him and he could actually feel his energy seeping away into the floor.  It was as if his restful night of sleep had never happened.  His father was awake and sitting at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee in his pajamas.  Kristen was with him.  Wearing a sexy ice blue negligee.  They weren’t even trying to hide it anymore.  Scott felt angry.  They should at least try until the divorce was finalized.  That’s all he wanted.  Let his father be officially divorced before he started openly flaunting his girlfriend.

“Where did you just come from?” asked his father, seemingly perplexed that he’d come in the front door.  “I thought you were still in bed.”

“I was at Julian’s,” he said evenly.

“You should have called to let me know you were staying out.”

“You could have called me if you’d noticed I was gone.”

His father didn’t look at all pleased with that response and set his cup down on the table.  Scott looked over at Kristen.  She was staring hard into her coffee cup.

“Besides, I didn’t want to interrupt anything.”

He wasn’t hungry anymore.  So, he turned around and left the kitchen.  He could hear the chair scraping over the tile as his father stood up.  Should he run up the stairs before he could get to him?  He would have if he’d had the energy.

“Scott,” his father called to him as he put his foot on the first stair.

Scott stopped and turned around slowly.  He just looked at his father wearily.

“Not now, Dad,” he said with a nod of his head toward the kitchen.

His father looked a little sad.  But he nodded his consent to let it go for now.  Scott struggled up the stairs.  He was so tired.  Maybe he should go back to sleep.  He wondered if he’d be able to.  Only one way to find out.  He dropped his bag off on his bedroom floor and crawled under the covers from the bottom end of the bed.  He’d been sleeping so restlessly lately that they’d become completely un-tucked.  He toed his shoes off and then curled his legs up so that his feet were under the covers too.  He exhaled slowly and let his muscles go.  His cell phone rang.  He pulled the covers around his ears, but the ringer was set on high.  He grunted and groaned and whined and fussed as he pulled himself to the edge of the bed.  He reached out blindly until he found his bag.  He didn’t know why he was trying so hard to get it.  It would switch to voicemail by the time he got it out.  If nothing else he could turn it off.

Scott pulled the phone out and flipped it open.  He grunted into the receiver, doubting anybody was there to hear him.

“Scott?”

“Ann—”  Scott broke off.  Who was he talking to?

“Yeah, it’s me, Anna.”

Scott breathed a nervous sigh of relief.  He’d almost said Antoinette.  “Hey, Anna.  What’s up?”

“I was wondering if we could talk.”

Scott flopped down on the bed, holding the phone to his ear by smashing it in between his head and the mattress.  He let his arms hang over the sides, his hands brushing the carpet.

“Sure.”

“Well, I wanna do it in person.  Can you come over here?”

“No.  You come over here.”

“I can’t.  I’m babysitting my sisters.”

“Your sister is old enough to _be_ a babysitter.”

“Scott, my parents told me to stay home.  Can’t you come over?  Please?  We really need to talk.”

Scott groaned.  “And it can’t be done over the phone?”

“No, I really don’t think so.  What’s wrong with you anyway?  Are you hung over?  Did you and the boys get drunk last night?  And that was really mean by the way.  None of us even saw Julian on his birthday.”

“I didn’t make the plans, Anna.  I just went to the party.”

“There was a party?!”

“No.  It was just the four of us.”

“Well, I don’t know why it wasn’t just the eight of us.”

“You’ll have to ask Julian that.”

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know, Anna,” he sighed grumpily.

“Why are you in such a bad mood?”

“I just am.  It happens.”

“Okay.  So, maybe today isn’t the best time to talk.”

“No, it’s fine.  I want to get out of the house anyway.”

“Then why did you make such a big deal about me going over there?”

“I wasn’t thinking.  I’m just tired.  We stayed up late.  That’s all.”

“Well, I don’t want you coming over here in a bad mood.”

“Why not?  Isn’t that what we used to do?  Go to each other when we felt bad because we knew we could make each other feel better?”

Anna was quiet for a moment.  “You’re right.  I’m sorry, Scott.  Please come over.  I need to tell you something.”

“All right.  I’ll be over in a few.”

“Kay.  See you soon.”

Scott let out another tired breath.  Did he want to deal with this now?  He needed to.  There was no reason to prolong the inevitable.  Will was right.  He just had to go out there and do it.  But what if he went to Anna’s and she convinced him they should date?  Then he would have to break it off with Antoinette.  Did he want to ask Antoinette first?  And do what, keep Anna as a back up?  He wasn’t going to treat his friend like that.  He needed to go to her first and decide if he wanted to be with her.  Yes, he did.  But did he want to _be_ with her?  Only one way to find out.

Scott pulled himself forward and rolled off the bed.  He put his shoes back on and put his phone in his back pocket.  He didn’t need his backpack for this trip.  He left his room and started down the stairs.  Hopefully his father and Kristen were still in the other room.  He couldn’t believe she was walking around in nothing but that wispy scrap of cloth.  Yeah, she looked damn good in it, but if they’d thought he’d been in his room, surely she realized he would probably see her in it.  Was she trying to win him over with sex since it didn’t work trying to be his stepmother?

He opened the front door and almost had it shut before his father called out to him.  He looked back and he was hurrying from the kitchen toward him.

“Where are you going?”

“Over to Anna’s.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

They stood awkwardly.  “Well, I better get going.”

“Scott.”  His father just looked at him.  It almost seemed like he was about to apologize.  “Do you want to take the car?”

“Uh.  Yeah.  Thanks.”

“The keys are in my room.”

 _His_ room.  So it wasn’t his parents’ joint room anymore.  His father was now the sole possessor of it.  He guessed he knew that already.  It wasn’t like the divorce _wasn’t_ going to happen.  Scott ran upstairs and tried not to look around the room too much as he walked over to the dresser.  He’d been half-expecting to find the sheets in a tangled mess and clothing sprawled everywhere, but it was pretty clean.  No clothes on the floor and the bed was sort of made up.  But that wasn’t any better.  In a way, it was worse.  His father wouldn’t make the bed.  Kristen had done it.  And had she done it to disguise the mess they’d made?

Scott picked up the car keys from the top of the walnut dresser and hesitated.  He cracked open a drawer that he knew used to contain his mother’s things.  It was too dark to see inside.  He pulled it all the way out.  It was empty.  At least Kristen hadn’t completely moved in yet.  He shut the drawer and ran back down the stairs.  He was startled when he reached the bottom and found his father still waiting outside the kitchen.  He didn’t say anything, so Scott continued on to the garage.  He could feel his father watching him as he left.  Why was he so creepy now?  Did he think that he would leave him?  Start to hate him?  He was mad at the way his father had handled things, but he understood his need to live his own life.  He only had one after all.  He wasn’t going to hate his father for any reason because his father would never do anything to hurt him.  So, should he hate him for what he did to his mother?  Maybe.  But he couldn’t.  So, that was that.  Maybe he should just tell his father that he did love him unconditionally.  Then maybe he would stop watching him so intently every time he left the house.

Scott didn’t have time for that today though.  He was in the Maserati and backing out of the driveway.  Today he was going to finally have an answer to his dilemma.  Whether it was good or bad, it would be over.  And then maybe he’d be able to better deal with what was going on at home.  And try to focus on his siblings more.  Ferris and Drake were starting to act out in school.  He needed to sit down and have a talk with them.

As Scott drove over to Anna’s, tapping his hands on the steering wheel in time to the music blaring from the speakers, he focused very intently on the road.  He did not want to allow himself to think past the “problem will be solved” thought going around in his head.  If he got to Anna’s and decided he really didn’t feel that way about her, then that meant he still had to go confess to Antoinette.  But scarier still was the notion of having to really and truly break up with Antoinette for real.  He’d tried it before and never been what he would define as “successful.”  Of course if his reason for breaking up with her was because he was now with Anna, he was pretty certain he could be firm in his resolve.

Scott pulled into the Norwood’s driveway.  He could see Anna sitting and waiting for him on the front porch.  She was wearing jeans and a pink baby doll T-shirt.  She must not have any clean laundry if she was wearing a color that bright.  Then he realized it was one of the T-shirts from the fundraiser run for breast cancer awareness she’d participated in a couples years ago.  Again, must be laundry day.  _See_ , he said to himself as he got out of the car, _I know everything about her and her reasoning for doing the things she does.  Why would I ever want to be with someone who I’m not even sure likes me that much?_

Scott shuffled down the front walk with his hands in his pockets.  He knew what they were about to discuss, and he wasn’t even nervous.  If ever there was a sign that this thing between them should happen, that was it.  She didn’t look nervous either.  She just watched him with her large hazel eyes and gave him a little smile.  He walked up to the porch and grunted like an old man as he sat down next to her on the concrete stoop.  He discreetly glanced behind her head to see if her slicked back hair was in a puffy ponytail or a neatly styled bun.  It was the bun.  She was in a serious mood.  She turned to him and opened her arms.

“C’mere,” she said.

Scott leaned forward into her embrace and she hugged him tightly.

“There, there.  Poor, Scotty.  You’re in a bad mood today?”

She was being a tish patronizing about the whole thing, but he knew it was only because he was being a baby.

“Yeah, but I’m starting to feel better.”

“Why are you in your uniform?”

He hadn’t realized that he was wearing it because he was only in the pants and dress shirt.

“It was what I wore to Julian’s last night, and what I came home in this morning.”

“Ew.  Just how ripe is it?”

“Do I smell?”

She put her face to his neck and inhaled deeply.  The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he felt her warm breath on his skin.

“Yeah.  But you smell nice.  You smell like you.”

She kissed his neck and then pulled back, sliding her hands around his shoulders and then gently cupped his face.  She brushed her thumbs over his cheekbones as she looked at him, and then she leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.  It wasn’t heated or passionate, but it was powerful.  It did make him feel better.  He felt his love for her pulsing warmly in his chest.  He pulled away from her.

“So, I guess we have some things to talk about,” he said.

Anna dropped her hands and looked away a little embarrassed.  “I was kind of thinking—hoping—we wouldn’t _need_ to talk.  You know what I mean?”

“Oh, right.  Sorry.  But as good as it feels to kiss you, that’s not going to magically change things.”

“But I don’t want things to change.  That’s the point.  We go so well together.  We’re such good friends.  Why can’t we be good lovers too?”

“Because.  Sex.  And other things _do_ change things.”

“Why?  I’ve expressed my affection for you blatantly.  Even physically sometimes.  Why is it such a big step?  I’m not even talking about sex, and I don’t think you are either.  You’re thinking about crossing that final line between us.  But I think we’ve already crossed it.  There’s no way we could feel more connected and intimate with each other.  Even if we slept together, I’m sure it would be good, but I can’t imagine feeling any more a part of you than I already do.  Because we’re just so…in synch.”

“Being ‘in synch’…that’s not being ‘in love.’  Here’s the problem, Anna.  The thought of losing you for any reason scares me to pieces.  You’ve been in my life for as long as I can remember.  Actually, you’ve been in my life for longer than either of us can remember.  I can say anything to you and I’m not scared or worried how you’ll react.  There’s no subject that we can’t talk about that.  I can’t even do that with the boys.”  Scott accidentally distracted himself.  “Although I did have a pretty weird conversation with Will this morning.  Actually,” he said musing, rubbing his chin, “thinking back on it, no wonder he looked so weirded out.”

“Oh, no,” Anna said, going with him.  They were both terrible about staying focused.  “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing!”  He didn’t want to tell her that he’d told his male friend that if he were a girl he’d probably be in love with him.  Maybe there were some subjects he couldn’t discuss with Anna.  “But, anyway, this is about us.”

“Oh, right.  Where were we?”

“Uh, I think I was saying how much I love you and thus can’t lose you.  I mean, like I told Will this morning, I like having him and Julian and Chris in my life.  But I _need_ you in my life.”

“You told Will you liked having him in your life?  You are so gay!  No wonder you won’t date me!”  She was laughing at him.

“Annabelle!  I’m being serious!  I just told you I love you and need you!  Your response?”

“My response?  Honestly, I haven’t been feeling that from you lately.”

Scott hung his head and looked at his hands.  “I know,” he said quietly.  “I know I haven’t been coming to you for help.  But, if it makes you feel any better, I haven’t been going to anyone else either.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Look.  It was just really hard…it still is hard getting back to the way things were before…the fight.”

“I know.  I’m sorry.  That was my fault.”

“You see,” he looked up and used his hand to raise her chin.  He needed to look her in the eyes for this.  “That’s what worries me.  If we date and it doesn’t work out—we’ll fall apart.  We’ll never come back from that.”

She didn’t respond right away and he dropped his arm.  He didn’t look away from her.  They needed to face this head on.  They needed to face the fact that if they moved forward with this, one way or another, for better or for worse, their friendship was over.  Finally she reached out and took his hand.

“Can you think of a reason why it wouldn’t work?”

“Everyone keeps me asking that.  You can’t predict the future.  I don’t know what might happen that could cause problems.”

“Of course.  Any relationship faces that.  Even our friendship if we don’t get romantically involved.  I’m simply asking you if you can think of a reason—any reason at all, no matter how small—why we wouldn’t be exactly what we need.”

Scott searched her clear eyes; he knew those eyes better than he knew his own.

“No, I can’t,” he murmured.

She gripped both of his hands now.  “Then what’s holding us back?”

As if on cue, his cell phone rang.  He didn’t have to guess or look at the display.  He knew who it was.  Who it had to be at a time like this.  He let go of one of Anna’s hands and pulled his phone out of his pocket.  He silenced it immediately and put it back in his pocket.

“Who was it?” Anna asked.

“No one important.”

“Okay.”

“So, where were we again?”

“Building up to a crucial moment in our relationship and lives.”

“Oh, right.  Do you think it will be hard to get the tension back?”

She smiled.  “I don’t want tension, do you?”

He shook his head.  Should he kiss her now?  It seemed like the right thing to do.  His phone rang again.  He let out an irritated snort and dug into his pocket again.

“Geez, take a hint,” he muttered as he silenced the phone again.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t answer that?” Anna asked.  “Is it your mom?”

“No.  It’s someone I can talk to later.  We’ve had enough interruptions.”

Anna smiled brightly and it made him smile too.

“So, I come first?” she asked playfully.

“You always have.”

She giggled and slapped him lightly on the shoulder.  “That’s so corny!”

“Yeah?  And you just giggled!  Like a little girl around her crush!”

“No way.  I am _not_ that hot for you.”

“Oh, I think you are.”

“I’m not.”

“I’ll prove it to you.”

“Well then, please do,” she said in a voice he never thought he would hear coming from Anna.  It was kinda weird.  But nice.

 _Do it_ , he instructed himself.  _Lean forward and kiss her.  Make Anna yours in every way possible_.

His phone beeped at him just as he was starting to move forward, so he kind of twitched.  Anna started a little in response and they chuckled together.  Then Scott yanked his phone out of his pocket one last time.

“Let me turn this off,” he said.

He flipped it open to turn off the sound, but it hadn’t been ringing this time.  It had been a text message.  And when he opened his phone, the message popped up on the screen.  She had only sent him two words: scott please.

He heard the words as much as saw them.  It sent a strange, unpleasant feeling through his body.  His chest tightened a little and he struggled with himself.  He mostly wanted to ignore it, but part of him couldn’t ignore somebody who needed help.  This wasn’t like Antoinette.  If she’d just been irritated that he wasn’t answering she would have texted him something nasty.  This was very different.  All he had to do was call her to see what was up.  If it was something stupid, he could hang up, turn off the phone, and finish things with Anna.  It probably was something stupid.  He should just get it over with now.

“I’m sorry, Anna,” he said, standing up.  “I need to make a _very quick_ phone call.  It won’t take long.  I promise.”

“Okay.  That’s fine.”

He walked over toward his car.  He really couldn’t let Anna hear any of this conversation.  He hoped that if he dumped Antoinette she would want to keep their secret relationship a secret break up.  He didn’t know if Anna knew anything about was going on between them, or if she did how much she knew, but he knew it would be for the best the less she knew.  Wait a minute…did that makes sense?

He dialed Antoinette and tried to call upon his earlier foul mood so that he could stand up to her easier.  It would also be easier since they weren’t in person.  She answered immediately.

“Scott?”

“What?”

“I need to see you.”

She was crying.  It wasn’t even something he had to listen carefully for.  Her voice was thick and she was sniffing constantly and every now and then would suck in a noisy, pitiful breath.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.  He’d meant to sound snippy, but it had come out quite compassionate.  Stupid feelings.  Why couldn’t he be mean?  Like Will?

“Please, Scott.”  She sniffed back a blubbery sob.  She sounded genuinely distressed.  “Please can I see you?”

“I can’t come running to you every time your mood changes.  You haven’t even spoken to me since Halloween.”

“I know, but this is important.  I have to see you now.”

She suddenly started crying harder and he knew she wouldn’t hear him if he spoke, so he waited her out.  Why did she have to call him?  Wasn’t he just her booty call?  If she had a problem she could go cry to her boyfriend.  Then he remembered what Will had said yesterday: Jake and Antoinette were fighting.  What if Jake had gotten mad and done something to her?

“Where are you?” he asked loudly so she would hear him.

She sucked in some air and calmed down a little.  “At my house.”

“Okay.  I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“O-okay.”  She sniffed.  “Thank you, Scott.”  She was still crying, but she sounded happy now.  Was he being played?  Or did she really just want to see him that much?  His heart leapt up.  He clutched the phone and took in a deep breath.  She wanted to see him.

“I’m coming,” he whispered.

“Thank you.”

He hung up and looked at the leather interior of his father’s car.  His vision shifted and he was looking at himself reflected in the window.  He was smiling.  Why was he so happy?  He forced the smile to go away and turned around.  He walked toward Anna slowly.  She was picking at one of her nails.

“You have to go, don’t you?”

Scott felt terrible.  “Yeah.  It’s kind of an emergency.  Well, not an emergency exactly.  But, you know how it can feel that way sometimes.”

“It sounds important then.”

“I guess.  But it probably will turn out not to be.  But, I can’t ignore it.”

“I know.”  She looked up at him with a sad smile.  “That’s a good quality.  You care _so_ much.  I love that about you.”

“Yeah?”

She stood up and walked to him.  She rose up on her toes and kissed him.

“Yeah,” she said.  “But let’s finish this soon, okay?”

Scott nodded.  “Okay.”

He turned and left feeling guilty.  What if when they finished it, it was going to have a different outcome?  Would she even be able to forgive him for that?  If he and Antoinette got together, would they still keep it secret?  Could he walk down the halls of Calverton holding hands with Antoinette knowing that Anna would see them?  He started the car and told himself to calm down.  He was getting himself all worked up over what could possibly be nothing.  Maybe she was just crying because her goldfish had died or something.

Scott tried hard not to speed.  The car was flashy enough that it drew attention even when one wasn’t breaking a law while driving it.  He didn’t want to get pulled over and then have to tell his dad he got a ticket.  Or worse yet, have the cop call his father and tell him where he’d pulled him over.  It was obviously not on the way to Anna’s.  His dad would be pissed and think he’d lied to him.  So, he’d better be extra careful.  He had to wait rather impatiently for the guard at the community’s gated entrance to finally drag himself over and let him in.  He didn’t have time for this.  Everything was happening today.  He was getting his answers today.  He had to know if it was good or bad.  He pulled up against a curb close to her house.  He’d never parked in her driveway before.  Would he be able to start now?

 _Stop that.  Find out what she wants first_.

Scott got out of the car and walked up the wide, white driveway.  Antoinette was waiting for him on the porch, just like Anna had.  She was sitting on the top stair with her knees drawn up.  Her face was buried in her legs and her hands were on the back of her head.

“Antoinette?” he called out softly.

She lifted her head, leaving her hands in place.  Her face was red and tear tracks stained her cheeks.  Her hair was messily pulled back and she didn’t seem to be wearing any make-up.  She was wearing thin sweatpants and a bulky sweatshirt.  It looked like she’d just gotten out of bed, or had bummed around the house all morning.  He’d never seen her when she wasn’t looking perfect.  Well, after sex she wasn’t still looking fresh and neat, but that was just a different kind of perfect.

When she saw him, her face screwed up and she started crying harder, but it wasn’t like she was miserably bawling.  Why was she crying?  He ran quickly up to her.

“How’d you get here so fast?” she half-sniffed, half-hiccupped.

“I didn’t come from my house.  I was at Anna’s.”

She went still.  And quiet.  Tears were still falling from her eyes, but she looked different somehow.  She stared at him as he sat beside her.  He put a hand on her back and took one of her hands in his.  He massaged her fingers and then pulled her hand close to his mouth.  He kissed it longingly, and then held it tightly in his lap.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She just stared at him with frozen eyes.  She pulled her hand from his and put the back of it to her mouth, forcing back a sob.

“Did something happen?  Did someone hurt you?”

She cried harder at that and then forced herself to stop.

“What?  Did your dad get busted?”

She shook her head.

“Well, what’s wrong?  Antoinette?”

He grabbed her hand again.  He wasn’t going to let it go this time.  She turned to him and it looked like her heart was breaking.

“I broke up with Jake,” she cried.

He dropped her hand and sat back.  Here was a nice harsh dose of reality.  Her heart was breaking over Jake.  Why had he come here?  Why had he left Anna?  So that this crazy chick could cry on the shoulder of the guy that she’d been cheating on her boyfriend with over the fact that’d she’d broken up with that boyfriend?  Why was he such a fool?

“But I’m not upset,” she said, using her wrist to wipe away the tears.

“I can tell,” Scott said dryly.

“No.  I’m not.  I’m not upset that we broke up.  I’m upset that I’m not upset.”  She reached out and took his hand.  He didn’t return the gesture.  She closed her eyes and her face scrunched up as she fought back more crying.  “I’m just glad you’re here.”

Scott felt himself react to her.  His body was tense and his brow was scrunching up too.  “What does that mean, Antoinette?”

She shook her head, starting to bawl.

“I don’t know!”  It was getting harder to understand her.  “I thought I wanted to date you.  To be with you.”

Scott’s heart stopped.  He could feel it teetering on the brink of exploding.  Did it know that it might do so out of something that was very different from joy?  Did it know what his brain was screaming at him was coming?

She pulled her hand back and turned away from him.  She hid her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

“But now that I can, I don’t want to.”

He felt like he’d been shot.  A total head wound.  He could actually see himself lying twisted and motionless on the ground.  Blood siphoning out of his head in a large pool, his heat seeping away into the earth.  This couldn’t be happening.  This wasn’t right.  She was lying.  He turned from her and put a hand to his mouth.  Hopefully she was making enough noise that neither of them would be able to hear the whimper he let out.  Why would she lie?  Why did he care?  Why did it hurt so much?  Why was he surprised?  He knew what she was like.  She was a lying, cheating slut.  She was a twisted whore who had only wanted him because she wasn’t supposed to.  Now that they could be together legitimately, she couldn’t care less about him.  He had just been her dirty little secret.  He had known that all along.  Why had he deluded himself and let himself start caring for her?  But he didn’t.  He didn’t care about her.  How could he care about such a manipulative, cold snake?

Her sobbing was starting to get on his nerves.  Why was she crying so much?  Had she realized what a shallow bitch she was?  Too bad for her.  He stood up.  He couldn’t look at her.

“I knew it,” he spat out.  “I guess I did all along.”

If it was at all possible she started wailing even louder.  He started walking away.  He could feel his eyes start to sting.  Something was in his eyes and it was hurting.  It might have been tears, but he couldn’t acknowledge them now.  He could not start crying in front of her.  He looked up at the blue sky and sucked his lips in.  His breaths were coming hard and shaky.  Why had it turned out like this?  Even from the beginning he hadn’t expected it to end well.  But this was torture.  He’d never felt like this before in his life.  Had he seriously thought they would end up dating?  They were from different worlds.  It could never happen.  He’d been insane.  He didn’t want to think about it anymore.

As he got close to the car, he looked over his shoulder.  She was still sitting on the porch with her face in her hands, sobbing her guts out.  He had a psychotic urge to go back and comfort her.  It was against his nature to see someone in pain and not try to help them.  But what about himself?  Who was going to help him?

Scott fumbled with the car keys, having trouble finding the right one because his hands were shaking so badly.  Then when he tried to put it in the lock, he kept missing because his vision was so blurry.  They fell from his numb fingers.  He squatted down to get them and to hide behind the car.  Just in case she looked up, he didn’t want her to see him crying.  She shouldn’t know how much this was hurting him.  It would only feed her self-pity.

He watched with desolated eyes as dark spots began to form on the dry, grey asphalt.  He wondered how long it would take for the spots to join and form one big wet spot.  He bowed his head and the tears fell faster.  Probably not very long.


	16. Chapter 16

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

 

Camellia

 

Camellia Gorman sighed in complete and utter satisfaction.  It was so good.  No feeling in the world was better than this.  It was so uplifting she felt young again.  Like she had in her college days.  If she wasn’t mistaken, her Excel spreadsheet was reveling in the afterglow as well.  It was probably rare that the software ever got used to its full potential.  One book, nineteen pages, and every facet of her life (and some of her family members’ lives) were accounted for.  A single click of a mouse button would reveal to her everything she needed to know and do for at least the next three months.  She was set.

Well, there was one loose cannon.  Though loose cannon was probably an understatement.  It was more like a loose nuclear missile.  She clicked on the Edit button and opened up a new sheet.  Number twenty.  She double clicked on the name tab and typed in a capital J.  She started as her office phone rang.  She gave it a dirty look.  Why was she feeling guilty?  Because she was acknowledging it?  Camellia shook her head in annoyance.  She knew all the clinical reasons for her guilt.  Fortunately she also knew that it wouldn’t hurt that much to temporarily ignore it.  She answered the phone on the third buzz.

“Hello, Dr. Gorman,” her secretary said, “I have a Julian March here to see you.”

“Thank you, Linda.  Please send him in.”

She hung up and then briefly wondered if that had been Linda.  She had way too many secretaries.  That’s what she got for trying to be nice and accommodate everybody’s schedules.  She clicked on her “secretaries” tab and double checked the entry for the current time and day.  It was Linda.  She skimmed over the next week.  Linda was due in for several more days.  She had switched around some of their schedules and as she looked it over she realized that Melissa was scheduled to work only when her colleague was in the office—and she was in her other office.  Had that been Melissa’s choice?  Or had she half-subconsciously arranged it that way?  Subconsciously?  Who was she trying to fool?  She had obviously intentionally made it so that she wouldn’t have to run into the one person who knew she was having a questionable affair with a much younger, former patient.  Though affair was a bit strong.  They’d yet to fully explore the physical aspects of their relationship.  Of course, it had only been three days since she had given in to her id and let it have what it wanted.  A hot male.  She hadn’t been dating much recently and the man she had been dating was older, going bald, and had four different love handles.  Who was she to deny a strikingly handsome young man what he wanted?  She just couldn’t believe what he wanted was _her_.

Camellia blinked as something moved in front of her vision and then she was being kissed.  She knew it was Julian.  Not because it was the only logical explanation or because she just knew it was him.  But because of that damn lip ring.  She had a feeling it might feel interesting on other body parts, but it felt awkward on the lips.  She kissed him back.  Well, not awkward enough to never do it.  She kept her hands firmly planted on the desk.  If she allowed herself to touch him, they would be late for their appointment.  He pulled back and then gave her another quick kiss.  She could feel his smile.

Julian sat on the edge of her desk with his hands clasped together.  He was in his school uniform and that was the one aspect of her attraction to him that did make her leery.  He was taller than her, and very solidly built.  He wasn’t like any of the boys she had gone to high school with, but the ones that had surprised her by being eighteen and buff when she was a freshman in college.  Julian March was already a man; physically anyway.  But for some reason, seeing him in his school uniform, an outfit that specifically evoked images and knowledge of the fact that he was a high schooler—a child—made her feel like slowly stripping it off him.  Is this what it was like for older men who fantasized about women in a school girl’s outfit?  Was the idea of young and off limits really that appealing?  Well, Julian certainly was appealing.  Especially with his sweet, genuine smile.  The only problem was that the smile didn’t reach his eyes.  And his eyes weren’t sad or lonely or lost.  They held a kind of dark revenge.  He was still so angry that he had lost his parents for no apparent good reason.  He wanted everyone else to feel the way he did.  And as long as he held onto that anger, he would never be able to deal with his loss and move on with his life.

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?” he asked with amusement.  “You know, it bothers me that I can sit here in all my sexy glory right in front of you and _you’re_ thinking about what I’m thinking about.”

She twisted her chair slightly to face him.  “Oh, I’m trying _not_ to think about what you’re thinking about.  Because I’m sure it’s quite dirty.”

He grinned and she had to smile back.  He was so cute.  Camellia shook herself.  She’d never been this sappy around anyone in her life.  It was ridiculous.  And they had to go.  She stood up and deftly sidestepped his outreaching arm.

“We need to hurry over to Dr. Corbin’s.  He cleared out time in his schedule just to meet you.”

“You are so unromantic.”

“What’s so romantic about this?” she asked, sliding her turquoise and gold suit jacket over her lavender blouse.  “You’re just here to meet your new therapist.”

“Exactly.”

She froze as Julian slid his arms around her stomach and pulled her back against him.  He kissed the top of her head.

“You’re thinking I’m here to meet my new shrink.  Why has nothing else crossed your mind?”

“Be—because.  It’s not.  I don’t understand why it crossed yours.”

“Really?  And you call yourself a licensed doctor.”

He turned her around in his arms and she put her hands on his shoulders to keep some distance between them.

“Doctor or not, I think almost anyone can figure out why it crossed the mind of a teenage boy.”

“I think the reason it didn’t occur to me that it might occur to you is because I don’t think of you as a ‘teenage boy.’  You certainly have some issues, but you’re quite mature.  You may be eighteen, but you’re not a boy.”

“I may not be a boy, but I still need some help becoming a man.”

He smiled impishly and shifted his lower body against her.  Camellia could feel heat rush to her face.  She squeezed his shoulders and looked away from him.  It wasn’t fair.  Why was she so easily turned on by him?  She’d dated quite a few men before and had sexual relations with almost all of them, but none of them had had such a strong effect on her libido.  Maybe it was because none of them had been terribly attractive.  Maybe because none of them had been particularly skilled.  Maybe because even only feeling him through their clothes she could already tell that he was _much_ bigger than anyone she’d ever been with.  She was wildly curious.  And that’s what it was, she realized.  The curiosity.  That was part of why she was so attracted to him.  Now that she had a reason, she could control it easier.  She pushed away from him.

“Perhaps later if we have time.  I am flying home for Thanksgiving today, however, so it hinges on how long the meeting with Dr. Corbin is—ah!”

Camellia gasped as Julian grabbed her by the hand and hauled her toward the office door.

“Then let’s get going!  The sooner we meet him the sooner the meeting will be over!”

Camellia laughed and followed him.  He was such an odd person, but there were definitely some “universal” male traits that he still possessed.  She wondered how long it would take for him to figure out that he had no idea where he was going.  He was a level-headed individual, so it didn’t take him too long.  She guided him toward the elevators and they went down a few floors.  As they got closer to Dr. Corbin’s office, Camellia became a little nervous.  She was positive he would be able to help Julian, but the man was unorthodox.  It might take some time for Julian to open up to him.

Dr. Corbin’s office was a mess.  Camellia couldn’t understand why he didn’t make his employees go through the magazines and throw the old ones away.  Or water the poor ficus tree in the corner.  Though looking at his secretary, she might crack if she had more responsibility than she already had.  She answered phones and made appointments, but it was a task unto itself just for her to show up in the mornings.  She was a former patient of Dr. Corbin’s.  She’d had agoraphobia and acrophobia.  Going out into public and working on the twelfth floor seemed liked good indications that Dr. Corbin had helped her.  But she was jitterier than Mr. Lambert and was constantly telling people to stop talking so loudly.  Pretty much anything above an inaudible whisper was too much for her.

“Hello,” Julian said, disturbing the quiet office.  The woman jumped violently.  “I’m here to see Dr. Corbin.”

“Please, stop yelling,” the miserable woman scolded him.  “He’s finishing one of his yoga sessions, but I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Julian made a face discreetly as she stood up and wiped her nose with a tissue.  She shuffled toward the white glass door with “Dr. Louis Corbin” written on it in gold lettering.  He looked over at Camellia as the woman knocked on the door and disappeared inside.

“Yoga?  I don’t know about this.”

“I think he just told her he’s doing yoga.  Lord knows what he actually does.”

“What’s her deal anyway?”

“Long story.  It’s kind of a charity case, but I don’t understand why he keeps her on.  Organization, especially in this business, is so important.”

“Well, I prefer Twitchy McCrazy over there to Dog’s Butt Ugly like you’ve got at the other office.”

“What?  What on earth are you talking about?”

“Camellia.  You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed you have a troll working for you?”

“If you’re referring to Jessica she is a lovely person.  And don’t say my name like that.”

Julian grinned and slid closer to her.  She tried to move away but bumped into a chair and lost her balance.  Julian grabbed her by the forearms and steadied her.

“Don’t say your name like what?”

He was using his sexy voice.  The one he borrowed from Will.  She found it most unappealing.

“I simply meant,” she said attempting to twist out of his grasp, “that it sounds—”

She cut off.  He wasn’t letting go.  She glanced up at him.  There were two things that managed to displace the anger from his eyes.  One was the comfort he found when thinking about his friends.  And the other was his lust for her.  She tried weakly to pull away again.  Her heart rate was accelerating.  How could someone so inexperienced be so confident and sure of himself sexually?  Then again, just because he was a virgin didn’t necessarily mean he was inexperienced.

“J-Julian.”  She hated how needy her voice sounded.  She was trying to be stern.

He gripped her arms tighter and pulled her closer.  She wanted him so badly.  She wanted to let him do whatever the hell he wanted to her.  But not in front of Dr. Corbin.  She was horny, not crazy.  She stomped on his toe.

“Ow!”  He backed off and gave her a frown.

The glass door opened and the woman shuffled quickly out of the way of Dr. Corbin.  He strode into the waiting room in his dark pants and strangely cut white shirt.  He wore a vest that was a little too small for him and his shoes were light brown.  His short dark hair was slicked back and he had a thin, short mustachio clinging to his upper lip.  He reminded her of Gomez Adams.  She kept her smile to herself.  He was such a fashion disaster.

“Camy, Camy, Camy!  My colleague, my protégé, my muse!  My, my.  What is this?”

He stopped a couple feet away from her as he caught sight of Julian.  She was glad he had been distracted.  He liked to do the European three kiss thing.  Camellia didn’t mind touching people in general, but Dr. Corbin gave her an odd “vibe” as Julian would call it.  And she hated it when he called her Camy.  So why was she okay with sending Julian to him?  He was a good psychiatrist.  And Julian definitely wouldn’t be tempted to try to seduce his “shrink” this time.  She bit back her smile.  Was she really so jealous?  She’d never had anything so pretty before in her life.  She was going to guard him to her as closely as she could for the duration of their little adventure.

Julian stuck out his hand.  “Hello, Dr. Corbin.  I’m Julian March.  Do we just need to set up a time for regular meetings?”

Dr. Corbin shook his hand and covered it with his other hand.  Camellia disliked it when people shook hands like that.  It was a very alpha thing to do.  Some people interpreted the covered handshake as being extra affectionate or friendly.  Really what the person was doing was taking control of the other person’s hand and asserting their dominance.

“Oh, no, no!  I cleared out the rest of my afternoon!  We should have our first session.”

Julian’s face fell and Camellia gave him a playful smile since Dr. Corbin couldn’t see her.  Julian wasn’t happy that she was amused by his disappointment.  Then Dr. Corbin turned to her and grabbed her shoulders.  He kissed her on the right cheek, then the left, and then the right again.

“Hello, Camy,” he said, holding her hands.

“Hello, Dr.—Louis.”

“My.  Stunning as usual.  But your headaches have come back, right?”

“Yes, how did you—”  She cut off and pulled one of her hands away to reach up for her tight bun.  She tugged on it a little to loosen the tension on her scalp.  Dr. Corbin smiled amusedly at her.

“So, you’ve brought me this young man.  He was your patient, or…”

“Yes, he was mine.”

“And why did you decided to transfer him?”

“Um.  I.”  She went blank.  Had she come up with a story yet?

“Oh, well, foot in the mouth,” Dr. Corbin laughed.  “I apologize.  The details aren’t really my business.  Sometimes people just don’t mesh well.  I suppose I—”

“Dr. Corbin,” Julian said, a hint of pleading in his voice, “can we start the session, please?”

“Oh, yes, of course.  Camy, would you like to sit in?”

“No thank you.  I think it would be best if I wait out here.”

“Yes, of course, of course.  Julian, please follow me.”

He escorted Julian toward the white glass door and the teenager threw her a look over his shoulder.  She couldn’t quite interpret its meaning.  And then they disappeared behind the door.  Camellia heard a sigh of relief and turned to see the secretary removing her fingers from her ears.  Then she started to tap at the keyboard in front of her one key at a time with her index finger.

Camellia moved as quietly as she could to one of the plush armchairs.  She sat down and considered picking up a magazine, but it would probably make too much noise and be months out of date.  She settled against the back of the chair, crossed her legs, and put her hands in her lap.  What was she going to do about this?  She knew what was going on between them was just a thing.  A game of sorts.  Or more of a mutual curiosity.  It was obviously also about the sex.  Should they ever get around to it.  She had a feeling they would eventually, which would be a very bad thing for her.  Right now, she could talk to him and touch him and enjoy the love she felt for him, knowing that it would eventually fade and they would inevitably go their separate ways.  But if— _when_ (she couldn’t deny she was definitely going to go through with it)—they became physically intimate, would she let herself fall for him completely?  It was fine now as an infatuation, but what if she actually fell in love with him?  It would only end in misery.  She was just going to have to make sure she kept the sex as impersonal as possible.  She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, and then shoved her glasses up her nose.  Make the sex impersonal.  Ridiculous.  She was exhibiting classic signs of Paranoid Personality Disorder.  And quite possibly doing something like that to Julian would hurt him irreparably.  He was so on edge right now.

It was good that he was voluntarily continuing his therapy sessions, but she had to admit to herself that she’d never gotten very far with him.  He would be very candid and acknowledge whatever advice she gave him and what his feelings were.  But then he wouldn’t use that knowledge to help himself.  He would just shrug it off and decide that he could come back to it later.  He liked feeling angry.  It made him feel like he had some power.  No, not power.  Control.  He needed to be able to control _something_ in his life.  She’d thought his emancipation would help with that and he would be able to start sorting through his anger, but there had been no change.  And the longer he kept clinging to that rage, the less likely it would be he’d ever be able to overcome it.  She was going to do everything in her power to save him from self-destruction; even if that meant going to one Will Harder and asking him for his help.  She just didn’t want to admit that he was the only one who could save Julian.  In fact, she didn’t think Will could.  They were too close.  Julian needed some outside authority, which was why he needed a new therapist.  He would no longer accept or respect what she had to say.  She was now a part of his inner circle: people he could control.

Camellia sighed.  Even if Julian eventually managed to work through his grief, his need to dictate and moderate his environment would always be there.  She smiled thinking of the face he would make if she said that to him.  He’d demand a layman’s term, which was, of course, a control freak.

Camellia glanced at her watch.  She still had some time before she would enter the “need to hurry” phase for her travel arrangements.  If Julian was still with Dr. Corbin when that phase started, she would have to leave him.  Fortunately, Dr. Corbin was just as money conscious as he was bizarre.  He didn’t do anything pro bono.  He wasn’t getting paid for this session today, so it probably wouldn’t last more than half an hour.  She doubted he had actually cleared his entire afternoon schedule for this.  Her assumptions turned out to be true as Dr. Corbin and a dazed Julian came out of his office after only twenty minutes.  Camellia stood up and approached them.

“Yes, there is some work to be done,” Dr. Corbin said, “but I have a good feeling about it.  You’re going to be quite cooperative, aren’t you Julian?”

Julian nodded dumbly.  Dr. Corbin shook both their hands, kissed her on the cheek three times, and then said his goodbyes even as he was disappearing back into his office.  Camellia turned to Julian.

“You okay?”

“I have no idea honestly.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not going to talk about it.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

He looked at her sharply.  “Would you disobey one of his ‘very direct’ orders?”

She held back her laugh.  “Not I.”

“Why do you do that?” he asked, his eyes softening.

She shook her head slightly.  “What do you mean?”

“Why do you stop yourself from laughing and smiling all the time?”

She smiled at him.  “It’s not psychological.  I had a strict grandmother.  Old habits.”

“Ah.”

He reached out a hand and she stepped back even before she could tell what he was going to do.  He frowned at her, so she nodded her head toward the despondent secretary.  He kind of rolled his eyes, but nodded.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

They left Dr. Corbin’s office and headed for the elevators.  He punched the down button.

“So, are we going to your place?”

Camellia stared at him.  Yes, they were.  She glanced at her watch.  She hadn’t reached the “need to hurry” phase yet.  If they got back to her apartment too fast they would have time for some…physical activities.  Did she want to have to deal with the repercussions for the next two weeks before she could see him again?

“Yes, we’ll go to my place.  And it’s not too far from here, so why don’t we walk?”

He shrugged nonchalantly as they stepped onto the elevators.  “Sure.”

The doors shut.  “Are there cameras in here?” he asked, looking at the ceiling.

“I don’t—”  She looked at him and glared.  “Yes.”

He smiled.  “Spoilsport.”

She looked away from him.  She couldn’t stop this smile, but the last thing she needed to do was give him any type of encouragement.  They walked slowly (she set the pace) to her building, shivering a little from the chilled breeze.  They chatted a little bit, and she tried to gauge if he was getting nervous.  He didn’t seem to be.  She wasn’t either.  It probably came from a mutual understanding that in the end this relationship was heading nowhere.  And they were both fine with that.  It was a mutualistic symbiotic relationship.  They both needed something from the other.

Jeff was working the front desk as usual, along with the other regular guard whose name she had yet to learn.  He was hard to talk to; he was always watching TV.  She said hello to Jeff and he smiled at her.  His eyes flicked to Julian and his smiled broadened.  He shook his head bemusedly and returned to watching TV.  She was suspicious of that reaction.  What had that been all about?  Did he suspect something was going on between them?  Julian had only been over once before and she was pretty certain it hadn’t been Jeff who had been working.  Maybe he was just one of those people who saw sex everywhere.  She’d love to give him a Rorschach inkblot test.

They started to get onto the elevator when someone called out to them, “Hold the lift please!”

“Lift?” Julian muttered derisively.

If he was annoyed by only that, just wait until he met the owner of the voice.  Camellia had recognized her voice.  She courteously held the door open button and her hallmate stepped into the elevator with them.

“Thank you so much, Camellia!”

“Oh, no problem.”

“Oh, hello,” she said to Julian.

Julian smiled politely at her, his eyes flicking subtly over her.  Camellia wondered if he found her attractive.  She was tall, thin, and still managed to be curvy.  She wore an expensive light grey skirt suit with a lavender shell.  Camellia glanced down at her own outfit.  She was wearing a lavender blouse too.  Her gold and turquoise jacket was much more exciting though.

“Geez Louise!” Autumn Rose exclaimed, “Can you believe this weather?  It was so nice just a few days ago.”

“Yes, the weather change does come suddenly here,” Camellia agreed.

Julian wasn’t paying attention to their conversation.  He was glancing and back forth between their legs.  Autumn Rose’s skirt was shorter, but he was looking at them both equally.  Since meeting him she had become so self-conscious about her leg crossing.  And it had been downright mortifying when he and his three friends had been there.  Every time she’d done it all four pairs of eyes had followed the motion.  How could they all be leg men?  Shouldn’t at least one of them have stared at her breasts?  Of course, she wasn’t that big, but that wasn’t the point.  The doors opened onto the seventeenth floor and Autumn Rose seemed surprised they were all getting off.

“Oh, do you live on—oh!  Ken!”

Camellia looked down the hall.  The man from 1703 was partially ducking back inside, but then realized he’d been caught, so he continued coming outside and smiled at them.  Camellia bit back her smile.  The poor man.  Autumn Rose had been after him for months.  Probably years by now.  He obviously had no interest in her.  She fake coughed as they walked closer to him.  She couldn’t hide her amusement.  The man looked terrified that Autumn Rose was going to attach herself to him in some way.  Autumn Rose stopped by her door across from him, effectively blocking Julian’s path to Camellia’s door.  She excused herself and stepped between them.  Then she heard Julian let out a soft exclamation of surprise.  She turned back to see what had gotten his attention.  He and the man were looking at each other with recognition.  Did they remember their brief encounter from when they’d dropped off his vitamin B6?  They both glanced awkwardly at Autumn Rose and her.  Were they worried that they shouldn’t have acknowledged each other?  Granted it hadn’t been one of the man’s finest moments, but it wasn’t something worth feeling awkward or guilty about.  Certainly not in Julian’s case.

“Oh, are you with Camellia?” Autumn Rose asked.  “It must be the trend these days to have a high school boy as an assistant.”

Julian looked up at the man and gave him a funny smile.  “A high school boy, hmm?”

The man simply smiled back.  That was weird.  Right?  Well, Julian was weird.  And so was the man for that matter.  He obviously had commitment issues.  She’d seen several different women with him over the course of the years they had lived on the hall together, and none of them lasted very long.  Camellia continued on down the hall.  She didn’t really think she was a part of the conversation, so she better leave before Autumn Rose made her one.

“Oh,” she heard the woman say, “Your uniform is familiar.  It looks like the one what’s his name wears.  What school is that?”

“Calverton,” Julian said.

Camellia began to dig through her bag for her keys.

“You go to Calverton?” the man asked.  And then cleared his throat.

She found her keys and turned back down the hall.  Julian was still standing between Autumn Rose and the man.  She really ought to stop thinking of him as “the man.”  She did know his name.

“Julian, are you coming?”

“Yeah, I—”

“Your name is Julian?” the man asked, his voice going gravelly again.  “And you go to Calverton?”  He looked down the hall at Camellia.  She was slightly startled by his sorrowful look.  “And you’re _Dr_. Camellia Gorman.  Right?  A psychologist.”

“Psychiatrist actually,” she responded.

“Oh.”  He looked back at Julian.  Julian seemed a little confused by the man’s expression.

“Were you leaving, Ken?” Autumn Rose asked.  “I can show you that place I was telling you about earlier if you have the time.”

“Uh, yeah.  Sure.”

He seemed distracted.  Camellia wondered if he even realized what he’d just agreed to.  He checked his door to make sure it was locked and then turned to head down the hall.  Autumn Rose had already taken off for the elevators.  The man put a hand on Julian’s shoulder as he passed.  She couldn’t see his face, but she could tell that he said something softly to him.  Julian’s face registered surprise, and then he smiled sadly.  The man patted him on the shoulder and then left.  Julian walked down the hall toward her, not seeming terribly affected by whatever had just happened.

“What’d he say?” Camellia asked as she let them into her condo.

“Ah, nothing really.”

She turned to watch him.  He was looking carefully around the room, taking in every detail.  He probably wouldn’t learn more about her from her decorations.  There weren’t many.  Of course, that might just be as telling.  She dropped her bag off on the large kitchen island and checked her watch again.  She was two minutes out from the “need to hurry” phase.  That was close enough.

“So.  You wanna see what I did for my birthday?”

She turned in surprise.  She hadn’t heard him come up behind her.  She leaned back against the island and looked up at him.  She’d always thought of herself as tall for a woman, but she still had to look up to meet his eyes.  How tall was he?

“How tall are you?”

“Around six feet.  What kind of answer is that?”

“Oh, sorry.  I just suddenly wanted to know.”

“Unh-hunh.  So, you wanna see?”

“See?  See what?  Oh, goodness.  Did you get another piercing?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”  She groaned.  “A tattoo.”

“Yup.  Wanna see?”

She waved a hand.  “Sure.”

He reached for his pants.  And God help her, he started to undo them.  Her hands shot out and she grabbed his to stop him.  Then she let go.  She had been way too close to private areas.

“Never mind.”

“Aw come on.  I don’t even have to take them off all the way.”

“No thank you.”

“Okay.  I got two.  Wanna see the other one?”

“Two?  And where were your friends when you were doing this?”

“They were there with me.  Watching.”

“Of course they were.”

Julian laughed.  “Scott fainted.”

Camellia smiled.  “I don’t know what to do with that boy.  Actually, I do.  I really would like him to start regular sessions with me.”

“So, he’s a boy?”

“What do you mean?”

“You think of him as a boy.  But not me.  What’s the difference?”

“Maturity level.”

“So, Chris would be like me.  And Will is still a boy?”

“Sort of.  You’re right about Chris.  He’s quite mature.  Will…Well, he is immature, but thinking of him as a ‘child’ or something else harmless or innocent could be a very dangerous mistake.”

“Geez.  You really don’t like him, do you?”

“No, I do.  But, he is borderline for a personality disorder.  I don’t mean he has Borderline Personality Disorder.  Just that he’s really close to being diagnosable for one.”

“Hmph.  So, anyway.  Tattoo.  Wanna see it?”

“Where is it?”

“On my back.”

“So, your shirt has to come off?”

“Mm-hmm.”

He started to play with the knot of his tie.  She closed her eyes.  That was the only way to fight the fantasy.  As long as she looked at him—in that stupid school uniform—she was going to wind up doing it someplace weird.  Like the kitchen island.  Those things just weren’t built for sex.

“I’m afraid I can’t.  I’m running late.  I need to pack my bag and get to the airport.”

“Oh, come on!”  He pouted.  “Why are you even leaving today?  Thanksgiving is like, over a week away!  That’s a little excessive, isn’t it?”

She scooted past him and was finally able to open her eyes as she headed for the bedroom.

“Not in my line of work.  Christmas and Hanukah and that time of year are usually the worst for my patients.  I need to be around to help them.  So, I take a longer break at Thanksgiving.  They’re usually okay leading up to Thanksgiving.  I just need to be back in time to deal with the fallout.”

He had followed her to the bedroom.  That could be dangerous too.  She just had to not look at him.  He tugged gently on the mostly packed suitcase sitting neatly on the bench at the foot of her bed.

“What time is this flight?” he asked dryly.

“So, I’m sorry I can’t be with you at Thanksgiving,” she said, ignoring his question.  “Although, is it something your family did?  I’m sorry, I know it’s a secular holiday, but I’m not sure what your family did for it.”

“We celebrated Thanksgiving.”

“So, it’s going to be tough, I know.”  Camellia walked into her bathroom and checked inside her half-packed train case.  She started to add the items she’d left out to use that morning.  She could actually feel Julian when his large form filled the entrance to the bathroom and he leaned against the frame.  She kept her eyes focused on what her hands were doing.

“So.”  She was saying “so” too much.  “I guess you’ll be spending it with your friends?”

“No.”

Camellia looked at him.  The hardness of his eyes matched his voice.  He had his arms crossed over his chest.  If she didn’t know better she’d say he was spoiling for a fight.

“They’ll ask me out of pity.  I couldn’t stand that.”

She clucked her tongue and returned to her work.  “Julian, that’s not true.  And you know it.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to spend time with other people’s families.  They’re all fucked up anyway.  The last thing I need is to deal with my friends’ shit too.”

He was using curse words.  His mood had shifted completely.  Camellia zipped up her train case and started to leave the bathroom.  As she neared him she was suddenly impressed with just how big he was.  If he decided he wanted something, he certainly wouldn’t need her permission to get it.  He stepped back to allow her to pass.  She couldn’t help but feel a little relief.  She hated that she had been afraid of him for a moment.  She knew by his nature he was not a violent person, but anyone could be pushed to a breaking point.  She walked to her suitcase and began to fuss with it.

“So, why don’t you go spend time with _your_ family?  They’ve asked, haven’t they?”

“Yes.  But I don’t want to spend time with them.  They’re not really my family anyway.  I don’t see them that way.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Julian flopped onto her bed and put his hands behind his head.  He stared at the ceiling.

“You’re isolating yourself.  You _want_ to be alone.”

“Why would I want that?” he asked irritably.

“You feel sorry for yourself.  And being alone on Thanksgiving.  Well, that’s just tragically sad, isn’t it?”

He rolled over to look at her.  “So what?” he spat out.  “Why can’t I feel sorry for myself?”

“It’s preventing you from grieving.  And you’ll never be able to fully cope with your parents’ deaths if you don’t allow yourself to grieve.”

He took in a short breath and his brows creased in grudging acknowledgment.  Then he frowned and returned to his back.

“That’s retarded,” he said.

She quirked an eyebrow and turned around to gather her jewelry from the dresser across from the bed.

“Well, it’s good to know you respect my professional opinion.”

“I don’t,” he said stonily.  “That’s why I didn’t want you for a shrink anymore.  I just want to fuck you.”

She stopped sorting through her jumble of earrings.  She took in a breath and tried to shrug off the sudden jolt of pain that had lanced through her chest.  She knew he didn’t really mean it.  At least, she hoped he didn’t.  But for some reason people never seemed to realize that words were weapons.  More than any physical pain you could inflict on someone, words could be an unimaginable torture.  Sticks and stones may break the bones, but words could break the soul.  She swallowed to make sure there would be no thickness in her voice when she spoke.

“Hmm,” she said, trying to sound clinically detached.  “You’re doing that on purpose.  You’re a very honest and straightforward person, and that translates to when you want to hurt someone.  You want them to know that you know you’re hurting them intentionally.  Be careful there.  I have a feeling that if you do it to your friends, you might cross a line.”  She turned to face him.  He was staring at the ceiling, his jaw working.  “I don’t have to be a _shrink_ to know that.  I know you, Julian.”

He looked over at her again.  His eyes were still dark, but he had calmed down.  He got up from the bed and approached her slowly.  He started to reach for her, but then stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said, stepping forward to hug him.  He wrapped his arms tightly around her.  “It’s okay.  But, you’ve got to be careful.  I’m so afraid you’re going to do something for which an apology just won’t be enough.”

“I think I’m okay.”

“I know you do.”

She pressed her face to his shoulder and breathed in his warm scent.  This poor boy.  What could she do for him?  His hands moved slowly over her back.  It felt so nice.

“Hey, hey,” he said softly, playfully.  “You wanna do it before you go?”

She chuckled and kissed the surprisingly smooth fabric of his blazer.  She pulled back to look at him.

“Sorry.  I really need to get to the airport.  It’s going to take forever to get my boarding pass because I have to check my bag.”

“Oh, come on.  I’m eighteen.  It’s my first time.  I’ll last, like, five minutes.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt you wouldn’t last two, but sorry.”

He whined and jiggled her a little bit.

“Come on.  Please?”

“It’s too messy.  I’d have to shower afterwards, which I don’t have time for.”

“What if I promise not to give _you_ any pleasure at all?”

“I’ve no doubt that would happen too.  But, no.”

He let out an exaggerated moan and fell away from her.  He sat on the bench next to her suitcase and scowled at her.

“You are so mean.”

She stepped forward.  “When I get back, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he groused.

She placed her fingers under his chin and tilted his face up.  She met his eyes.

“I promise.”

He stared at her like a deer in headlights for a moment.  Then he swallowed loudly and nodded weakly.  Camellia felt suddenly overwhelmed by her feelings.  Maybe it would help him if she just showed them for once.  She took his face in her hands.

“I _do_ care about you, Julian, I really do.  Please take care of yourself while I’m gone.”

“Um, yeah. Okay.”

She bent over and hugged him.  What if he wasn’t the same when she came back?  She hugged him tight and squeezed her eyes shut.  There was moisture gathering behind the lids and she couldn’t let it out.

“Please come back,” she whispered.

She felt him laugh softly.  “You’re the one who’s leaving.”

“I know.”  She sighed, petted his hair, and then turned her head slightly to kiss his temple.  “I know.”


	17. Chapter 17

Thursday, November 24, 2005

 

Julian

 

“Ah, Julian, you’re a lifesaver,” Anna breathed as she clutched the bag with the cream of mushroom soup to her chest.  “I can’t believe I totally forgot to get this yesterday!”

“I can’t believe a 7-11 actually sells it,” Scott said from the backseat.

Julian strummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for the light to change.  He’d been awoken by Scott at 9:00 that morning asking if he could help scour the town for any open stores for a can of soup that Anna needed.  She’d called Scott in a panic and he’d called Julian because he had a car.  He wondered why he hadn’t called Chris.  He had a car too.  He knew he was flying to Chicago today, but his flight wasn’t until the afternoon.  So, had Scott called him out of pity?  Had he been so worried that he would be alone on Thanksgiving that he thought Julian would welcome the opportunity to drive them around on their stupid mission?

He looked in his rearview mirror as he accelerated through the green light.  He wasn’t looking for traffic though.  He looked at Scott.  He was straining against his seatbelt so that he could be closer to the front seats.  He wore jeans and a long-sleeved red T-shirt.  He would have looked something like Superman if his hair hadn’t been so bright.  He was smiling, as was usual for him, and it even seemed genuine.  Despite all the crap he was going through, especially today, he was happy.  And he was doing his best to make Julian happy.

“So, are you sure you don’t wanna come over later to my dad’s?” Scott asked.  “It’s going to be très bizarre.  Of course, bizarre may not be what you want, but—”

“It’s okay, Scott.  I told you.  I’m going to be with Will and his parents.”

“Oh.  Is Mr. Harder going to cook?  That could be bizarre too.”

“No, I think they’re planning on going out.”

“Well, that’ll be good,” Anna said.  “I’m sure it’ll be someplace swanky.”

“Ha, swanky,” Scott chuckled.  “I love that word.  It’s so funny.”

He and Anna laughed and Julian again looked at Scott in the mirror.  Scott met his eyes and smiled brighter.  Julian looked away.  He knew Scott was upset and unhappy, so why was he so chipper?  Was it an act for his sake?  Did he feel so sorry for him that he decided to ignore his own problems just so that he could help poor, pitiful, orphaned Julian?  No.  He wasn’t that clever.  He was simply that sweet.  That loving.

Julian braked hard as he reached Anna’s house.  Anna and Scott were slung forward and then back.

“Whoa!”

Julian’s eyes sliced to the mirror again.  Scott’s face was a little surprised from the abrupt stop, but he was still smiling.  Why was he smiling?  If he was so unhappy he should stop smiling.  Julian wanted to make him stop smiling.  He gripped the wheel as the other two got out.  More than that, he wanted to hurt him.  He didn’t know why, but he knew that hurting someone like Scott was a hell of a lot more gratifying than hurting someone who deserved it.  He knew he should leave.  He should turn around and drive home right now.  He was in a vicious, foul mood and he was going to do something stupid if he stayed.  Scott opened Julian’s door.

“Come on.  You have time before you have to meet the Harders, right?  Let me show you that thing Anna found on the web the other night.  Come on.”

“Scott, I think I should go.”

“Why? Come on, come on.  What are you going to do?  Go home?  There’s no one there.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Julian said coolly as he undid his seatbelt and got out of the car.

Scott must not have heard his tone because he turned and walked up Anna’s driveway, seemingly happy that Julian was going to stay.  Julian hadn’t been in Anna’s house in a long time.  It was like he remembered it though.  Clean, bright, and full of noise.  Most of the family must be in the kitchen if the clanging and laughing was any indication.  It didn’t smell like Thanksgiving though.  It must still be early in the cooking process.

“Okay, I’m gonna go drop this off in the kitchen,” Anna said.  “Why don’t you guys head up to my room?  Otherwise my mom will assign you a task to work on.”

“Okay,” Scott said and lightly tapped Julian on the shoulder as he started up the stairs.

Julian followed him, feeling aggravated.  It had irritated him when Scott had touched him.  Why did he go around slapping people?  Maybe nobody wanted to be touched.  He walked down the hall toward Anna’s room and pushed on one of the stupid rainbow signs on Anna’s sister’s door.  He must have pushed a little too hard because it swung off the hook and fell to the floor.  He didn’t stop to pick it up.  Anna’s room was not how he remembered it.  All the *NSYNC posters were gone.  Scott was bent over Anna’s desk, starting up her computer.

“Man, I hate her,” Scott grumbled.  “Why does she get her own computer?”

Julian stopped by the door and looked over the messy top of Anna’s dresser.  There was make-up and hair care products.  Things he didn’t remember from even thirteen year old Anna’s room.  He knocked over one of the troll dolls guarding her china piggy bank.  Those he did remember.

“Hey.”

Julian looked up at the gentle voice.  Scott had moved back toward him and was half-sitting on the dresser.

“What’s wrong?”  Scott put his hands up.  “Okay, okay.  Stupid question.  I know what’s wrong.  But, is it just worse today?  Or is it something else?  Did something happen?”

Julian didn’t really look at him, but shook his head.  He could feel his lips and eyebrows kind of pursed together in an irritated expression.  Hopefully Scott would take the hint.  Scott twiddled with his fingers, and then for some unfathomable reason, just wouldn’t shut-up.

“Is it your family?  Your other family I mean?  Did they have a fight?  Or did they not even invite you or something?”

Julian kind of rolled his eyes.  Both of his parents’ families had asked him to come see them for Thanksgiving.  But even if they hadn’t, why would Scott think that would upset him?  He didn’t care about them.

“Not it?  So, what is it?”

“It’s nothing, Scott,” he finally spoke, trying to let all of his irritation leak into his voice.  Why was Scott so socially inept sometimes?  Take a hint.  “I’m just in a bad mood today.  You know, it happens.  You wake up and you’re just like, bleh.  The fact that today is Thanksgiving is just a coincidence.”

“Oh.  Oh, okay.  But is it one of those bad moods that there’s nothing you can do but ride it out, or is it the kind that can be cured?”

Julian looked up, ready to snap at him.  He stopped when he saw Scott grinning at him.  He leaned forward a little bit.

“You wanna mess with my hair?”

Julian looked at his friend.  He was such a good friend; he was trying so hard.  Julian reached slowly toward the platinum blond hair.  He watched almost in a trance as his fingers broke through the soft, bright spikes.  He curled his fingers in it, his skin being tickled by the short locks.  Julian yanked Scott forward by the roots and he let out a cry as he stumbled forward.  He crashed into Julian, putting one hand on his chest.  They were so close Julian held his head tilted back so that they could meet eyes.  Scott’s irises were such a brilliant blue; it was calming to look into their depths.  And while he was confused and in a little pain, he wasn’t scared.  He wasn’t scared of Julian or of what he might do to him.  Because he didn’t suspect he would do anything to him.  Julian didn’t let go of him, but he eased his grip on Scott’s hair, releasing the pressure on his scalp.  Scott relaxed a little bit, still staring up at him, and curled his fingers lightly against Julian’s chest.

 _Calm down_ , Julian ordered himself.  _It’s okay.  Let him go._

Julian slowly began to release Scott when Anna rounded the corner to her room.

“Whoa.  What are you guys doing?  Gay much?”

She laughed and walked past them toward her computer.  Scott pushed himself away and Julian could tell that he refrained from running his hand through his hair.  He glanced over at him.  The stupid little…he just looked worried.  Concerned.  Why wasn’t he angry?  Because he was an idiot.

“Not gay,” Julian said, moving further into the room.  “Definitely not gay.”  He sat down on Anna’s bed.  “You definitely like girls, don’t you, Scotty?  I’m sure Antoinette could testify to that.”

Scott looked at him sharply.  Anna stopped what she was doing and straightened up slowly.  She looked over at Scott and he looked panicked as he tried to communicate something with his eyes to her.

“I mean, you knew, right?” Julian continued.  Anna turned toward him.  “That’s why you kept getting into fights with her.  You were jealous because you knew they were messing around.”

“Julian,” Scott finally found his voice.  Though it sounded disbelieving and weak.

“That’s why he kept putting you off.  Not because he didn’t like you or didn’t know if he wanted you.  He just wanted Antoinette more, you know?  Because she would put out.  Of course now, that’s he been so colossally dumped, he might be willing to take a little less as long as you’re willing.  Has he been hanging around you more lately?  Trying to rekindle the spark?”  His voice was so unfamiliar to him.  He sounded like the mean chick on the soap operas.

Scott was motionless and soundless.  Wasn’t he going to try anything to stop him?  Anna was looking at him more angrily than Scott was.

“Yeah, I knew something was going on.  I mean honestly, I didn’t really even believe it.  I thought he just had a crush on her.  But when she suddenly started making lame excuses to talk with him…and then she got all snippy with me.  I figured maybe there was something going on.  Which really sucked.”  She glanced at Scott and then quickly away.  He was still frozen by the door, but he looked like he was about to puke.  “Anyway.  I knew whatever it was it was just physical.  And once it was out of his system, he’d get over it.”

Anna was picking at the corner of her desk.  Once she finished her little speech, she looked defiantly up at Julian.  He smiled maliciously at her.

“Wow.  Talk about deluding yourself.  Just physical?  If it was only physical, why would Antoinette even bother to fight with you?”

“Because she’s spoiled and selfish,” Anna snapped.  “She didn’t care that there was someone after _Scott_.  Just that someone was taking her toy’s attention away from her.”

Julian glanced over at Scott.  Anna’s assessment of their relationship had cut him.  He looked back at Anna.

“Careful, Anna.  You don’t want to push him away.  He’s still a little sensitive about the whole thing.  You remember how mopey he was the week after my birthday?  He’d just been dumped.  He seemed a little upset for someone who stopped seeing someone who was only his fuck buddy, don’t you think?”

“Well, he’s just overly sensitive—” Anna cut off abruptly.  She looked at Julian, then at Scott, and then back again.  “What….What do you mean?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Julian feigned surprise.  “They were fucking.  Full on bunny mode.”

Based on the nauseated shock that passed over her features, Anna had clearly not even allowed that possibility to cross her mind.  She turned her head slowly to look at Scott.  He was hunched back into the wall and staring at the floor.  His breathing was a little irregular and his jaw muscle was twitching.

“But maybe you’re right, Anna,” Julian said, regaining her attention, “maybe it was just the sex.  But unfortunately, even if you’re willing to put out for him, he still won’t want you.  You’re just not what he _needs_.  You see, he likes to get slapped around a little, don’t cha, Scotty?  You could never satisfy him, Anna.”  He snickered spitefully.  “You’re not bitch enough.”  Julian stood up and approached her.  She glared at him, but bravely held her ground.  “But don’t feel down.  He wouldn’t do you any good anyway.”  He tucked a piece of wiry hair behind her ear.  “You need to save your clean little thighs for someone who’ll fuck you back.”

Anna pushed him roughly away.  “Shut-up, Julian!”

He laughed as he stumbled back.  Scott finally moved.  He grabbed Julian by the cloth of his shirt over his elbow.

“Leave her alone,” Scott snuffled.  “You’re being mean.”

Julian disdainfully plucked Scott’s hand from his shirt.  “Well, you know what, Scotty?  The world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

“I know,” Scott sighed.  “I know that, Julian.”  His pitying voice was ticking him off even more.  “And I know you’re hurting.  I know how hard it is for you right now.”

Julian turned his full attention on Scott.  He stepped forward and Scott backed up a step.

“Do you really, Scott?  Do you really know how hard it is for me?  How is that exactly?”

“Look, Julian, my family is _really_ screwed up right now.  I know what it’s like to have your family fall apart.”

Fall apart?  Julian felt the crack in his control splinter down the middle.  He grabbed Scott by the shirt and slammed him against the door frame.

“Fall apart?  Fall apart?!  My parents are _dead_!  You just have to go to two Thanksgiving dinners.  How on Earth,” he gave Scott a violent shake, “does seeing your parents separately compare to mine being dead?!”

Julian pulled him forward and slammed him against the wall again.  Scott wasn’t fighting back.  He just held onto Julian’s wrists and struggled to find words.  He couldn’t talk because his throat was thick with tears.  He could see them forming in his pretty blue eyes.  It inflamed his rage.  Julian shook him again.

“Why are _you_ crying?!  You’re such a goddamn baby!  Why are you so fucking weak?!”

Scott looked at him, his face distorted in wretchedness, tears tumbling over his cheeks.

“I don’t know,” he sobbed.

“That’s enough, Julian!” Anna shouted.

He’d forgotten she was there.  She grabbed onto one of his arms.  Julian jerked his arm to get her to let go.  The force caused her to stagger back.  She bumped into the corner of the dresser.

“Ow,” she said softly.

“Asshole.”

The hissed word made Julian look back to Scott.  He wasn’t sad and submissive anymore.  He’d snapped.  Julian saw the motion and tried to step back, but Scott landed his punch on the side of his jaw.  It mostly glanced off the bone and didn’t hurt much at all, but Julian released Scott and stepped away from him.  He put a hand to his face, a little shocked.  Scott had just punched him.

“Are you insane?” Scott asked incredulously.  Julian moved his eyes to look at him.  “I couldn’t care less what you do to me.  But what makes you think you can get away with hurting _her_?  I can’t and won’t forgive you if you hurt her.”

Julian smiled scornfully at him.  “So, you do have some balls after all.”

Scott’s eyes hardened.  “Get out,” he said through clenched teeth.  “I don’t care if you’re in pain or suffering.  Go away.”

He would have been a lot more convincing if his voice hadn’t been trembling so much.  Julian sneered at him.  Pathetic.  He rubbed his thumb over his jaw a couple times and then dropped his hand.

“Gladly,” he said contemptibly and roughly shouldered Scott out of his way.

 

Scott

 

Scott waited until he heard Julian on the stairs, and then he fell back against the door frame and slid to the floor.  He sucked in a shuddering breath and then had to do it again quickly.  He couldn’t get enough air.  He buried his face in his hands and let out a couple of soft sobs.  He sniffed back his tears and snot and looked up.  Anna had moved to kneel in front of him.  She put her hands on his knees.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  He didn’t really touch me or shove me.  It didn’t really hurt.  I just bumped the corner, that’s all.”

Scott pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index fingers.  He closed his eyes and took in a breath.  He needed to calm down and pull himself together.  He didn’t know what to do about Julian, and he honestly felt there was nothing he could do about him today.  Certainly not with the mood he’d been in.  Although, he’d seemed to be coming down from it.  Just before Anna had come back, he’d been sure Julian had been getting himself back under control.  He could see it in his eyes.  So what had happened?  Why had he decided to go all Melrose Place on him?  Which reminded him of all the things Anna now knew about him.

Scott pushed her hands off his knees and struggled to his feet.  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed back the gunk in his throat again.

“Well, I think I should go.  It’s a long ass drive out to my grandma’s.”

He looked around and realized he hadn’t brought anything with him, so he started out the door.

“Scott, wait.  Julian’s gone.  Let me get the keys from my mom and I’ll drive you home.”

“No, it’s okay.  I’ll take the bus.  I’ve got some money.”

He started to leave again, but she called out to him softly.  He stopped with his hand on the door frame, and turned very slowly toward her.  He raised his head, but couldn’t get his eyes above her chin.  She said his name softly again and he managed to force his eyes up to meet hers.

“It doesn’t change anything, Scott.  What happened today doesn’t change anything between us.”  She managed a small smile.  “Whatever, you know?  It’s still you and me.”

He managed a nod, but couldn’t get the smile.

“Have a good Thanksgiving.  Say hi to your family for me.”

Scott left her.  Of course it changed everything.  She would never be able to look at him the same way again.  Scott started down the stairs and slowed up as he saw Mrs. Norwood at the bottom.  She was looking up with concerned eyes.  Had they heard Julian screaming?  Had they heard the thumping?  Probably.

“Scott,” she said worriedly, “is everything okay?”

He nodded and hurried past her.  “Yeah, it’s okay.”  He saw that Anna’s father and sisters were standing in the entrance of the kitchen, quiet and curious.  He went out the front door and was relieved to find that Julian had in fact left.  He couldn’t face him right now.  After all, what was left to say?

By the time Scott got home, he’d replayed the events that had occurred in Anna’s room in his mind at least twenty times.  And he still couldn’t come up with a reason for Julian going off the deep end.  Aside from the obvious.  Of course, if it had been so obvious, why hadn’t he noticed?  Had any of them noticed that he wasn’t okay?  He seemed okay.  He said he was okay.  Why would he lie to them?  He knew people lied.  He just assumed that there were three people in the world who would never lie to him.  So, he kept reliving Julian’s meltdown and every time it left him with a nauseating sloshing in his stomach.

As soon as he stepped inside his house he was assaulted by Pat Benatar.  Well, not Ms. Benatar herself, but the loud riffs of “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” were pouring out of the kitchen.  Scott risked a quick trip to the kitchen to see what Kristen was up to because no way was that his father listening to this song.  Sure enough Kristen was in short shorts, a tiny T-shirt, and a red apron.  She was bobbing around a little bit as she bent over to check on the turkey she was basting in the oven.  Scott watched her move a little bit and then he snapped out of it.  It was such a bad thing that he was kind of attracted to his dad’s girlfriend.

“Hey, Kristen,” he said.

She must not have heard him because she continued what she was doing and then started singing loudly.  And off key.  She stood up and shut the oven, doing a kind of swirling maneuver with her hips like she was playing with an invisible hula hoop.  She slowly made a turn and then yelped when she saw Scott.  She put a hand to her chest and looked mortified.

“Gosh.  I didn’t know you were there.”

“I said ‘hey,’” he said.

“What?”  She walked over to her iPod speakers and turned the volume down.  “Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing.  Isn’t it a little early to be cooking?  My dad told you we can’t eat until late, right?”

“Oh, yes, he did.  I’m slow cooking the turkey.  I wanted to smoke it, but your father refused to get up at two this morning to start it.”  She kind of laughed.  “Well, anyway.  The oven’s on a low setting, so it should take most of the day to cook.  But that way the flavors can permeate through the meat.”

Scott nodded.  “Okay.  Well.  Sorry I can’t be here to help.  I’m looking forward to it.”

He realized his voice had been a little flat when he said that, but at least he’d attempted to be nice.  He started to leave, but Kristen called him back.

“I just wanted to check.  What time do you think you’ll be back?”

“Well, I’ll probably leave here around 11:00.  I’ve found some shortcuts to my grandma’s over the last few weeks, so it only takes about two and a half hours to get there now.  We’re supposed to sit down to dinner there at around 3:00.  So, a couple hours, and then two and a half more driving back.  I guess we should be here around 7:30.  I know that’s kind of late.”

“It’s okay.  I just hope you guys won’t be sick of turkey by the time you get here.”  She smiled at him.

He tried to smile back.  “Don’t worry.  I can always eat.”  At least, he used to be able to.  “Although, Joanna is a vegetarian.  So…”

“Oh, I know.  Your father told me.  I bought some tofurkey for her.  Actually for me too,” she laughed.  “I’m not that big on meat.  But don’t worry!  I still know how to cook it.”

Scott nodded.  “Okay.  Well.”  What should he say?  Good luck?  Happy cooking?  Enjoy having the house to yourselves so you and my father can screw all day?  “See you later.”

Scott left the kitchen and ran upstairs to his room.  It was a disaster area.  Without his mother peeking in at least twice a week and threatening his youthful lifestyle, he had no incentive to clean it.  Except for maybe he had to hop and skip around his room to make sure he didn’t step on anything breakable, squishy, or awkward enough to turn his ankle.  He had managed to figure out how to take care of all his laundry needs, so he did have clean clothes.  It just tended to be wadded up in the laundry basket, which was currently covered by dirty clothes and week old dishes.  He had to rummage through the mess to pull out his good pair of khakis.  They were a wrinkled mess.  He glanced at the clock on his nightstand.  He didn’t have time to iron them.  He dropped them onto the floor and one of the leg cuffs fell into a crusty cereal bowl.  He shrugged.  He could always wash them again.  In his closet he found a pair of black dress slacks and a dark blue button down shirt.  If he put on a tie his mother might be happy that he dressed up.  Or would she scoff at his attempt?  His mother had never scoffed at him before.  But maybe now she had no reason to hold back her contempt.

Scott pushed those thoughts aside.  He couldn’t deal with that right now.  He just didn’t care.  He was going to just let himself think that his mother still loved him.  It was easier.  So he grabbed a black, blue, and silver patterned tie out of his closet.  As he started to knot it, he paused as he looked at himself in the mirror hanging on the back of his closet door.  Had Antoinette bought him this tie?  No, that’s right.  She’d just tied him up with it.  He pulled it off and tossed it to the floor.  He put on a lighter blue tie with a dark blue swirling pattern.  He supposed he looked presentable enough.  Though his mother abhorred his hair.  He’d contemplated buying a temporary brown dye for today, but he didn’t want to risk his hair coming out orange.  And his mother was just going to have to get over it eventually.

With wallet and phone in hand he was ready to head out.  He met his father on the stairs and the man turned around to walk back down with him.  He seemed very happy and was smiling, which hadn’t been all that common even before this mess started.  So, it was especially weird to see it now.

“I was just coming to give you the keys,” he said, dropping the key to the Maserati in his hand.

“Thanks.  I told Kristen we’d be here by 7:30, but maybe we can come earlier.”

“Okay.  Great.  Just give us a call when you leave so we’ll know when to expect you.”

“Okay.”

His father continued to walk him to the garage door.  Scott stopped before opening it and looked at his dad.  He shook his head and gave him a small smile.

“Why are you smiling so much?”

“Because.  I haven’t seen Joanna or the twins in three weeks.  I’m glad they’re going to be staying for the weekend.  I miss them.”

“Hmm.  Your favorite isn’t enough?”

His father laughed and pulled him into a hug.  “More than enough.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t love them with my life as well.”

Scott hugged him back and enjoyed feeling his father hold him.  One hand rubbed his back and the other brushed through his hair.  He turned his face into his father’s shoulder and took in a deep breath.  What had happened with Julian?  What had he done to make him so angry?

“Scott?  You okay?”

Scott nodded.  “It’s just a weird day,” he mumbled into his father.

“And I rather imagine it’s not going to get much better.  Your mother and grandmother will probably have a few choice things to say about me.”

“Yeah.  But it won’t be any different from any other day.”

His father let out an uneasy laugh.  “Yeah.  You know.  Your grandmother never did like me.  Not even before any of this came to light.”

“Maybe she always knew.”

“Maybe.”

Scott pulled back and attempted another smile.  “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Okay.  Drive safely.  And call when you get there.  And when you’re ready to leave.”

“I will.”

“Hey, Scott?”

He turned back.

“Are you ever going to be able to forgive me?”

Scott smiled sadly.  “You’ve got it all wrong, Dad.  I never thought you did anything that you needed to be forgiven for.  Not by me anyway.”

His father nodded but didn’t respond.  Scott left and started his long drive to his grandmother’s.  Even though he had the radio blaring and was trying very hard to concentrate on his driving, he still had two and half hours to think about Julian.  He kept slumping further and further into the bucket seat.  He was completely baffled by what had happened.  And that made him depressed that he had no clue what was going on with his friend.  And then he got angry that his friend said such horrible things to Anna.  And then he felt sick thinking about what Anna must think of him now.  And then he felt like crying because he thought of Antoinette.  And once he started crying, it made him wonder what Julian was doing, which made him cry harder.  And by the time he got himself under control, he started thinking about earlier in the morning and was once again baffled by Julian’s behavior.

“Vicious, _vicious_ cycle,” Scott muttered to himself as he pulled into his grandmother’s driveway.  Fortunately he’d reached the end of it again and had pulled himself together.  He would hate for his mother or siblings to look out the window and see him trying to dry his eyes.  He couldn’t believe he still had tears left though.  Didn’t the human body eventually dry out?

No one rushed out the door to greet him.  Maybe they just hadn’t heard him pull up.  He crashed into the door as the knob wouldn’t turn and the door didn’t open.  He hadn’t even thought about it being locked.  He shook his head in embarrassment and rang the doorbell.  After a few moments his mother opened the door.  She smiled when she saw him and he smiled back, feeling his stomach settle down a little bit.

“Hey, honey,” she said, giving him a hug.  “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.”

“Well, you’re early!  We weren’t expecting you yet.”

Scott looked at his watch.  “But it’s 1:35.  I told you I’d be here at 1:30.”

“Which was why we were expecting you at 2:00.”

She ruffled his hair and gave him a teasing smile.  Scott tilted away from the ruffling.

“Oh, hush.  I swear.  I’m not _that_ bad.”

His mother laughed.  It was good to see her in a good mood.

“So, where’s the cornbread?”

Scott blinked at her.  “What?”

“The cornbread.  When I said everyone needed to contribute to dinner, you said you’d do the cornbread because you could probably follow the instructions on the box.”

“Oh, my God.  I totally forgot.”

“Hmm.  I guess it’s good we did our own.”

He smiled sheepishly.  “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  You look very nice.”

“Thanks.  So do you.”

As nice as moms could anyway.  They just tended to wear such mom-like clothes, which were not the hippest fashions on the planet.

“Joanna!  Ferris!  Drake!  Your brother’s here!”

Scott could hear thundering steps coming from both upstairs and down in the basement.  The twins leapt down from the fifth stair just as Joanna rounded the basement door.  Scott was crushed from both sides and he laughed as his siblings hugged him and jumped and talked to him all at once.  Then their grandmother poked her head into the front hall.

“What is all that racket?  What have I told you children about running in the house?”

“Sorry, Grandma,” his siblings chorused.

“Well, Scott.  Where’s the cornbread?”

“I forgot it, Grandma.”

“Mm-hmm.  I told your mother that.  She said you’d remember and that she wasn’t going to make any, so I had to go do it myself.”

The crabby woman disappeared back into the kitchen.

“Well, Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Grandma,” he muttered softly.

His brothers giggled and his mother gave him a pat on the shoulder as she dared to go into the kitchen.  Ferris and Drake started tugging on him and Joanna leaned on the wall, trying to look nonchalant and cool, despite having been completely red-faced after bolting up the stairs to see him.  Scott leaned over and picked up Ferris.  He grunted under the weight.

“Geez.  You guys are getting too heavy.  I want you to stay cute little boys!”

“No, we need to get taller,” Drake said, tugging on his pants pocket.  “We’re playing basketball.”

“Yeah, we’re on the junior team, but we’ll be able to play on the actual teams when we get to fourth grade!” Ferris explained seriously.

Hmm, so his little brothers were starting to develop interests other than dinosaurs and candy.  They were growing up.  He glanced toward the kitchen, but couldn’t tell if anyone was standing by the entrance, so he walked toward the stairs.  Joanna and Drake followed him, and he let Ferris slide from his hip back to the floor.

“So,” he said softly, but tried not to sound like he was speaking softly, “are you guys all packed?”

“I am,” said Joanna.

“Not yet,” said Drake.

“Mommy told us she would help us later,” Ferris said.

“That’s what I thought,” Scott half-sighed.  “Come with me and I’ll help you get packed.”

“Ok!”

His brothers used all four limbs to climb the stairs and he and Joanna walked calmly after them.

“So,” Scott said.  “How’s Hunter?”

“We broke up.”

“Oh, really?  That’s a shame.”

“Oh, yeah, I can really tell you’re just broken up over it.”

“So, what happened?  Did he cut up that beautiful face of his?”

He nudged her gently into the banister.  She pushed him back, but they had reached the top of the stairs, so he went flailing into the hall bathroom.  When he came out she was scowling at him.

“He does not look that much like you, okay?  And no, he still does look like you.  I mean.  The same.  We just broke up because Jenna Lunsford said she’d let him go to second base if he dated her.  Slut,” she muttered.

Scott tried not to laugh.  But thank goodness his sister hadn’t counter offered with third base.  He walked into the twins’ room and found that they had gotten their overnight bags down and were bouncing around waiting for him.  Joanna had been put in a small room in the basement.  Their mother took up the remaining spare room.  It really was a good thing he had stayed with his dad or else he’d probably be sharing this tiny room with the twins.

“Well, that’s fine,” Scott said, opening a drawer and tossing some underwear to the twins.  They stuffed it in their bags.  “You’re too young to date.”

Joanna groaned and rolled her eyes.  She started picking out clothes for the twins from their closet.  “I’m almost fourteen.  That’s how old you were when you dated that weird girl.”

“Okay, one: it’s still four and a half months until your birthday.  Two: I wasn’t fourteen, I was fifteen.  And three: she wasn’t weird.  She was unique.”

“No, no.  Not the one you dated in tenth grade.  That weird girl.  That you went on like three dates with in ninth grade.”

“I have no idea what you’re—oh!  Oh, that’s right.  Pearaboo.”

“Yes!  The one with the weird ass name!”

“Yeah.  Man, she was weird.  Good kisser.  But weird as hell.  How do you even remember that?  I didn’t even remember her.”

Joanna shrugged and tossed some shoes to the twins.  “I just paid a lot of attention to who you were interested in.”

“Yeah.”  Scott stuffed Ferris’ pajamas in his bag.  “About that.”

“Scott.  Let’s not.  Today anyway, I mean.  I’m like, getting over it.  And like.  Not in front of them.”

“Why not?” Ferris complained.

“How come we never get to know anything?” Drake whined.

“Joanna.  I want to believe that.  But, I’ve discovered recently that just because someone says they’re getting over it doesn’t mean they are.  Even if they’re getting therapy.  Which you’re not.”

Joanna whirled on him.  “You think I need therapy?!”

“Joanna.  You tried to…”

Scott glanced at his brothers.  They were staring at him wide-eyed.  He sighed and shoved some socks into Ferris’ bag and then zipped it shut.  Joanna stood stock still, working her jaw, trying not to cry.  The twins had settled down considerably.

“Joanna.  I don’t despise you.  And you don’t disgust me.  You’re my little sister and I love you.  I didn’t mean to make you upset.  Especially not today.  But.  Something has to be done.”

Joanna stared at the floor and took in a couple short breaths to keep herself from crying.  “Something _has_ been done.  Our family fell apart.  And no, I don’t think what I did is responsible for Mom and Dad, but things aren’t the same anymore.  I think it did help that we spent time apart.  You don’t understand, Scott.”  Her shaking voice finally gave in to the tears.  “I was _miserable_ at Calverton.  I didn’t have _any_ friends.  I was a total outcast.  And you…” She sniffed.  “You are so popular.  You hang out with popular people, but you still liked me.  I just…I just wanted to believe that you liked me because you liked me, and not because you had to because I’m your sister.  I thought that if our relationship was something other than brother and sister, that would mean somebody liked me...for me.”

Scott could feel himself tearing up.  He felt for his little sister.  He’d had no idea school had been that bad for her.  He tried to discreetly wipe away the tears with one hand.  He was tired of crying.  Why couldn’t he control his emotions better?

“Joanna—” his voice wavered, so he stopped.

“But it’s better now, Scott.  I got a fresh start at this school.  Nobody knew me.  It wasn’t the same group of forty students in the same classes every year.  I’ve made some friends.  I feel better when I wake up in the morning.  And I don’t really think of you…that much anymore.  I mean, whenever I’m interested in a guy, I still compare him to you.  I probably always will.  But like.  I don’t.  Crawl under my covers at night and play ‘When I Think About You I Touch Myself’ over and over.”

“Agh!”  Scott jerked sideways and crashed onto Ferris’ bed.  “Oh, my God!  I never needed to know that!  Ahhhh!”

“What?!  What?!” his brothers cried.

The twins screamed and bounced around him on the bed.  Scott turned in slow horror, afraid of what his sister might say or do next.  She was laughing at him.  Scott sat up, confused.  She stopped laughing long enough to point at him.

“I got you good.”

She started laughing again and Scott made a face.

“That is _so_ not funny, Joanna.  You do not have a good sense of humor.  In fact, you have a horrible sense of humor.  That was terrible!  And here I was feeling sorry for you!”

“Well, you should.  What I said was true.  I didn’t have friends, so I attached myself to you.  But now, I’m doing a lot better.  I just wanted to tease you a little bit.  Julian is right.  You’re fun to tease.”

She smiled at him, but Scott’s slightly improved mood immediately changed at the mention of Julian’s name.  He waved her over and then pulled her into a hug.  The twins, feeling left out, jumped onto them.  Scott laughed and Joanna complained.  So, she still had middle child syndrome.  Well, they couldn’t solve all of her problems at once.

“What’s all that racket?” their grandmother yelled from downstairs.

“Nothing!” all four of them chorused back.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” their mother called out.  “Get the twins washed up.”

Scott got Joanna to finish packing the twins’ bags while he took them to the bathroom.  He was sad to discover that they could wash their hands all by themselves and didn’t need help because they were “big boys” now.  He didn’t want to have big boy brothers.  He wanted his little baby brothers.  Of course, he also wanted a normal sister, but that obviously wasn’t in the cards either.  They dropped the twins’ bags off by the front door and Joanna went downstairs to bring hers up.  It was kind of funny to see the bags by the door.  It looked like they were preparing for a quick escape.  He hoped it wouldn’t turn out like that.

His grandmother’s house wasn’t the largest, but it had a decently sized dining room and she had an old antique oak dining table.  It was decorated with something the twins’ had made in art class.  It kind of looked like leaves and pine cones randomly glued and taped together.  Which was probably all it was.  They had mismatching plates and silverware because his grandmother had lived alone for several years now.  Their grandfather had died before Joanna was even born.  Scott only had a vague memory of the man.  But it was nice.  It was a family Thanksgiving.  And yet, it wasn’t like one he’d ever had before.  His mom and dad used to be a little bit more formal, but he found he rather enjoyed the intimate, familial setting.  That was until dinner started of course.

His mother asked him to carve the turkey, but his grandmother thought he might hurt himself.  Scott knew he was a lot of things: a crybaby, twitchy, and chronically late, but he wasn’t a klutz.  He didn’t argue and just sat down next to his sister.  His grandmother skillfully wielded the sharp knife and it made Scott a little nervous.  She looked like an ex-Marine in one of those family movies where the big badass has to play Mommy to a bunch of rowdy kids.  The turkey didn’t stand a chance.

“Wow, Grandma,” he said, trying to pay her a compliment, “you are an expert turkey carver.”

She harrumphed.  “Had to do it myself all these years after Jimmy passed on.  Because I never got invited to any Thanksgivings.  No sir, I did not.  Well, Sandra and Sylvia did have me over some.  But never got asked over by my youngest.  No.  For some reason, Grandma wasn’t welcome.”

Scott rolled his eyes.  “Grandma, how can you not remember the great Ham Instead of Turkey Incident?  You were definitely there for that.”

“Yes, as I recall that was your father’s idea.”

“It was his,” his mother chimed in.  “Along with all the other stupid things we did for Thanksgiving.  Going out some years.  Trying new fads.”

“He always was into fads.  The man has no roots.  Hates to be tied down.  And it’s a flaw in his personality that he views marriage as a trap.  A cage.  That’s not normal.”

“Looking back there were a lot of things that weren’t normal.  He’d have no problem going to see his parents for holidays.  But whenever I wanted to see you, he pitched a fit and complained that he wanted it to just be us.  He always tried to alienate me from my own family.  I went a year and a half without seeing Sylvia or Sandra once.”

“Mom,” Scott cut in.  “They live on the other side of the country.  How often do you expect to see them?”

“I would have appreciated being able to do what I want with my own money.  I could have flown without him.  But he was so controlling.  And he was terrified of being solely responsible for the four of you.  This custody battle is a joke.  If he gets you he’s just going to hire a nanny.”

“And probably wind up messing around with her too,” his grandmother grumbled as she plopped a piece of turkey on Joanna’s plate.

His sister looked at the dead bird flesh with revulsion but didn’t dare say anything.  Scott took in a breath, but kept his comments to himself.  He of course didn’t know the details of his parents’ marriage, but children did often notice things no matter how much the parents tried to hide it.  And Scott had never thought of his father as controlling.  In fact, if his mother had ever volunteered to fly across the country by herself, Scott couldn’t imagine his father saying no.  After all, then he would have been freer to see Kristen.

As the rest of the dishes were served, the topic didn’t change.  It was a free for all between his mother and grandmother to see who could name the worst thing about his father.  Some of the things Scott was quite sure were highly embellished if not outright made up.  He and his siblings just stared at their plates, barely eating.  Unsurprisingly none of them had much of an appetite.  His mother’s and grandmother’s voices were starting to grate on his nerves.  He knew they had legitimate complaints about the man, but that didn’t mean they needed to do it in front of his children.

“I mean, he was just so _inattentive_ ,” his mother griped.  “I realize now that was because his attention was on other more blonder things.  But you would think that if he cared about his children at all he would have made time for them.  I can’t even tell you how many times he missed games or recitals or other things the children did.  He’s probably grateful to have them gone.  He’s only fighting for them now just to annoy me.  He’s so spiteful.  I can’t even—”

“Will you stop?” Scott shouted.  He cleared his throat and knew he was going to have to talk in a more reasonable tone if he wanted his mother to listen to him.  His grandmother was a lost cause.  “Can you, for like, two hours on Thanksgiving talk about something other than what a horrible person our father is?”

“Why do you always take his side?” his mother accused sharply.

“I’m not taking his side,” Scott half-groaned.  “It’s just…listen to what you’re saying in front of your children.  He’s still our father.  He will always be our father no matter what happens after the divorce.”

“Just because he’s your father doesn’t make him a good man.”

Scott shook his head, an irritated half-smile on his face. “He’s not a bad man either.”

“Yes, he is,” his mother snapped.  “He’s a terrible role model.  And a terrible person.”

“Then why did you marry him in the first place if he’s so terrible?”

“He’s a very good actor.  Borderline sociopathic.”

“Oh my God,” he almost laughed.  Scott put his fork down and it clattered off the plate to the table.  His siblings jumped at the noise.  “That is the stupidest…will you stop being so melodramatic?”

“I’m not being melodramatic.  I don’t want my children anywhere near that man.”

“Well, you know what, Mom?  It might not be your decision.  You don’t have a job yet.  You live with Grandma.  Even the new minivan is in Grandma’s name.  Dad is probably going to win primary custody of us.  Do you really want us to have to live with a man that we hate?”

“No.  You’re right.  I don’t want you to live with a man you hate.  I want you to live with me and hate him from afar.”

Scott put his hands out and then ran them over his brows.  He shook his head and stood up.

“Okay.  We’re done.  Guys, get your stuff.  We’re going to Dad’s now.”

His mother stood up, thumping her hands on the table.  “Sit down,” she ordered sternly.  “We are not through with dinner.”

“I’m done.  I couldn’t eat another bite.  I’d probably throw it up.  We’re leaving now.  Joanna, get the twins’ coats.”

Joanna started to move but her mother pointed a sharp finger at her.  “Don’t move.  You’ll leave when I say you can.”

“It’s nearly a three hour drive back, Mom.  Don’t you think it would be better if we get there before dark?”

“You can’t leave now.  The twins aren’t even packed yet.”

“And why exactly is that, Mom?”

She tightened her lips and didn’t answer.

“But don’t worry about it.  I already got them packed.”

His mother threw her hands up in disgust and shook her head in irritated disbelief.  “Of course.  That’s just what he would do too.  And what are you driving?  That sports car?  It doesn’t even have a backseat!  I’m not letting you drive them in that.  If he wants to see them he can come get them himself.”

“Mom.  The Maserati does have a backseat.  With seatbelts and everything.  I’ll drive really safely.  But, we’re going now.  Sorry we can’t help with the dishes, Grandma.  Boys, Joanna.  Move it.”

They started to inch off their chairs, but glanced nervously at their mother.  The woman walked around the table to block Scott’s way.

“Don’t you dare!  Scott Walker Ra—Do not disobey me.”

Scott confronted his mother.  He’d been taller than her for a couple years now, but this was the first time he’d ever used his height to try to intimidate her.

“What was that, Mom?  What were you saying?  Say my name.  Say it!  Why can’t you say my name?!”

“I can!  You _are_ a Ramsey!  You are _definitely_ that man’s son!” she spat at him.

Scott stared her down.  Unspoken were the words, “You’re certainly not mine.”  And it was a good thing they’d remained unspoken.  Scott would never have been able to recover from that.  Or forgive his mother.  But then again, maybe it was in his head.  Maybe she hadn’t even thought it.  She knew he was her son, but he was a lot like his father.  That was all she meant.  That’s what he wanted to believe.  But based on the horrified look on her face and how she had covered her mouth with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, she was probably thinking it.  Scott knew there wasn’t a response to that, so he walked around her.

“Get your coats,” he ordered his siblings.

They eased away from the table and hurried from the room.  His grandmother was still sitting.  She had wisely decided to stay out of this particular battle.  Scott ran his thumb and index finger over his mouth while he waited by the front door.  Was he going to have to have a fight with everyone today?  And why did he keep feeling like the bad guy?  Why was he wrong for still loving his father?  And how did still loving him make him the same in his mother’s mind?  Could only other self-involved sociopaths love him?  Other cheating bastards?  Did he have any moral high ground to stand on because of Antoinette?  _He_ hadn’t cheated on anyone.  What Antoinette did was her own…

Scott curled his hand into a ball and pulled it tight to his chest as he fell against the door.  He put his forehead on the cold metal.  He didn’t want to think about Antoinette.  That was the only way he could make it through the day.  How could she do that to him?  How could she really have no feelings for him at all?  Didn’t she at least like him enough to let him down easy?  Why had she been crying so hard?

“Scott?”

Scott turned around and found that his siblings were standing anxiously beside him with their coats.  He picked up the twins’ bags and opened the door.  Joanna picked hers up and they all tromped outside.  He was opening the trunk when his mother came down the driveway.  He didn’t say anything but roughly threw the overnight bags into the back and then slammed the lid down.  He unlocked the passenger side door and pulled the seat forward.  His brothers started to climb in.

“Scott, wait.  We still need to talk.”

“I think we’ve said enough for today, Mother.”

“Scott.  I don’t know what he’s said about me, but I’m still your mother and you need to respect me and listen to me.  I am only thinking of what is best for my children.  For _all_ of my children.  It concerns me that you’re stuck with him day and night all by yourself.  Of course you feel close to him.  And are clinging to him.  I really think you need to move here.  Immediately.  I won’t send you to Chesterbrook.  You can go to a public school.”

Scott hadn’t interrupted his mother because he’d been securing the twins’ seatbelts.  Then he pushed the seat back into place and let Joanna get in.  Once he shut the door he turned to face his mother.

“I’m not coming to live here.  End of discussion.  I’m not clinging to Dad.  I’m clinging to my friends.  And it’s really hard to listen and respect someone who can’t even look at you without just a little bit of revulsion in their eyes.”

He walked around to the driver’s side.

“Scott.  I do not—”

“Yeah, you do, Mom.  It even started before the truth came out to us.  When I dyed my hair you went ballistic.  You’ve known about Kristen for a long time, haven’t you?”

His mother didn’t answer.  He nodded his head.

“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t unfairly transfer any of your anger onto me or anything.  Because I might have taken that personally.”

“Scott—”

Scott opened the door.  “And you know what, Mom?  Dad’s never said anything about you.  Not one thing.  He’s told me his reasons for doing what he did.  But never once has he said it’s because there’s something wrong with you.  Or it’s all the bad things you did.  Or what a terrible person you are.  You know why?  Because he doesn’t think that.”

“Then why did he cheat on me?!  Why wasn’t I good enough?!”

“Did you ever ask _him_ that?”

His mother clenched her hands into fists, but couldn’t manage any words.

“Let’s not do this in front of the neighbors, okay?  I’ll call you when we get there.  Let you know I got your children there safely.”

Scott slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door.  He started the car and backed out of the driveway looking only at what was behind him.  He didn’t want to know if his mother was chasing after them or calling out to him or signaling him in any way.  Once he hit the road, he put the car in drive and accelerated down the street.  He didn’t see what his mother’s reaction was.

“Joanna.”  Scott handed her his phone.  “Call Dad and tell him we’re on our way.”

“Okay.”

The drive back to his father’s was much longer than the drive to his grandmother’s.  Even though it technically took less time, the car had been silent.  None of them had spoken.  He’d wanted to try to make them feel better, but he was too afraid to find out that the person they were really angry with was him.  The silence still remained unbroken even after they had pulled into the garage and the engine had been killed.  The four siblings sat in the dimness listening to the soft creaking sounds made by the settling car.

“I’m hungry,” Drake said.

There was a pause.  And then Scott let out a small laugh.  Then Joanna giggled.  Then the older two started laughing.  Ferris laughed too because they were.  Drake looked perplexed.

“I really am hungry.  I didn’t eat at Grandma’s.  And it wasn’t that good.”

Joanna and Scott laughed harder.  They continued to laugh as they got out of the car and helped the twins get out from the back.  Ferris was still smiling, but he was concerned for his brother’s wellbeing.  He started herding his older siblings toward the door; they needed to get some food now.  Scott opened the door that led into the house and they heard a voice that was out of place in their home.

“David, I really think I should go.”

They stepped inside and saw their father and Kristen standing by the front door.  She was halfway into her coat and their father was trying to prevent her from getting the rest of the way into it.  She stopped moving when she saw them and their father pulled the coat off her.  Scott took in a breath and held back his smile.  She was wearing a chic, oddly cut dress that showed off her figure and yet was modest.  It was black with a beige old-fashioned lace pattern.  She looked beautiful and Scott figured out why he was so attracted to her.  The way she dressed, the way she stood, the way she tilted her head when she was listening, the bright blue of her eyes, and that sweet, gentle smile.  If she’d been a deep honey blonde instead of platinum…It wasn’t that she looked like Antoinette, but she could have been related to her.  A cousin or a young aunt.  It didn’t matter.  She just reminded him of Antoinette.  He swallowed the lump in his throat.  How was she today?  Was her family happily enjoying their holiday together, oblivious of her father’s infidelity?

“Hi,” his father said to them.

He took a step forward and the twins hung back behind Scott and Joanna.  The man stopped cold, looking like his heart was breaking.  Scott moved forward and walked up to his father.  He hugged him tightly.  His father returned the embrace.  He turned his face in a little to speak softly into Scott’s ear.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.  They’ve just never met Kristen before.  They’re a little shy.”

“No, not them.  What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh.”  Scott put his lips to his father’s shoulder and took in a deep breath.  He released it as he raised his head.  “Long day.  A lot has happened that I haven’t had time to sort through yet.  And dinner with Mom and Grandma wasn’t the greatest.  We can talk later.”

“Okay.”

They stepped back from the hug and Scott looked at his siblings.  Once the twins were reminded that he was their father, they ran toward him.  The man knelt down so he could get one in each arm.

“Hey, boys.  How’re you doing?”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“We’re happy to be home.”

“When can we come back home for good?”

“Very soon.  I promise.”

Scott glanced at his father.  That was a bit ballsy.  And did he understand that the twins included their mother in that “we?”  Scott shook his head and looked at Joanna where she was still hanging out by the door.  He gave a slight nod of his head toward their father.  He didn’t really think she needed the encouragement, but they didn’t need a long dramatic standoff.  Joanna crossed the room and hugged her father.  He cupped her face and brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones.  Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead.  He was smiling broadly now.

“I’m so happy to have you all here.”

Kristen still stood awkwardly by the door.  Their father walked over to her and took her by the hand.  He led her closer to his children and she gave them a scared smile.

“This is my daughter, Joanna.  And these are the twins.  Drake is on the left and Ferris is on the right.  Why are you two dressed the same?”

“Grandma,” they grumbled.

“Hn.  This is Kristen.  She’s a very special person to me.  And she spent all day cooking dinner for us.”

“Hi, Kristen,” Drake said.  “Can we eat?”

She laughed and covered her mouth with a hand.  “Of course.  Come on in the dining room.”

The dining room had been transformed.  There was a pristine white table cloth over the long table with an expensive-looking, professionally made fall centerpiece.  The fine china and actual silver silverware was laid out.  The room was mostly lit by candlelight and all the food had been transferred to decorative bowls rather than being served in the pots it had been made in.  It smelled really good.  His father and Kristen took the ends of the table and Scott wondered if she felt nervous being separated from the one person who actually wanted her there.

The silence wasn’t noticeable as food was passed around and polite murmurings for such and such to be passed were made.  Then before they could start eating Kristen asked if they should say grace.  She said it for them and when she was done, everyone began to eat.  And nobody talked.  Nobody looked at Kristen.  The silence was almost as bad as his mother’s and grandmother’s whining and griping.  Kristen looked so uncomfortable; she wasn’t eating anything.  Scott wondered if she was upset she hadn’t managed to bond with Joanna over the tofurkey.  The whole thing was miserable.  He couldn’t deal with this.  He didn’t want to make the effort.  He didn’t want for the situation to be okay.  But after the day he’d had, he couldn’t bear to have one more thing be a complete disaster.  He cleared his throat.

“So, Kristen, what do you do?”

She looked startled at first, like she hadn’t expected anyone to address her.  “I, uh.  I manage a day spa.”

Scott twirled his fork in his sweet potatoes.  “Like.  Hair?”

She looked like she was about to cry.  “Y-yeah.  And massages and manicures and pedicures.  Facials and waxing and…We—we do a whole range of services.”  Her voice was shaking.  She almost seemed embarrassed by it.

“You said you manage it?”

She nodded and took a sip of her wine.  He’d been given a glass too.  He’d felt like draining the glass in one sip, but had refrained so far.

“I actually started out as a shampoo girl.  Out of cosmetology school.  Then I did hair and some other things.  And then I eventually moved up.”

She stopped talking abruptly.  Scott could tell that she felt like she was babbling.

“That’s really impressive,” he said.  She looked up at him.  “That you took over.  Working in a salon and running a business are two very different things.  It must have been hard work to make the change.”

“Well, I did have to learn a lot.  But I really enjoyed it.  I like dealing with the business side.”

Scott smiled at her.  She smiled brightly back at him.  He had to look away.  Maybe she only reminded him of Antoinette because he was still hung up on her.  Hopefully that was all this was.  His siblings took their cue from him.  The twins instantly relaxed and were their normal, noisy, messy selves.  Joanna looked tentatively at Kristen.

“Even though you do business stuff, do you still do hair?”

“Sometimes.”

“’Cause mine is, like, really weird.  I could really use some help.”

“Well, why don’t we see what we can do after dinner?  I’d love to play with your hair.”

“Okay.”  Joanna smiled shyly.

“I like this macaroni and cheese,” Ferris said.  “Mommy never lets us have it for Thanksgiving.”

“Well, you need good, yummy food at Thanksgiving, don’t you?” Kristen smiled at him.

The twins nodded in agreement.  His father caught his eye and smiled gratefully at him.  Dinner was now relaxed and his siblings were well on their way to accepting Kristen.  That really hadn’t been his intention.  He’d just meant to ease the tension a little bit.  Scott continued to poke at his sweet potatoes.  Suddenly he couldn’t hold his fork anymore.  He put it down quickly and put his hands in his lap.  He massaged his right hand gently.  His knuckles hurt so much.  It was excruciating.  He closed his eyes and held his breath until it passed.  When he opened his eyes everyone was still enjoying their meal.  They hadn’t noticed.  He flexed his fingers.  The sharp pain had been replaced with a dull ache.  He knew what it was from.  It was where he’d hit Julian.  He knew he hadn’t him that hard.  In fact, he’d almost intentionally missed.  It was because Julian had moved to the right that he had connected with his jaw at all.  And still, his hand hurt like he’d pounded on a metal wall for several hours.  He tried to pick up his fork again, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate.  He pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Excuse me.  I need to run to the bathroom.  It was a long drive back.”

“Okay,” his father said, eyeing him carefully.

Scott left the room and decided to go upstairs to his bathroom.  He locked himself in and turned the sink faucet onto cold.  He stuck his hand under the frigid water and realized the absurdity of it.  The pain wasn’t physical.  It was in his head.  But he kept his hand under the water until it started to go numb.  He dropped his head with a sad, humorless laugh.  He was going to make a terrible psychologist.

 

Julian

 

Julian slammed the front door shut and Cornelius started in fear.  He tucked his tail between his legs and crouched low to the floor.  Julian ignored him.  He reminded him of Scott and he’d had fucking enough of needy babies for one day.  He stomped into his kitchen and began jerking open cabinets.  Things were out of place.  There was hardly any food.  And it was probably his stupid friends’ fault.  They’d been over so much they’d taken over his damn house.

“Friends.  Fuck.”

How much longer was he going to have to put up with their stupidity?  He never should have asked them to be with him 24/7.  He should have known that would drive him mad.  He slammed the McDonald’s bag in his hand down on the kitchen table.  He roughly pulled out a chair and sat in it.  He dumped the contents of the bag onto the table and glared unhappily at the grease-stained wrappers.  They looked about as appetizing as he was sure the food inside them was.  Cornelius was hanging out by the entrance to the kitchen.  He was interested in the food, but he was too nervous to come closer to Julian.  Julian sat back in his chair.  He wasn’t hungry anymore.  His phone rang.  He groaned in exasperated irritation.  It was probably Scott.  Stupid ass couldn’t take a hint even when it was a 2x4 that had recently hit him upside the head.  Did he even want to talk to the retard?  He turned the phone on and put it to his ear, but didn’t say anything.

“Where are you?”

Julian was confused.  The voice wasn’t who he expected.  And who greeted someone with “Where are you?”

“What?” Julian snapped crossly.

“Where are you?  I’m coming to see you.”

It was Chris.  Julian tapped his finger against the back of the phone.  Was it a coincidence Chris was coming to see him in person after what had happened this morning?  Scott was such a tattletale.  He briefly considered lying to Chris and sending him on a wild goose chase in the mall or something.

“I’m at home.”

Julian waited to hear the beginning of Chris’ speech.  But he remained quiet.  Julian kept listening, but he still didn’t say anything.  He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen.  Chris had hung up.  Julian rolled his eyes.  He was going to be such a dramatic little bitch when he got here.  He stood up and walked to the back door.

“Come on, Cornelius, you wanna go out?”

The dog pranced by the kitchen entrance, but didn’t come to him.  Julian patted his leg.

“Come on.”

There was a very soft whining sound, but the dog stayed where he was.  Julian shrugged and walked out the backdoor.  He kicked the ankle deep un-raked dead leaves across the yard and plopped down in the homemade swing that hung from the gigantic weeping willow tree at the back the property.  He settled onto the board that had been slightly warped by time and a lot of use.  It used to be his mother’s favorite place to sit in the spring and summer.  And autumn.  And winter if it wasn’t too cold.  She liked to be outdoors.  Julian wrapped his hands around the itchy, coarse nylon ropes and ran them gently up and down.  About ten minutes had passed when he heard Chris pull into the driveway.  He listened to the car door open and close, but he remained seated.  Several more minutes passed before Chris rounded the side of the house.  He wore grey pants and a blue and grey striped white shirt.  His hands were in his pockets and he didn’t appear angry or upset.  But he didn’t look happy either.  He stopped a few feet away and just looked at him.  Julian stared back.  Chris didn’t say anything about having knocked and waited for a long time before coming around back.  So, what was his first complaint going to be?  Or then again, maybe he didn’t know what had happened that morning.  Maybe he’d come over all serious because he was feeling sorry for him too.

“So, what?” Julian asked, using his feet to gently sway in the swing.  “Did you come over to invite poor, parentless Julian to a nice family Thanksgiving dinner?”

“No,” Chris said in a neutral voice.  “Not at all.  I wouldn’t want you there.”

Julian was a little surprised by his bluntness.  And also by the fact that he didn’t want to invite him.

“What did you do to Scott?”

Julian rolled his eyes.  Of course.  He should’ve trusted his instincts.  Scott gets bullied at the playground and along comes Mother Chris to fight his battles.

“Geez,” Julian groaned.  “Did you come over here to defend his honor?  You are so queer about him, you know that?”

“Anna called me.  I went over to his house but he’d already left for his mother’s and he’s not answering his cell phone.  All I know is what Anna said, but honestly I can’t really believe it.”

“So don’t.  I would never do anything to hurt, Scotty, right?”

Chris shifted his weight, but he wasn’t getting upset.  That sent a spark of anger through Julian.

“What were you thinking?  He’s so completely frayed right now.  Even before he had to deal with you.  Why would you do that to him now?  Of all of us, why would you do that to _him_?”

Julian stopped rocking on the swing and leaned forward, gripping the ropes tighter.  “What about _him_?  What about _me_?”

Chris shrugged.  “What about you?  You’re angry and spiteful and you don’t want any help.  Fine.  But don’t take it out on him.”

Julian clenched his teeth together, the enamel grinding in his ears.  He hated how mature and cool under pressure Chris always pretended to be.

“So, he’s got some problems,” Julian snarled.  “We all do.  I don’t see why he can’t get his shit together and deal with it.  He’s such a goddamn baby and so fucking sheltered.  He needs to find out what the real world is like.  It’s about time he grew the hell up.”

Chris didn’t react to him.  “And you’re the one who should educate him?”

“Oh, blow it out your ass, Chris.  I don’t need a fucking lecture from you, okay?  He’ll get over it.  And if he doesn’t, then he’s kind of pathetic.  And I so don’t care.  You need to mind your own damn business.”

“Scott is my business.”

“Oh, my God!”  Julian practically barked his laughter.  “You are so gay for him!”

“And you were my business too.”

Again he hadn’t reacted and Julian stood up to give his body something to do.  His anger was building and he was getting sick of sitting on it.

“ _Were_?  So things get a little rough and you bail on me?  What a standup friend you are.”

“When things got rough, I didn’t bail on you.  When things got shitty, I didn’t bail on you.  And now…well, your world is collapsing in around you because you’re pushing away all the people that would be your pillars.”

“Ugh!  Shut-up!  Enough with the queerified metaphors!  You’re seriously making me sick!  And you know?  It’s starting to make sense now.  It’s got to be because of your mommy issues.  And while we’re on the subject of not dealing with our issues, why don’t you take a look at yourself Mr. Moral Highground.  You are completely in denial about your dad because it makes it easier for you to not have to acknowledge that your father is a full on fucking wiseguy.  And just because he didn’t get caught for murder that last time doesn’t mean he’s not a peon whacking murderer.  In order to _be_ in the mafia, you _have_ to kill somebody.  And seriously, duh, Chris.  You’re all confused about what you saw between Mommy and Mr. Lawyer.  They were fucking.  He probably did his damnedest to _keep_ your father in jail.”

To the untrained eye, Chris once again didn’t react.  But Julian could see the shift in his eyes and the slight movements made by his clenching jaw muscles.

“Aw, what’s wrong, Chris?  You wanna talk about _your_ feelings now?  You wanna sit down to a nice Thanksgiving dinner with your support pillars?  A nice dinner paid for with blood money.”  Julian let out a scoffing-laugh and shook his head.  “You are so self-righteous.  You look down your nose at us because you’re the ‘normal’ one.  You’re the one who does the right thing and shakes his head amusedly as the rest of us fuck up.  Well, you’re playing two girls to see which one will give it up to you with the least amount of commitment.  Very noble.  So why don’t you take a long, hard look at yourself before you come prancing over here on your high horse.  God!”  Julian turned around and kicked the swing.  He turned back to Chris and took a couple steps toward him to avoid the returning swing; and to intimidate Chris.  “You are so fucking irritating!  You always have been.  Even when we were little.  I’m mean, fuck.  We only played with you because Scott was such a sappy little bitch and didn’t want to leave anyone out.  So, thanks for tagging along for the rest of our lives.  It’s been great having you around.  Really.”

“Julian.”  He was so calm.  He’d stopped clenching his jaw and his eyes were neutral again.  Why was he so fucking calm?  His soft, patronizing voice was driving him crazy.  “I’m not coming after you.  I know you have your own problems and I’ve offered more than once to help, but you’ve clearly indicated you don’t want any.  That’s fine.  I’m through with trying to help.  I’m gone.  Forever if that’s what you want.  But I’m warning you now: leave Scott alone or you are going to have much bigger problems than the ones you already have.”

Julian kind of laughed in mocking disbelief.  Then his body tightened up on him.  “What the hell?” he asked softly.  Julian closed the distance between them and grabbed Chris by the shirt with both hands.  It had never been clearer how much bigger Julian was than Chris until now.  “Are you threatening me?  You going to beat me up?  ‘Cause I would love to see you try.”

Chris didn’t seem scared or impressed with his show of force.  He just turned his head to get Julian out of his face.

“Look, Julian, I—”  He shook his head and faced Julian again, their noses inches apart.  “I could forgive you almost anything, Julian.”  He put his arms in between their bodies and then pushed out on Julian’s arms so that he had to let go.  “But if you go after Scott again…There is no repairing this.”

Chris turned and started to walk away.  Julian clenched his hands into fists.  That goddamned sanctimonious fucking asshole.  Who was he to give ultimatums and orders?  If he was such a great friend why was he just walking away from him?  He’d tried so hard, huh?  So, that meant he’d done enough?

“Fucker!  You’re walking away awfully damn easy!  You’re the worst out of all of them because you’re a goddamn hypocrite!  Preaching about helping and caring!  You obviously never cared about me!  You better stay the hell away from me because the next time I see your ugly face it’s going to be a bloody smear across the pavement!  Do you fucking hear me?!”

 

Chris

 

Chris took in a deep breath, but didn’t turn back around.  What on earth could he do for Julian?  If he tried to help him he would irritate him more and make him feel smothered.  And if he left him alone, it meant he didn’t care about him.  It was hard to please people who weren’t being rational.  Chris knew he couldn’t help him.  Julian didn’t want his help.  So, he had to leave before things got seriously violent.  Chris had a lot of patience, but even he had his limits and Julian had gotten awfully close to setting him off.

Chris got into his car and backed out of the driveway.  Should he call someone?  Would it be better or worse for Julian to be alone right now?  Chris didn’t want to send anyone to Julian at the moment.  He’d probably do something to push them away too.  Plus, he didn’t really have time to deal with Julian’s neurosis; he had a flight to catch.  He had to go see his murdering, extorting father.  Chris clenched his jaw.  Julian had never been the type to take cheap shots, but he was even more stubborn than Will when he wanted to be.  Chris was pretty certain there was no helping him today.  He’d let him stew by himself over the weekend and hopefully they could work things out when he got back.

He just wished he could get a hold of Scott.  He couldn’t imagine Julian being violent with Scott.  He couldn’t imagine anyone being violent with Scott.  How could you hit someone who was crying his eyes out?  And not because he was scared, but because he was upset that something had upset his attacker?  How would Scott even react to violence?  He wouldn’t be okay.  Chris shook his head.  Scott was more or less a normal teenage boy.  He wasn’t a young child or mentally retarded.  He could handle it.  He would be okay.  Maybe they did baby him too much.  All the same, Chris couldn’t help but stress over his friend.  He’d been a wreck since Antoinette had dumped him and now he had to go to two Thanksgivings.  And his father’s mistress was cooking one of them.  That could _not_ be normal.

Chris turned into his community’s parking lot, and as he pulled into his parking spot his mother came out the front door with his bag in hand.  He turned off the car and got out, a little amused by his mother’s frantic scurrying.

“Chris!  I can’t believe you just took off like that!  We have to go!  The traffic will probably be terrible today and they’re saying that now you have to be there two hours early for domestic flights.  Do you want to miss it?”  She stopped and looked at him.  “Wait, was this a ploy to miss the flight?  Because if you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to go, that’s fine.  We’ll just tell Mr. Richardson we had car trouble or something.  Your—your father will understand.”

Chris smiled and shook his head.  “No, it wasn’t a ploy.  It was an emergency.  But it’s taken care of now.  Or at least, I’ve done what I could.  If we leave now I think we’ll get there in time.”

His mother looked at him imploringly.  “Are you sure?”

“Mom.  You’re working today and tomorrow.  What am I supposed to do?  Just hang out here until you have time for me?”

His mother put his bag in the backseat of her car.  “No,” she grumped.  “I just still think this is a bad idea.  I mean.  You’re going to have Thanksgiving dinner…in prison.”

“Better than Iraq though, right?  Some mothers have it worse than others.”

She shot him a dirty look.  “That won’t work with me, mister.”

He smiled and gave her a half-hug and then started up the stairs to their townhouse.

“Where are you going?”

“To get my laptop.”

“Oh, don’t take that.  It’ll get stolen.”

Chris laughed as he went inside.  “No it won’t.”

Chris took the stairs two at a time up to his room.  He quickly disconnected his laptop from the wall and shoved it with its cables into its worn traveling case.  He looked around his room to make sure he had everything.  Of course, if he’d forgotten his toothbrush or underwear, he wouldn’t realize that until later that evening.  He pulled his cell phone out and ran his thumb over the buttons.  He wanted to call Scott again, but he probably wouldn’t answer.  Should he call Will?  And tell him what?  Tell him to go help Julian or warn him to stay away?  Chris shook his head and stuck his phone in his pocket.

His mother already had the car running by the time he got downstairs.  He hopped in and was still putting his seatbelt on when she backed out and got them on their way.  Chris gave her a suspicious look.

“You’re not worried about me missing my flight; you’re worried about missing your appointment.”

“Well, that’s true.  I’d much rather you not go at all.  And if my team doesn’t get the appraisal and contract drawn up by our meeting with the client tomorrow we will all be tremendously fired.  We cannot afford that, Chris.”

Chris fidgeted with his seatbelt.  Actually, they could.  He had enough money to support them while she found a new job.  Hell, she could even go back to school if she wanted to.  He had no problem with getting loans for school and working his way through college.  But would his mother have a problem accepting his father’s money?    He certainly wasn’t going to ask her to find out.

The traffic wasn’t bad until they got into the city, but even after a thirty minute delay they still arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare.  Mr. Richardson was waiting for them by the departures drop off zone.  He smiled politely, but detachedly at them.  Chris felt a little awkward saying goodbye to his mother in front of him.  It was a bizarre feeling, like he was doing something wrong by expressing his affection for someone.  Mr. Richardson was just so…professional.  His dark suit was perfectly tailored and very clean and stylish.  It went well with his dark hair and eyes.  And then before he knew it, he and Mr. Richardson were alone.  Together.  For at least the next six hours until they arrived at the prison.  And that was if their flight didn’t get delayed.

The check-in went fairly quickly since neither of them had luggage to check.  In fact, Mr. Richardson hadn’t brought anything with him.  He’d flown out just to pick Chris up, which he thought was a bit unwarranted.  He was seventeen years old.  He was certainly capable of getting on a plane by himself.  Of course, if he worked for the mafia, maybe if anything happened to Chris, whether it was his fault or not, he would be held accountable.  Chris scowled at the long security check point line.  It was ridiculous.  Nobody was in the mob.  His father had never said he was.  All he said was that he worked for some people who wouldn’t be willing to let him out of the business.  Drug trafficking didn’t automatically mean the mafia.  At least, not like the way it was on TV, which is how he kept imagining it.

The terminal was busy, crowded, and noisy, so it was easy to pretend that it was too hard to hold a conversation with Mr. Richardson.  And when they got to their gate, Chris used Mr. Richardson’s brief trip to the restroom to set up his laptop and plug in his head phones.  He pretended to be very engrossed in the game he was playing, and he’d turned the music up so loud his ears were hurting.  Mr. Richardson didn’t disturb him when he came back.  He simply sat beside him and pulled out a PDA from his lapel pocket.  Chris only risked glancing at him a couple times, but the man seemed immersed in the electronic book he was reading.

After a while, Chris really did put all his attention on his game.  Mr. Richardson had to tap his shoulder to make him aware that their flight was boarding.  Chris scrambled to put all his equipment away and checked three times to make sure he had his boarding pass in his hands.  He hadn’t heard what seating zone had been called, but Mr. Richardson was heading toward the line, so he followed.  He started to get in line behind the other passengers, but Mr. Richardson put a hand to his elbow and guided him toward the shorter line to the left.  Chris looked at his ticket again.  They were flying business class.  They were traveling on a small plane, but it was big enough that it had three rows of big, leather seats up front that were separated from the rest of the plane.  Chris felt a little funny as he sat down in the comfy seat.  He’d only flown once before in his life and it had definitely been coach.  He really didn’t need Mr. Richardson spoiling him.  And he felt ridiculous being served water by the perky flight attendant while the rest of the passengers struggled past him to find their cramped seats with no hope of cabin service until at least thirty minutes into the flight.

The activity on the plane was enough to keep Chris from feeling awkward for not talking to Mr. Richardson even though he had to put his laptop away.  The take off itself was definitely enough to distract him.  He was in the window seat and he had his nose pressed to the plastic.  It grew colder as they climbed higher and higher and soon the world below looked like a child’s play set.  Chris was hit with a sudden sense of vertigo, so he sat back in his seat and stared at the tray table in front of him.  He strummed his fingers on the armrests and wondered when he was allowed to get his laptop out.  Then he wondered what the movie was going to be.  He looked up but noticed there were no retractable TV screens anywhere.

“What are you looking for?” Mr. Richardson asked.

“A TV screen.”

“On flights this short there are no in flight movies.  Sorry.”

“Oh.”

The man chuckled.  “I actually thought you were looking for some kind of safety feature.  You seem a little nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.  Per se.  This is just my second time flying.”

“Where did you go your first time?”

Chris opened his mouth, and then closed it.  He didn’t want to have a conversation with Mr. Richardson.

“I don’t remember,” he said.  “I was really young.”

“I see.”

They were quiet and Chris glanced around.  None of the businessmen sitting around them had pulled out their computers yet.  He supposed he should wait a bit longer.  But could he avoid conversation for that long?

“So, how are you, Chris?”

Apparently not.

“Bad,” he said.  He’d meant to say “fine,” but his real mood had slipped out.  He picked at his thumb.

“Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Chris hunched forward a little bit and continued to play with his fingers.

“I take it you don’t like me much.”

Chris sighed and sat back.  “It’s not that.  It’s just weird.  I mean, you’re my dad’s lawyer.  And my mom doesn’t like you.”  _They were fucking_ , Julian’s voice echoed in his head.  He made a face.  That stupid jerk.  “But it’s not that either.”  Chris decided to just flat out ask about what was bothering him.  “What exactly is going on here?”

Mr. Richardson looked slightly uncomfortable.  Or maybe he was just airsick.  It was hard to tell.

“What do you mean?” the man asked.

“Who do you really work for?  My father is poor.  I know he doesn’t have any money.  How can he afford a big shot lawyer like you?”

Mr. Richardson’s unease passed.  “Oh.  It’s—”

“I mean, it’s obvious he can’t afford you.  So, someone is paying for it.  And he’ll never be able to pay it back.  You’re just trapping him in further.  Making it so he’ll always be in someone’s debt.  You’ll never let him go.  He’ll never be able to live a normal life.”

Mr. Richardson smiled at the passing flight attendant.  Chris hoped she hadn’t heard too much of that.

“What do you consider a normal life, Chris?”

“Well, nothing that remotely resembles what happens on _The Sopranos_.”

Mr. Richardson chuckled.  “Don’t you know that TV is fiction?”

“So what?  What happens after he gets out on parole?  Will he be put straight back to work?  Selling drugs.  Breaking legs.  I don’t get it.  He said he was a peon.  Why do the higher-ups care so much about him?”

He looked over at Mr. Richardson and the man was giving him a smile that made him feel like a dumb ten-year-old.

“Chris.  I don’t work for the mafia.  In all honesty, I’m not entirely sure what your father’s involvement is if any, but I definitely have no mob connections.  Ten years ago I was a lowly public defender.  I was randomly assigned to your father’s case.  After it was over, I realized that that wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to do.  I don’t mind stress, but I couldn’t be responsible for people’s lives.  So, I joined a law firm that specialized mostly in property law and trusts and managing rich people’s accounts.  That sort of thing.  Over the last few years I worked my way up through the ranks.  I made junior partner less than a year ago.

“When your father’s parole came up, I was contacted because I was still technically listed as his counsel.  When he received his sentence, he said he didn’t need me to do anything else for him.  I always assumed he would get other counsel to continue working with him.  But he really decided to just accept his sentence.  So, since it was just a parole hearing, I figured I would see it through, since I started it.  Also I did it as pro bono work, so it made my law firm look good.”

Chris half-smiled.  He knew the act couldn’t be completely altruistic.

“Then the whole disappearing mess came up.  I didn’t know what to do.  I assumed he had gone straight to find you and your mother, but I didn’t know if I should try to contact you.  Or to tell someone that I thought that.  Technically he was still my client; I’m not supposed to do anything that will get him into trouble.”

Chris laughed softly.  “I don’t think that’s what being a lawyer is.”

“Well, that depends on who you talk to.  Anyway, I figured I was screwed.  I really had no control over the situation, but I was almost certain I was going to take a lot of heat for it.  Then miraculously, a few months later, he turns himself in.  Which was almost worse because now I had to go and defend him again.  Then you came along and completely saved my butt.  Did I ever thank you for that by the way?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, thank you.  It was such a great human interest story that my firm was thrilled to receive the press.”

“Whoa, wait.  The press?  Good God.  This was in the news?”

“Oh, yeah.  Man breaks parole and risks more jail time to find long lost son.  Son pleads on father’s behalf and garners leniency from the parole board.  That’s second page headlines right there.”

“Wonderful.”

He and Mr. Richardson shared a smile.  Then he turned away from him.  He didn’t want to get overly friendly with him.  He wasn’t sure why though.  Maybe some kind of loyalty to his mom.  _They were fucking._   Chris gritted his teeth.  Julian’s comment was a frickin’ worm in his head.

“At the risk of sounding like a snooty know it all,” Mr. Richardson said as an afterthought, “ if your father is involved in organized crime, it wouldn’t be the mafia.  The mafia, or ‘the mob,’ is Italian families; specifically Sicilian in origin.  But nowadays, especially in America, it refers to Italians in general.  Your father would—”  He cut off as he looked at Chris who was giving him a look that clearly stated it didn’t matter one way or the other.  “Be in something else,” he finished to himself.

Chris sat back in his chair and tapped a finger on the arm rest.  So, if he wasn’t a big bad mafia lawyer, why did his mother not like him?  Had they just not gotten along?  Had his mother been so angry at his father back then that she resented Mr. Richardson for trying to help him?  But wait a minute.  If he wasn’t working for the mafia (or whatever)… and he claimed he didn’t know for sure if his father was…

“So, who paid for my plane ticket?” Chris asked suspiciously.

“I did.”  Mr. Richardson cleared his throat and seemed to be doing some fast thinking.  “I have some money to spare.  And I feel for you and your mother.”

“Why?” Chris demanded a more satisfying answer.

Mr. Richardson looked away.  “You obviously don’t remember.  The trial was…really rough.”  He looked back at him.  Chris thought his eyes had softened considerably, but it was hard to tell because they were so dark.  “You were, what, seven?  It was hard to see you in the courtroom.  You weren’t there often, but whenever you were I always tried to make the trial…boring almost.  I didn’t want it to be too crazy.  I think I was trying to protect you from it.”  He smiled a little bit embarrassedly.  “I guess I got too attached.”

Chris narrowed an eye.  “Unh-hunh.”

“So what about this dinner?”  Chris wasn’t ready to just accept the “junior partner” story.  “How did you arrange a private room with outside food?”

“I didn’t.  I have nothing to do with that.”  He smiled wryly at him.  “Like I said, I don’t know for sure what your father is into.  Someone else is providing the dinner.  We’re just guests.”

“So, then you’re going too?”

“It was one of your mother’s stipulations for allowing you to come.  I’m not to let you out of my sight for a…what unit did she use?  Micro?  No…Oh, yes.  A nanosecond.”

Chris shook his head in amusement.  “Well, that’ll make showering awkward.”

Mr. Richardson chuckled.  Chris noticed the man never laughed outright.  Did he just have a dull sense of humor, or had he just been trained to be reserved?

“Don’t you have any family?” Chris asked.  “You know, that you would rather spend Thanksgiving with?”

Mr. Richardson stared at him for a long moment.  Then he looked away and shrugged indifferently.  “Not really.  Besides, I hear this meal is going to be quite decadent.”

Chris felt a little shift in his stomach as Mr. Richardson looked away.  It was an innocuous question.  In general, people had families, but that didn’t always mean it was a good thing.  Maybe Mr. Richardson was estranged from his family.  Or maybe he’d just gone through a divorce.  Or maybe he’d had a kid who had died of leukemia.  Chris allowed all kinds of terrible things to trickle through his brain.  He hadn’t been attempting to be mean when he asked about his family, but you never knew what someone’s personal life was like.  Chris figured he was feeling guilty and imagining wild possibilities because he hadn’t asked in the nicest tone; it had been along the lines of “Don’t you have your own life?”  But whatever.  He didn’t have the emotional capacity right now to deal with Mr. Richardson’s issues.  With Scott, Julian, and his pending visit with his father, Chris was tapped out.

“So, Chris,” Mr. Richardson said, looking at him, but not quite.  “How is school?”

Chris decided to answer.  Mr. Richardson obviously wanted to change subjects, and as long as he was talking, he wouldn’t be able to ask anymore stupid questions.  In fact, Mr. Richardson did all the asking.  They covered everything from school to his friends (minus the events that transpired in the morning), his girl issues (slightly edited), his interest in computers and baseball, and even a little bit of his home life with his mother.  It had been a little awkward at first, but once he started talking, he couldn’t shut-up.  And Mr. Richardson never once seemed to be bored or like he regretted getting him going.  He appeared to be genuinely interested in his life, but Chris interpreted that as years of practice as a lawyer.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Harder were excellent at pretending to be interested in what their son’s friends were talking about.  Chris kind of hoped that’s all Mr. Richardson’s interest was: feigned.  Because the only other explanation he could come up with was that he had a crush on him, which Chris acknowledged was downright silly if not borderline paranoid.

The worst part of the whole trip was the landing.  Despite how close they kept getting to the ground, Chris could not see anything resembling a runway or an airport out the window.  It wasn’t until the last second that pavement appeared out of nowhere and the plane bounced and skidded and careened to a halt.  Mr. Richardson commented that it was an unusually smooth landing, but Chris thought he was lying to make him feel better.  Like they hadn’t just almost died.  None of the other passengers looked freaked out, but Chris was already dreading the flight back home.  Maybe he would discover that Chicago was a nice to place live.  Or eighteen hour bus rides weren’t so bad after all.

Dinner at the prison was scheduled for 7:00, so they had about an hour and a half to kill.  Mr. Richardson suggested they go to his condo so that Chris could drop off his bag.  He’d agreed, that made sense, but his day just kept getting weirder.  Why was he going to some strange man’s residence?  Who did that?  Before going to Thanksgiving dinner at a prison, which was possibly being supplied by the mafia.  Or whatever.  Chris missed most of downtown Chicago as he kept his eyes buried beneath his hand on the drive from the airport to Mr. Richardson’s building.  A condo in downtown Chicago.  Mr. Richardson must be doing pretty well for himself.  The building was old, but recently renovated.  It had a slightly funny smell in the lobby, but once they got to the top floor, it had gone away.  And Chris couldn’t believe someone would want to be on let alone live on the 40th floor of any building.  Talk about your fire hazards.  He was going to have trouble sleeping for the next two nights.

He understood a little better why someone would choose such a high floor when he saw the inside.  The view was spectacular.  Nearly two walls were nothing but large windows and both the harbor and the city skyline were visible.  Chris was distracted from the view by the bouncing black ball of fluff at his feet.  It had a bright pink tongue wagging out of it, so Chris assumed it was some kind of animal and not just a giant dust bunny.  Quite possibly it was a dog, but it wasn’t barking, just whining happily and bouncing around like an ADD kid off his Ritalin.  Chris knelt down and picked the thing up.  It began to lick his face and he sputtered and laughed as he tried to get away from the excited pup.  It couldn’t have weighed more than four pounds and he could easily hold it in one hand.  He looked at Mr. Richardson.  He looked like he was about to explain, but then he just shook his head.

“It’s a long story,” he sighed.

Chris snickered.  “I smell a woman.”

“Hmph.”

“So, what kind is this?” Chris asked, attempting to keep the squirming thing from falling out of his grasp.

“It’s a Pomeranian.”

“Oh.  I thought they were brown.”  He let the thing go so it could run to Mr. Richardson.

“Oh, they come in all colors,” the man said looking dubiously at the fluff ball.  It stood on its hind legs and placed its paws on his shin, barely above his ankle.

“Does it have a name?”

Mr. Richardson raised an eyebrow in thought, and then he squatted down.  He petted the dog’s head and dug around in its thick fur coat looking for its collar.  He bent down further to read the tag and got his nose licked.  He stood up wiping his nose off.

“Versace.  I’m pretty sure it’s a boy.”

“You don’t know its name?” Chris laughed.

“It’s not my dog!” Mr. Richardson said a little defensively.  “I don’t know why it’s still here anyway.”

“Oh.  Is the, uh, woman, not still here?”

“No, she’s not.  So, you won’t have to worry about running into anyone else.”

Chris nodded.  “Um, where is your restroom?”

“There are two.  There’s one around the corner over that way and the room next to it is yours.”

“Thanks.”

Chris started in that direction with Versace on his heels.  He looked around him as he went.  The condo itself was very nice, if a little overly sculpted.  The walls and ceilings had multiple reliefs, which Chris felt took away from the space.  Even though there was plenty of it.  It was open and quite bright because of the windows.  It was decorated tastefully, but the design of the kitchen and bathrooms was a little hoity-toity.  The sink in the guest bathroom was kind of weird.  It was on top of the counter and not set into it.  Chris questioned Mr. Richardson on the bizarre design and he said it’d come that way.

The bedroom he would be staying in was a little more traditional.  It was smallish, but very comfortable.  Chris sat on the bed and looked at the harbor.  Versace whined at the foot of the bed until Chris picked him up and sat him beside him.  He smiled amusedly as he sat in a beautiful condo forty floors up looking at a beautiful view with a small accessory dog named Versace lying next to him.  Is this what life would be like if he’d been born to wealthy parents?  He shook his head.  He didn’t want to think about that.  His parents were fine.  He just needed a rich wife.  In which case, Karen won over Sophia.  Chris groaned and flopped back onto the bed.  Versace licked his cheek.  Karen won over Sophia for everything, and he knew that.  He needed to find someone who would win over Karen.  He curled his fingers into the soft bedspread.  Could anyone win over Karen?  He closed his eyes.  He’d told her a little over a week ago he needed some space, and she had complied.  And once she’d been gone, he’d kind of missed her.  Chris groaned again and flopped his limbs around in aggravation.  Why was it that no matter what shit he was going through he could always agonize over Karen?

“Um…Chris?”

Chris stopped his fit and looked at the door.  Mr. Richardson was standing in the doorway, his arm up with his knuckles resting against the door.  Chris sat up quickly.  How much of that had he seen?

“Sorry to …interrupt you…but I figured we should get going.  By the time we get to the prison and are signed in and screened, it’ll be about half an hour before dinner.  And you’ll be able to visit with your father.”

“Oh, great.  Just let me get my stuff together.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Richardson left him.  Chris looked at Versace.  The dog stuck its tongue out and from the waving fluff at the back of its body he assumed it wagged its tail at him.  Chris patted his head and then hopped off the bed.  He dug around in his bag for his wallet and phone.  Should he bring either?  They might be confiscated from him at the prison, but if he didn’t have his phone with him and his mother called…speaking of which.  He quickly dialed her number.  She answered right away.

“Christopher Wade Pelletier!”

Chris flinched.  His mother never resorted to the middle name card.  She didn’t really like his middle name.  She must be pissed.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“I checked online.  Your flight landed at 5:18.  It is now 6:02.  Why didn’t you call?  It has been nearly an hour!”

“Sorry, Mom.  We just, we were busy getting off and then we were driving and dropped our stuff off at Mr. Richardson’s place.  I’m calling right now.”

He heard his mother inhale and exhale slowly.  “Are you okay?”

“Well, yeah.  Except for being mugged, kidnapped, raped, and left for dead in the gutters of Chicago, everything’s been fine.”

“Don’t be a smart aleck, Chris.  I have every right to be worried.”

“I know, I’m sorry.  We landed, we went to Mr. Richardson’s condo, and now we’re going to the jail.  You want me to call you when I get back from dinner?”

“Yes, I would appreciate that.”

Chris had been a little sarcastic when he’d suggested that; his mother hadn’t noticed.  Now he’d roped himself into calling her when he got back.  It wasn’t really that big a deal, but he was already certain he didn’t want to discuss what would happen at the prison with her.  It was going to be weird with a capital W.

The process at the jail was very similar to his first trip there for the parole hearing.  He was searched and sent through a metal detector and signed a form saying he had no plans to do anything illegal while he was there.  They did let him keep his wallet, but his cell phone was taken from him.  Mr. Richardson told him it was because they didn’t want the inmates to be able to make any unauthorized calls.  Then they were led to a long, narrow room.  There were some tables pushed together and mismatching chairs sprinkled around.  There were several men in grey jumpsuits hanging around, and a lot of people in civilian clothes.  Chris checked his watch.  It was only 6:40, but he felt like they were the last ones there.  Chris hated to think it, but all the convicts looked more than a little sketchy.  And the visiting family members were wearing designer clothes and had big hair…just like you saw in the movies.  He and Mr. Richardson looked out of place.  Well, Mr. Richardson’s suit was probably designer.  There was no way it wasn’t after he’d nosily inquired after the cost of his condo.  A cool two million.  And Mr. Richardson had said he’d gotten a really good deal.  Chris had nearly fainted in the elevator.  So really, only he was the sore thumb.

“Chris!”

Chris immediately felt better when he heard his father’s voice.  He looked around the room and saw his father walking toward him.  They embraced and his father lifted him off his feet.  It was a little embarrassing; he wasn’t eight years old after all.  But it felt nice.  His father put him back on his feet and held his face in his hands for a moment, smiling broadly.  Then he let him go and shook hands with Mr. Richardson.  There was a lot of noise in the room, but it was okay.  They were just getting the perfunctory “how are you doing” out of the way.  His father introduced him to another inmate, but he didn’t quite catch his name.  Which was okay because the point wasn’t for him to meet his father’s acquaintance; the man then promptly introduced him to his high school age daughter.  She was cute in the way Laney was cute.  Definitely not his type.  But he smiled at her and shook hands with her, ignoring the chuckling going on between his father and his friend.

Then the most bizarre thing in his life happened.  The doors opened and in walked three richly though gaudily dressed men and their tacky, younger wives.  All they were missing was the Godfather track playing in the background.  Though, these people weren’t Italian.  And according to Mr. Richardson, that meant they weren’t a part of the mafia or the “mob;” they were just a drug cartel.  Regardless, it seemed awfully similar to _The Sopranos_.  Maybe he should look up what the drug royalties of South America were like.

“Hello, gentlemen,” the head honcho spoke.  “We want you to know that your hard work and sacrifice are not overlooked.  What you do for us is something that we will always remember.”

Everyone in the room seemed to accept this for whatever it might mean, including the three guards.  Chris suspected even his father knew exactly what it meant, so he looked at Mr. Richardson.  Mr. Richardson gave him the same look back.  They were definitely out of place.  Then some caterers began to bring in large containers of food.  Everyone in the room began to shuffle toward their seats and Chris was reeling from the absurdity of the situation.  Just how much did it take to bribe the guards and warden for a nice Thanksgiving dinner for a drug cartel’s unfortunately incarcerated members?  He sat down, feeling bemused and little like he was having an out of body experience.  If nothing else, at least the food would be good based on the smells wafting from the now open serving trays.  It wasn’t anything too fancy nor was it traditional in Chris’ mind.  It was a lot of Hispanic foods and some of it was quite spicy.  It was good, but he was glad he would be having turkey and dressing when he got home with his mother.

Despite being able to relax in increments, he could never quite shake the weird sensation of sitting between his father and Mr. Richardson.  But maybe that was just because Carolina, the girl that reminded him of Laney, sat across from him and kept smiling at him.  In and of itself that wouldn’t have been so bad, but her foot under the table was starting to become a problem.  She kept distracting him when he tried to talk to his father, though he didn’t really feel comfortable talking about anything too personal.  Chris wasn’t sure if he heard Mr. Richardson say more than three words.  Not that he blamed him.  The talk was pretty run of the mill for Thanksgiving: family reports and updates on lives.  If it had at least been cryptic, shady talk, that could have kept his attention, but Chris rather imagined the man was bored out of his mind.  And if he didn’t like Spanish food, he was really hating life at the moment.

The dinner had only lasted about an hour before the guards indicated that it was time for everyone to make their goodbyes.  At least they didn’t have a full run of the facility.  And while he had been living it, the dinner had seemed endlessly long and awkward.  But now that he had to say goodbye, it had gone by too fast and hadn’t been nearly long enough.  Chris turned to his father and wished he had opened up more, though he wasn’t sure what else he could have talked to him about.  His father patted his cheek.

“I’m glad you could come.”

“Me too.  I’m really glad I could see you.”

His father smiled wryly.  “It’s a shame your mother couldn’t come too.”

“Yeah,” Chris half-laughed.  “You might need to give her a little more time.”

His father nodded and dropped his hand.  Chris watched his father’s eyes jump around as they looked over his face.

“Is there anything I should know about?” his father asked.

Chris felt his eyes widen and tried to stop it.  What was his father asking him?  About the money?  Or something else?

“What do you mean?” he asked softly.

His father smiled humorously at him.  “Just you.  I mean, is there anything I need to know about you?”

“Oh.  Um.”  Should he tell him he was miserable?  That the three people he was closest to in the world were drifting irretrievably far apart?  “I’m okay.  Nothing really going on.  I’m just, kind of trying to figure out what to do with my ex-girlfriend.  But, nothing major.”

“Oh, yeah.  That…what was her name again?”

“Karen.”

“Right.  Karen.  I’m not sure if I should say good luck with that or not.”

Chris laughed.  “That is the very nature of our relationship.”

His father pulled him close into a hug and held him tightly.  It was a little desperate, but it didn’t bother Chris.  He just hugged him back and put his face against his shoulder.

“You’ll be out for Christmas, right?”  His voice was muffled, but his father understood him.

“Yep.  My release date is set for December 19th.”

“I guess you can’t come visit us though.”

His father chuckled.  “That would probably be a bad idea.”

They both laughed softly, and even though they had been hugging for a while, neither of them stepped back.  The guards made some comment about wrapping things up.  Chris felt a hand on his shoulder.  He pulled back from the embrace and saw Mr. Richardson standing just behind him.

“We need to go,” he said gently.

Chris nodded.  His father shook Mr. Richardson’s hand.

“Thank you, Dean.  Really, I can’t thank you enough for doing this for us.  I wish there was some way to repay you.”

“That’s quite all right.  I was more than glad to help.”

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” his father asked him.

Chris nodded.  “Yup.  Visiting hours are between eleven and one, right?”

“Yep.  That’s right.”

“Okay.  See you tomorrow then.”

“Goodnight, Chris.”

Chris watched his father leave with the other inmates.  He was going to sleep on a hard mattress in a tiny cell tonight.  Mr. Richardson put a hand on his shoulder again.  Chris looked at him.  His reassuring smile was a lot more convincing than Chris thought it would be.  They turned and started to leave the room.

“Hey, so, Chris.”  Chris looked to his left to see Carolina smiling at him.  “I thought maybe we could exchange e-mails or something.”

Chris gulped.  Her father had left the room already, right?  “Um, it would be nice to talk with you more.  But, I should let you know, I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh, that’s okay.  If you ever break up with her, then we won’t have to start from scratch.”

Chris forced a smile, but it only made it up one side of his face.  Carolina began to dig in her purse for something to write on.  Mr. Richardson grabbed him by the arm.

“Hurry along.  I’ve done my part for my client.  I don’t have time to waste while you try to pick up girls.”

Chris stumbled as he was pulled somewhat roughly out the door.  He glanced back in the room and saw a shocked Carolina standing frozen in place with her hand still in her bag.  Chris shrugged at her and then he was pulled around the corner.  Mr. Richardson let him go, but they continued walking quickly away from the room.

“That _was_ what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Mr. Richardson asked.

“Oh, yes,” Chris breathed.  “Thank you.”

They smiled and made their way to the out-processing room to pick up their belongings.  Chris was beginning to reevaluate his opinion of Mr. Richardson.  Well, not begin, he’d already altered it quite a bit.  Quite possibly from the moment he’d seen Versace.  A man who could put up with that kind of dog either had a sensitive side or was an evil, self-serving gay man hell bent on ruling the fashion world.  The former just seemed more likely.

However, despite having acknowledged Mr. Richardson as a human being, it didn’t help make their time alone any less awkward.  The streets of Chicago were busy for Thanksgiving night Chris thought, but Mr. Richardson was having no problem maneuvering through them.  He had one hand on the wheel and was leaning on the driver’s side window with his elbow.  He chewed gently on his finger as he stayed focused on the honking cars around them.  Chris picked at a spot on his pants.  He knew he had to clear something up before he could really think of Mr. Richardson as a normal person.

“Um.  Mr. Richardson?”

The man looked over at him, seeming momentarily confused to see him.  He must have really been lost in thought.  He put his other hand on the wheel.  “Yes?”

“Um.  I want to ask you something.  But I don’t know how.  And I want you to know that it wasn’t my idea.  It was my stupid friend’s.”

“O—kay.  What is it?”

“Well.”  Chris looked out the window.  There was a neon sign advertising adult movies.  He took in a breath and let it out _.  Just ask._   “Was there ever anything between you and my mom?”

Mr. Richardson was silent and Chris couldn’t work up the courage to turn to see his reaction.

“I mean, like, during the trial, did you two.  Like.  Become close or something?”

Chris heard a slightly muffled breath.  Then Mr. Richardson spoke with humor in his voice.

“You mean, did your mother and I work together day and night in a gallant effort to prove your father’s innocence, unwittingly allowing our passion for justice to build into rampant sexual tension that one day we gave in to and expressed on top of a table full of depositions?”

Chris scowled at the adult movies sign as they left it behind.  “Well, when you put it that way…”

Mr. Richardson chuckled.  “No, my relationship with your mother was nothing like that.”

Chris rubbed his forehead, a little embarrassed.  “Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s okay.  I’m sure you have questions about what happened nine years ago.  Especially since your mother doesn’t seem to like me all that much.  But, it was hard for her.  She truly didn’t know what your father was into.  So, it was a big shock for her.  She was really angry with him.”

“ _Is_ really angry with him.”

“As she has every right to be.  I guess she just associates me with him.”

“Oh.”

They drove on a few more blocks before Mr. Richardson asked, “May I ask what made you think that?  Or your friend, rather.”

“It’s ‘cause I told them that I saw you two.  On the day you came to town and offered to let me fly to Chicago.  You like, reached out for my mom’s hand and looked kind of.  Well.  Whatever.”

“Oh, yes.  That is a little embarrassing.  I was trying to use my ‘positive body language’ training.”

Chris finally looked at him with a small smile.  “Your what?”

“A woman I was in a relationship with thought I was too closed in on myself.  That I had been a corporate lawyer for too long.  So, she signed us up for these ‘bettering communication with your partner’ classes.  One of them was on body language.  Your mother was pretty adamant that she didn’t want you to come to Chicago.  So, I tried one of my ‘empathetic’ gestures.”  He glanced at Chris and grinned.  “It didn’t work.”

Chris smiled and shook his head.  “Wow.  That’s pretty bad.”

Mr. Richardson laughed outright this time, but it was still very subdued.  He barely opened his mouth.  “Tell me about it.”

When they arrived at Mr. Richardson’s building the man handed Chris his keys and started to head away from the elevators.

“I need to leave a note for the building manager.  You can head on up.  But be careful when you open the door.  That thing will dart into the hall.”

Chris laughed and pushed the elevator call button.  “That thing,” he murmured as he stepped onto the lift.  So maybe Mr. Richardson’s sensitive side wasn’t as big as he’d originally thought.  The ride up made his stomach drop and he was reminded again that there was no fire ladder in the world tall enough to reach him in the event of a fire.  He tried not to think about it as he made his way down the hall, jingling the keys.  He unlocked the door and then knelt down when he opened it.  Versace tried to squirm out the opening, but it didn’t seem like he was interested in running away; he just wanted to greet whoever was coming home.  Chris picked the dog up and tried to keep his breathing passages clear from dog tongue as he stepped inside and shut the door.  He could see pretty well because of the lights from the harbor and city.  He put his hand out and flipped the light switch on.  Nothing happened.  He flipped it down and back up a couple times.  Nothing.  Chris noticed a low, flickering light coming from across the room.  Maybe he could use that light to help him find another one.  He put the dog down and started for Mr. Richardson’s bedroom.  The door was open a fraction, so he pushed on it and stepped in.

Chris started and gasped in a shallow breath.  The light was from dozens of tea lights lit around the room.  There were rose petals on the floor and on the bed.  Also on the bed was a woman wearing a red negligee.  She had her head thrown back against the pillows, one hand on a breast and one between her legs.

“Oh, Deannn,” she moaned seductively.  “I’m glad you finally came home.”  She bit her lip as she smiled.  “I almost had to start without you.”

Chris fell backward to get out of the room quickly but caught himself as he turned around.  He lurched across the room, heading back toward where he thought the door was.  It was kind of hard to see since the room was now darker in comparison to the bedroom.  Suddenly the room flooded with light and Chris went even blinder.

“I wonder how this got unplugged?” Mr. Richardson asked himself as he stood up from plugging in a lamp by the door.

Chris tripped over Versace and crashed into Mr. Richardson.  The man caught him and wrapped his arms partially around him to help steady him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um.”

“DEAN!”

They both turned toward the wild scream.  The woman from the bed stood in the bedroom door.  She might as well have been wearing nothing considering how much the red negligee revealed.

“How _dare_ you just walk away from—”  She suddenly screamed and Chris and Mr. Richardson started in fearful surprise.  “What the hell is this?!  You took a ‘break’ from us so that you could fuck little boys?!”

Chris and Mr. Richardson looked at each other.  They were close together in a half embrace.  They straightened and stepped a little apart.  Then Mr. Richardson looked back at the irate woman with a little bit of confusion.

“Victoria…why was that your first thought?”

“I—uh.”

Chris couldn’t see what her facial reaction was because Mr. Richardson covered his eyes with his hand.

“Will you get dressed, please?”

“Oh.  Right.  Of course!  One moment.”

Chris heard a door shut and Mr. Richardson let him go.  He wasn’t sure if the man had done it because he didn’t want Chris looking at his girlfriend or if he thought Chris’ eyes were virginal.  He didn’t say anything about it and just looked at Mr. Richardson.

“Wow,” Chris said.

Mr. Richardson gave him an annoyed look.  “Don’t even start.”

“Love on the rocks?”  Chris said it straight-faced and then crossed an arm over his stomach so he could rest his elbow on it and cover his mouth with a hand.

“More like a fault line,” Mr. Richardson grumbled picking up a decanter of dark liquid from one end of his counter.  He grabbed a snifter out of a cabinet, pushed it roughly under the ice dispenser on the refrigerator, and then poured himself a healthy serving of the alcohol.  He leaned on the counter and took a gulp, making a slightly strained face as he swallowed.  Chris kept his hand over his mouth.  Mr. Richardson was becoming more and more human to him.

The bedroom door opened and they turned their heads to look at the woman.  She was just wearing a silky red robe that went to about mid-thigh.  Technically she had covered up.  Mr. Richardson rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and took another sip of the alcohol.  The woman walked across the room and sat on one of the bar stools at the counter.  She crossed her legs and smiled.  Chris looked her over and tried not to look like a perverted teenager as he did.  Nobody said anything.  The woman strummed her fingers over her knee.

“Sorry,” she said suddenly.  Chris wasn’t sure which of them she was talking to.  “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.  My friends just—put some stupid ideas into my head.”

“What, that I’m sleeping with high school boys?” Mr. Richardson asked surprisingly mildly.

“No,” she said sheepishly.  “Just that, you’re, um.  Cheating.  I mean, I just saw you two and I—I mean!  In my defense, you two were in a slightly compromising position.”

Mr. Richardson looked at her over his glass as he took another sip.  She smiled uneasily and looked away.  She focused on Chris.

“I’m really sorry.  I don’t think you are…that way.  You really don’t look it.”

Chris raised his eyebrows.  Mr. Richardson rolled his eyes and stood up straighter.

“Well, he _is_ spending the night tonight and tomorrow night.  So, maybe you should go.”

“B-but—I made you dessert!”

Mr. Richardson looked like he was about to say something along the lines of “I don’t care,” so she turned to Chris.

“Would you like some?” she asked.  “I know it’s kind of a strange thing to make, but I got into it when I lived in Mexico City for a few years.  It’s called flan.”

“I’d love some,” Chris said automatically.  Strangely, there had been no dessert at the Thanksgiving dinner.  Who had Thanksgiving dinner without pecan pie?

The woman clapped her hands together and hopped off the stool.  “Excellent!  Let me get you some!”  She scurried into the kitchen and made her away around it like she was very familiar with it.  Mr. Richardson gave him a not so pleasant look.  Chris shrugged in apology.  He wanted some flan.  He hadn’t had any since the disastrous night of Karen’s family dinner.  And it had been terrible.  He was almost certain it wasn’t because he was so upset he couldn’t taste it, but because Mrs. Green had done a terrible job of making it.

Chris moved over to the counter and sat down on one of the bar stools.  Mr. Richardson stayed standing and poured himself another finger or two of what Chris thought was bourbon whiskey.  The woman happily served them up large helpings of her flan.  Her portion was much smaller.  She perched back on the stool and now had Versace in her lap.  The dog had disappeared somewhere during all the screaming, but now he seemed happy to be in the woman’s lap.  It seemed like he belonged there.  The woman looked at Chris and then toward the flan with a broad smile.  He picked up his fork and poked it.  It jiggled a little bit.  It was the right color and consistency.  Now, how about the taste?  He took a bite.  He nodded his head smiling.

“This is good,” he said.

She smiled and took a dainty bite of hers.  Mr. Richardson ignored his.  Chris happily ate his flan and even though he wasn’t done with his yet, he eyed Mr. Richardson’s.  The man noticed and slid his plate toward Chris.  Chris smiled and kept eating.

“So, I’m sorry about our strange meeting,” the woman said.  “And I’m so embarrassed for the way you found me.  But even still, he’s awfully rude for not introducing us, isn’t he?”

Chris glanced at Mr. Richardson.  He was looking at the woman through slightly narrowed eyes and crunching on a piece of ice.  She cleared her throat and smiled politely at Chris.

“My name is Victoria,” she said, extending a hand.

Chris didn’t want to put his fork down, but he did to shake her hand.  “I’m Chris.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said.  And then it looked like a little jolt went through her.  “Oh.  Whoa.  You’re _Chris_.  Like—”  She cut off and looked at Mr. Richardson.  His expression remained neutral.  Chris swallowed the bite in his mouth.

“You’ve…heard of me?”

“Um.  No.  No.  I haven’t.  Well, I mean, not exactly.  It’s just that your name is sort of familiar.  Of course, Chris is a common name.”

She stopped talking and seemed like she looked to Mr. Richardson for help.

“He’s my client’s son, Victoria.  He visited him in jail for Thanksgiving and I offered to let him stay with me for a couple nights.  Remember?  I told you this only a week ago.”

“Oh, right, right.  Yes, I remember now.”  She knocked gently on her head.  “Now I feel even stupider for the way I reacted to seeing you.  Well.”  She looked back and forth between them and then hopped off the stool with the dog in her hands.  “I guess I better be getting dressed and heading on my way.”

“I guess it’s about that time,” Mr. Richardson said dryly.

“Mm-hmm.  Dean.  Could I speak with you in private before I leave?”

She put the dog down and he sighed crabbily as he put his glass on the counter.  He left the room with Victoria.  Chris leaned over and saw the bedroom door shut firmly after them.  He laughed to himself and started on Mr. Richardson’s flan.  Meeting Victoria had at least reassured Chris that Mr. Richardson’s interest in him wasn’t because he had a crush on him.  Chris shifted his weight and felt the bump of his cell phone in his pocket.  He groaned.  He’d forgotten he’d told his mother he would call her after dinner.  He dug his phone out and looked at the screen.  It was blank.  There was no light beeping at him to tell him he had a message or any missed calls.  He turned it on and checked his call log just to make sure.   Nothing.

Scott hadn’t called.  Was he okay?  Will hadn’t called.  So, had Julian not done anything bad to him?  Or had Will managed to get him back under control?  Chris squeezed his phone and his vision went out of focus.  Julian’s voice had been in his head all day.  It had been easy to ignore it most of the day, but it hadn’t ever gone away.  And it wasn’t what he’d said about his mom and Mr. Richardson.  He couldn’t care less about that.

_You are so fucking irritating!  We only played with you because Scott was such a sappy little bitch and didn’t want to leave anyone out.  So, thanks for tagging along for the rest of our lives._

Chris lowered his head to the counter.  It had been said in anger.  Julian hadn’t been himself.  But no matter how much someone was just shooting their mouth off to hurt someone else, wasn’t there always a grain of truth in the things they said?  Chris felt a sharp pain in his chest.  It didn’t go away and it didn’t fade.  It just throbbed inside of him.  His life for the last nine years hadn’t been a lie.  He knew that.  He made a fist and slammed it on the counter.  He was going to fucking kill Julian.

Something whimpered far below him.  He turned his head so that he could see something other than counter.  A black fur ball was hopping around by his dangling feet.  Chris bent down and scooped the thing up.  It took a swipe at his face with its tongue, but Chris put it quickly on the counter.  It found the flan and began to lap up some of the juices on the plate.  Chris poked the few remaining bites with his fork.  He hoped flan wasn’t bad for dogs because he’d lost his appetite.

 

Julian

 

Julian glared at the TV screen, his fingers working almost independently from his mind on the game controller as he shot and hacked his way through bloodthirsty zombies.  He’d debated about using some of his inheritance to buy a TV.  Eventually he’d given in and bought a 36” screen TV and a Playstation 2.  And now he was very grateful for the distraction.

Chris had gotten on his last nerve.  Actually, Scott had gotten on his last nerve, which was why he’d gone postal on Chris.  Not that the twit didn’t have it coming.  He really was so self-righteous.  He thought he was better than all three of them, which was apparent from his total lack of reaction.  Only someone completely detached and basking in their own superiority could possibly remain that calm.  Julian couldn’t remember exactly everything he’d said to him, but he’d probably deserved it.  Especially after not even caring that it’d been said.  And then _threatening_ him.  What a little bitch.  Chris wouldn’t stand a chance against him.  He’d crush him.

His character died just as his cell phone rang.  Again.  Julian cursed and threw his controller across the room.  The cord yanked the console off its stand and it clattered to the floor.  The lid popped open and the game rolled out.  Julian growled at his phone.  If his PS2 was broken he was making whoever was calling him pay for it.  He put the phone to his ear and snapped, “What?!”

“Don’t ‘what’ me!” Will yelled back.  “I’ve called, like, ten times!  Now, get your suit and get over here.”

Julian _so_ didn’t want to deal with him right now.  “No.”

“Do it you bitch!”

Then Will hung up.  Julian put his phone in a death grip and wished it was Will’s neck.  He’d had enough.  Of all of his “friends.”  Scott and Chris were just irritating as hell, and now Will was being ridiculously selfish and pushy.  Maybe he should just ignore him.  Of course, Scott and Chris were already angry with him; he might as well piss Will off too.  In fact, it might not hurt for Will to hear the truth for once.  Julian was always so careful around him.  He was always so worried that if he said or did the wrong thing Will would just blow him off.  It wasn’t fair.  What kind of friend bailed just because it got too annoying or boring for him?  If he was a real friend, he’d just put up with it.  Julian stood up.  He was going to test that theory.

Julian had hoped the short drive to Will’s would help him settle down a little bit.  It hadn’t.  He was still pretty ticked off.  But he felt he had good reason to be.  After the morning he’d had and Will’s snippiness anybody would be a tad out of sorts.  He knocked hard on the door and rang the bell twice.  He only waited a couple seconds, but he didn’t hear anyone coming, so he checked the door.  It was unlocked.  He went inside and looked around.  Will’s house was always neat and clean and a little on the dark side.  Not like, evil, but as in lacking light.  Mrs. Harder liked dark colors and so the drapes were dark and thick, effectively blocking out a lot of light.  In a way, it almost had a sterile, futuristic look to it.  It was also very quiet.  That was pretty typical as well.

“Where are you?” Julian shouted.

“In my room,” Will’s voice floated from upstairs.

Julian walked slowly up the stairs.  Even though he wanted to pick a fight with Will, he wasn’t particularly eager to do it.  Depending on his mood, Will might turn out to be even more vicious than he was feeling.  The one left broken and crying might actually be him.  Julian squeezed the end of the banister as he reached the top of the stairs.  He didn’t want to leave Will broken and crying.  That was a bit much.  As he kept moving forward the banister creaked in relief when he let go.  His hand hadn’t relaxed though; it was tightly curled into a ball.  He arrived at Will’s room and found the door open.  Will spotted him as he walked from one end to the other and said hello.  Then he started talking.  Babbling about stupid things.  Julian barely understood him because he wasn’t paying attention.  He just leaned in the doorframe with his arms crossed and watched Will run around his room.

He was in nothing but his underwear and couldn’t quite manage to get dressed because his attention was divided among picking out what suit to wear, something he was downloading on the computer, an open textbook on his desk, and a half-assed effort to make up his queen sized bed.  He looked good.  Strangely enough, it was in the off season that Will was at his buffest.  He worked hard while playing soccer in the spring and summer, but he didn’t do weight training or muscle building until the winter.  His parents had a mini home gym in their basement and he’d obviously been at it for the last few weeks.  Will was never out of shape and always had definition to his body, but it was during the winter months that he looked sculpted from marble.  It was kind of sickening for a male to be so prettily perfect.

“So, I found this thing—” Will said and then cut off.  He stopped in front of Julian and looked at him quizzically.  “Is your suit downstairs?”

Julian shook his head.  “I didn’t bring it.”

“Why not?  I reminded you.”  Will gave a little shake of his head, like someone who didn’t understand a foreigner’s customs.  Then he walked toward his closet, the babbling starting again.  “I don’t think you can fit in one of my dad’s.  Even if the pants are long enough you’re too broad in the shoulders.  And you definitely can’t wear one of mine unless you’re okay with highwaters.  But you know, we still have time.  So we can go back to your house and pick it up.”  He pulled out a pair of pants and walked back toward Julian.  He held them up at Julian’s waist.  The cuffs were well above his ankles.  Will sighed wistfully.  “I wanna be tall.”

“Will.  Don’t worry about it.  I don’t need a suit.  I’m not going.”

Will pulled the pants back and looked up.  He had an odd expression and Julian wasn’t sure if it was just out of confusion or if some irritation had crept in there.  He didn’t answer right away.  He turned and walked toward the bed, tossing the pants onto the messy sheets.  Then he turned back to Julian.

“Okay.  I heard it.  And I understood it.  So, I guess my question is why did you say it?”

Julian shrugged.  “I’ve just decided not to go.”

“Oh.”  Will started to say something and then stopped.  He thought a moment and then said, “Did you make other plans?  With Chris or Scott?  Of course, I think their situations are little weird this year so that doesn’t make sense.  Are you going to one of the girls’?”

“No.”

“One of the Coven people?”

“No.”

“Your grandparents?”

From his voice Julian could tell that even Will knew he was grasping at straws.

“No.”

Will put his hands out in front of him in slight exasperation.  “So, what?”

“So, nothing.”

“Jesus, Julian.  Come on.  You’ve gotta be going somewhere.”

“Why?  Can’t I just stay home?  Eat a yummy frozen dinner?  It’s really not a big deal.”

“Julian.”  His condescending tone incited his anger again.  “I’ve been to Thanksgiving at your family’s before.  Your mom used to go all out.  It’s big deal for you.”

“So?  She’s obviously not going to this year.  I just don’t feel like celebrating.”

“Well,” Will said, crossing his arms and looking to the side as he tried to think through this problem.  Why didn’t he understand that not every problem could be solved if he just thought about it long enough?  “It’s not a celebration.  It’s just…food.”

“No,” Julian said, allowing his annoyance to creep into his voice.  “That’s what Thanksgiving is.  It’s a celebration of everything you’re thankful for.  What do I have to be thankful for?”

Will raised an eyebrow at him, not being guilted into pitying him.  Julian didn’t expect anything less.

“Well, if you can’t think of anything you’re thankful for, then you obviously need to participate in Thanksgiving.”

“No, Will,” Julian said emphatically.  “I don’t want to go.”

“Oh, come on,” Will said coming closer.  He smiled at him.  “I want you to come.  Come on.  Do it for me?”  He batted his eyelashes at him, partly laughing at his own charade.

Julian stepped closer.  “Stop it.  I don’t want your pity.”

Will dropped the sappy face.  “Pity?  What on Earth makes you think _I_ would do anything for someone out of pity?”

“Then you’re doing it for yourself.  To make yourself feel better.”

Will shrugged.  “Kind of.  I guess.  I’m happy when you’re happy, so if I help you be happy, then that’s good for me.”

“Help.”  Julian flexed his fingers and tightened his jaw.  “Help?  Why does everyone think I need help?  I don’t need any help!  I’m fucking fine!”

Will was unimpressed by his mounting anger.  He just gave him a blasé look.

“Yeah, I can tell,” he said dryly.

“God, shut-up, Will!  You don’t get it!”

Will looked concerned and took a step closer.  They were way too close together; his proximity was aggravating Julian even more.

“Get what?” Will asked, his voice gratingly close to sympathetic.  “How can I get it?”

“You can’t!” Julian screamed, letting his anger go.  “You fucking sociopath, you’ll _never_ understand!  Stop pretending anything you do isn’t for your own damn sake!”

“Julian, I don’t understand.  What happened?  What’s wrong?”

Will reached out his hand to touch him.  Julian snatched his wrist in the air before he could reach him and Will flinched slightly.

“What’s wrong?!” Julian shouted, leaning down toward Will.  “Are you fucking retarded?!  My parents are _dead_!”

Will didn’t try to get away, but he finally looked a little nervous.

“Y-yeah.  I know they’re gone.  I mean, what’s wrong now?”

“That’s it!  That’s _it_!  That’s all it ever was!  Wow, Will.  You’re really such a great best friend.  You didn’t see anything.”

“B-but.  You’ve been getting help!  You said you were getting better.”  His voice wavered and Julian squeezed his wrist in anger.  Will didn’t much react to the pain.  “You said you were getting over it.”

“Well,” Julian snarled, “obviously not.  But thanks for noticing, buddy.”

Julian flung Will away from him and he stumbled back onto the corner of his bed.  He stayed seated, his face clearly showing how upset he was.  He was near tears.  When he spoke his voice shook so much Julian could barely understand him.

“Julian, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you notice?!” he retorted harshly.

“I—I’m so sorry.”  Two fat tears fell from his eyes.  His face was turning red and was so screwed up with distress he almost started to look unattractive.  “I can’t—I’m sorry!  I was just—I—”

“You were busy with other things,” Julian said coldly.

Will swallowed thickly and Julian thought that he’d hit the nail on the head.

“What other things?’ Julian demanded.  “What are you hiding that’s so important?”

Will’s first attempt to speak failed.  He licked his lips and said, “I’m not hiding—”

“Yes, you are!” Julian roared.  He could understand pity and concern and while they pissed him off, he could deal with it.  But now Will was lying to him.  “Don’t lie to me!  How can you lie to _me_?!”

Will was crumbling before his eyes.  He no longer remotely resembled the self-assured know-it-all that was his usual persona.

“I—It’s not—”  He stopped and took in a breath.  Then he switched gears.  He stood up tentatively.  “Julian, we need to fix this.  We have to solve this now.”

“This isn’t a math problem, Will.  Not everything _has_ a solution.”

Will shook his head.  “No.  We’ll get through this.  We’ll figure it out.  We’ll fix what’s wrong.”

Julian stalked closer to him.  “You see, Will.  That’s the problem.  You _can’t_ fix what’s wrong.  My parents are never gonna come back.  And this,” he said holding his arms out to his sides, “this is the way I am now.”

Will shook his head.  “No.”

Julian clenched his teeth.  “ _No_?  No, _what_?  I have to fit what _you_ want?  I need to be what’s right for _you_?!”

He shoved Will and he fell back onto the bed again.

“No!  Be however you want.  I don’t care.  Get over it and be happy or carry it around and be angry and bitter the rest of your life.  Completely change who you are.  I _don’t_ care.  Whoever you are, you’re still you.  I just want to fix it so that whoever you are, whoever you turn into—I’m still someone you want around.”

Julian shook his head, disgust and annoyance written all over his features.  He didn’t believe a word of it.  Will had calmed down just a little bit and stared at him defiantly, his beautiful green eyes now a dark, blotchy, ugly hazel.

“I mean it.  I’ll do anything.  _Anything_.  Whatever you want.  I don’t care.  Just tell me what to do.”

Will’s soft, acquiescent voice was driving nails into his head.  Lies.  Pacifying lies.  Just like he’d been lying about his big secret.  He just hated problems and he would say and do anything to make them go away.  It was insulting.  This wasn’t like Will.  He was stubborn and had more pride than anyone he knew.  Was he mocking him?  Or was Julian just so pathetic that even Will Harder felt sorry for him?

The rage coursing through his body was making him hot.  It was hurting.  It wanted to be let out.  But he held it in check for just a moment longer.  He needed to be calm when he made his demand.  What would the great, proud Will Harder do with this?

“Anything, huh?” Julian said, his eyes flicking up and down his body.  “Get on your knees.”

Will’s expression was completely blank, like he had heard him but was having trouble comprehending him.  It would be hard to describe exactly what happened because it was so subtle, but the blankness slowly melted into a cold realization.  Will was so still it was hard to tell if he was still breathing.  Then he shifted slightly.  His body slid forward over the corner of the bed.  He dropped to his knees on the floor, still staring into Julian’s eyes.  Julian’s breathing had already been shallow, but now it was getting worse.  He watched with a rising sense of dread as Will slowly raised his hands toward the fly of his jeans.

Something exploded behind Julian’s eyes.  He couldn’t see too clearly, so he jerked his arm in front of him, slapping Will’s hands away.  He could easily see the darkness of Will’s hair, so he grabbed that and yanked hard enough to force Will to his feet.  He involuntarily cried out in pain and Julian shoved his hands in front of him as hard as he could.  Will crashed back onto the bed, his body bouncing roughly as he hit the mattress with tremendous force.  Julian was on him in a second, pinning his wrists to the mattress.

“What the fuck?!” Julian screamed in his face.  “Don’t fuck with me!”

“I’m not!” Will cried.  “I swear, I’m not!  If it’s what you want, if it’s what will fix this—I’ll do it!”

“Shut-up!  Shut- _up_!  Stop pitying me!”

“It’s not pity.”

Julian squeezed Will’s wrists.  He could feel the bones shift under the skin.  “You think I want faked love?!”

“But…I _do_ love you.”

“ _Will_!”  He shut his eyes and squeezed harder.  Will shifted under him and let out a small sound: the only concession to the intense pain he must be causing him.  “Do _not_ mistake my meaning!”

He opened his eyes.  Will was trying hard to breathe around his crying.

“I know, Julian.  I know.  I just…”  He looked desperately at him.  “You have to tell me what to do.  I thought you were okay.  I believed you when you said you were getting better.  But you’re not.  So what I was doing before obviously wasn’t right.  And I don’t _know_ what to do!  I’m sorry, but I don’t.  I don’t have an answer for this.  I need you to tell me what to do.”  He sucked in a breath and shifted again in pain.  Julian hadn’t loosened his grip.  “I _need_ you to tell me what to do.  Even if it’s that I have to figure it out on my own.  Even if it’s to leave you alone.  Even if it’s to smother you.  Even if it’s to let you take your anger out on me.”

Julian’s biceps started to scream in agony as he tried harder to break Will’s wrists.

“Really, Will?” he hissed, lowering face to within inches from his.  “That would be okay?  It just might fix me.  But could you ever forgive it?”

Will closed his eyes and almost laughed.  “Of course,” he said wearily.

Julian sat up and let go of one wrist so that he could grab Will’s hair and yank him partially up.

“Stop lying you little shit!  Stop patronizing me!  Stop making a joke out of my feelings!”

“I’m not!” Will wailed.

“I _hate_ you!”  Julian screamed to shut him up.  “ _I fucking hate you_!  You still wanna help?!  You got it!”

Julian pushed forward and forced their lips together.  For one small instance, his anger disappeared.  The rage was quelled by the warm, salty taste of his wet lips.  Everything became clear to him.  He felt peace being joined with the one he loved.  Then Will let out the smallest noise of pain.  Everything came rushing back twice as potent.  He kissed Will harder, pushing his lips back into his teeth.  He must have done it hard enough to cut Will’s lip because he soon tasted blood.  He collapsed on top of him, their bodies sinking into the mattress.  He let go of Will’s hair (the other hand had yet to let go of his wrist) and reached down his body.  He brutally grabbed Will’s groin and then put his knee between his legs to force them apart.  He pushed his hand further between his legs, rubbing and gripping him violently.  Will’s lips felt damaged, but he could only stop biting them when he was sucking the blood off them.

“Come on, Will,” he groaned into his mouth.  “Help me out.  Help me heal.  What’s the matter?”  He sadistically squeezed the hand between his legs.  “You can’t get it up for me?  I thought you wanted to help.”

Will sucked in a breath now that his mouth was free from Julian.  But that’s all he did.  He didn’t cry out and he didn’t try to push him off.  He just drew in another breath and swallowed hard.  He had his eyes closed, but he did nothing else to block Julian.  Julian shouted in frustration.

“Why aren’t you fighting?!  Do you _want_ me to do it?!  What the fuck?!  Who _are_ you?!  You make me sick!”

He set his arm at a cruel pace, rubbing Will hard enough that the friction was making his hand burn.  He wanted to hurt him.  He wanted to fuck him until he was writhing in anguish.  He wanted to make him bleed.  He wanted to make him die inside.  Then they would finally be the same.  Then they could be okay again.

As he continued to abuse Will, he realized he wasn’t getting hard at all.  This was what he wanted, right?  To kiss and touch Will.  So, why wasn’t he getting turned on?  He wasn’t even tingly.  He was touching his Will, but he wasn’t getting anything from it.  And he knew he couldn’t like this.  His body could never do it with Will like this.  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt him with something else.  His eyes rose up to the shelf over Will’s bed.  It was full of his soccer trophies and first prizes at the science fair.  How fitting would it be to rape Will with one of his own trophies?

Julian felt something like a sledgehammer crash to his chest.  He flung himself off the bed and fell onto the floor on all fours.  He choked on his breaths and quaked in revulsion.  He put a hand to his mouth as he almost vomited onto the carpet.  How could he even _think_ that?  How could something that violent and hateful and cruel even enter his mind?  He struggled to his feet and ran out of the room.

 

Will

 

Will lay on the bed.  His lips ached, his wrists throbbed, and his groin burned.  But he didn’t move.  And he tried desperately not to make any noise despite his intense desire to sob like a child.  He remained so carefully still and quiet.  After a while, he realized that Julian had stopped himself.  That he wasn’t hurting him anymore.  He still didn’t move, but couldn’t stop himself from making noise as he sniffed and swallowed laboriously.  He waited.  He was willing to wait as long as he needed to.  Until finally, he realized that Julian had left.  He was alone, and had been for quite some time.

Will allowed his mind to focus on his body.  He was trying to feel if his muscles were still responding to his brain.  He tested moving an arm, but nothing happened.  Then he tried a leg with the same result.  He let out a long breath and then struggled with every fiber of his being to get his body to turn to the side.  Then he painstakingly pulled his legs up until he was curled in a ball.  He stared at the wall across from him.  It was blank.  He had put no posters up.  No pictures.  It was just a white wall.  He stared at it.  He felt weak and drained.  He felt completely exhausted and was quite certain he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long while even if his life depended on it.

He couldn’t move.  Couldn’t feel.  Couldn’t think.  Couldn’t sleep.  All he could do was lie still and stare at the wall, listening to Julian’s words run through his mind.

_You’re really such a great best friend.  You didn’t see anything._

_How can you lie to me?_

_You’ll never understand._

_I hate you._

The light changed in the room.  Shadows shifted.  Time wasn’t standing still for him.

He heard the front door open and close, and then a muffled conversation between his parents.  He couldn’t hear them anymore as they left the foyer.  Then he heard them again.  The voices got louder and more distinct as they came up the stairs.  His bedroom door was open, but there was no way he could get to it to close it.  Maybe they would ignore him.  Maybe they would forget they had a son.  He heard their voices pass his room, and then stop abruptly.

“William Wright!  It is 6:30,” his mother informed him.  What time had Julian come over?  One, two?  “We are leaving in half an hour and you’re still not dressed?  Hurry up.”

His parents started to walk away.  He had to speak now or they wouldn’t hear him.  He forced his mouth to work, his voice tearing out of his raw throat.  Even still, it came out quite soft.

“I’m not going.”

He was afraid they hadn’t heard him.  And then his mother said quietly, though unhappily, “What?”

Will didn’t want to speak anymore.  It hurt and he didn’t have the strength, but he tried again.

“I’m not going,” he repeated.

His mother made an irritated noise.  “I don’t know where this is coming from and I don’t even care.  Just get ready.”

“No.  I’m not going, and it’s not a big deal.”  Will took in a breath.  He was feeling winded.

“We have reservations,” his mother said like it was an unchangeable fact about the Universe.

“So?”  It was becoming a little easier to speak now, though not any less painful.  “I’m sure they’ll take two as easily as four.  Julian.”  Will closed his eyes in agony.  “Julian’s not going either.”

“Did he make other plans?” his mother asked crossly.

Will looked at the wall again.  “I guess.”

“Well, you’re still going.”  She started to leave.

“No,” Will croaked.

He could picture his mother in his head, stopping in mid-step and turning slowly back to look at him.

“Stop telling me no.  It is Thanksgiving and we are—”

“We’re what?” Will rasped.  He swallowed and his voice sound a little better.  “Sitting down to a nice family meal?  This is no different from any other Thursday night.”

“Will.  I don’t have the patience for this nonsense today.  Just get up already.”

“Why won’t you listen?  I’m not going, and you can’t make me.”

“Oh, you think so?”  Her voice was glacial.  “I _am_ your mother and you’re still under my jurisdiction.”

“Jurisdiction?” he repeated softly, almost smiling.  Was this woman really a mother?

“Marilyn,” his father finally joined in.  “Maybe we should leave him alone.  He seems…unwell.”

“No, he’s just spoiled and used to getting his way.  You are not an independent adult yet, you hear me?  As smart as you are and as capable as you _think_ you are, you still answer to an authority higher than your own.  Now get up, get dressed, and get downstairs in twenty minutes or you will be seeing _a_ _lot_ of this bedroom for the next three months.”

“Marilyn—”

“Rich,” his mother snapped.

His bedroom door slammed shut and he didn’t know what happened between his parents next.  Will tried to send an impulse down his limbs.  He didn’t think he was physically capable of complying with his mother’s wishes even if he wanted to.  He slowly sucked in as deep a breath as he could, and then let it out equally slowly.  He grunted and forced his body to move.  He struggled just to sit up.  Then before his body could give out on him he pushed himself to his feet.  It was easier than he thought.  Now that he was standing and moving again he realized that a lot of his exhaustion had been mental.  His body was okay.  He could make it work.  He walked gingerly to his closet.  He raised an arm to pull the door open farther and stopped when he saw his wrist.  It was purpling in places.  He raised his other hand and turned his arms over to look at both sides of his wrists.  The bruises circled all the way around like a pair of bracelets.

His body started growing heavy again, so he quickly grabbed a white dress shirt.  He slid it on and buttoned it up while staring at the ceiling.  He couldn’t remember if he’d showered that morning.  And normally he would put on an undershirt with a white shirt this thin, but now that his wrists were covered, he didn’t want to take it off again.  Not even to apply deodorant.  Hopefully he wasn’t going to smell.  But who cared if his parents had to put up with his stench?  He finished dressing and was more or less sure his tie and socks matched.  He stopped by his bathroom and ran a hand through his hair.  Good enough.  He leaned forward to take a closer look in the mirror.  His lips looked ragged, like he’d been out in the cold for way too long.  He opened a drawer and dug around until he found some clear-colored, menthol flavored ChapStick.  It helped a little bit.  No one would notice there was something really wrong beyond a case of chapped lips.  He stuck the lip balm in his pocket.  He would definitely need more later.  Then he went ahead and used a spritz of the Banana Republic cologne Ken had bought him just in case he did smell.

Will held the bottle in his hand.  Ken was such an idiot.  He’d bought him two bottles of the stuff after he’d caught Will stuffing his own supply into his bag.  He’d thought Will just liked it and didn’t want to bother to buy any for himself.  He didn’t even consider that he was going out of town and Will just wanted to have something that would bring his lover back to him in vivid detail.  Scent was the strongest sense tied to memory.  The bottle clacked loudly as he set it back down.  Why did he know such stupid trivial stuff?  What was the point of knowing that crap if he couldn’t even…

Will left the bathroom.  He made it downstairs in the required twenty minutes.  Either he had managed to dress adequately or his mother didn’t want to get into another fight with him because she didn’t comment on his appearance.  His sullen silence was easily ignored since he was in the backseat of the car and his parents talked amiably with each other.  Despite his assertions that his family was messed up (which it was), he had to admit that his parents probably had the healthiest and most loving relationship among all of his friends.  The only exception had been the Marches, but that was only because they had been more public about their affection.   Their happy prattle irritated him.  He shifted and kicked his foot out.  It hit his father’s chair.  He hadn’t exactly meant to.  He really didn’t want to start anything.  His father glanced at him over the chair, but didn’t say anything.  His mother must not have noticed.

They arrived at the restaurant without any more tantrums from Will.  His mother always seemed happy when she went to posh, public locations where all the rich and famous rubbed elbows with her two beautiful men in tow.  As if being the most well-known, respected, and powerful woman in the city weren’t enough, she needed to prove that she could keep her husband satisfied and faithful and that her genes reproduced well.  They caught more than a few eyes as they threaded their way behind the seating hostess in the crowded restaurant.  The occupants of all the tables were very similar.  It was mostly groups of three: two rich parents and the one child they’d managed to produce.  One or two tables had a second child, but Will didn’t see any tables of five.  Sometimes the arrangement was reversed with a young couple being kind, good people taking their elderly parents out to dinner.  A nice chef-prepared, gourmet meal to repay them for all the chef-prepared, gourmet meals they ate as children.  These were the kind of people who didn’t really do Thanksgiving.  And his family was just like them.

In fact, knowing what his family was like and what all the other ones were like who would be at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city on Thanksgiving night…Will scanned the tables nearby.  It was a large restaurant and there was even more than one dining room.  So, even if he was here (ignoring the dozens of other restaurants he could be at), the odds of Will being able to see him were pretty small.  Then his eyes found what he was searching for.  He saw him in profile, and only partially at that, but he instantly recognized his lover.  Seeing him comforted him, but not in the usual all encompassing sense of contentment he received from the man’s presence.  Will was still feeling raw.

He looked at the other people seated with Ken; there were three.  He recognized the older man as Ken’s father, and the elegant woman with silvery hair must be his mother.  A beautiful blonde haired woman sat to Ken’s right.  She was bright and bubbly and had an adorable charm about her.  Will squeezed his fork in his hand.  He hated her.  Was Ken that scared of his parents that he had to go hire some tramp to pretend to be his girlfriend for his poor old parents’ sake?  She was probably an escort.  Will wouldn’t be surprised if Ken had escort companies for both genders on his speed dial.  After all, he never knew when an occasion would arise that he might need one.  Will was furious with him.

The woman gave Ken a look like he was an ass and tossed a piece of bread at him.  He scowled in return and tossed the bread piece back at her.  The woman reached for it again, but Ken’s mother stilled her arm by placing a gentle hand on it.  She gave them both reproachful looks and they looked momentarily apologetic before hiding their grins behind their napkins and smirking at each other.  Will relaxed.  He felt like an idiot.  Of course, that must be Ken’s sister.  The one who had been in the hospital.

A waiter stopped by and set down two wine glasses in front of his parents.  He uncorked the bottle of red wine they had ordered and poured the glasses half full before leaving the rest of the bottle behind.  Will didn’t remember the waiter coming by the first time or his parents ordering.  He looked up at his parents.  His mother was holding her glass and swirling the dark liquid in it as she gave him a reproving look.  His father kept his eyes averted and sipped from his glass.

“Would you like something?” his mother asked.  “That is if you can manage to acknowledge us.”

“Sorry,” he grumbled.  “I was just looking around.  I was distracted I guess.”

“Mm-hmm.”  His mother put her glass down without taking a sip.  “Well, I have had about enough of this.  What exactly is it that is your problem?”

“Nothing,” he sulked.

“Then stop acting like a brat.  You are seventeen years old.  You’re an adult.”

“Oh, so _now_ I’m an adult.  I can’t decide if I want to stay home or not—that will get me grounded.  But here I’m supposed to be completely grown-up.”

His mother put her palms flat on the table and shook her head with a little irritated smile.

“I will not sit through an entire meal of your childish mood swings.  And I certainly won’t stand to watch you pick at a seventy-five dollar plate of food, which I know is what you’re going to do.  So.  I’m going to the ladies’ room.  When I return, you had better be behaving yourself.”

Will rolled his eyes up to watch his mother stand.  He was sure his look wasn’t any friendlier than hers.  He heard his father make a soft exhalation, which may have been a sigh.

“Marilyn…”

“I’ll be back shortly.”

His mother left and he glared after her.  If his father hadn’t been sitting across from him he might have flicked her off.  Sometimes she could be so damn narrow-minded.  She really did have a monstrous case of egomania.  So, at least he came by his own affliction honestly.

“Will,” his father called out to him softly.  Will ignored him.  “Will.”  Will looked at the floor to the side of his chair.  “William, look at me.”  His tone was still gentle and not reprimanding, which was the only reason he looked in his father’s direction.  He couldn’t get his eyes above his father’s chin though.

“Is something wrong?”

Will shrugged.

“Did you and Julian have a fight?”

This made Will look directly at his father.  But he couldn’t find the words to answer or the strength to even nod.

“Was it that bad?”

God, could he ever tell his father how bad it had been?  That was something a father should never know.

“Should I be worried about him?” his father pressed for some kind of answer.

Will looked away again.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t know if he just needs to be alone to cool off.  Or if I should be looking for him.  To make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.”

“Do you want to leave?”

Will let out a short, scathing laugh.  “Yeah, I’m sure Mom would be all for that.  I think she might kill me if I did.”

“We’ll explain it to her.”

“No.”

“She’ll understand.”  His father said it like he believed it.  Well, in theory he did know the woman better.  Not that he really spent any more time with her than Will did.  “We could all go together,” he suggested.

Will’s eyes widened as he stared at a stain on the floor.  “No, definitely not.”  He could only imagine what would happen if he and his parents found Julian and he decided to share with them what had happened.  Besides…“I couldn’t face him tonight anyway.”

“Will.  What on earth happened between you two?”

Will didn’t answer and his mother returned just as the waiter arrived with their first course.  The menu was preset for a “special Thanksgiving feast,” otherwise Will might have gone hungry since he would have missed ordering too.  Not that it would matter because he wasn’t hungry anyway.  The waiter looked at him.

“Monsieur, can I get you anything to drink?  Coke, perhaps?  Or how about a Roy Rogers?”

 _See?_ He wanted to say to his mother.  _The waiter thinks I’m a child, so it’s okay for me to be a brat._

“I’m fine with water, thank you.”

The man gave a curt bow and left them.  Will looked at the tiny serving of fennel salad on his plate.  Fennel salad.  Very traditional.  His mother sat down and elegantly placed her napkin in her lap.

“Are we feeling better?” she asked mildly.

“Marilyn.”

“Yes, Rich?”

“I need some air,” Will said.

“Then by all means, get some,” his mother said coolly.

Will stood up and walked past his parents so that their backs were to him.  He stood just behind a pillar and leaned against it for a moment.  Then he heard his father speak, so he listened closer.

“Marilyn.”

“What?  Don’t take that tone with me.”  As far as Will could tell his father hadn’t changed the way he said his mother’s name at all.  “He’s acting like a spoiled brat.”

“And that’s not setting off warning bells?”  Maybe now his father’s voice was a touch disagreeable.  “Neither of us is around much, but we should know our own son well enough to know when something is wrong.  This isn’t how he misbehaves.  When he’s being rebellious, he blows things up.  There’s something wrong.  Can’t you tell?”  There was a pause and then his father continued, “He had a fight with Julian.”

“Oh, is that all,” his mother sighed, clearly unimpressed.  There was more silence.  Then his mother said, “Well, is that it?  Is that why he’s being so petulant?”

“Marilyn.”  His father’s tone had definitely changed this time.  “Did you _look_ at our son tonight?  It wasn’t _just_ a fight.  _Something_ happened.  I think Julian is…not doing well.”

“He’s fine!  I’ve seen him _at least_ once a month.  I’ve spent a lot of time with him and talked with him at great length.  He’s coping just fine.  Boys have fights.  They get over it.”

“Marilyn,” his father sighed.

Will pushed off the pillar and walked away.  Did his father ever get tired of saying that woman’s name?  And she hadn’t noticed anything was wrong with Julian.  So did that make it better or worse that he hadn’t?  As he crossed the room he looked at the table where Ken had been sitting.  There were three people seated there now.  It was an older couple and a pretty woman, but for the life of him he couldn’t tell if they were the same people or not.  All he knew was that Ken was gone.

Will made his way to the back of the restaurant.  It was several floors up and had a balcony that looked upon the city’s skyline.  The doors were always open in the summer, but he wasn’t sure if they would be this late into autumn.  He grasped a handle and it turned easily.  He went outside and pulled his suit coat tighter around him.  It was quite cold out, but that was a good thing.  There was no one else outside; not even for a smoke break.  Will walked to the edge and leaned on the railing.  The chill wind ruffled his hair.

“You’re such a total prick, you know that?”

Will leaned to his right and took a few steps to see around the slight curve of the verandah.  Will knew who it was, his voice was unmistakable, but Ken didn’t normally talk like that to people.  In fact, he _didn’t_ talk like that to people.  He talked like that to one person in particular.  He was on his cell phone.

“I know you deliberately ignored my calls and called me on Thanksgiving knowing that I wouldn’t answer because I’d be with my family.  But, ha.  I did answer.”  There was a pause.  “Yes, I think it’s _that_ important!  Your new ‘employee’ is in _high school_.  Did you know that?”  Another pause.  “I don’t care if he’s eighteen!  And do you have any idea what’s he been through lately?”  Ken made a face.  “It doesn’t matter how I know.  Listen, I—Rylan!  Don’t hang up!  Rylan!”

Ken snapped the hand holding the phone down to his side and looked up at the sky.  He rolled his eyes up into his head in aggravation, but refrained from launching a verbal attack on his friend.  Ken started to turn around to head back into the restaurant.  He hadn’t noticed Will and would probably go back inside never knowing he’d been there.

“So, Rylan’s starting to meddle with jailbait too?”

“I know, right?” Ken turned toward him, clearly still quite miffed.  “And after that lecture he gave me.  He’s always like, ‘I don’t hire teenagers.’”  Will smiled as he deepened his voice to imitate Rylan.  “‘I run a non-sketchy escort company.’  Whatever.  I mean, he says he’s not working for him as an escort, but he’s still in high school!”

“Anyone I know?” Will asked nonchalantly.

Ken suddenly looked at him like he was really seeing him.

“Will.  What are you doing here?”  He gave a slight shake of his head with a small smile.  “It made sense to be talking to you, but it just dawned on me where we are.”

“Well, it’s a fancy, swanky restaurant filled with rich, distant, dysfunctional families on Thanksgiving.  Of course I’m here.  Why are you here?”

Ken took a step closer but disguised it as a step closer to the railing.  He leaned on it and looked out across the city.  Their backs were to the large windows.  Nobody would be able to tell they were talking at all, let alone to each other.

“Same reason,” Ken answered him.

“Hmm.  I kind of figured your family was the kind that would fake a homemade Thanksgiving by having the maid prepare it.”

“Well, if we wanted refried beans and tamales, we probably would.”

He chuckled at his own joke.  It was kind of funny, but Will couldn’t laugh.  Peripherally he could see Ken turn toward him.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

He took a step closer and Will slid away from him.

“Stay away from me.”

Ken froze in place.

“Think about where we are.  It’s nothing but windows between us and your parents _and_ mine.  We can’t risk it.”

Ken turned back to look at the city.  “Is something wrong?”

Will worked his jaw a moment.  He didn’t want to tell Ken.  Not because he felt unclean or that Ken would hate him or think that he did something to provoke the attack, which technically he did, but Ken was a part of the problem.  He was what he kept lying to Julian about.

“I had a fight with a friend,” he conceded.  “Nothing horrible.  But you know.  It gets to you.”

 _How can you lie to me?_   Julian’s words echoed through his mind and haunted his heart.  How could he lie to Julian?  How could he lie to _Ken_?

Ken twiddled his fingers for a couple moments, and then he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Will shook his head vaguely.  “Not about this.”

They were quiet.  The cold was starting to make him feel really uncomfortable.  Should he go back inside?  He was probably going to be grounded after tonight.  This might be as close as he could get to Ken for a while.  If that was the case, he wasn’t budging from the spot until he was threatened with hypothermia.  And even then, if Ken would stay with him, he wouldn’t miss a toe or a fingertip or two.

“Does—” Ken’s voice broke the silence, but it wasn’t unwelcome to Will’s ears.  “Does your family do that tradition where you go around the table and say what you’re thankful for?”  Will didn’t answer, but it didn’t appear Ken was expecting one.  “Mine does.  I always say the same things every year.  My health, my family, my career.  This year I added Joyce Greene.  It was as close as I could get to you.  I am thankful that I have you.  I’ve been so happy.  It feels like it’s been longer than a couple months.  And it has.  Since May.  But I mean, I feel like I’ve experienced a lifetime of happiness since I met you.”  He paused and Will thought maybe he was collecting himself.  “I love you so much.”

Will felt his brows crease.  His heart was pounding.  He closed his eyes and bent his head forward.  Tears formed in his eyes and he lifted his head.  Two thin lines on his cheeks suddenly stung more than the rest of his face in the frigid air.

“It might be a while before I can see you again,” he said calmly, not letting on that he was crying.  “I think I’m grounded.”

Will turned abruptly away from Ken and left him standing alone on the cold, windy balcony.  What kind of response was that?  How could he do that to Ken?  He was going to wind up destroying everything he loved.  And would it even matter?  Did Ken mean anything to him if he didn’t have Julian?  Why were the two most important people in his world unable to coexist?

The warmth of the restaurant was starting to penetrate his chilled flesh.  He turned the corner of the pillar that was next to his parents’ table and quickly sidestepped a shrieking child being chased by a nanny.  He collided with a heavily laden waiter.  His tray pitched to the left, then the right, and then to the left again.  The plates slid off the tumbling platter and fancy cut pieces of turducken and expertly crafted gourmet cranberry sauce splattered on his mother’s hair and expensive new dress.  A heart of palm slid down her chest, between her breasts, and part of it remained peeking out from her top.  The tray and plates hit the floor with loud bangs and crashes.  The restaurant went quiet and all attention was focused on their little section.  Will didn’t move.  Maybe if he stayed still enough his mother would think it was the waiter’s or the unruly child’s fault.

His mother calmly plucked the heart of palm from between her breasts and placed it on her empty salad plate.  Will’s eyes slid to his father.  The man had a hand over his mouth, but Will could tell from his eyes that he was dying to burst out laughing.  His eyes slid again to look around the restaurant.  Every eye was on them.  Including those of Ken’s family.  Ken’s sister looked as amused as Will’s father wished he could.  He raised his eyes a little more as he saw Ken walking toward his family.  He slowed down as he took in the scene.  They weren’t particularly close, but since the restaurant was so quiet Will heard his murmured words clearly.

“Oh, you’re definitely grounded now.”

 

Julian

 

The car skidded over the loose gravel of the shoulder as he took a turn too tight and too fast.  The tires squealed and the engine shuddered.  He managed to right the vehicle back onto the road and gunned the accelerator.  The car jumped up to eighty-five miles per hour on the residential road.  Hopefully there were no unleashed pets or stray balls with young children running after them in his path.  He couldn’t stop.  Cops weren’t even a concern.  He wasn’t going to stop for them.  He drove with a single-minded purpose to get to the secluded back road that led out to the countryside.  The car lurched as he followed the road’s sharp curve to the left.

Julian’s heart was racing and his hands were strangling the steering wheel, but it wasn’t because his own erratic driving was scaring him.  He was terrified and distraught completely freaked out by what he had just done.  What he had almost done.  What did he just do to Will?  What had he done to all of his friends?  What was wrong with him?  Despite his agitated state he did notice the irony of that question.  All his friends had asked him the same thing and he’d refused to acknowledge that there was more to it than just being upset about his parents.  He should feel terrible for what he did.  And he did, but only by _making_ himself feel bad.  Why didn’t he feel bad for what he had done?  What was _wrong_ with him?  Why couldn’t he control this?  He did need help.  He really did.

He saw the turn off to the road he was looking for and slammed on the brakes.  The car careened side to side and the tires squealed and slid across the pavement.  He made the turn going around forty miles an hour and the back end of the Honda swerved far to the left before he managed to force the wheel to get the car straight again.  He gunned the engine again.  Up to ninety this time.  There was nothing on this road.  Nothing but the one place he thought could help him.  And the one person who might be able to save him.

He was taught that whatever he sent out into the Universe came back to him threefold.  He had turned his back on the Goddess.  He had abused and rejected and denied his faith.  He needed to find that peace he had lost.  He needed to rededicate himself to the simple, natural practices that allowed him to understand himself and his environment.  It had been so easy when he had let himself be a part of all that surrounded him.  But he had shut himself off from the world and now he was paying for it.  His friends were paying for it.

He saw the large house looming up on his right.  He braked hard and the car slid for several meters before halting a little ways down from the house.  He struggled to turn off the ignition and fought with the keys to get them out.  Then he opened the door and left it that way as he ran up Aaliyah’s driveway.  They should be here.  The Wicca equivalent of Thanksgiving, Mabon, was in September.  So, if they were celebrating a traditional Thanksgiving, her family should be here.  The Coven wouldn’t have gathered somewhere else.  Unless they were all here.  Could he face a Circle today?  Maybe that’s exactly what he needed.  Julian pulled up sharply when he got to the door; he didn’t want to crash into it and worry the people inside.  He bent over to catch his breath.  After a couple deep breaths he stood up straight and raised a hand to knock on the door.  It opened and Aaliyah was trying to lock the door, balance a pie plate, and keep her cell phone tucked under her chin at the same time.

“Yes, I know what time it is.  I’m on my way right now.  Just make sure the girls are behaving themselves.  I’ll see you soon.  Bye.”

She attempted to catch her cell phone as she closed the door and then started when she saw Julian.  She let out a small exclamation of surprise and Julian reached forward to keep her pie from crashing to the ground.

“By the Goddess!”  She put a hand to her chest.  “Julian, you gave me a fright.  What are you doing here?”  Her brows creased in deep concern.  “What’s the matter, Julian?  Has something happened?”

“Oh.  I’m sorry.  You’re heading out.  Of course.  It’s Thanksgiving.  You’re going to your mother’s.”  He handed the pie back to her.  “I’m sorry for bothering you.  I’ll leave.”

“No, Julian, stop.”

He stopped.

“Come back here.  Come inside.  Please, come inside and talk to me.  Alastair and the girls have already gone over, so the house is empty.  We can talk in confidence.”

She stepped back inside and waved him in.  He wrapped his arms around himself and stepped inside, looking down.  What would Aaliyah think of him when he told her what he’d done?  Would she say he was beyond saving?  He wanted help.  He wanted to get better.  But part of his mind was telling him that it was ridiculous to turn to magick.  It didn’t exist.  He ignored the voice.  Maybe it didn’t exist in the turning people into toads kind of way, but he remembered being moved by the feelings of the Coven members when he was younger.  He remembered feeling that peace not too long ago.  He desperately needed it back.

“Why don’t you go have a seat in the front room?  I’ll just pop this in the oven to keep it warm.”

Aaliyah left him and he looked around her house.  It felt like ages since he’d been there when it had only been a few months.  The crystals and dried herbs still hung everywhere and the scents were comforting.  He walked to the front room and as soon as he entered his senses were almost overwhelmed by the pungent aroma of frankincense.  It sent a rush of memories through him.  This room was where Aaliyah took people who needed to be cleansed of negative influences and to take in the wisdom of the people and gods around them.  Julian was familiar with the room because it was his favorite hiding spot during games of hide and seek.  There was a wardrobe at one wall that looked like it was flush against it, but the crown molding on the base kept it far enough away that a skinny eight year old could easily squeeze behind it.

He never thought he would have to enter this room in order to use it for its real purpose.  It was decorated in rich blues and soft greys.  The color blue was thought to encourage wisdom, patience, meditation, truth, and peace.  Grey was meant to stabilize a disturbed personality.  Boy did he ever deserve to be in this room.  He’d always thought it strange that there was not a couch or chair to sit on.  There was only a king-sized bed covered in a royal blue bedspread with a grey stripe down the middle.  He’d learned when he’d gotten older that that was because not only was it a room of reflection and healing, it was a spare guest room.  He stood at the foot of the bed, not sure what to do.  He looked at the colors and breathed in the incense.  He wasn’t feeling any different so far.

“Julian.”

He turned at Aaliyah’s voice.  She was wearing a white flowing dress with a green partial corset at her ribcage.  It wasn’t extremely tight nor was it overemphasizing her bust.  Her long, dark curls fell over her shoulders, almost to her waist.  She shut the door behind her and walked to the bed.  She slid gracefully onto it and patted the mattress beside her.  Julian sat down beside her and put his hands in his lap.  He stared at the floor.  She reached out and covered his hands with one of hers.

“I’ve missed you, Julian.  It has been a long time since I or anyone in the Coven has seen you.  I’ve been very worried.”

 _So how come you never called or came over to check on me?_   Julian kept that thought to himself.

“Tell me.  What has happened?  You looked so lost and frightened when you arrived on my doorstep.”

“I’ve done some terrible things,” he said softly.  “I turned my back on the Goddess.  I kept things inside.  I’ve—hurt people.”

Julian choked back a thick breath.  Aaliyah turned more toward him and rubbed his back slowly with a hand.

“Shh.  It’s okay.  It’s okay.  Let it out.  You know it is terrible to repress your emotions.  The Goddess gives them to us so that we may feel them.”

Julian bent forward more and felt his chest tightening.  Tears welled up in his eyes.  “I can’t—”  He gasped in a breath.  “It hurts too much.”

“Shh, shh.”  Aaliyah pulled gently on him and he leaned into her.  He settled his head on her chest and forced back a couple sobs.  She held him and stroked his hair.  “I know that right now everything seems so big and difficult.  So, take a breath, take a step back, and look again.  The Goddess will help you if you let her in.”

“But.  But I’ve—I’ve not felt Her in so long.  I—” His body shook with another sob.  “I rejected Her.”

“Oh, Julian.  She forgives you.  She will always forgive you.”

“I just don’t know how.  I can’t feel Her.  It _hurts_ too much.  I can’t feel anything else.”

He was crying freely now and had turned enough to wrap his arms around Aaliyah’s waist.  She held him tightly to her breast and kissed the top of his head.

“Let it out, little one.  Let the pain out and it will hurt less.  Let it flow into me.  I will share the pain with you.”

Her hands ran over his back in soothing circles, at times one hand running up to his neck and at others dipping lower to his hips.  As he took in deep breaths to calm himself down he felt more like he was being caressed by a lover than comforted by a mother.

“I’ll open myself to you,” she whispered in his ear.  “Do what you need to do to let go of the pain.  Do what must be done to help me share your burden.”

He felt himself leaning forward and realized that she was pulling him down onto the mattress with her.  He put an arm down to prevent himself from lying completely on top of her.  Her dark hair gleamed silkily on the blue cloth, her skin looking paler in contrast.  She tilted her head to the side and gazed up at him, her hand running down the line his jaw.  He gulped nervously.  He glanced down and saw the blue septagram pendant she always wore in the hollow of her throat.  His eyes went further down.  The mounds of her breasts were now pushing against the top of her dress.  He stared in shock for a moment and then met her eyes.

“I don’t understand.  What are you doing?”

One hand continued to caress his face and the other ran soothingly up and down his arm.  She shifted beneath him, parting her legs so that he settled in between them.

“Just feel, Julian.  Feel your wrath and your despair.  Gather it up, push it toward the surface.  And together, we’ll dispel it.”

Julian moved awkwardly, trying not to think about where his body was.  He tried to rise to his knees, but the first part of the motion pushed him more into her.  She rolled her lips in and her eyes fluttered closed for a moment.

“Yes, Julian.  It’s okay.”  She pulled him back down.  “This will help you.  Don’t think of this as simply sex.  Yes, Wiccans view sex as pleasure, but it is also the symbol and embodiment of life.  It is one of the sources of magickal energies and we use it for healing and bonding and even as a form of religious worship.  I feel you are too far gone for words.  I want you to be able to express your grief.  Feed on it.  Experience it.  And I will help you.  You can trust me.”

She brought their faces together and kissed him sweetly.  He went rigid.  He was kind of scared.  He wasn’t scared of Aaliyah, but he’d just never experienced anything like this before.  She settled back on the bed and spread her legs wider.  Julian’s mouth fell open in nervous surprise.

“Aaliyah.  I would like help.  But, I…I just don’t know if this is right.  It doesn’t feel right.  I mean, I don’t know what to do.  I’ve never done this before.”

“Using sex as a healing ritual is difficult at first.  You want to heal because you’re hurting, but your pain wants you to stay distant from people.  That unease will melt away as our bodies blend together.”

Julian almost laughed.  “No.  I mean.  I’ve never done _it_ before.”

She smiled and ran the backs of her fingers over his cheek.  “You’re a virgin?  I never would have guessed.”

He looked away.  Embarrassed.

“Don’t be embarrassed, child.  It’s not about technique or knowledge.  It’s about joining with another.  Mingling our energies and feeling the presence of the Goddess flow into you.”

She pulled him down and kissed him again.  He let her, but wasn’t sure how to participate.  There was still something wrong about this in his mind.  She was a married woman.  He was in high school.  Her family was waiting for her to have Thanksgiving dinner.  What were the two of them doing?  But was that just the prejudice of society filling his mind?  Witches had a long suffered history of being persecuted because the common public did not understand their ways.  Aaliyah was a High Priestess of the Blue Star Coven.  His parents had trusted her implicitly.  He had always found comfort in her.  He had once believed in his faith.  This might help him.  Maybe it would be good to stop thinking for once.  To lose himself in physical sensations, to let his body cry out with the rage and pain he’d been feeling.  The release of his body might be what he needed for the release of his mind.

Aaliyah kissed him deeper and moved one of his hands to her breasts.  He kissed her back and squeezed the soft, warm mound.  She did feel good.  She moved her hips beneath him and he allowed himself to move with her.  She was making soft noises of pleasure; he was glad he was making her feel good.  But he wasn’t sure if he was doing it the right way.  Not the physical part, but the emotional expression.  He didn’t feel it coming to the surface and pouring out into Aaliyah.  It was slipping further inside him, sinking deeper and deeper into the pit where he imagined his soul to be now.

“Oh, yes,” Aaliyah moaned.  She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed his chin and jaw, writhing underneath him, stimulating him easily even through the thick denim of his jeans.  “That’s right, Julian.  There.”  She half-gasped and half-moaned before plunging her tongue into his mouth.

He was touching her and feeling her and was definitely responding to her, but he didn’t feel anything.  In fact, he felt like he was shutting down.  Or was that just the anger going away?  Had it been so long since he’d been free of it that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be without it?  But this couldn’t be right.  He felt empty.

Her hands reached down to her legs and she pulled the skirt of her dress up as high as she could.  Then she moved her hands into the tight space between their bodies and started to work on his zipper.  She let her head fall back onto the mattress and Julian kept himself braced above her, closing his eyes and sucking back a moan as her fingers reached for him.  He opened his eyes and took in a gasping breath.  She was smiling languidly at him, her eyes roving over his face.

“Mmm, Julian.  You really do look so much like your father.”

Julian pulled straight back, the tension completely broken.  He looked at the wardrobe for a moment and then turned to look at Aaliyah with an expression of disgusted annoyance on his face.

“What?”  He rose to his knees and then sat back on his heels.  Aaliyah seemed startled by his movement and a little confused that he had stopped.  “I look nothing like my father.  I don’t look like either of my parents.  If my mother hadn’t forced me to watch a video of my own birthing, I would have thought I was adopted.”

Aaliyah kind of shrugged and looked like she conceded the point.  “You are right.  I’m sorry.  I was just struck with a sudden sense of resemblance.  That’s all.”

She raised her hand up to touch him and he grabbed her wrist, stopping the movement.  He ran his tongue over his teeth as he looked at her.  She seemed very human to him at the moment.

“Do you—did you just have a thing for my father, but he’d never do you?  And I’m, like, the next best thing?”

A look of mortified anger flashed over her face.  It was only for a moment.  It was barely there.  Julian almost didn’t see it.  But her sweet smile of amused confusion couldn’t cover it up fast enough.  “Of course not,” she lied.

Julian closed his eyes and shook his head, feeling like a complete fool.  “Gotta go,” he said and let go of her wrist as he climbed off the bed.

“Julian, wait!” she cried, sitting up and pushing her skirt down.  “I was just trying to help!”

Julian turned to look at her like she was a crazy bag lady who wouldn’t leave him alone.  “How exactly does having sex with an emotionally distraught teenage boy help him?”

She didn’t have an answer for him.  He turned his back on her and walked out of the room.

“Julian, don’t—” he heard her start to call out, but he slammed the front door behind him.  His body was roiling with the rage he’d felt when he’d been hurting Will.  No wonder it felt so good.  It was the only thing that was real.  He walked to his car, slid in, and slammed the door shut.  He started the car and peeled off the shoulder, taking some of the front lawn with him as he made a quick U-turn.  He was speeding again.  But this time he didn’t know where he was going.  What should he do?  Should he just drive until something got in his way?  Should he find a nice parked tractor trailer and join his parents?  That would probably make everyone happy.  No one would have to deal with him anymore.  But was that what he wanted?  Would death be any easier than this?  It had to be.  Unless one of the other religions in the world was right.  How long would he spend in purgatory?  Would they even bother sending him there?  Or was he going to get a one way ticket straight to hell?  It had to be hell.  He’d never been baptized.  He’d be so screwed if Christianity was right and he killed himself today.  Plus, wasn’t suicide like a guaranteed ticket to hell?

He needed someone to help sort through this.  He needed someone who could explain to him Christian beliefs.  Or could at least get him to wait until tomorrow to kill himself.  Who could do that?  Dr. Gorman.  He needed to see Dr. Gorman.  He braked hard and despite having anti-locked brakes, they locked up on him and his car slid a hundred feet before starting to slow down.  He pumped the brakes fiercely until the car stopped and then forced the vehicle to turn onto the road he’d spotted.  He followed it down a couple turns until he came to the parking lot of the one pointless station on the metro line.  It was three stops in toward the city from the one he and his friends used.  There was a small stretch of undeveloped land between his town and the city that the metro line ran through.  For some reason they’d decided to go ahead and build a station out here.  He drove through the open gate and his car banged over the speed bump and metal scraped the pavement.  He drove as close to the station as he could and parked his car across two parking spaces in the mostly deserted lot.

He was on autopilot as he got out of the car, swiped his fare card, and paced the platform waiting for the next train.  He couldn’t remember if he’d bothered to close the door to his car this time.  He could only think of one thing: get to Dr. Gorman.  She’ll help.  She’ll explain things.  She’ll make sense of all this.  That’s all he needed.  He just needed _something_ to make sense.  A point of reference.  Then he could start piecing things back together.

After ten minutes on the platform he was starting to go mad, and then finally the sign flashed that a train was approaching.  It was completely empty when he got on.  He couldn’t sit down.  He paced the railcar, occasionally grabbing onto a pole as the floor tilted beneath him.  The trip was short.  He’d started closer to the city than usual and he got off at the stop near her office building, not her condo.  He ran from the station and came above aground, turning left.  Was that the way to her office?  Then he saw a giant turkey flashing on a neon sign above a Chinese restaurant.  He stopped cold.  It was Thanksgiving.  She wouldn’t be at work.  She would be at home.  No.  He dropped his head back and groaned softly, his energy leaking out of his body.  She was at _home_.  In Ohio.  With her family.  But this was an emergency.  She’d understand.  He’d just call her.  He pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his list of contacts.  All he had was her office number.  Why didn’t he have her home number?  A cell phone at least.  Weren’t they a…a what?  A couple?  No, they weren’t.  They hadn’t bothered to exchange personal phone numbers.

But then just above Dr. Gorman he saw the name Dr. Corbin.  Yes, that’s right.  He had a new shrink now.  He’d just call him.  Someone should be working the office in case of emergencies.  They could patch him through if Dr. Corbin was out.  He dialed the number and listened frantically to it as it rang.  No one was picking up.

“Come on, come on.”

“Hello.”

“Hello, yes!  My name is—”

“You have reached the office of Dr. Louis Corbin.  Our office is currently closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.  It will reopen at 8:00am, Monday morning, November 28th.  Thank you for calling and Happy Thanksgiving.”

Julian waited.  Where was the “in case of emergency” message?  The line went dead.  He stared wide-eyed at nothing, water filling his eyes.  How could their office be closed?  How could they not have a way for people to get help?  Didn’t they realize that their patients were all a bunch of crazies?!

“Damn it!  Damn it!  Fuck!”

Julian screamed and slammed his phone against a lamppost.  It felt good, so he did it again.  He continued to scream at the top of his lungs and beat his phone until pieces of plastic and wiring began to rain down to the ground.  When the thing had completely disintegrated, he held the remnants of the broken case and kept hitting his hand against the post, ignoring the pain from the hard metal and the sharp plastic edges cutting into his skin.  He started cursing in his screaming and he could peripherally see people on the sidewalk looking scared and walking in wide arcs to stay away from him.  Some of them even crossed the road.  He didn’t care.  He kicked the post and came down on his foot awkwardly.  He stumbled to his right and threw what was left of his cell phone to the ground.

“What the hell are you doing?” a deep voice demanded.

Julian stopped screaming.  He turned slowly around to look at who had interrupted him.  A cop stood a few feet away, one hand on the radio by his shoulder and the other resting on the nightstick at his waist.

“Nothing,” Julian said.  “Nothing.”  He took a step backward and tripped over a lump of cell phone.  He was tired and didn’t have enough coordination to catch himself.  He fell to the ground and winced as the bits and pieces of his phone bit into his butt through his jeans.

“You been drinking?” the cop asked in his irritatingly low voice.  Was he trying to sound like a father or a principal?

Julian shook his head.  “Nope.”

“You sure about that?  Perhaps we should have a chat about it somewhere quieter.”

“Go away,” Julian snarled.  “I’m calm now, okay?  Just go away and leave me alone.  There’s no law against sitting on a sidewalk.”

The cop’s hand didn’t move away from his nightstick, and he seemed to be getting ready to use the radio with the other.

“I think we should contact your parents.”

Julian burst out laughing.  He clutched his stomach and rocked back, howling at the mere thought.

“Yes, we should try!  I think a séance would be the best place to start!”

The cop took a step forward.  “Come on, son.  I’ll take you somewhere you can sleep it off.”

Julian pushed himself away from the cop, but couldn’t get far because his jeans caught on the rough sidewalk.

“I’m not your son,” he said darkly.  “Leave me alone.”

“We’re going now.  Get up.”

The man grabbed his arm and Julian shook him violently off, lurching to his feet as he screamed, “Don’t touch me!”

The cop had his nightstick partway out now.  His other hand was back on the radio.

“Do you want me to have to place you under arrest?”

“Only if you have a good reason to.”  Julian pulled his lips back to show his teeth in a snarling grin.  “Should I give you one?”

He stepped forward, starting to raise his arm at the same time the cop pulled his nightstick completely out and spoke a code into the radio.  Then something grabbed his wrist and jerked his arm painfully behind his back.  He bent at the waist as his arm was shoved cruelly up between his shoulder blades.  It hurt so much he couldn’t even make a noise.  He started to turn his head but a hand crashed down on top of it, keeping him bent over and staring at the ground.  His arm hurt so much he couldn’t even consider moving his legs.  He was held completely immobile.

“Sorry about that, officer.  I’ll take him from here.”

“No, he’s coming down to the station.  He assaulted a police officer.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Only because you stopped me,” Julian grumbled.

His captor gave him a little shake and pain lanced through his arm causing him to gasp and shut-up.

“He’s mine,” the man said.  “I’ll take care of it.”  There was a hint of sadistic pleasure in his voice as he said, “Make sure he gets properly disciplined.”

“Well, I really think—”

“Officer.”

The man’s voice sent a chill down Julian’s spine.  There was a moment of hesitation on the cop’s end.  And then Julian heard the crackle of his radio as he said, “Cancel the 10-56.  All right, sir.  Just get him off the streets until he sobers up, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”  Julian wasn’t sure he heard it, it was so subtle, but the acquiescence sounded a touch mocking.

Julian watched the shiny shoes of the cop walk away.  There were some hushed voices and soft shuffling of feet as people looked at him and whispered to each other as they rubbernecked by.  Several seconds passed and the man still held him in place.

“Let me up!” Julian snapped.

“Have you been drinking?”

“What’s it to you?”

The man gave him another shake and the pain was somehow worse this time.  His hand was going numb.

“Damn it!  Let me go!”

“Have you been drinking?  You hit any drugs?”

“No!”

He was released and Julian stepped forward, still bent over.  He swung his arm forward and grimaced with pain as it remembered where its proper location was.  He straightened and spun around to glare at his attacker/rescuer.  But once he was face to face with Rylan, all the fight left his body.  He was too scared of the man to ever truly be angry or foolish enough to try to start a physical fight with him.  Even arguing with him was draining.  And now wouldn’t be a good time for verbal sparring.  Rylan looked completely ticked off.

“I don’t even want to know what set you off or what was done to you or what you did.”

He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and lit up with a lighter from his other pocket.  A white plastic bag dangled from one wrist.  He inhaled deeply on the cigarette and returned the pack and the lighter to his pockets.  He was wearing black slacks and a thinly striped blue button down shirt.  The cuffs weren’t rolled up, they were buttoned to his wrists, but the top two buttons on the shirt were undone.  He looked Julian over, holding in the smoke for what must be an unhealthily long time, and then let it out slowly.

“Frankly, I don’t care,” he growled.  “But I can’t have you arrested while you still work for me.  I’ll be sure to remedy that in the morning, and then you can go assault all the police officers you’d like.”  He took another drag of the cigarette, but didn’t hold it as long this time.  “Until then, come with me.”

Rylan dropped the cigarette to the ground and didn’t even bother to put it out with his foot.  He just turned and started walking away.  Julian defiantly stayed put.  Rylan was just his employer.  His soon to be ex-employer.  He was under no obligation to do anything the man told him to in his personal life.  Rylan didn’t glance back at him.  He didn’t stop and turn around to glare at him in annoyance.  He just crossed the street.  Julian didn’t know why he was just now realizing this, but Rylan really didn’t give a shit about him.  He’d leave him standing there like an idiot if that’s what Julian chose to do.  He wasn’t going to reason or fight with him.  He was just going to let him be.  Which would probably be for the best.  It had been a mistake to get involved with him and Blue Boy.  He watched the tall man walk away.  He looked so strong and confident.  He looked invulnerable.  He was on the other side of the street now, still walking away.

Julian’s feet moved even before he could get his brain to tell them to.  He darted into the street and tires squealed and horns blared as he cut in front of several cars.  He ran in a dead sprint to catch up to Rylan.  His feet pounded loudly on the concrete as he slowed to a halt beside him.  He found the man’s pace and walked beside him.  Rylan didn’t say anything or look at him.  He did nothing to acknowledge the fact that Julian had disobeyed him and then run after him.  He could have been walking beside him the whole time for all the notice Rylan gave his presence.  But that also meant he didn’t tell Julian to buzz off.  So, he followed him quietly.

They walked quite a few blocks in silence and Julian wondered what he was doing walking by himself on Thanksgiving night.  That thought plus the fact that he was now quite calm made him realize he was hungry.  He hadn’t eaten since before 11:00.  The darkening sky let him know it had to be close to six o’clock.  He wondered if he could get a free pity meal out of Rylan.  For some reason, he was willing to accept pity from Rylan.  Because it obviously wouldn’t be pity.  Rylan just had a disdainful distaste for everybody.  How could he broach the subject of a free meal without being too obvious about it?

“So, why are you out on Thanksgiving?” Julian asked carefully.

No answer.

“Are you getting back from dinner?”

No answer.

“Are you on your way to dinner?” he asked hopefully.

Rylan finally looked at him, just a hint of humor in his eyes.  He obviously knew why Julian was asking him about dinner.

“I’m on my way home,” he said.

“Oh,” Julian said, a little disappointed.

“I went out because EJ refused to eat dinner without this sledge.”

Rylan held the white plastic bag out to him.  Julian took it from him and peeked inside.  There was a single can of processed cranberry sauce.  Julian quirked an eyebrow.  Rylan left his home and went in search of an open convenience store to buy cranberry sauce for someone?  Who warranted such a miraculous act of benevolence?  Was it his boyfriend?  Julian didn’t want to ask.

The remainder of the five block walk to Rylan’s building was in silence.  Julian followed the man timidly inside.  Technically the “Until then, come with me,” had been an invitation, but had that been revoked when Julian had decided to take his time accepting it?  Rylan didn’t tell him to go away when they were in the lobby, so he followed him to the elevators.  He glanced at the front desk.  Poppy wasn’t there.  Nobody was.  He guessed the management got off for Thanksgiving and the residents would have to make do until Friday.

Even though they had been quiet since the sharing of the cranberry sauce, the silence somehow seemed worse in the small enclosure of the elevator.  Well, it was for Julian.  Rylan didn’t seemed perturbed in the least.  He stepped off the elevator with a confident stride and walked easily down the hall with one hand in his pocket.  He almost seemed like a model on a runway, only it was a little more natural.  He wondered if he was being extra cool and casual just to make sure that Julian was aware of his indifference.  He put his keys in the lock and turned back to look at Julian.  He was definitely striking a pose and giving him a cynical smile.  Julian didn’t rise to the bait.  He just walked right up to him, stopping less than a foot away.  Rylan was four or five inches taller than him, but he was able to make eye contact without coming off as completely like a petulant child.  Rylan let out a soft sound that Julian thought might be a laugh.  He raised a hand and placed four fingers under Julian’s jaw.  Julian felt like he’d been hit with a thousand volt shock, but he didn’t flinch.  Rylan looked at him quizzically and brushed his thumb once over his lips.

“What have you been doing today?”

Julian’s lips parted involuntarily.  The heat from Rylan’s thumb invaded his mouth.  He momentarily lost the ability to speak.  And think for that matter.  Then Rylan dropped his hand and unlocked the door.  He stepped inside and Julian raised an eyebrow at himself.  Was Rylan some kind of alien?  Maybe an incubus.  No one actually had the power to control someone with just a touch.  The sudden eruption of shouting that spilled out of the condo startled Julian.  He took a tentative step inside and then stopped short.  The kitchen was crowded full of people.  All young men he noticed, and they were shouting, laughing, and ordering each other around as they appeared to be preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  It looked like they were having fun.  One of them noticed Rylan who was now in the middle of his living room.

“Yo, Rylan!  Where’s my stuff?”

Rylan nodded back toward the door.  The young man looked toward Julian and his eyebrows shot up.  He nudged the man next to him who was laughing and licking something off his thumb as he turned.  The other three noticed something was going on and looked too.  All activity stopped.  They just looked at him with mild interest.  Then the one who had addressed Rylan took a step forward.

“Is that my cranberry sauce?” he asked.

Julian looked down at his hands.  He was still holding the plastic bag.  He was slightly irked to discover that somehow he’d wound up carrying the bag home for Rylan.  He looked back up at the young man who was obviously sizing him up with an amused, knowing smile.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Hey,” Rylan got his attention.  “I don’t care if you stay or go, but shut the door.”

Julian immediately turned around and put his hand on the knob.  He looked into the hallway.  He could run away now.  But where would he go?  What would he do?  Who would he hurt next?  Plus, he still had someone’s cranberry sauce in his hands.  He closed the door.  Julian turned around and walked across the room.  He held the bag out to the man.  He took it from him and pulled out the can.

“Eh-x-cellent,” he grinned, kind of like an evil genius whose conspiring was going according to plan.

Julian swallowed and looked at the five young men.  Three were white, one was black, and one was Asian.  All of them were good looking.  Julian wasn’t sure if he fit in with them or not.  Rylan appeared by his side.

“This is EJ,” he said indicating the tall man with the cranberry sauce.  He was probably the oldest one of the bunch, but he hadn’t reached thirty yet.  His dark hair was in a shaggy cut that partially hid his blue eyes.  He tossed that hair to the side as he gave Julian a nod of acknowledgment.  Then it fell back in front of his eyes.

“And this,” Rylan indicated the Asian, “is Howie.”  Howie grinned at him showing a dimple in his left cheek.  He looked really young, but that may have been just because he was Asian.

Rylan pointed to a frosted blond who was absently stirring some gravy.  “That’s Sam.”  Sam waved the hand with the gravy spoon and some of it splattered on the counter.  He kind of reminded Julian of Ryan Phillippe.

“This is DaNeil,” Rylan continued almost sounding like he was getting bored and kind of regretting deciding to introduce him to everyone.  DaNeil gave him a nod and as Julian took in his skin tone and facial features thought that maybe he was mixed.

“And you already know Tyler.”  The pretty boy waggled his fingers at him.  “This is Julian.  He’s going to be joining us tonight.  Are we almost ready?”

“Yeah,” DaNeil said.  “We were getting ready to set the table now.”

Tyler started.  “Omigod!”  He darted for the oven and pulled it open.  That seemed to be the cue for everyone else to return to what they had been doing.  The kitchen was once again a chaotic mess.  Rylan left him and he stood awkwardly by himself.  He wasn’t sure if he should offer to help or not.  DaNeil squeezed another setting at the table and retrieved a chair from one of the back rooms.  With some unspoken cue the rowdy group of men all carried steaming dishes to the table and began to sit down.  Rylan passed him, putting the slightest pressure on the small of his back.  It was enough to push him forward.  He waited until everyone was sitting and then took the empty chair beside Tyler.  Rylan and EJ sat at the ends of the rectangular table and Julian was at Rylan’s end.  The noise didn’t die down at all as the dishes were passed around and food was served.   Then EJ stood up with a mild expletive.  He hurried into the kitchen, opened his can of cranberry sauce, and gave a hard shake of the can over a fancy plate.  The stuff shlorped out of the can and jiggled on the plate.  EJ returned and everyone started eating.  Julian realized there wasn’t going to be a blessing, which didn’t much surprise him with this crowd.

“Oh, crap,” Howie sighed.  “We forgot the drinks.”

“I’m sure there are other things too,” DaNeil said.  “We’ll just get them as we need them.”

“Yeah, and since you remembered the drinks,” Sam smiled, “you can get them.”

Howie made a face but stood up.  He went into the kitchen and began to rummage through the refrigerator.

“Who wants what?”

Julian was almost certain everyone called out a different kind of beverage.  Howie voiced his opinion about them all being difficult, but continued his work.  When everyone was served their drink (Julian had opted for water) they finally all settled down and began to eat.  It smelled good and looked pretty normal, but Julian was having a hard time finding his appetite again.  He felt really out of place and like he was crashing someone’s party.

Tyler pointed at the sweet potato soufflé on Julian’s plate with his fork and said, “Try that.  I made it.”

Julian obediently took a bite.  It was sweet and good.  And reminded him that he was hungry.

“It’s good,” he told Tyler and kept eating.

The chattering and laughing continued despite almost everyone having a full mouth.  He glanced at Rylan.  He didn’t look like a jovial, proud patriarch.  He looked like his usual, slightly sour self.  Julian couldn’t believe he was willing to have this kind of chaos in his house.  Sam, who was sitting across from him, noticed that Julian was being left out.  So, the next time there came a lull in the conversation (or as close to a lull as this crowd could get) he asked Julian, “So, you’re a new employee?”

Julian wasn’t sure how to answer.  He looked at Rylan.  Was he going to get fired tomorrow?

Tyler answered for him.  “I told you about him.  He’s not an escort.  He’s the new test dummy.”

There was a collective, “Ohh,” of understanding.

Julian looked around the table.  Were they all Blue Boy employees?  He was pretty much one hundred percent sure they were.  The only question was, were they all escorts?  They were good-looking enough to be.

“It’s been a while since he’s brought a new one home though,” Howie said.

“It has,” said EJ.  “It’s good to have a young face around again.”

“Hey!” Howie protested.  “I’m only twenty-two!”

The table laughed at him.  Julian looked around at their faces again.  He still stood by his first thought that EJ was the oldest and had to still be in his twenties.  So, they were all quite young.  Howie grumbled at them, and then decided it would be best to ignore them.  He focused on Julian instead.

“So, what’s your sob story?”

Julian blinked at him.  “Pardon?”

“Why did you get picked up?”

Julian opened and closed his mouth, not quite sure what to say.  He looked to Rylan.  He hadn’t been picked up; he’d kind of weaseled his way into working for Blue Boy.  And he was only here now because Rylan couldn’t have him doing anything stupid until he was off the payroll.

“Don’t be shy around us,” EJ said.  “We are certainly in no position to judge you for anything you’ve done.  We’re just an assembly of clichés.”

Julian looked around the table.  Was he expected to chronicle his life story for them?

“For example,” EJ continued when Julian didn’t speak up.  “I had problems with my parents.  I got horrible grades in school.  I had no ambition, no sense of purpose.  I dropped out of high school when I was sixteen and lived on the street for a while.  I got hooked on drugs and tried to commit suicide off the top of the newly under construction Blue Boy building.  Needless to say, Rylan was pissed when the cops called him to tell him about the situation.”  EJ smiled wryly and his eyes were locked on Rylan.  “My punishment was rehab.  And not the hospitalized detoxing kind.  The locked in a room and throwing fits and soiling and vomiting on oneself kind.”  He looked back at Julian.  “Have you ever been through heroine withdrawal?  It ain’t pretty.  And knowing that Rylan would let me get completely hooked on the stuff again just so he could put me through the same torture was enough to keep me away.”  He chuckled.  “Talk about being scared straight.  And here I am.  Clean and sober six years running.”

Julian was impressed.  Should he tell him that?  Applaud?  Then DaNeil spoke.

“I was disowned by my parents for being gay.  I ran around with a youth street gang.  It wasn’t anything hardcore like the Bloods and the Crips or anything.  Just abandoned kids living together and causing trouble.  One night, my friend and I hustled the wrong guys at pool.  They followed us after we left and saw us making out in an alley.  And that pissed them off even more.  That they’d been had by a couple of young punk fags.  They beat us and raped us with whatever was handy.  They left us for dead.  My friend did die.  Rylan found me in time.  Took me to a hospital and offered to let me work for him.  He gave me a second chance at life.”

“I wish I had a better reason for my crap past life,” Sam said.  “I just got caught up in the club scene.  I drank and did _a lot_ of ecstasy.”  He shook his head, smiling kind of embarrassedly.  “There was all kinds of rampant unprotected sex.  I got syphilis, gonorrhea, chancroid, Hepatitis B, scabies.”  Sam had ticked off each disease on his fingers.  He shook his head with a disbelieving laugh.  “I even got dysentery once.  _Dysentery_.  I really have no idea how I got lucky.  I never picked up HIV or herpes or anything else that couldn’t be cleared up with a couple rounds of treatment.  Not that that part was easy.  I contracted two or more at the same time on more than one occasion, which pretty much always lands you in the hospital.  At one point I was in the ICU for weeks.  I was in debt up to my ears.  And even then, I _still_ tried to return to the clubs.  One of the owners recognized me and I guess realized that I was never going to learn my lesson and wind up dead very soon.  He called Rylan.  And Rylan definitely straightened me up.”  He laughed.  “Almost literally.  I kind of like to do women every now and again.”

Everyone at the table (except Rylan of course) snickered.  Julian couldn’t believe the complete train wrecks he was sitting with.  He was almost afraid to hear anymore stories, but Howie was taking his turn now.

“My uncle started molesting me when I was like four or five.  Possibly younger and I just don’t remember it.  Penetration started when I was around ten years old.”  Howie thought for a moment.  “Maybe I was eight.”  He pulled himself out of his memories with a shrug.  “Anyway, my family was way too caught up in honor and tradition to believe anything I told them.  So, I finally ran away when I was in junior high school.  I lived on the streets and got hauled in by the cops every couple of months or so for lewd acts in public.”  Howie gave a cluck of his tongue.  “The Johns kept going to the same damn public restroom no matter how many times it got raided.  Rylan picked me up one night and showed me a better and safer way to make money selling my body.”

Julian raised his eyebrows.  And was Howie grateful to Rylan for this?  He looked around the table.  They all seemed pretty content with their current situations in life.  He looked beside him at Tyler.  Tyler looked back at him and then around the table.  He apparently felt an obligation to share his story as well.  But all he said was, “My parents didn’t approve of me being gay, they kicked me out, I lived on the streets for a couple years and turned tricks, yada, yada, yada.  Then I was taken in by Rylan.”  He shrugged.  “That’s about it.”

Julian was a little horrified.  Tyler had just yada, yada, yada-ed two years of whoring himself out on the streets.  There was no way he could so easily dismiss that.  But, he did.

“So, what’s your sob story?” Howie asked again, but the context was completely different this time.  They thought he was one of them.  Someone who had actually suffered through something truly terrible in his life.  And he had.  The death of his parents had been extremely horrible.  But did it compare to these five’s stories?

“Um.”  Julian looked at his plate and swallowed uneasily.  Everyone waited.  Julian wanted to look at Rylan; he wanted some clue as to what the man was thinking.  But he’d probably get the same uninformative, displeased expression he always got.  “Um.  My parents died.”

The table was quiet.  They were apparently waiting for more of an explanation.  Julian didn’t have anything more.

“Were they mean?” Howie asked.  “Did they not approve of your lifestyle?”

Julian shook his head.  “No, they were very nice.  And, I’m actually not gay.  But if I was they wouldn’t have cared in the least.  They were killed in a car accident this past April.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” DaNeil said.

“Yeah, bummer,” Sam added.

The expression sent a shooting pain through Julian’s heart; it had reminded him of Scott.

“You know, I always wondered,” Howie mused, “Never being loved by your parents or losing loving parents.  Which sucks more?”

“Howie,” EJ admonished softly.

“What?”

“So, why do you work for Blue Boy?” Sam asked.

 _Good question,_ Julian thought.  He really didn’t know.  And what they were really asking him was why Rylan had taken him in.  They weren’t asking it directly, but essentially they were trying to figure out what was wrong with him.

“I’m not—coping well with my parents’ deaths.”

“Ah.”

He wasn’t sure which one of them made the noise, but that was the end of the discussion.  There was no prying.  Someone just asked for the mashed potatoes and once again the chaotic eating resumed.  Afterwards there was quite a mess on the table and in the kitchen.  Rylan got up and left them.  He obviously wasn’t going to be helping with the dishes.

“Hey new guy,” EJ said, draping an arm around Julian’s shoulders.  He dropped a sponge into his hand.  “You’ve got KP duty.”

“What?” Julian asked, completely stunned.

“Hey, just be thankful we’re not making you do it naked,” DaNeil said with a friendly pat to his chest he walked by him.  EJ laughed and left with Tyler and Sam to head into the sitting room.  Howie stayed behind and smiled at him, giving him the full effect of his dimple.

“I’ll help,” he volunteered.

While Julian and Howie worked in the kitchen, the others sat in front of the base of a cabinet at the far end of the room, pulling out board games and puzzles.  They were debating on what to play.  It took a full hour for Julian and Howie to finish the huge task of putting away the leftovers, scrubbing the pans, and wiping down all the surfaces that had been sacrificed to the Thanksgiving gods, and the other four only just then managed to agree on what game to play.

Julian felt like he was in some weird alternate dimension.  The condo looked like Rylan’s from what he could remember, but Julian never would have guessed that the expensive, stylish furniture was actually used for normal everyday things.  Rylan just seemed above that kind of thing.  Then again, maybe he’d bought the cabinet as a way to hide all the stupid stuff his “boys” liked to bring over.  And it was strange looking at them and thinking of them as “boys.”  They had all lived a lifetime’s worth of pain and suffering in the short time they’d been alive.  And they were in their twenties.  Rylan couldn’t be older than thirty-five.  Why did he think of them as his “boys?”  Maybe it was just politer than “whores.”

“Okay, but if we play Trivial Pursuit there will be uneven numbers on the teams,” Sam said.  “Should we give the three person team a handicap of some kind?”

DaNeil scoffed.  “Whatever team has Howie on it already has a handicap.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t worry about numbers,” Rylan said emerging from the back.  “I’ve got some work I’ve got to take care of.”

No one tried to argue with him.  Julian felt bad.  Maybe he should leave.

“Hey new guy!” Sam called out.  “Start serving the desserts so we can eat while we play.  I do want some of all three.  And don’t skimp on them ‘cause I’m getting three.  Three real sized servings.”

“Are you sure you should?” Tyler asked maliciously.  “You’re looking a little pudgy there.  You might lose some clients if you pork up too much.”  Tyler was obviously one of those people who could eat anything and probably still lose weight if he got too much exercise.

“Oh, blow me,” Sam said snarkily.

“For how much?”

“I’ll take Mr. Billings off your hands for a couple weeks.”

“Done.”

They shook hands and Sam started to undo his pants.  Tyler looked startled.

“What, right now?”

Sam smiled at him.  “Why not?”

“Well, you know how much Rylan hates stains.”

Sam leaned forward and grabbed his jaw.  He used his thumb to play with Tyler’s lower lip.

“So swallow.”

Julian was watching the scene unfold with wide eyes.  What on earth was he about to witness?

“Um, guys?” Howie called out.  “I can think of a reason why not.”

They all looked at him and he nodded toward Julian.  Sam pouted.

“Besides, the deal would be bogus anyway, right, Tyler?” Rylan said as he was setting up his laptop at the now cleared dining table.  “You haven’t been servicing Mr. Billings for a while now, correct?”

Tyler actually looked angry with him and Sam slapped Tyler on the shoulder lightly, looking kind of appalled.

“Dude.  You’re _still_ on office duty?”

“Only because _someone_ is being an anal retentive _dick_ ,” Tyler snapped, his eyes on Rylan.

The other escorts desperately tried to hide their smiles and laughter.  Rylan didn’t seem to have even heard him.  He just sat at his computer and waited for it to start up.

“All right, fine,” Sam said.  “Two normal size servings of the pecan pie and pumpkin flavored thingie.  And a small serving of the chocolate mousse.  It’s not really Thanksgiving-y anyway,” he sniffed.

Howie started to pull the desserts out and the others began to set up the game.  Except Tyler who sat on the floor, leaning back on his hands, and still looking rather unhappy.  Julian looked at Rylan; he seemed engrossed in his work.  Julian had considered leaving after finishing the dishes, but he had a feeling that since Rylan had decided he wasn’t going to play that the others would pitch a fit if he un-evened their numbers again.  Once it was sorted out what dessert everyone wanted and they were all seated around the glass coffee table in the living room, they drew numbers out of a hat to determine teams.  He was on Sam’s team.  Sam let out a whoop and hopped off the couch.  He crashed beside Julian on the floor and wrapped an arm around his waist, leaning his chest against Julian’s arm and putting their faces close together.

“Looks like you and I play for the same team now,” he grinned.

“Mm-hmm,” Julian agreed.

Sam pouted and reached around Julian’s waist enough to give his crotch a squeeze.  Julian didn’t react.  Sam sat back.

“I thought you said you were straight!”

“I am.  But being touched by a guy doesn’t bother me.  Though it was rather inappropriate.”

Sam frowned.  “You’re not fun to tease.”

“No, I’m not.  But my friend Sc—”  Julian cut off.  Did he even have a friend named Scott anymore?

“Your friend what?”

Julian shook his head and looked down.  “Nothing.  I just know a guy who’s fun to tease.”

“Okay, so my birthday is next,” Howie said.  “So, our team goes first.”

They began to play the game and it didn’t take long for Julian to realize that it would probably take a while for someone to win.  They were playing the original version of the game that came out in the 70’s, and they were all too young to know a lot of the entertainment and even sports trivia questions.  And the game truly dated itself when DaNeil asked EJ, “This country has the twelve coldest cities in the world.”

EJ answered, “Russia.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” DaNeil said, not sounding sorry at all, “the correct answer is the Soviet Union.”

The group laughed and EJ threw his napkin at him.  After that Julian noticed that Tyler started looking up again.  He was feeling like crap, but his curiosity was still greatly piqued by Tyler’s situation.  Why wouldn’t Rylan let him work as an escort anymore?  It was interesting, but he couldn’t focus on it too much.  Sam was very serious about the game and requiring him to try to reason through every question to come up with an answer even if he had no clue what it was.  He was actually having to think.  Which was difficult because there was conversation going on as well.  He’d been afraid at first that some weird stories of interesting encounters on the job would come up, but he discovered that even if you had a truly unique profession, you didn’t bring your work home with you.  They talked about pretty normal things, which he didn’t know why he was so surprised to learn.  The closest anyone ever got to any boy on boy material was when DaNeil complained about his annoying boyfriend.  Not that he was bored with listening to them, but the most interesting thing that happened all night was when Rylan made a phone call.  It was a short conversation, but Rylan looked over at him at least three times.

Two hours after they started, Tyler and EJ’s team finally won.  And to Julian’s dismay, they couldn’t stop until they found out who got second place.  It took another thirty minutes for Sam and Julian to take it.  It hadn’t been that he hadn’t enjoyed it; quite the contrary he’d had a lot of fun.  But that had been the problem.  He felt guilty.  He was a horrible person.  He didn’t deserve to be happy today.  He didn’t deserve to be treated kindly.  And if any of them knew the things he had done, they probably wouldn’t have been so nice to him.

Rylan finally shutdown his computer once they started to clean up the game.  Julian wondered if he’d just been playing Solitaire the whole time or something.  Then there was a lot more noise as they gathered their coats and thanked Rylan and each other and themselves for all their hard work.  They all seemed to be in some kind of hurry and Julian glanced at his watch.  It was barely after 11:00.  Howie noticed the motion.

“We, uh, we have work tonight,” he explained.

“Really?” Julian asked.

Sam grinned at him as he wrapped a scarf around his neck.  “After midnight on Thanksgiving—after all the brawling and aired dirty laundry and the family and in-laws have gone to bed—it’s one of our busiest nights of the year.”

“For some of us anyway,” Tyler grumbled.

DaNeil patted him on the back and left out the front door.  The rest followed and just as Tyler was leaving, Rylan called out his name.  He stopped, but didn’t turn back to the man.  Julian wasn’t especially near them, but he felt that maybe there was about to be a personal conversation.  He didn’t know if he should excuse himself to the bathroom or just walk into the kitchen.  Rylan stood beside Tyler and didn’t say anything.  After a couple of stubborn moments, Tyler let out an aggravated sigh and opened the backpack he had with him.  He pulled out a manila folder and held it out to Rylan while glaring at the ceiling.  Rylan opened the file and flipped through a couple pages.  The best Julian could tell from where he was trying not to be nosy was that it contained some kind of medical charts.  Rylan closed the file and handed it back to Tyler.

“Okay then.  Six more weeks.”

Tyler rolled his eyes and shook his head as he jammed the folder back in his bag.  He gave Rylan an irritated glare.

“You know, you can’t stop me from having recreational sex.”

“Do what you want,” Rylan shrugged.  “I don’t care if you live or die.  I just don’t want you dying underneath one of my clients.”

Tyler gave him an unpleasant look and started to leave.

“Hey,” Rylan said softly.  Tyler stopped, but didn’t look at him.  Rylan reached up with a hand and brushed his knuckles against Tyler’s cheek.  The young man stopped scowling a little and glanced over at Rylan.  Something passed between them, but Julian didn’t know what.  Then Tyler walked out the door and shut it behind him.  Rylan looked over at Julian.

“Well,” Julian said.  “Looks like I should be on my way too.”

“Are you joking?”

Julian gulped.  Had he done something wrong?  Was Rylan going to ream him out for talking back to a cop while it could still lead back to him and his company?

Rylan hitched a thumb in the direction of the living room.  “You can do the dessert dishes now.”

Julian’s jaw dropped.  Say what?  He had to do the dessert dishes too?  He clomped over to the living room.  He supposed he should have known Rylan wasn’t going to do anything.  And it really was the least he could do.  He had gotten a free, home-cooked Thanksgiving meal that had been really good.  And he’d had a good time with them.  It had felt nice.  In some weird, jacked up way…it had felt like a family.  Not like it had been _his_ family of course.  But just that they had become each other’s family since they no longer had their real families.  But still, he felt like he would have been welcome to be a part of it.  He gritted his teeth as he stacked plates together.  Right up until they found out he was a violent, asshole, attempted rapist.

He swallowed painfully as he put the dishes in the sink.  That was the first time he’d allowed that word to enter his mind.  He bowed his head and the dishes clinked as they tipped out of his numb fingers.

“Hey, careful with those.  Or it’s coming out of your paycheck.”

Julian raised his head.  “And how many paychecks would it take me to pay off one of these?”

“More than one.”

“Well, that’ll be hard to do once I’m fired.”

Rylan didn’t answer him, but he remained in the kitchen.  Julian turned on the faucet and started washing the dishes by hand.  He and Howie had already filled up the dishwasher and turned it on.  He kept his eyes focused on his work.  Rylan was watching him.  Why?  Could incubi read minds as well?  Did he know what horrible things he had done?  He needed to distract the beast.  He did his best to let out something that sounded like a natural laugh.

“You know, it’s funny,” he said.  “I thought you ran an escort company.  Now it seems more like a halfway house for troubled boys.”

Rylan harrumphed.  “Don’t go thinking I have a heart of gold or anything.  There are a lot of boys on the streets.  I just take in the ones I know I can make money off of.”

Julian smiled as he put the dishes in the rack in the second sink.  “I don’t think anyone would ever mistake you for having a heart of gold.”  He turned off the water and turned toward the man.  “Maybe someone just might start to believe that there’s actually something there.”  He placed two fingers in the middle of Rylan’s chest.  “Something other than an inky black bottomless pit that sucks in all warmth and light.”  He gave Rylan a cheeky smile and the man fought extremely hard to hold back his own smile.  He mostly failed.  “Well,” Julian said, drying his hands off with a towel.  “I guess now I really should be on my way.”

He was on his way to the door when Rylan asked, “And then what?”   His tone stopped Julian cold.  The light, open rapport they’d just developed was gone.

“Will there be another theatrical display on the street?  Will you batter a trashcan to pieces with your iPod?”

Julian whipped around.  “That was.”  He stopped.  Rylan was stalking toward him.

“That was what?”

Julian took in a breath and crossed his arms.  “I was just angry.  Because I couldn’t find any help.  But, you obviously helped me.  I feel much better now.”

Rylan stopped a couple feet away.  “This is you, ‘better?’  You’re not better.  I didn’t help you.  I didn’t do a damn thing.  You’re just calm now.  That’s all.”

Julian worked his jaw back and forth.  That was kind of true.  And hadn’t he already acknowledged that arguing with Rylan was a wasted effort?

“Look,” the man said, “I’m not going to make you stay here and I _definitely_ don’t want to talk about your feelings, but what will you do when you get home?”

Julian’s mouth tightened.  What _would_ he do?  He couldn’t face his friends.  He might never be able to.  But so what?  Who said he had to be well adjusted?  There were tons of unhappy, fucked up people in the world and there was no reason why he couldn’t be one of them.

“What are you so angry about?” Rylan asked.

Julian felt himself fracturing again.  “My parents are _dead_ ,” he reminded the man.  Why was he such an insensitive ass?

“So what?” Rylan shrugged.

Julian shook his head in disbelief.  Was this guy for real?

“So what?  _So what_?  They’re gone, _that’s_ what.  And maybe to someone who’s never had any parents or anyone else in the world who’s ever cared about him, it’s hard to understand why that might bother someone.  But, I’m sure you’ve watched TV or gone to the movies before.  Perhaps you’ve read a book where people have these kinds of relationships?  Just try to imagine that.”

“Oh, I get that,” Rylan said, not reacting to Julian’s snide sarcasm, which he thought was kind of strange.  “I just want to know why you’re so mad that they’re dead.  What’s the reason?  What’s the point?”

Julian put his hands to his head.  It was like he was talking to a retarded kid.  “I’ll never see them again!  _Ever_.  I won’t get to have them there for my graduation.  Any of them.  They won’t be able to help me move into my first college dorm.  They’ll never meet my wife or know their grandchildren.  It _sucks_.  Is that a good enough reason for you?”

“Sooo…you’re mad at _them_ for dying?  For leaving you.”

“What?  No.  No.  It’s not their fault.”

“So, you’re mad at the person who caused the accident?”

“Yes!  I don’t know.”  Julian felt a squirming in his chest.  He felt like Rylan was judging him.  Like he was doing something wrong.  Hadn’t everyone said that there was no wrong way to grieve?  “It’s just stupid.  It’s so stupid that they’re dead.  It’s just so fucking stupid!”

“I agree, it’s stupid.  By why are you mad?  Just be sad and move on.”

Julian felt that explosion behind his eyes again.  Without allowing himself to think about how suicidal the action might be, he grabbed Rylan by the shirt and pulled himself up to get closer to his face.

“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about!  _Get over it?!_   I can’t just get over it!  And it’s not fair!  It’s _not_ fair!  Why me?!  Why _them_?!  My friends are all so fucking patronizing.  They just say ‘we understand, we understand.’  They don’t understand anything!  Just like you!”  He shook Rylan hard.  “You all won’t understand it unless you feel it too!”

Rylan shifted his weight but didn’t try to get away from Julian.  “Maybe,” he said.  “But so what if we don’t understand?”

“Because it’s irritating!  It’s _infuriating_!  I hate their fucking pity!”

“What’s wrong with being pitied?  It means someone feels for you.  It means someone cares enough about you to give a shit about your problems.  Most people will just shrug and say, ‘People die.’  Why the hell are you so special?”

Julian clenched his fingers tighter in Rylan’s shirt.  Every muscle in his body was straining and starting to hurt with the tension.

“Why am I not?!” he forced out through gritted teeth.  “Why does it not matter that it happened to me?!  Why aren’t my parents important?!  They were _so_ important to me!  How can they not matter?!  Why _goddamnit?!_   _WHY?!_ ”

Julian kept his grip on Rylan, but closed his eyes and bent forward at the waist, ready to let out an infuriated scream.  But he choked it back.  Rylan let out a short exasperated noise and grabbed Julian’s arms.  “Don’t do that,” he said, almost to himself.  It made Julian look up at him.

“Do what?”

He could see Rylan’s eyes looking over his face; he seemed to be debating about something.  Then he spoke.

“Julian.  Your parents are not important.  And there is no reason for it.  They’re just not.  The world doesn’t care that they died.  The world didn’t stop for them.  And it won’t stop for you.  And it’s nothing personal.  That’s just the way it is.”

There was something wrong with his body.  He could feel it.  It was too hot.  It was vibrating.  The tremors started small, and then grew and intensified.  It happened so quickly, almost instantaneously.  And then everything he’d felt slipping away from him…Everything that had been slowing disappearing inside of him and fading and sinking away…It suddenly and violently flung out of him.  It pushed up through his skin, burning him over every inch of his body.  He could feel it pouring out and yet it seemed to be clinging to him, sticking just to the surface, compounding and smothering him.  And Rylan’s words echoed in his ears, through his mind, down to his heart.  And he knew it wasn’t true.  It was _not_ true.

“ _NO!  Nooooo!_ ”

Julian screamed.  He raked in a breath and screamed.  It was a howling, aching scream that overtook every sense he had.  He could feel it ripping out of his throat, he could see his body shaking with it, and it became the only sound that existed in the world.  And once wasn’t enough.  He did it over and over again, feeding on its intensity and pushing more and more out.  His body felt a jolt and he realized he’d hit the floor, but he couldn’t stop screaming.  He beat at the floor for being in his way.  He pounded at it with his fists.  The violence of the motion and the pain he caused himself made him need to scream more.

An eternity passed.  Or maybe time stopped.  Maybe the world finally did stop for him.  But if life had gone on without him, he had no idea how much time had passed.  He would have gladly gone on screaming forever, but his body gave out on him.  He wasn’t sure if it happened all at once, or if it happened in increments.  When he became aware of himself again, he was lying spread out on the floor.  His hands and arms throbbed.  His throat was shredded.  Tears were drying on his face.  And he was staring at the leg of a couch.  He could feel himself breathing evenly.  A tear dripped over the bridge of his nose.  They weren’t drying.  They were still falling freely.  So he let them go.  It would have been too much effort to try to stop them, and he was exhausted.  He stared at the couch and cried.  He might have cried for hours.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to the couch leg, though his throat didn’t cooperate.  It was too dry and raw to produce any actual noise anymore.  “I’m so sorry, Mom.  Dad.  I’m sorry.  You were important to me.  You are…so important to me.”  The failed attempts at speaking nearly caused his throat to implode.  He closed his eyes and tried to relax.  And he lay there.  He felt worn out.  He needed sleep.  No.  He needed unconsciousness.

The hand on his shoulder had other ideas.  It pulled on him and he ignored it.  He couldn’t move.  He’d lost that ability.  He was paralyzed.  The hand was insistent.  It turned him partially over and another hand grabbed his other shoulder.  They forced him to sit up.  His eyes rolled around in his head and then he focused them.  Rylan was kind of scowling at him.  Then he shoved a tissue into his face and looked down at his carpet.

“Well, it’s a good thing the maid is coming tomorrow,” he frowned.

Julian looked down.  There was a large, dark ring on the carpet from his tears and snot.  Rylan grabbed him by the wrists and pulled him to his feet.  Every muscle in his body protested the movement, but Rylan forced him through it.  He was aware that the man was trying to take him somewhere, so he just went.  He wouldn’t have been able to stand up to him even if he’d wanted to.  He could barely muster the energy required to sniff back all the gunk that had slid into his throat when he’d been forced to his feet.  And that he only did because it was partially blocking his airway.  He swallowed it down and regretted it.  His throat was a column of pain.  He wished there was some way he could just remove it while it healed.  Rylan led him into a large, white bathroom.

“Take off your clothes,” the man ordered him.

He didn’t comply right away.  Not because he felt uncomfortable stripping in front of him, but because his body refused to go through the motions.  Rylan finished turning on the shower and walked over to him looking a little irritated.  He pulled Julian’s T-shirt over his head and his shoulders ached with the movement.  Rylan started to undo his pants and Julian figured as long as he was going to do it, he’d let him.  But he stopped once the fly was undone.

“Take them off,” he ordered again and left the room.

Julian dropped his head back and let out a weary sigh.  He put his hands to the waistband and pushed on the fabric.  It wouldn’t move.  He took in a breath and tried again.  This time he managed to get his jeans and underwear to slide over his hips.  He pushed them down as far as he could without having to bend his body too much.  Then he used his feet to slowly inch them down his legs.  He forced the fabric into a wad at his ankles and then tiredly stepped out of them.  He trudged to the shower and couldn’t be bothered to close the glass door once he was inside.  He fell against the wall and sighed in fatigue.  He had no idea if the water was hot or cold.  He couldn’t feel it.

“Just wash off.”

Julian opened his eyes, his heart catching in his mouth.  He’d forgotten Rylan existed.  He turned to look at him.

“What?” he mouthed

“Just rinse off in there.  Then get out.”

Julian really wanted to stay in for a while.  At least until he could feel the water, but he obediently scrubbed his face with his hands and used a bar of soap to get off some of the grit from the day.  He lamentably turned off the water and stumbled out of the shower.  Rylan caught his arm and led him to the bathtub.  He helped him in and immediately Julian was aware that the water in the tub was almost scalding hot.  It wasn’t quite at the point where it was painful to stay in it, but it was close.  Rylan made him sit down and lay back in it.  It was too hot to stay in for a long time.  It would make him feel sick.  Then he felt a cold cloth across his forehead.  His body tensed at the extreme sensations.  And then his head cleared.  He relaxed into the hot water, his muscles almost dissolving in it.  The tension melted away.  The steam assuaged his raw throat and soothed his aching lungs.  And he felt he could stay in the hot bath because the cool cloth kept him from breaking out into a sweat.  It kept him calm and tranquil.

He stayed in the bath a long time.  He stayed until the water began to cool off.  And Rylan stayed with him, dipping the cloth on his head in more cool water when he needed it.  When at last he had to get out, Rylan helped him and then handed him a towel before leaving the room again.  Julian half-heartedly wiped the water off his body.  He was completely pruney.  Rylan returned with some clothes.  He made a face when he saw that Julian was still dripping wet and dropped the clothes off on the sink counter.  He grabbed Julian and began toweling him off.  It felt good to have his muscles worked on, almost like a horse getting a rubdown after a hard race.  He braced himself on the sink and closed his eyes at the sensation.  He knew he really shouldn’t show how much he liked it.  It would probably just tick Rylan off.

“What is this?” Rylan asked.

Julian opened his eyes and from the mirror in front of him saw Rylan looking at his back.

“It’s a septagram.”  His voice was hoarse to the point of being little more than a rasping whisper, but he was able to talk.

“I can count,” Rylan grumbled.  His finger traced one of the points on his back.  “What does it mean?”

Julian felt choked again.  He bowed his head.  “It doesn’t mean anything anymore,” he whimpered.

“No,” Rylan commanded.  He wrapped an arm across Julian’s clavicles and pulled him back, making him stand up straight.  “Don’t start crying again,” he said gentler.

Julian sniffed back a couple sobs and then took in a deep breath.  He let it out and fell back into Rylan.  He felt warm.  Which made sense, he was a human being.  Julian had always imagined Rylan’s skin being cool to the touch, like a vampire or something.  But of course, he was a human.  A rather volatile human in fact.  He should be hot if nothing else.  Julian leaned back into the warmth.  Rylan was so much bigger than him, he could completely envelope him.  It made him feel hidden.  Protected.  Safe.

“Come on,” the man said.

He stepped away from Julian and put the spare clothes he’d brought into his arms.  Julian didn’t want to put them on.   It was more work.  But he knew if he didn’t Rylan would do it for him.  And somehow _that_ would just be going too far.  It was a pair of pants and a T-shirt, both made out of soft jersey cotton, but they fit him perfectly.  These obviously weren’t Rylan’s clothes.  Did the man keep all manner of styles and sizes of men’s clothing on hand for whatever circumstances may arise?

“This way,” Rylan’s voice called from the hallway.

Julian looked at himself in the mirror for the first time.  He thought he would look haggard or sick.  But he just looked tired.  He turned away from himself and followed Rylan’s voice.  He led him to a small bedroom that contained only a double bed, a dresser, and a nightstand.  A small, dim lamp on the nightstand provided the only light.  Rylan had the covers pulled back on the bed, so Julian climbed in and scooched down into the soft, warm mattress.  Rylan actually tucked him into the covers up to his chin.  Then he sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at him.  He didn’t seem nearly as scary in the soft light.  Even still, Julian swallowed nervously.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  His voice still scraped out of him.  “For all the screaming.  It must have freaked out your neighbors.”

Rylan gave him a little smile.  “With my line of work…I had the walls soundproofed the week I moved in here.”

Julian laughed and then grimaced in pain.  He groaned and settled back into the cushy pillow.

“How are you feeling?” Rylan asked.

“Like a colossal idiot.”

“Good.  That means you’re self-aware again.”

“Yeah.  I am so…”  His brow creased and his chin started to shake.  “I am in so much trouble.  My friends are never going to forgive me.”  He took in a shuddering breath, tears welling in his eyes again, and he could feel the tension and strain returning.

“Shh, shh.”  Julian felt a soothing hand on his brow.  It smoothed out the lines, which released the tension in his head.  He felt Rylan’s fingers run alternately over both his cheeks.  Sometimes with the tips, sometimes with the knuckles.  He spoke softly to him and Julian calmed down again.

“Don’t worry about it now,” Rylan said.  “When you see them again you can fix it.”

Julian shook his head.  “You don’t understand.  What I did was unforgivable.”

Rylan raised an eyebrow.  “Like…are you going to get arrested?”

Julian smiled against his will.  “No, nothing like that.”  Then he thought of Will.  “Exactly.  It’s just.  What I did.  They’ll never be _able_ to forgive me.”

“Then they’re not really your friends.”

“No.  You don’t know what I did.”

Rylan was quiet for a moment.  Then he said, “Well, if it’s really that bad, then you’ll just have to earn back everything you threw away.”

All the fear in Julian came out in his next whispered sentence: “What if they won’t let me?”

“Then it’s over.  If you’ve lost them forever, then you’ve lost them forever.  You’ll just have to learn to live with that.”

Julian felt tears coming on again, his face scrunching up in despair.  “You’re not very comforting, you know that?”

“I’m not your fairy godmother.  I can’t wave a wand and fix all your mistakes.  All you can do now is hope that when you lashed out at them your character was strong enough to hold you back and keep you from doing something _truly_ unforgivable.”

Julian clutched the covers in his hands.  “What if I wasn’t that strong?”

“Cross that bridge _only_ if you come to it.  Do you understand what I mean?”

Julian sniffed, his rush of emotion fading again with Rylan’s calming voice.  “Kind of like, don’t cry over milk that hasn’t even been spilt yet?”

“Yes.  Now before we get into an adage battle, I’m going to bed.  I think you should rest some.  If you want, you can leave as soon as I walk out the door.  Or you can sleep a couple hours and then go.  If you want to stay the night, please do.  And…”  He held up a round, blue tablet between his thumb and index finger.  “If you want to make sure you _can’t_ think anymore tonight…”  He placed the pill beside a glass of water on the nightstand.

The man switched the lamp off and walked to the patch of light spilling in from the open door.  Just as his large frame was silhouetted in the block of light, Julian called out to him.  He paused and from the movement of the dark figure Julian thought he turned back to him.

“Are you going to fire me tomorrow?”

“Probably.”

He started to leave again.

“Rylan?”

He turned back.

“Thank you.”

“Go to sleep.”

The man left the room and closed the door behind him.  The room was dark and quiet, but it wasn’t scary.  It was comforting.  Once again, he felt safe.  He turned to his side.  He couldn’t even see the table though it must be less than a foot from his face.  He knew he didn’t need the pill though.  He was already asleep.


	18. Chapter 18

Layla

 

Sunday, November 27, 2005

 

Layla McDermott placed one foot in front of the other, walking along the edge of the sidewalk and trying to keep her balance with her arms held out to her sides.  She wasn’t trying very hard.  She kept stepping off to the street below.  The walk from her family’s apartment to Calverton wasn’t very far, which meant they lived in a bad part of town.  They didn’t live in the projects though.  Those were about two blocks down.  They just lived where all the residents of the projects came to push their drugs and hide their bodies.  And it was her fault her family had to live there.  Sort of.

Layla checked the road and then crossed the street.  The high chain link fence that surrounded the school rattled softly in the cold wind blowing through the city.  She trailed her hand along the fence as she walked toward the back of the building.  She wondered if she still would have gone to school here if her family had stayed in their nice suburb.  They’d used to live in a house in the town to the north of the city.  It had been small, only three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but for a young couple with three little girls, it had been nice.  There’d been a yard (a tiny yard, but a yard nonetheless), a small jungle gym, a tire swing, and a dog.  Layla couldn’t remember the dog’s name anymore.  She’d been eleven when they’d had to give it away, but that part of her life just seemed so far away.  The time in that house was a vague, happy memory, almost like it had happened to someone else.  Though the event that had caused them to move definitely wasn’t someone else’s memory.  It was hers.

Layla reached the back of the school and bent over to search the base of the fence for the perfectly sized stick that was a universal secret among the Calverton students.  She found it in its worn place in the ground and stuck it up through the holes of the fence.  She pressed herself against the metal and felt blindly around with the stick.  Then she felt the gate’s latch and pushed up on it.  The gate swung open and Layla returned the stick to its place.  She entered the elementary school’s playground and swung the gate shut behind her.  The bright pink, plastic tortoise in the middle of the playground was out of place amongst all the silver metal of the jungle gym and monkey bars and swing set.  Only the small grouping of four metal bouncy animals had any color to them, and it had mostly worn off over the years.  Layla climbed into the tortoise through one of the holes in its shell and sat down in the cedar chips, reclining against the pink stairs that led out though its mouth.

She closed her eyes and let the memory come to her.  She had gone through phases where she’d tried to forget it or tried to fight it.  But she found that just letting herself remember it was easiest.  She’d been eleven years old.  She had been given the lectures and the instructions.  Always walk against the traffic.  Don’t talk to strangers.  Don’t accept anything from strangers.  Don’t walk up to a stranger’s car even if they ask for help.  Just keep walking and go home.  So when the beat up silver van had pulled up beside her and the clean, balding man had leaned out the window and asked if she liked puppies, she’d ignored all of it and said yes.  The man had asked her to come closer, so she could see the one in his lap.  She’d walked over to the van and the man had opened the door.

“It’s cute, isn’t it?” he’d asked.

Now that she was older, she knew what she’d been looking at, but the memory didn’t translate to her adult mind.  In her head the man still gripped some kind of creature in his hand.  Something with no eyes or mouth, but a squirming, vein-y thing like a giant worm.  She’d been too confused to be frightened by it.  She’d been expecting a puppy, not a worm.  And she certainly wasn’t the kind of girl who was afraid of bugs.  She’d been so transfixed by the thing in the man’s hand that she didn’t see him reach out for her.  It had happened so fast.  She’d been pulled inside and shoved into the back.  She’d fallen to her knees on the dirty blanket covering the bed of the van.  When she’d tried to stand up she’d fallen down again because the van lurched to the side.  The drive had been short, and she’d been aware of that at the time, but it had also been endless.  She’d been scared.  Scared of the fact that she didn’t know what was going on.  She hated not understanding things.  Then the van had stopped and the man had crawled around from the front seat.  He’d grabbed her hand and forced it onto his giant worm.  It had been hot and sticky with something.  He’d made a weird sound once her tiny hand was on him.  Then he’d leaned forward and kissed her.  It had been uncomfortable and confusing.  He was slobbering on her and she didn’t know why.  She didn’t understand what was happening and her confusion made her more scared as the man touched her in other places.  She hadn’t screamed or fought.  She hadn’t even thought to try to get away.  She had simply lain there.  She didn’t know how long she was with the man, but she’d only been an hour late getting home.  The man had dropped her back off where he’d picked her up, so she didn’t get lost.  She just walked home.  It had hurt when she’d walked home.  She did remember that.  But not terribly so.

Layla reached up to one of the ledges created by the folded pink plastic shell.  She felt around until she found the pack of cigarettes and lighter she stored there.  She pulled them down and looked inside the box.  She’d started to think that someone had found her stash and was pinching her cigarettes, so she’d counted them the last time she’d been there.  Sure enough, two were missing.  It didn’t matter though.  She didn’t smoke that often.  She placed a cigarette between her lips and lit it up.  She took a shallow drag and held it in her mouth and then let it out.  She’d been told before that she didn’t smoke right.  You were supposed to inhale the smoke all the way to your lungs, but she didn’t like doing that.  So, she didn’t.  That might have also been the reason why she could get away with only smoking once every month or so.  She didn’t really get addicted to the nicotine.  She took another drag and leaned her head back.

Her mother had freaked.  Gone absolutely ape-shit crazy.  There had been screaming and crying and swearing and eventually a hospital and then police and lawyers and search parties and a Mothers Against Predators (MAP) task force.  They never found the man, though there were reports that he had approached other children.  Layla had been the first and only one to actually stop and talk to him.  That was what she carried around with her.  Even after all the therapy and acknowledging that she was just a child and it hadn’t been her fault, she’d always blamed herself for talking to the man.  Every eleven year old knew not to talk to strangers.  That part _had_ been her fault.  And as a result, her mother had decided that the worst predators were in the suburbs.  That’s where the real sickos were.  There was gang violence and general thugs and hooligans in the city, but a child that grew up there also became street smart.  So, her family had packed up and moved to the city.  And while her father’s salary had been able to cover the mortgage payment of a tiny house in a little town, it was only enough to get them a two bedroom apartment in a nicer part of the city or a three bedroom just outside the projects.  Her mother’s pregnancy had forced them to take the three bedroom.

Layla stubbed out her depleted cigarette and made sure the butt was completely out before stuffing it in her pocket.  If she started leaving debris behind the kids would notice and tell the teachers.  And then her little fortress of solitude would be compromised.  She thought about getting another one out, but she didn’t really want it.  So, she put the pack and lighter back into a different cubbyhole.  Maybe that would keep whoever the thief was from finding them again.  At least for a little while.

She’d gotten lucky.  She had no real ill-effects from the incident.  No nightmares, no screaming fits, no self-esteem issues.  She’d always felt that she grew up as normally as any other girl.  Except when her friends started to get crushes on boys, she felt nothing.  She didn’t like boys.  She didn’t like to talk to them because she thought they were stupid.  She didn’t like to play with them because she thought they cheated.  She didn’t like to touch them because their skin was always hot.  But she didn’t completely blame this on the man from the silver van.  She knew he had a lot to do with it, but her father was a little controlling.  Of her mother and her and all of her sisters.  And she’d blossomed early.  She’d always been pretty, with her pale skin and dark hair and eyes.  Everyone thought she was like some kind of Snow White, but really her dark features just came from an Indian grandmother on her mother’s side.  The curry-eating kind, not the obese, casino-owning kind.  And her prettiness had developed into beauty, about the same time she’d turned thirteen and had filled out and gotten curvy.  Boys and men had taken notice.  They shouted at her and whistled and made catcalls.  When women were attracted to men, they didn’t do that.  Why were men so stupid?

It was just so much easier to be with someone like Caitlyn.  She understood her moods, liked the same things, she was soft and warm, and most importantly…she didn’t have that stupid gigantic worm making her act like a retard for nine-tenths of her life.  And it wasn’t just that she liked her because of her missing anatomy, she did like her body.  She liked being with her and kissing her and having sex with her.  It wasn’t hard and it wasn’t demanding and it was never scary.  It took care of her needs and gave her a friendship on top of it.  It was just so much easier to be with Caitlyn, except when it wasn’t.  From simply them both being girls, they did have a lot of common interests, but they were quite different.  They fought all the time and Layla always wondered that if she had some other girl she could start seeing instead if she would still keep going back to Caitlyn.

Even not having someone else, it was kind of ridiculous that they kept getting back together.  Almost daily they got into some kind of disagreement.  Over stupid things like whether or not an outfit was cute.  Sometimes they got into tiffs and would walk away in a huff.  They were just incompatible.  The fact that they both liked girls just wasn’t enough.  And _that_ was a bone of contention between them.  Their first real fight had been because of Layla’s reluctance to get physically involved with Caitlyn.  She had told Caitlyn that she just wasn’t ready for those kinds of things.  Caitlyn had declared that it was because she liked boys.  Layla had vehemently denied the accusation.  She did not like boys.  Two and a half years later she still remembered Caitlyn’s exact reply: “Just because you don’t like boys, doesn’t mean you aren’t attracted to them.”

But the thing was, she _wasn’t_ attracted to boys.  She had no desire for them.  And she was repulsed every time she felt their hot skin anywhere near her.  But Caitlyn had made her angry.  She’d decided to go ahead and prove her _right_.  She’d wanted to see her face when she caught her easily making out with some guy when she could barely even kiss her.  But her search for an eligible candidate had been hopeless.  She didn’t like boys.  She didn’t like to look at them let alone have to even shake hands with one.  What would she do with their lips?

Caitlyn had always joked that if she was ever going to be with a boy it would have to be Will Harder because he was pretty enough to be a girl.  But Layla didn’t see that.  He was still a boy.  A nasty, wormy boy.  She’d never paid much attention to him no matter how smart or beautiful or athletic he was.  He was a boy.  What was there to notice?  Besides, if she used him, Caitlyn would just assume that she chose him because he was girly.  She’d thought she needed a manlier guy.  A big one with muscles.  Jake Patterson had always turned an eye to her.  This was, of course, before Antoinette Bixby’s tits had grown in.  It wouldn’t have taken much encouragement to get Jake to kiss her in public.  And it had to be somewhere public because otherwise it would have had no meaning if Caitlyn couldn’t witness it.  She’d actually gotten close enough to Jake to touch him before she’d chickened out.  She’d reached her hand out, felt that dry heat radiating from his skin, and run away.  She just couldn’t do it.  _She didn’t like boys._

In her hasty retreat she’d rounded a blind corner and crashed into someone.  She’d apologized and helped pick up books without even looking to see who she’d bowled over.  She remembered reading the cover of one of the books: _Introductory Quantum Mechanics_.  And it had only gotten weirder from there.

 

Layla raised an eyebrow.  Did Calverton even offer this course?  A hand reached out to take the book back from her, touching hers at it did.  She looked up.  Will Harder was looking irked with her.  But his nasty look meant nothing.  His hand, his skin…it was cool.  And it didn’t repulse her to touch him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking and sounding quite put out that he even had to bother to inquire.

She said the first thing that popped into her head.  “Would you be able to make out with a girl with absolutely no emotional attachment and no expectation that anything more was going to happen?”

He didn’t look at her strangely.  He didn’t even quirk an eyebrow.  He just said, “Yes.”

“Would you be willing to with me?” she asked, forcing the question out before she could think it through.

He made kind of a non-committal, inconvenienced face and checked his watch.  “When?  I have soccer practice now.”

Layla was a little bewildered by his response.  She didn’t have much experience with boys—okay, she didn’t have any experience with boys—but she didn’t think one would react like this.

“O-oh.  Um, tomorrow?”

“Nope.  Practice again.  And there’s chemistry club on Wednesday.  I’m free Thursday.”

Thursday…Caitlyn had an after school activity on Thursday.  “Um, that doesn’t really work for me.”

“Friday then.  We can go to the central park after school.  The days are getting longer now.”

That wouldn’t work, Caitlyn had to be able to see them.  “Do you have a free period?”

He frowned.  “I have study hall fourth period if that’s what you mean.”

Layla thought about what time that was.  Caitlyn had first lunch.  If she skipped English class she might be able to set it up right.

“Would that be okay?  To meet during fourth period?  By the downstairs lockers, near the civics wing.”  Caitlyn always ate at the same table every day.  It was one at the edge of the cafeteria that had a sliver of a view of one of the hallways.  Layla would sometimes take a bathroom pass during English and go down to the civics hall to wave to her.

“Eh.  Sure,” Will said.  “See you then.”

He started to leave.  Layla was a little miffed.

“Hey.”  He turned back.  “Aren’t you even curious why I’m asking you to do this?”

“No.  I don’t care.  If you’re a lesbian and are just curious or doing it as a dare, so what?  But based on your specific scheduling needs and location it seems more likely that it’s for revenge or to make someone jealous.  It seems like it might be fun to participate.”

Then he left.  Layla looked after him.  He was a weird kid.  She knew he was insanely popular and even people who hated him kind of liked him, but she wondered if all those people knew how…detached he was.

The next day her nerves had her in a strangle hold.  She clutched the straps of her backpack anxiously as she walked down the empty halls.  What if yesterday had been a fluke?  What if she got there and his skin was all hot and gross now?  Would he get angry if he took the time to come meet her and she backed out?  Or what if he did things to her?  Uninvited things.  She made a soft whimpering noise as she trudged on.  Was she really that angry with Caitlyn?

He was waiting for her at the lockers.  He was leaning against them, playing with his cell phone.  His hair was as dark as her own and fell in glossy locks to his collar.  He looked sweet.  He looked harmless.  Which meant he was the most dangerous of them all.  He didn’t look up from his phone until she was right beside him.  Then he put it in his bag and pushed the strap from his shoulder, allowing the bag to thump softly on the floor.  He turned to her and looked at her with breathtaking green eyes.  Literally, breathtaking.  She choked on her next inhalation and had to suck in an ungraceful breath.  His expression didn’t change, but she could see in his eyes that he laughing at her.  He had been expecting this reaction from her.  Lesbian or not, she was still a woman and he was Will Harder.  She scowled at him and he dropped the James Bond look.  But he didn’t do anything after that.  He didn’t grab her and he didn’t ask to get started.

Layla took in a breath and held it as she reached for his hand.  She touched the back of it with two of her fingers, and then she gently grasped it.  It was still cool.  She would later come to find out that that wasn’t a result of a psychological acceptance of Will.  Every girl who ever had the good fortune to be with him all said he had cool skin.  He blamed it on poor circulation.

“So, is your girlfriend here yet?” he asked.  “I actually can’t stay long.  I’m helping Mr. Kilgore out with an experiment.”

“Oh, sorry.”  She dropped his hand.  “You can leave.”

“No way.  Let’s put the bitch in her place.”

“That’s not what this is!”

He smiled teasingly at her and she felt so gullible.

“I’m playing.”

She looked away from him.  Being made a fool of by a boy wouldn’t help her start to like them.  She looked back in alarm when he stepped forward.  She watched, terrified as he leaned closer.  She realized that if she had managed to ask someone like Jake Patterson she would have panicked at seeing his face come closer.  But how could anyone be scared of something so beautiful?

They were the same height, so he just tilted his head and pressed his lips to hers.  They were dry.  And a little warm.  But it wasn’t the bad kind.  It was just a peck.  He pulled back after a scant two seconds.  She considered her first kiss from a boy.  It wasn’t so scary.

“Oh, good grief,” he rolled his eyes.  “I’m gone.”  He started to reach for his bag.

“No wait!” Layla cried and grabbed him by the sweater vest.  She pulled him forward and planted a kiss on his lips.  The little bugger didn’t even act surprised.  He just put his hands on her waist and kissed her back.  And it wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t scary.  In fact, it was kind of nice.  She could do this.  She could—!  Layla’s eyes shot open and her body tensed.  Holy crap that was a tongue.  She yanked back.

“What are you doing?!”

He shrugged.  “I have a philosophy.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“There’s no point in even stepping up to bat unless you know you can at least single off the pitcher.”

“Okay, I don’t follow baseball, so you’re going to have to explain that.”

“A single is when the player gets a base hit.”

She stared blankly.

“Meaning, he at least gets to first base.”

“Ah.  First base.  Forgive my naivety, but what exactly does that entail?”

Will stepped forward and licked her lips.  It was stupid, but she gasped in surprise, opening her mouth so that he could push inside of her.  He held her biceps and kept her from stepping back.  Layla couldn’t believe this was happening.  It was just weird.  There was some guy’s tongue…in her mouth.  Why did people do this?  Who was the first person who thought, “Gee, I think it’d be a super cool idea to put my tongue in someone else’s mouth?”  It was just gross and weird and— _ohh_.

Layla heard an embarrassing “mm-ing” sound.  And God help her, she was making it.  His kiss was alive.  He tugged on her lower lip, sucking it into his mouth.  And just as she opened her mouth with another embarrassing noise, he plunged back in and rhythmically massaged her tongue.  It felt good.  It felt really, _really_ —

“What the fuck is this?!”

They pulled apart and Layla blinked in surprise at Caitlyn.  She’d forgotten she was the reason for their doing this.  Will laughed gleefully.

“This is my cue to go,” he said picking up his bag.  He sauntered off down the hall and Layla felt like one of those people that hated to like him.

 

Caitlyn had been pissed.  She’d yelled and screamed and kicked the lockers.  Layla had been terrified that she was going to get them in trouble because of all the noise she was making.  And then suddenly Caitlyn just threw herself at her.  She’d pushed her up against the lockers with a promise to make her forget all about Will Harder.  That day had been her first real kiss with a girl too.  It would be hard to say which was better, but Caitlyn had succeeded in making her forget about Will.  Temporarily.  She’d been willing to continue exploring her relationship with Caitlyn because she felt safe in the arms of a girl, but every time they had a fight, she sought Will out.  And he was always more than willing to oblige her.  And he hadn’t lied.  He was always capable of fooling around with her with no emotional attachment or expectation of anything more than a make out session.  The one time things had gone further—it had kind of been an accident.

They always made out in public.  That was the arrangement.  The idea was for Caitlyn to always be in a position to catch them.  Otherwise they had no reason to be doing it.  She wasn’t interested in Will and he obviously wasn’t interested in her.  After he’d broken up with Liz Holloway she’d wondered if he’d ever really be interested in anybody.  But for some reason, one day, they’d just…gotten caught up in it.  They’d been kissing by the computer labs (which was the hall Caitlyn walked down in order to get to her locker) when they heard some teachers approaching.  Usually, they’d simply stop and wait for the third party to pass.  But that day, neither of them had felt like stopping.  It’d just felt nice and it was such a pain to stop and start and stop and start all the time.  They’d discovered by feel that the janitor’s closet hadn’t been shut into the latch all the way.  So even though the door was locked, they could open the door.  Which they did and then slipped inside, pulling the door firmly shut so that no one would be able to accidentally walk in on them.

It’d been tight in that closet.  The tiny room was packed with shelves, a deep sink, and the mobile mopping cart.  They’d pressed against one of the shelves and enjoyed the dark quiet of the room.  It’d been pitch black.  They couldn’t see a thing.  All they could do was feel each other and hear their panting and the soft smacking sounds they were making.  She wouldn’t lie to herself; it was erotic.  Which had made it very easy to quickly round first base and slide into second.  She’d been so lost in the sensations that she hadn’t even cared when she’d felt his hand slip under her skirt and between her legs.  It hadn’t surprised her; by that time she was actually quite used to having fingers down there.  And it hadn’t scared her just because it was a boy’s hand.  And as she’d squirmed and writhed in his grasp, she’d liked the way the hard muscles of his arms and torso pressed and moved against her.  She’d liked the sounds he made—the very masculine sounds that vibrated against her ear.  As pretty as he was, Will Harder was not a girl.  He was not soft and he was not delicate.  He was definitely a boy…and she’d loved it.  She realized that day that Caitlyn was right.  She _didn’t_ like boys, but she _was_ attracted to them.

She’d bitten down on the collar of his blazer to keep from crying out when she came.  Never in a million years would she have believed that a boy would get her off in a janitor’s closet.  And never would she believe that she wanted to reciprocate.  She’d reached behind her in the tiny space and desperately felt around for a light switch.  A dull light had come on, but it had been enough to hurt their dark-adjusted eyes and they’d squeezed their eyelids tightly shut.  As she’d slowly become used to the light she’d reached out and started to undo the button to his pants.  She’d ignored Will’s nervous questions.  She’d been ready to face the worm again.

Her hands had been shaking so badly, it had been difficult to get his pants down.  But she had.  And she’d looked at it.  She’d really looked at one for the first time in five years.  It was easy to see why she’d thought it had been alive when she was eleven…it kind of moved on its own.  But it wasn’t scary.  It was almost funny looking.  Will had looked a little freaked out, but she’d been too busy dealing with her own trauma to bother about him.  For a long time she’d just looked at it, touching it every now and again.  Will hadn’t touched her or spoken a word.  He’d pressed himself against the metal shelf with the cleaning supplies.  She’d been a little surprised to learn how nervous and seemingly scared he was.  The great, womanizing Will Harder was a virgin?  It had been kind of funny.  And how could you be scared of that?  She’d leaned close, worrying her bottom lip as she did.  She’d had the thought that this part of his skin had to be hot.  Just as her mouth had closed around him, the door had opened.  The janitor had started violently in astonishment.  He’d stared for only a moment and then slammed the door shut.  Layla had stood up and quickly run out of the room, not looking around or back.  She’d just desperately wanted to get away.  It hadn’t occurred to her that Will’s pants had still been around his knees.

The whole ordeal had been highly embarrassing and slightly traumatizing, but she’d gained two things from her time with Will in the janitor’s closet.  She was now able to flirt with boys and touch them of her own free will.  Since she’d acknowledged that she was attracted to boys, it was easier to not be afraid of that unidentifiable quality about them anymore.  And she realized it was really easy to control boys when they thought they might get something from her.  She still found that most of them had overly warm skin and that almost all of them where dumb as a box of hammers, but she wasn’t completely repulsed by them anymore.  She’d also gained the ability to touch Will casually whenever she felt like it.  Anytime she wanted to piss Caitlyn off (or Liz Holloway for that matter) she felt completely comfortable giving him spontaneous hugs and suggestive caresses.  He never seemed to mind when she did.

Layla opened her eyes and stared at the pink plastic shell.  What had brought on all of those memories?  Maybe she was really hoping that one day she would be able to be with a man.  To fall in love with him and have his children.  Because that would certainly be less of a pain in the ass than having to spend the rest of her life with Caitlyn.  Layla felt her annoyance and anger start to come back again.  It was mild though.  It was more annoyance than anger.  Because it _had_ been kind of funny.  On Thanksgiving Day Caitlyn had stopped by to say hi.  And of course, they’d gotten into an argument about something.  She couldn’t even remember what now.  Her entire family—parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents—had crowded in their tiny apartment as a meeting place before heading out to dinner.  So everyone had pushed down the tiny hallway to the room she shared with her sisters to see what all the screaming was about.

“What is going on?” one of her aunts had asked, glaring at Caitlyn and rightly assuming it was her fault.

“Nothing,” Caitlyn had snapped.  “We’re just having a tiff.”

“Well, best friends shouldn’t fight like that,” one of her grandmothers had said, trying to impart some sort of worthless wisdom.

“Yeah, well, you know who does fight like this?  Lovers!  And since Layla is my girlfriend, I can yell at her all I want!  And it’s not some weird phase I’m going through and I’m not just ‘confused,’”—that had been when her problems with her parents had come out—“I _am_ gay and I _do_ like girls and I _am_ going to be with Layla!  I already know what flowers I want in my bouquet at the commitment ceremony and which one of us is going to be inseminated with the turkey baster first!”

Shocked silence had followed.  Her parents already knew and were mostly okay with it.  Her mother just assumed it was a consequence of her attack from the silver van guy, so she’d always been understanding.  And her father was actually happy that his beautiful daughter didn’t bring around horny teenage boys who wanted nothing more than to get into his little girl’s pants.  Of course if her father knew what Caitlyn had been doing to his little girl, he might have had a change of opinion.  But the rest of the family didn’t know.  And now that they did, the shit had hit the economy-sized industrial fan.  One grandmother in particular had been completely scandalized.  Caitlyn had left them to their mess and they had gone out to dinner anyway.  And the fighting and yelling had continued in the restaurant.  It was the most embarrassing Thanksgiving of her life.  Actually, it was one of the most embarrassing moments of her life period.

Layla groaned.  Caitlyn could be very sweet and thoughtful and they did have a lot of fun together, but she was just so much trouble.  Just remembering the incident made her want another cigarette.  She started to reach up to the ledge again when she heard the banging of warping metal.  Someone had sat on the slide.  Layla made a face.  It really ticked her off when someone invaded her private hiding space.  Of course, every kid in Calverton knew how to get into the school after hours, so she shouldn’t really feel like the place was exclusively hers.  Possibly she’d disturbed somebody else’s privacy once.  There was a grey plastic structure on the other side of the playground that she’d heard was a common make-out spot.  She crawled silently across the cedar chips to find out who dared disturb her solitude.  She peeked out through one of the holes in the shell and was a little surprised to discover that it was Julian March.

She chewed on her upper lip a little nervously.  She’d always been a little scared of him.  In general she was scared of tall, broad-shouldered guys, but he was also a little strange.  Caitlyn had no problem flirting and playing with him, but she’d never been able to do it.  He had an air about him, like he knew things.  She’d always felt that if she spent too much time with him that he would learn her secret.  That somehow he’d be able to look into her soul and find out that she was a fake.  And a stupid little girl who talked to strangers.  She didn’t want anyone to know that.  Not even Caitlyn knew about the man in the silver van.

Julian did nothing.  He just sat at the bottom of the slide, his knees almost at chest level because of his long legs.  He was wearing pants and a long-sleeved shirt, all black.  He had his earrings in, and his lip ring, eyebrow ring, and a fair application of eyeliner.  It was a pretty typical look for him.  It was an ordinary look for him; there was nothing odd about that.  But he looked different.  He almost looked like a different person.  There was a stillness in his face where there used to be a kind of wild energy.  He looked grown up.  He looked like he understood the world a little better than most others their age.  He looked a little like her when she looked in a mirror.  And she knew what must have caused it, the poor thing.  It had been his first Thanksgiving without his parents.

Her empathy lasted quite a while.  But as time wore on and he didn’t leave, she started to get a little irritated.  Too much time had passed for her to crawl out of the pink turtle now.  He’d think she was weird for having stayed in there the whole time.  Unless she claimed that she’d been sleeping.  She glanced at her wrist.  She wasn’t wearing her watch.  She scrunched up her face.  How much time had passed?  When you were bored or wishing for someone to go away time moved faster in your head than in actuality, but she was pretty sure she’d been stuck under that turtle for at least half an hour.  What was he doing?  Was he waiting for something?  Or someone?  Was he waiting for school to start tomorrow?

She built a fort out of the cedar chips, and then she made a little town with roads to go with it.  Every now and then she glanced through the window to see what he was doing.  He never moved.  Not to stretch his legs or shift his bottom on the hard slide.  He just sat there.  And then one time when she looked up at him, he flinched.  This made her pay more attention.  What had caused it?  Then she heard the gate clanging shut.  Someone had come into the playground.  He was facing away from the entrance, so he must have only heard whoever it was.  By the time she crawled to the other side of the turtle and looked at the gate, the person had passed out of view.  She hurriedly crawled back again and peeked out the window.  Julian was surrounded.  Three people stood around him in a semi-circle: Scott Ramsey, Chris Pelletier, and Will Harder.  She didn’t have to be any nearer to them than the ten feet she already was to sense the portentous, heavy tension in the air.  What was going on?  Weren’t the four of them as in love with each other as they could be without actually being gay?  She was very intrigued to see what would happen.  She didn’t even mind the extremely long silence that followed their arrival.

“I think,” Julian’s hoarse voice snapped the silence, but not the tension, “that an apology would be meaningless unless you knew that it was one: genuine, and two: held the promise that I will never have anything like this to apologize for again.”  He wasn’t looking at anyone in particular.  It seemed more like he was staring at Will’s legs.  He took in a breath.  “I’m better now.  And I know, I know.”  He closed his eyes and looked to be in pain.  “I know that’s hard to believe because I lied to all of you for so long.”  He opened his eyes again and took in another breath.  This one made him look a little stronger.  “But something happened on Thanksgiving.  I—I faced my rage.  I acknowledged what I was really grieving over.  And finally, I was able to—to _start_ to let it go.  I can breathe again.  I can _feel_ again.  And because of that—”

Layla clutched at her heart with a hand.  His expression was heartrending.

“Because of that—I’m dying inside for what I did to all of you.”

Will moved forward and dropped to his knees.  He pushed between Julian’s legs and wrapped his arms around his waist, laying his head in his lap.  Layla was startled by the reaction.  Did Will actually have an attachment to someone?

“ _No_ ,” Will said vehemently.  “You _just_ said you were better.  Don’t start hurting again because of us!”

She wasn’t sure if they’d already been forming or if they had suddenly sprung to his eyes, but tears now fell freely down Julian’s face.

“Will,” his voice was already hoarse, but it cracked on his friend’s name and he had to stop.  Layla felt a sorrowful pressure in her chest as she watched him.  He swallowed, licked his lips, and tried again to speak.

“Stop.  Please.  How can you forgive me?  What I did to you was—”

“No.  It’s what _I_ did to _you_ ,” Will said leaving no room for argument.  “I didn’t notice your pain.  I turned a blind eye to it.”

Julian shook his head.  “That’s not true.  I lied to you.  I told you I was better.  All you did was believe in me.  All of you did.  And I—I have destroyed that trust.  Will, what happened at—”  He cut off, looking sick, and turned to Scott.  “Scott, what I did to you—”

“It’s fine,” Scott said, kneeling down next to the slide and touching Julian’s arm.

“Don’t say that.  It’s not fine.  I—”

“It is, Julian,” Chris finally spoke.  He sat on the edge of the slide and scraped some dirt off the metal with his fingernail.  “It may be stupid of us to do it.  And you may definitely not deserve it…But we forgive you.”  He cleared his throat and then mumbled quickly, “We love you.”  Then he spoke clearer, “We want to help you.”

Scott gripped Julian’s arm tighter and as he turned his face slightly Layla could see the shiny streaks on his cheeks.  He’d been crying for some time now as well.  Chris ran a hand through Julian’s hair a couple times.  He seemed in shock, and like he was having a hard time accepting the comforting gestures from his friends.

“This is too easy,” Julian cried.  “It’s not right.”  He sounded even more upset.  “I should have to _earn_ your trust back.  How can you just—”

“Would you forgive us?” Chris asked.  He was the only one of the four of them not absolutely beside themselves with tears.  “Would you forgive us anything, or would you make us earn your trust back?”  Julian shook his head no.  “We know, Julian.  We know you.  So we can understand why you did what you did and forgive you for it.”

As sympathetic as she was to the boys’ obvious distress, Layla was dying with curiosity.  What had Julian done to them?

“But here’s the problem,” Chris said.  “You _did_ lie to us and hide what you were feeling for so long.  And _none_ of us noticed.  How do we know this is real?  How exactly did you get help?”

Julian took in a couple weepy breaths and raised a hand over Will’s head.  Then he curled his fingers up and didn’t touch him.

“I, uh.  I got a new therapist.  Of sorts.  I saw him on Thanksgiving.  After I had…afterwards, I tried to find help.  I really did.  But things just went from…bad to worse doesn’t even cover it.  I was already at worse, wasn’t I?  But, I got lucky and happened across someone who had helped me in the past.  And he helped me again that night.  It was really bizarre.  He was very kind and very helpful.  He worked through the rage and the pain with me.  And when I say worked through…at the end of it I was completely exhausted.  I slept like a baby.”  Julian’s brow creased and he looked torn between his torment and humor.  “The next morning—I got yelled at.  He bitched at me for all the trouble I caused him and told me that if I was so stupid to bottle up all my feelings and not ask for help then I deserved to lose my friends.  That it would be proper punishment for being so pathetic.”

Will’s head snapped up and he sat back to look at Julian with a peeved expression.  “What the hell kind of therapist is that?” he demanded to know.

Julian forced a smile.  “The kind I needed.”

They were all quiet again and Layla could tell it was a little uncomfortable for them.  Chris cleared his throat and patted Julian’s leg.

“Well, I’m glad you’re better.  I was a little nervous to come here, you know.  For one thing, I wasn’t sure if you would think or even want to come here.  And if you did, I was afraid the other two might not.  Plus, if you were here, especially if we were alone, I was a little worried about my face becoming a bloody smear on the pavement.”

“Oh, God,” Julian groaned softly, closing his eyes.  “Don’t repeat it.”  He turned and wrapped an arm around Chris, pulling him close.  “I can’t believe I said that.  I would never…”  He put his hand to the back of Chris’ head and pulled him close enough to kiss his cheek.  “I love this face.”  He kissed his cheek again, and then turned his head to kiss him on the lips.

Layla put a hand to her mouth to stop her surprised laugh.  Chris struggled away and nearly fell off the slide.  He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said, “Okay, maybe there are some things I won’t forgive.”

The other three managed a laugh.  Julian looked at Scott and very gently ran his fingers through the blond’s hair.

“I’m so sorry, Scott.  Anna must—”

“It’s okay,” Scott interrupted him with a shake of the head.  “She’s not mad at you.”

“Wha—no.  Not how she feels about me.  The things I told her.  About you.  And the way I did it.  I…mocked your pain.”

“It’s okay.”  He shrugged.  “In a way, it’s a good thing.  I’m not sure I ever could have told her.  And now, we have no secrets.  And I don’t feel guilty that I’m hiding something from her.  And she’s okay, by the way.  You didn’t hurt her.  She just bumped into the dresser.  She’s fine.”  Scott grabbed on the sleeve of Julian’s upper arm.  “And I didn’t mean it,” he said desperately.  “I really didn’t.  I _do_ care if you’re in pain or suffering.”

Julian looked ashamed.  “You shouldn’t.”

“But I do!”

“Come on, stop looking at me like that.  You want a kiss too?”

Scott straightened up and grabbed Julian’s face.  He pushed their lips together, but Layla wouldn’t have called it a kiss.  Per se.  Though she was quite shocked by all the lip-locking going on among four “heterosexual” teenage boys in a very public setting.

“It’s fine,” Scott said, still holding Julian’s face.  “ _We’re_ fine.  I know things are different and a lot has changed.  And I know things will never be the way they were before.  But that’s a good thing.  We’re growing, changing.  We’re turning into the men we’re going to be one day.”  Scott pulled back and pointed an irritated finger at all three of them.  “And I better not hear any remarks about how corny that is or I _swear_ I will hurt someone.”  The other three bit their lips or covered their mouths, but they didn’t say anything.  “Anyway.  Where was I?”

“We’ve changed into different people,” Chris said.

“Yes.  We are becoming different.  But, amazingly, we all _still_ like each other.”

Julian smiled at the resolute blond.  Then his smile faded as he turned to Will.  Will was still on his knees in front of Julian.  Layla could tell there was something different between these two.  She’d never be able to name it, but there was something that was both holding them closer together and pushing them farther apart.

“Will—”

“Don’t start,” Will said harshly.  “There’s nothing to say.  You didn’t hurt me.”

A look of sheer horror gripped Julian’s face.  “What the—Will.  I almost r—”

Will reached forward and covered Julian’s mouth with a hand.  “You didn’t.  You didn’t hurt me.  At least…” he sat back, dropping his hand.  “Not in the way, or ways, you’re thinking.”  Will looked scared.  His breathing was shallow and he curled his hands into fists.  He chewed on his lips and pressed his fists into Julian’s legs.  “Julian.  I’m in love with someone.  That’s the big secret.  That I…I think…I love this person more than I love you.  But life without you, even if I have the one I love by my side, it’s not worth living.”  He drew in a shaky breath.  “And there it is.  That’s why I’ve been lying to you.  I was afraid you’d never forgive me for giving a bigger part of myself to someone else.  I was trying to hide that from you.  And because I did, I stopped looking at you.  I stopped seeing you.  I stopped hearing you.  You begged for help so many times and I ignored it.”  Will took Julian’s hands in his.  “I’m sorry for that.  _I_ am sorry for what happened to you.  And I’m not angry for what happened as a result.”

They were all very quiet.  Layla searched each of their faces.  Was that it?  It didn’t feel like it was completely settled yet.  They weren’t just going to leave things like this, were they?

“Scott’s right,” Julian said.  “We are growing up and we are changing.  I think all of us are very different people now than we were six months ago.  But somehow, I feel we’ve grown closer rather than father apart.  And I think that scared me.  I think I wanted to push you all away.  Because…I wouldn’t be able to _survive_ losing one of you.”

“It’s the same for all of us, you idiot,” Chris muttered.

“You know,” Scott said, “I think when I get to shrink school I’m gonna find out that our relationships are highly abnormal.”

They all let out an initial reactionary laugh.  Then they looked at each other and laughed louder.  It didn’t last long though and they were soon quiet again.  A couple minutes passed.

“I’m sorry,” Julian said softly.

“We forgive you,” the other three said in perfect unison.

Then they all stood up and left.  Layla was floored.  “Wow,” she whispered to herself.  The magnitude of that had been staggering, but she still had no idea what it had all been about.  She felt a little guilty for witnessing something so raw and personal.  But then again, they had been out in public.  Anyone on the street behind the playground could have seen them.

Layla leaned back against the incline of the plastic stairs.  She really wondered what Julian had done to them.  It seemed like it had been some really awful things, including threatening to hurt Chris.  And yet, all three of them had forgiven him so easily.  What kind of man did that make him?  A good man.  One worthy of such loyalty and love.  She pictured his pained face.  And then the look of desperate relief that had taken over when he realized he hadn’t lost his friends.

Her heart gave a little flutter.  She put her hand to her chest in alarm.  Then she scowled and reached for her cigarettes.  It must be that nasty nicotine addiction of hers.


	19. Chapter 19

Monday, December 4, 2005

Julian

 

Julian groaned inwardly as he stared at the cheap piece of plastic that had somehow been twisted to vaguely resemble a twig of a poisonous plant.  It was barely December, and it had already started.  It seemed like it started earlier every year.  Fortunately he would graduate before the tradition started to take place before Thanksgiving.  He adjusted his course down a different hall in order to avoid the foreboding doorway from which the mistletoe hung.  He didn’t really believe that he was one of the people who truly suffered from the Calverton ritual of hanging dozens of dollar store quality mistletoe sprigs from random doorways, but he’d been burned before.  Better to be safe than sorry.  And he definitely wasn’t in the mood for it today; last week had been a little rough.

It had been hard to go back to school and pretend like everything was normal for all the teachers and students, and to walk among them like the whole Universe hadn’t just been turned upside down and inside out only a few days before.  What made it bearable was that his friends didn’t treat him weird, but they also weren’t pretending like nothing had happened.  Their relationships had changed, and they were acknowledging that.  That helped Julian to slowly let down his façade.  He was who he was now, and there was no sense pretending this person didn’t exist.  This person who was him, but who had a dark scar across his soul.

Julian sighed.  He wished it was a scar, but it was a closed wound.  One that could be re-opened.  He was aware that he would have to be wary about that injury for the rest of his life.  It was something he was going to have to work at keeping closed.  But he’d brought that on himself.  Maybe Dr. Corbin would help him learn how to keep it under control.

He’d gone to see the man last Tuesday and confessed everything to him.  Everything.  It had taken nearly the full hour to get it all out and he had to keep repeating himself because his voice had been trembling so much he could barely get the words out.  Dr. Corbin’s craziness had calmed considerably while he’d listened.  He’d seemed very worried, especially about the “mystery therapist,” but he hadn’t pried when Julian had talked around it.  Dr. Corbin had told him that under circumstances like these he would normally take some kind of serious action (which he never defined) or even prescribe drugs, but he could tell that Julian was being completely honest and open.  He’d said that he could tell Julian was truly trying to start healing.  So, he would work with him, and keep a watchful eye on him, but for now semi-weekly sessions were enough.  Julian was a little unhappy about the semi-weekly part, but he didn’t dare argue with the man.  So, now he had to see Dr. Corbin on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

He wondered why he’d chosen Dr. Corbin of all three of his “therapists” to open to.  But he knew the answer.  Dr. Corbin was nobody to him.  Julian was just another messed up patient that he was treating.  He couldn’t tell Dr. Gorman—Camellia—what he’d done.  Because she’d been right.  She’d warned him that exactly what had happened would happen.  And he’d ignored her.  He didn’t want to have to tell her that.  And Rylan—Julian knew that he now trusted the man.  Not in an Old Yeller, Old Reliable kind of way…certainly not.  He was still a conniving, manipulative bastard no doubt.  But he’d seen Julian at his worst and had not been horrified or disgusted.  He’d simply accepted it.  And for that Julian felt indebted to him for life, which was a feeling he would never share with Rylan.  He wasn’t that stupid.  And he also couldn’t tell him the things he’d done; the things that had gotten him to that point.  He didn’t want Rylan to know.  It was better for him to wonder about what kinds of terrible things he had done than for him to know.  He wasn’t horrified or disgusted with him at the moment, and Julian couldn’t bear the thought of the man ever feeling that way about him.

Julian was startled out of his thoughts as he heard someone squeal in dismay.  He looked up and found that some poor girl had fallen prey to the mistletoe.  The offender laughed and ran off with his friends.  The girl shouted after him while her friends giggled.  Julian shook his head.  December was going to be a very interesting—scratch that, annoying—month.

 

“Okay, so like, I understand Edmund did some pretty nasty things, but that’s no reason to call the guy the villain of _King Lear_.  Isn’t that, like, the point?  That there is no real villain?  Except for maybe those slutty sisters?”

Julian glanced at Will.  He looked riled up.  He hated English class and art and literature.  He hated things that didn’t make sense.  He was feeling sorry for his friend.  The next unit they were going to do was poetry.  Poetry drove Will up the wall.  Julian didn’t bother to answer to him; he was thinking too hard and wouldn’t have heard him anyway.  They were on their way to lunch the long way, having carefully mapped out the one path to the cafeteria that had as little mistletoe along the way as possible.  The mistletoe tradition was a particular problem for Will “fuck me” Harder.  He wondered if Will had ever heard that “nickname” before.

“Hey!  Harder!  March!”

They stopped in their tracks and turned around.  Their soccer coach was waving them over from the entrance to the gym.  They shuffled over and looked at the man.  He was probably in his 40’s and while he didn’t appear to be out of shape Julian doubted he could run from one end of the field to the other without stopping for a breather.

“So, today is the last informational meeting about the team, and I’ll be announcing who has made the cut.  The placement tryouts are going to be Wednesday though.  I already know everyone who’s made the cut, but now I’ve got to pick varsity, JV, and first and second string.  Well, you know how it works.  So, today’s meeting you don’t _have_ to come to, but Wednesday’s you definitely have to be there.  If you want to be on the team.  So, I know you already know about today’s, Will, but I forgot to remind you this morning about Wednesday’s.  You do need to come to that one.  I can’t just say you’re the best player so you don’t have to show up.  I mean.  You know.”

“Got it, Coach,” Will smiled.

“And, Julian, I uh, wasn’t sure if you were planning on joining the team this year.  You haven’t been to any of the meetings or the tryouts.  But I’m willing to let you come to the placement ones if you’re still interested.”

Julian thought a moment.  Was he still interested?  Exercise was good, and maybe if he ever did feel angry he could use it as an outlet.  Maybe he could put a lot of focus into it and actually learn how to aim right.  But then again, he did have two days a week already filled up with shrink appointments.  Did he want the rest of his week to disappear as well?  He glanced at Will.  He took a step back from the death glare his pretty friend was directing his way.  Julian looked back at the coach and noticed that he had edged a little away from Will as well.

“Of course, Coach.  I’m totally still interested.  I’m definitely there.”

“Okay.  Great, glad to hear it.  Then I’ll see you boys after school today.  Well, at least Wednesday for sure.”

“I’ll be there today,” Will said.

The coached smiled dryly at him.  “I didn’t doubt it, Will.”

Will scowled as the coach gave them a little wave and ducked back into the gym.  Julian wisely didn’t externalize his laugh.  Will still seemed a little peeved that he had hesitated before answering.  So things between them were pretty normal.  Even the possible threat of more psychotic breaks wasn’t more important than soccer.

 

Julian looked left and then right.  The coast looked clear.  He leapt through the doorway and flung himself against some lockers.  No one tried to grab him.  No one seemed to be around.  He was late for class after all.  But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a kiss-happy hall monitor somewhere.  Then he heard a soft sound.  Definitely female.  Apparently quite pleased.  Julian grinned and leaned around the side of the lockers.  He knew what he would find because he remembered there being some mistletoe hanging from the library hallway entrance.

Sure enough, a guy and girl were tightly embracing and going at it like it was the seventh minute of their time in a dark closet at some middle school party.  The girl was standing on her tiptoes and that made her legs look really good.  She tilted her head a bit and Julian’s jaw dropped.

“Chris!” he hissed.

Chris and the girl broke apart.  He vaguely recognized the girl as the sophomore that had been stalking Chris lately.  And that he had declared he was “done” with.

“Um, hi,” Chris said, wiping his lower lip with a thumb and not quite meeting his eyes.  The girl was picking up her bookbag from the floor.  Then she smiled embarrassedly at Julian and scurried away.  Julian leaned on the wall and crossed his arms over his stomach.  He raised an eyebrow at Chris.

“What?” Chris laughed.

“What was that?” Julian asked.

Chris shrugged and picked up his backpack.  “She’s fun to kiss.  She’s like, so submissive.”

“Christopher,” Julian intoned sternly.

“Oh, shut-up,” Chris said, he still hadn’t stopped smiling.

Julian gave him a mock disapproving look.

“Alright, alright.  Enough with the lecturing.  I’ll go talk to her.”  He punched Julian in the shoulder lightly as he left.  “Party pooper.”

“Slut.”

“Uh!”  Chris kept walking and didn’t dignify the comment with a response.

Julian chuckled and turned to continue on to class when he bumped into Eun-hee.  He blinked as he looked at her.  It felt like it’d been a lifetime since he’d seen her.  He’d kind of avoided her after Halloween.  He’d recognized even before then that he was having trouble controlling his emotions, so he’d decided he should stop pursuing the relationship.  Of course, he’d been an asshole boy and not told _her_ about that decision.

She smiled at him shyly and glanced up.  Julian didn’t have to.  He knew they were under some mistletoe.  But he didn’t want to kiss her.  Not because he didn’t like her anymore, but because he still felt weird about touching people.  The last time he’d touched people, he’d hurt the three most important people to him in the world.  He still felt dirty.  Or maybe dangerous.  Besides, he knew now that he wasn’t really interested in her.  But he honestly didn’t know her that well, so how could he say that?  What if she was his soul mate or something?  Well, he knew that wasn’t true.  And sometimes it didn’t take years or months or weeks or even days of dating to figure that out.

Eun-hee took a tentative step forward and he took a step back.  She froze and then retreated a little bit.  She looked embarrassed and little nauseous.  He felt awful.

“I’m sorry, Eun-hee,” he said.  “I really hate to say this, but it’s not you.  It’s me.  I don’t think I can get involved with anyone right now.  Or even be close to someone.  I’m in a bad place in my life right now.  Thanksgiving was harder than I thought it would be.”

Her features changed into sympathy, and it didn’t anger him.

“I’m so sorry, Julian.  I didn’t think things were so bad for you.  You always seemed like you were okay.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking away, “I did that on purpose.  And it was a mistake.  A huge mistake.”

“I understand.”  She took his hand and he looked back at her.  “I hope we can still be friends.  Or acquaintances at least,” she laughed sadly.  “Well.  Good luck.  I hope things get better.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled as she gave his hand a squeeze and walked away.

Julian closed his eyes.  That was such a crap way to do that.  He needed to do it better than that.  He opened his mouth to call her name and then someone shouted at him.

“Where are you supposed to be?!”

Julian opened his eyes.  Hall monitor.  Crap.  Julian turned on his heel and made a run for it.

 

The hollow thump created by his head connecting lightly with his locker door repeated three times.  Julian stopped banging his head and glanced at his watch.  Thank god or who or whatever school was over.  He was seriously considering stealing some of those stupid mistletoe props.  So many girls had wanted to kiss him, the “poor baby.”  And they didn’t even necessarily wait for him to be _under_ any stupid mistletoe.  Two of them had gotten a hold of him.  One on the cheek and one on the lips.  She’d been wearing cotton candy flavored lip gloss.  She’d pulled back rather quickly and said, “Ouch.”  Everyone laughed and thought he’d bitten her or something, but she’d just pushed a little too hard on his lip ring is all.

“Omigod.  That is so stupid.  I like, never said that.”

“Um, like, I was standing, like, _right_ there.”

Ordinarily this conversation would have passed by him almost unnoticed, but he recognized the second voice that was mimicking the first voice.  He looked up and saw that Scott was indeed squabbling with someone.  He rubbed his eyes and looked again.  He was still seeing the dark-haired lesbian.  Did Scott even know her well enough to talk to her?  What was he doing making fun of her to her face?

“Hey!” Scott said loudly when he saw him and Julian started.

“What are you doing camped out under some mistletoe?  Pretty pervy, man.”  Scott grinned at him.  “You hoping Will’s gonna come by or something?”

He laughed and the lesbian bit her lip, trying not to smile.  Julian was just confused.

“What are you talking about you blond twit?  I’m not even under a doorway.”

Scott, still grinning, pointed up.  Julian looked up and found that someone had taped some mistletoe above his locker.  His jaw dropped.  Well, at least that helped to explain a few things.

“So, I think you oughta kiss her,” Scott kind of sang and pointed to the lesbian.

“What?” she squeaked.

Julian glowered at Scott.  “We’re not even under the mistletoe.”

“Yes, you are.  It’s close enough.  Besides.  It’s the rule.  You have to.  Will said so.  No one can get out of it.  Certainly not you if he can’t.  I mean, he even kissed J’Antoinette.”

“J’Antoinette?”

“Um, Antoinette.  Bixby.  You know.”

“I know who you’re talking about.”  He looked suspiciously at Scott and he just smiled back at him.  “And you didn’t beat him up or anything?”

Scott’s eyes went wide and then kind of twitched in the lesbian’s direction.

“Why, no, of course not,” he said stiffly.  “Why would _I_ care?”

Whoops.  Julian glanced at the lesbian.  She was raising an eyebrow at Scott and looking him over.  Geez, hadn’t he already screwed over Scott enough on this topic?  Scott suddenly gave the girl a gentle shove toward Julian and then bolted.

“Gotta go!” he called out and ran off down the hallway.

Julian watched him hang a left, hopping on one foot, and then he disappeared around the corner.  He tried not to smile.  He shouldn’t find Scott so amusing.  He was a turd.  He looked at the girl.  She was standing kind of near him, near enough that anybody who saw them would claim they were technically under some mistletoe together.  She was fidgeting and staring at her toes.

“I, uh, I’m sorry about Scott.  He’s kind of…a doofus.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

He felt a little irked at that.  It was one thing to call his own friend a doofus, but he felt the need to defend him now.

“So, should we kiss?” she asked suddenly, looking up at him.  She looked like she was bracing herself for something…not disgusting or horrible…but a close neighbor of those two things.

Julian cleared his throat and tried to force a laugh.  “Oh, don’t worry about it.  He was just being stupid.  We don’t have to.”

She let out a very small partial laugh as she looked away to keep from giving him the face she was making.  And then she looked back at him.

“Would I have even brought it up if all I wanted was to get out of it?”

“Oh.”  Oh.  Julian glanced around.  No one was around.  Would anyone believe that he’d kissed one of the lesbians if there were no witnesses?  And wasn’t he in a non-touching other people kind of mood anyway?

“Okay,” he said.

She nodded, as if steeling her nerves and then closed her eyes.  Julian tilted his head as he looked at her.  He wondered what had suddenly come over her.  She may flirt with boys all the time and sometimes touch them, but the only one she ever let touch _her_ was Will.  He doubted anyone had ever noticed that, but he certainly had.  What had he done to earn the right to touch the forbidden princess?  He leaned down and could see her stiffen, just a little bit, as she sensed that he’d gotten closer.  He smiled and kissed her on the cheek.  He pulled back and her eyes were open.  She looked startled.

“Later,” he said and left her staring at the lockers.

He hurried down the stairs and hoped he would be able to make it through unscathed.  Both stairwells were covered in mistletoe, which he thought was a retarded idea.  All it did was clog up the only two pathways to the upstairs.  Fortunately the halls were clearing out pretty quickly, and people tended not to worry about it so much when they had better things to do, like get out of school.  He saw his escape to the outside world and jogged swiftly toward it.  Then someone with a giant puffball of hair came out of a hall in front of him and started for the same exit.

“Anna!”

She stopped and turned to see who was calling her.  She looked a little unsure when she saw who it was, like she might take off running.  He’d only seen her in the hall a couple times last week and they had not spoken since Thanksgiving.  He slowed down as he approached her, just in case that might help her relax a little.  She waited by the door with her hand on the latch to make a quick getaway if she needed to.  He stopped a couple feet away and just stared at her.  He swallowed thickly.  Geez.  It had been easier to face Will.

“Um.  Hi.”

She looked to the side and then back at him.  “Hi.”

“Um.”

He licked his lips and swallowed again.  He’d been such an asshole to her.  And they did not have the kind of relationship that instantly forgave any and all harms.

“Um, Julian?  I have to get home.”

“Right.  Sorry.  Sorry.  Oh, that’s it.  Sorry.  That’s what I needed to do.  To say.  I need to apologize.  To you.  For.  What happened.  On Thanksgiving.”

She stared at him for some of the longest seconds of his life, and then she half-smiled at him.  The small gesture released a huge knot in his stomach.

“It’s okay,” she said.

He was a little stunned by her response.  He shook his head.  “No, it’s not.  I said…and _did_...some horrible things.  I mean, I _tried_ to hurt you.  I was—”

“Julian,” she cut him off and smiled at him.  “Scott forgave you, right?”

He nodded.

She shrugged.  “So…I forgive you.”

“Oh.”  He continued to stare at her.  Did she love Scott that much?  Or was this simply their trust in each other?

“You don’t believe me?” she asked, giving him a bit of attitude.

“Huh?  Wha—no.  I mean yes.  I mean.  Um…”

“You want proof?”

She looked up and Julian did too out of reflex.  Fucking mistletoe.  She pulled hard on his tie and he stumbled forward.

“Kiss me, Julian.”

She did it for him.  It was just a little smooch.  And then she pulled away and patted his cheek.

“Forgiven, but not forgotten, Julian March.  So you best watch yo’self.”

She pushed the door open and left him leaning against the frame.  He was kind of in a state of panic.  Or maybe this was giddiness.  He felt so completely and totally uncool at the moment.  He took in a short breath.  Had he said all those things at Thanksgiving because he secretly wanted Anna to hate Scott because _he_ wanted her?

“God, I need a shrink,” he groaned softly.

 

Julian stared at the entry pad to Dr. Gorman’s building.  Stupid security made it difficult to make surprise visits on people in this building.  He hadn’t seen or spoken with her since she’d gotten back from Ohio.  He’d carefully worked out what he was going to say to her.  He was going to tell her he’d had some problems over Thanksgiving, but they had been minor, and they had helped him see that he wasn’t truly grieving, but now he was doing much better.  Even Dr. Corbin thought so.  Keep it simple.  Julian made a face.  She was too perceptive and clinical.  It would be nearly impossible to tell her anything without making her suspicious.

“Oh, here you are, son.”

Julian looked up as an old woman stepped outside the building, holding the door open for him.  He jumped forward and held the door for her.

“Oh, thank you so much,” she smiled at him and hobbled down the stairs.

Julian glanced around.  No one seemed to be paying him much attention, so he went inside.  The guards were watching re-runs.  One of them gave him a nod as he headed for the elevators.  Well, he certainly hoped the condo fees weren’t too high if this was the quality it was paying for.

When the elevator doors opened on the 17th floor, he could hear a voice floating down the hall, but he couldn’t see anyone.  He started down the hallway, curious where the one-sided conversation was coming from.  As he got closer to the middle condos, the words became clearer.

“It’s just that tonight is so important, you know?  I want to make sure I look elegant and sophisticated, and yet like a with-it together woman who knows how to run a business.  But I also don’t want to look so good that it seems like I might be embezzling from the charity!”

A man laughed.  Julian walked between the two doors and looked to his right.  A woman stood in the doorway.  She held up a slinky black dress in one hand and a silky green dress in the other.  She was wearing some fancy, lacey and quite sexy matching underwear.  Her hair was in an up-do and her make-up was already in place.  Actually putting on a dress seemed to be all that was left.

The woman gasped when she saw Julian and then let out a high-pitched yelp as she slammed the door shut.  Julian looked to his left.  Rylan’s friend was leaning on his doorknob dressed in black pants and a tuxedo shirt sans bowtie.  Had the woman been modeling for him?  Sweet.  He smiled at the man and he smiled back.  But wait…wasn’t he…gay?  Maybe he was bi.  Or maybe he’d kind of had it wrong.  Maybe this guy was the straight friend Rylan had pined over but could never have.  That didn’t seem right either.

“So, does this happen every Monday?” Julian asked.

“Fortunately for all parties involved, no.”

Julian smiled again.  He liked this guy.  He had good vibes.  Though at the moment the man was chewing on the inside of his lip as he looked at him.  That was never a good sign.  It meant he was debating over something.  But what could he be thinking about?  Oh!  Maybe he wanted to ask Julian if they could arrange a “date.”  Didn’t that woman say he had another high school boy running around?  Maybe he liked them young.

“How are you?” the man finally asked.

“Hmm?”  Julian was thrown off by the question.

The man looked a little uneasy himself and then shrugged.  “You know.  Just, how are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m fine.”

“Ah.  I mean.  You’re okay?”

Julian tilted his head as he looked at the man.  His eyes were such a deep blue it was hard to see into them clearly and therefore hard to figure out what he was thinking.

“Yeah, I’m okay.  Do I not look it?”

“No, you look fine!  I just.”

He shut-up.  Apparently he couldn’t explain why he’d asked.

“Well,” Julian said, wondering if he looked strange, “today was kind of interesting.  Some kids put up mistletoe all over the school and as you can imagine that made for some interesting encounters in the hallways.”

The man laughed.  “The school allows that?”

“It’s like this ancient tradition.  They can’t stop it.  Even if they did take it down, there’s always more up the next morning.”

“Hm.  I guess it makes getting to class more interesting for the more…popular students.”

“Attractive ones, you mean?”  He grinned at the man and he smiled in concession.  “Yeah, they do have a hard time of it.  But seriously.  Who can complain about an acceptable form of cheating?”

“I see,” he said evenly.

“Um, I’m sorry, can I ask your name?  I think Rylan’s said it before, but…”

“It’s Ken,” the man said, extending his hand.

Julian took his hand.  It was strong.  Above even the warmth and softness of it, he could tell that it was strong.  He liked the man even more.

“I’m Julian.  But, I guess you knew that.  Um.  Is it okay to call you Ken?  Should I call you Mr. Something?”

The man looked crushed and leaned against his door.

“Please don’t.”

Julian bit back a laugh.  Then he had a wicked thought.  He shouldn’t do it, but he was curious.

“Yeah, if a high school student did, it might make you feel old and kind of wrong for banging one, right?”

The man had no reaction beyond a mildly amused smile as he straightened.

“He’s my housesitter.  I go on business a lot and he comes over to feed the fish and the cat.”

“Oh.”  Julian pouted.  “That’s boring.”

Ken shook his head at him.  Then his smile faded around the edges a little.  “You don’t have to work for him, you know.  I don’t know what your situation is exactly, but there are always other options.”

Julian nodded.  “I know.  But don’t worry.  I won’t do anything I don’t want to.  I just.  I know to almost anyone else in the world saying that I trust Rylan to help me right now and not take advantage of me would make me sound incredibly naïve and stupid.  But, I think you’re the one person who might understand.”

Ken partially nodded.  “It’s not really him that has me worried.  It’s _them_.”  He wrinkled his nose a touch.  “They’re kind of weird.”

“I know, I met some of them.”

“In all honesty I’ve only met a couple of them, and Rylan claims the majority are mostly normal, but…”

Julian chuckled.  “I get it, I get it.  I know I’m just a kid in your eyes, but I can take care of myself.  I’m savvier than you might think.  But, thanks for worrying about me.  I’m not sure why you do, but I won’t question it.  I’m definitely learning not to take things for granted.”

“That’s one of the hardest lessons to learn.  I’m sorry you had to learn it at such a young age.”

Julian shrugged.  “Yeah, well.”

“Um.  Are you going to be coming here more often in the future?”

 _Good question_ , Julian thought.  Who knew how long this thing with Dr. Gorman would last.  Or if she would even put up with him just dropping by unexpectedly.

“I’m not sure.  Why?  You wanna be here to watch me through your peephole?”

Ken started to respond when the door across the hall opened and the woman appeared in the silky green dress.  It looked good on her.  Good enough to turn a gay man straight?  Well, he wasn’t sure about that.

“Oh, you’re still here,” she said.

“Sorry,” Julian said.  “I was just chatting with Ken.  I’ll be on my way.”

He smiled at Ken and then started down the hall.

“Calling you by your first name?  That’s a little rude,” the woman said in not quite a whisper.  “So anyway, how is this one?  Do you want to see the black one again?”

Julian made a face.  That poor man.  And was he going to have to take her somewhere tonight?  He didn’t hear Ken’s response and he miraculously managed to keep from looking back at them as he knocked on Camellia’s door.  He was dying to know what kind of faces the poor guy made when she wasn’t looking.  He almost started to turn his head, but the door opened.  Camellia looked very surprised to see him, but then she smiled.

“Julian, hi!”

Julian was in shock.  Who was this person?  She was like…normal looking and sexy.  She was wearing an old, white baby doll T-shirt and a pair of light blue, short cotton shorts.  Her hair was in a loose ponytail and the glasses were a more modern style, giving her a more youthful appearance.  Vacation apparently agreed with her.

“Hey,” he said and let her pull him into the apartment.  She hugged him and he hugged her back.  He kind of started to wonder if she had a twin sister and that in any minute Camellia would come storming out and freak about the two of them.

“So, good vacation?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.”  She let go of him and wandered into her kitchen.  “You want something to drink?”

Julian glanced toward the entrance to the bedroom.  No one was coming storming out.  He followed the woman into the kitchen.  Even if it was the twin, he could always feign ignorance later.

“No, I’m fine.”

Camellia pulled a flavored water out of her refrigerator and smiled at him as she took a sip.  “I really love going home.  It’s so relaxing.  No phone calls, no emergencies.  And my family is not one of those ones that fight when they get together.  It’s so great.  I really miss them!”

Julian shook his head.  “Who are you?” he smiled.

She laughed and walked over to him.  She put the bottle on the large center island and slid her hands over his shoulders to lock her arms around his neck.  She pressed against him and Julian put a tentative hand to her waist.

“This is who I would be if I weren’t such an uptight prude.”

She kissed him and he blinked in shock a few times.  He could get used to this Camellia.  She pulled back and smiled at him.

“How was your Thanksgiving?”

“Uh,” he looked away from her.  “Not quite as happy as yours.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  Did something happen?”

“Kind of.  Nothing really serious or anything.  Exactly.  But, I guess I had what you would call a breakthrough.”

She combed her fingers through his hair as she looked at him concernedly.  “I can tell.  You seem different.”

“Do I?”

She nodded.

“Yeah.  I came to a realization.  You were right.  I was angry and I kind of said some things I shouldn’t have to my friends.  We had a big fight and I had a long talk with a…mentor on Thanksgiving.  I’m seeing Dr. Corbin twice a week now, and he thinks I’m actually starting to deal with it all now.”

She pulled back a bit to look at him better.  “Louis wants to see you twice a week?  What exactly happened?”

Julian had an internal “oh shit” moment, but he just laughed it off.  “The fight itself wasn’t so terrible.  It was the realization.  That I do, like, have problems.”

“Mm-hmm.”  She looked at him suspiciously.

“Really.  It’s not that bad.  Dr. Corbin could tell you.”

“But he won’t.”

“Oh, come on.  Aren’t you happy I’m getting better?”

“Yes,” she grumped.  “But I’m jealous someone else helped you do it.  And who is this ‘mentor?’  Anyone you’ve mentioned before?”

“No, but he’s a good guy.”  _Sort of_ , he amended to himself.  “I’m getting better.  I’m working hard on improving myself.  But there is definitely one area where I still need _a lot_ of practice.”

He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her.  He could have sworn she giggled.  This was so weird.  Who was this woman?  He wrapped his arms tightly around her, whoever she was, and they shared a slow, wet kiss.  He was leaning against the island, slowly running his hands over her body.  There was a lot more skin to feel than usual.  He wondered how much she weighed.  He broke the kiss and bent over to sweep her up into his arms.  She gasped and struggled a little bit, but he found it surprisingly easy to carry her.  He headed into the bedroom and all she did was inform him of the absolute unnecessary-ness of him carrying her.  He put her down on the peach-colored quilt and then shrugged out of his blazer.  She drew one knee up and smiled at him from the bed.  He tried really hard not to betray his cool, I’ve-done-this-a-million-times exterior.  He put one knee on the bed and loosened his tie.  She put one arm behind her head and watched him remove the piece of fabric and toss it away.  He moved onto the bed and decided to lie on top of her rather than to the side.  She didn’t seem disturbed by his weight at all.  She just moved her raised knee to allow their bodies to connect better.

Julian had a sudden flash to what had happened with Aaliyah.  And while that memory made him uncomfortable, this moment didn’t.  This wasn’t the same.  He brushed his hand over her hair as he looked at her.  He really liked her.  He hooked a finger under her glasses and slid them off.  Her brown eyes tried to focus on his face.  He wondered just how bad her vision was.  He tossed the glasses a little out of the way and bent down to kiss her.

He stopped thinking.  He just felt.  And all he needed was to kiss her.  She was warm and solid and comforting.  He didn’t feel bad about touching her.  He wasn’t going to hurt her.  And she wanted him.  That felt good.  To be wanted and needed for something so simple.  There were no demands or expectations.  There was no promise of forever nor the fear of what would happen if he lost her.  There was simply this moment when they both wanted the same thing.   It was a rare moment of clarity in his world, and he was grateful to her for it.

Of course, there’s only so long that kissing will satisfy a man while he’s on top of a woman.  He started to explore and she helped put some movement into their lower halves.  He liked the noises she was making.  He was doing that to her.  It sounded like he was doing something right.  Thank goodness.  Hopefully he wouldn’t embarrass himself too badly.  He laced his fingers with hers and moved one hand above her head.  Their hands bumped her glasses.

“Mm,” she turned her head to the side a bit, “let me move my glasses off the bed.”

“They’re fine,” Julian breathed, kissing her neck.

“No, no.”  She started to turn under him, so he let her.  He just kissed her shoulders and back.  He was pretty sure they could do it from this position too.  She stretched under him as she reached out to put the glasses on her nightstand.  He slid a hand under her shirt, found that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and promptly began to slide it around toward the front.

“Oh, no!”

Julian whipped his hand back.  “What?” he asked, worried he was in trouble.

“Oh, no!” she repeated, putting her glasses back on.  “It’s 3:30!”

“So?”

She started to wiggle under him.  “I have to go!  I have a meeting at 4:30.”

She got partially turned over and he rose up enough to flip her onto her back.  He pinned her arms down, being very careful not to grip her too tightly.

“So?  That’s an hour.  Can’t we finish this?”

“No.  It’s going to take me half an hour just to get there and I need to take a shower.”

“But.”  Julian felt like crying.  “But you promised!”

She looked puzzled.  “What?”

“When you left you said we’d do it when you got back!  You promised me.  You looked me in the eyes and promised me!”

Camellia laughed.  Then she looked at him again and laughed harder.  Julian let go and rolled off her.

“Didn’t any of your shrink books teach you that laughing at a man during a sexual encounter will permanently scar him?” he scowled.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still laughing, “You are just so adorable.”

She leaned over and kissed him.  He pulled her down and kissed her back.  He pulled her over him and she straddled his hips.  They continued to kiss and he wondered if he could make her forget about her appointment.

“Mm, mm.  No.”  She sat up.  “I’m sorry.  But, you’ve gotta go.”

He ran his hands over her thighs and pouted at her.

“That won’t work with me, Julian March.  I know the male psyche very well.”

He bent his knees and used his feet to raise his hips.  She closed her eyes and clenched a handful of shirt.

“Okay.  That’s no fair,” she said.

Julian smiled and moved again.

“Oh, yes.”  Her head fell back and Julian jumped several notches forward in his ready-to-blow meter.  He remembered the conversation they’d had before she’d left.

“Come on.  We’ve got time.  Remember?  I won’t even last two minutes.”  It was really embarrassing to admit.  “I really don’t think that’s even a joke.”

She laughed and rolled off of him.  “I’m sorry.  I must be firm in my resolve.  It’s important to set a good example for my patients.”

“I’m not your patient anymore,” he grumbled.

“True enough,” she said and tossed his tie and blazer onto him.  “Come on.  Scoot.  I have no time for distractions and you are an enormous distraction.”

Julian grumbled to himself and sat up on the bed.  She headed into the bathroom and he heard the spray of a shower come on.  He rolled his eyes up into his head and groaned.  This was so unfair.

“Come on,” she said, returning to the bedroom.  “Up.”

Julian made a face but stood up.  He followed her into the front room and trudged slowly to the door.  She waited for him by it with one hand on the doorknob and one on her hip.  He dragged his feet all the way to her and gave her a sad look.  She smiled at him.

“I know.  Poor thing.”  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.  “Life is full of disappointments.”

He pulled her close and swept his tongue into her mouth.  They stayed joined for several long minutes and then she pulled back, breathless.

“Alright, alright.  I get the point.  Next time.  I promise.  And I mean it,” she said before he could protest.

“No, next time will be after you’ve gone back to work and are back in serious doctor mode.  You’ll make up excuses or talk about how wrong it is.”

“Oh, Julian, that so will not be the case.  But, even if it is, all you’ve got to do is show up in your cute school uniform and I’m sure I won’t be able to resist.”

She bit her lip as she smiled up at him.  Julian was pleasantly surprised.  Women could have school uniform fetishes too?  Awesome.

“Okay.”

He bent down to kiss her again, but she pushed him away and opened the door.

“Out.”

“Oh, come on!  You can’t send me out there like _this_.  It’s indecent.”

“Julian, in our society it’s expected that teenage boys experience erections at least twenty times a day.  And the human mind often ignores what it doesn’t want to see or acknowledge.  No one will even notice.  Trust me.”  She shoved him out the door.  “I have two degrees in this stuff.”  She smiled and shut the door.

Julian stared at the number on her door.  She was so mean.  He should stand right here and see if she actually came out in thirty minutes.

“Oh, don’t make that face at me, Ken!”  Julian turned to look down the hall.  The woman was standing in the hall in a blue dress.  “Just let me try on the green one one more time!”

She disappeared inside her apartment and Julian started down the hall.  He found Ken lightly banging his head against the doorframe.  He stopped when he noticed Julian.

“Gee, you look as unhappy as I am,” the man said.

Julian frowned.  “Do _you_ wanna have sex?”

Ken didn’t seem shocked by the question in the least.  He just looked at him.  And then he said, “With you?”

“Yeah.”

Ken smiled and flicked his eyes over his body once.  “You know, not long ago you would have been my type.  If you were older, of course.”

“Of course,” Julian said dryly.  “So, your type, now, is what, unattractive?”

Ken laughed.  “No, just a different kind.  Although, it really isn’t so much the looks as the personality.”

“What do you like?”

Ken looked a little embarrassed, but he didn’t look away.  “I guess I kind of like them bossy.”

“Hmph,” Julian groused.  “I should introduce you to my friend, Will.”

A sound that may have supposed to have been a laugh trickled out of Ken, but Julian didn’t pay it much attention.  He just turned and tromped down the hall toward the elevators.

 

Will

 

Kissing and smooching everywhere.  Sometimes Calverton really was fun to go to.  Will glanced left and right at all the lip-locked couples and the girls squealing over some boy trying to kiss them and the boys looking nervous enough to puke as a girl came closer.  It was so funny.  His friends didn’t really like the tradition, but he didn’t mind it so much.  He rather suspected Scott might take a liking to it this year as well.  He was bound to be accosted by a lot of hot girls this year whereas last year it had mostly been the ones from the Academic Team.  But as much as Will liked the mistletoe covered halls, he did acknowledge it was dangerous as well.  Dancing with The Regurgitator was one thing, but kissing her was quite another.  She wasn’t called The Regurgitator for nothing.  Of course this year could be even more dangerous than usual.  One: he was a senior so everyone might jump him for one last chance, and two: Liz would be out there.  Their relationship had been a little strained lately, but he wouldn’t put it past her to fully take advantage of the situation.  He’d better tiptoe around the doorways.

He placed one foot inside the doorway.  Suddenly he was yanked to the side by his tie and received a forceful, lingering kiss.  He was released and he cleared his throat, still a little shell-shocked.

“Hi, Will.”

He looked at his assailant.  “Hi, Caitlyn.”

She smiled and sashayed away, several guys watching her go and several more glaring at him.  He just shrugged and continued on toward his homeroom.  Someone called his name and he jumped away, flattening himself against the wall.  Coach Mayhew looked startled by his reaction, and then he shook his head in sympathetic understanding.

“Sorry, Harder, didn’t mean to frighten you.  I just wanted to let you know about the meeting today for soccer.  I think it’d be good if you’re there.  I’m asking Jake to come too.  I’d like to make you guys co-captains this year.”

“Oh.  That’s okay.  Jake can be captain.”

“I know.  But it helps to have two I think.  Besides a lot of the younger, newer players have heard a lot about you and look up to you.”

“That’s the problem,” Will frowned.

Coach Mayhew laughed and thumped Will on the back.  “Oh, come on.  There are worse things than being a role model.”

“I guess,” he said skeptically.

“Okay.  See you today then.  Oh.  One other thing.  Do you know if Julian intends to play this year?  A lot of last year’s players haven’t come to any meetings either, but he hasn’t even put his name on the sign-up sheet.”

“He’s going to play.  Just remind him when you see him.”

“Okay then.  Have a good day,” he laughed as he walked confidently under the mistletoe hanging from the door.  Will didn’t know why he seemed so confident.  Teachers had fallen prey to the stuff before.  Will saw movement to his left.  An incoming group of girls was bee-lining for him.  He recognized them as the girls’ gymnastic team.  He slid a foot to his right—back under the doorway—and waited with a smile.

 

Will liberally applied some Chap Stick to his lips as he skipped down the stairs.  The halls were busy and the entrance to the stairwell was jammed as people freely made out in it.  He managed to squeeze through a pair of couples without being accosted himself and spotted Scott by his locker.  He smiled and half-hopped over to him.  He was interested to find out how his morning was going.  Just as he reached him, he saw his friend heave a sigh and lean his head against the locker door.  It was a theatrical gesture, but not nearly melodramatic enough for Scott, which meant it must be for real.  He pulled up beside him and tried to determine where he was looking.  It didn’t take an idiot to figure out he was staring at Antoinette.  And she looked good today.

Will glanced at Scott.  He’d put a hand to his face and was pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.  His eyes were shut and he looked really sad.  The poor thing.  How had those two gotten so messed up in the first place?  Scott’s explanation of the break-up hadn’t made any sense to him.  They obviously liked each other, so why had things not worked out?  A lack of communication.  That’s what it had to be.  If they’d simply told each other how they felt rather than trying to figure out how the other felt, he was certain their relationship would be an actual relationship right now.  Will shook his head sadly.  That’s what happened when couples didn’t communicate.  Not like him and his honey.  They communicated just fine.

Well…Will made a face.  He hadn’t actually talked with Ken since Thanksgiving.  He hadn’t gone over or called him or even e-mailed him.  Ken hadn’t done anything to try to contact him either.  Was it because he thought that’s what Will wanted?  Or was he peeved that he’d poured his heart and soul out to him and Will hadn’t reciprocated?  Why hadn’t he?  Why hadn’t he just said, “I love you too,” before leaving?  He was going to go over today.  He definitely needed to see him.

“Hey,” Will said, nudging Scott.

Scott turned to look at him.  “What?”

“Go talk to her.”

“No,” he said, a little irritated and rubbed his eyes.

“Go,” Will demanded and gave him another nudge.

Scott turned a look on him and said, “No!”

Will’s eyes went wide.  “Okay.  You’re the boss.”

He put his hands in the air and backed away slowly.  Scott glared at him and made sure he made a full retreat before turning his back on him.  Will scowled.  That little…oh, he was going to pay.

“Hey!  Watch it!”

There was loud laughter and Will turned around in time to see Julian getting kissed on the cheek by some freshman girl.  He managed to get away and ran for Will like he was home base during a game of hide and seek.  He didn’t know why Julian thought being near him was any safer.

“Having a good day?” Will asked.

“No,” Julian snapped.

Will snickered, and then he became a little alarmed by the twitch of Julian’s eyebrow.

“By the way,” he said, “Liz is looking for you.”

Will made a face.  “Ew.”

They fell into step together as they headed for their next class.  Julian half-laughed.

“I take it the person you love more than me isn’t her?”

Will felt himself blush, so he stayed focused on the busy hallway and didn’t look at Julian.

“You don’t have to tell me who it is.  Now.  But you will eventually, you know?”

“Yeah,” Will acknowledged, looking to the side.  _In about five years when the statute of limitations has run out._

“Oh, this is me,” Julian said and started down a different hall.  “Meet you for lunch?”

Will nodded.  Then he had to wonder, would Ken even be willing to let him tell anyone in five years?  The man couldn’t stay closeted for _ever_.  Could he?

 

Will twirled his hall pass and walked right by the boy’s bathroom.  Did anyone ever take a hall pass to actually go to the bathroom?  Maybe the goody-two-shoes.  He saw someone leaning in a doorjamb under some mistletoe.  But he was alone.  Was he waiting for people to walk by?  That was a little pathetic.  Then he recognized him.

“Yo, Chris!”

He hummed his way over to his friend, but he didn’t appear to have heard him when he’d called his name.  He looked dazed.

“Dude?”  Will poked Chris with the hall pass.  Chris shook his head and looked at him.

“Hmm?”

“Dude, what’s up with you?”

“Um…”  He looked away, and might have been blushing.  “Well…”

“Oh, no,” Will sniggered.  “You look like a guy who’s been completely bowled over by nothing more than simple little kiss.”

Chris laughed and leaned his head against the doorframe.  “It was anything but simple.”

“Mm-hmm,” Will said knowingly.

“Hey, Will?”  Chris was staring at the ceiling.

“Yeah?”

Chris didn’t answer right away, but Will decided to wait him out.  After what looked like some tough thinking going on in his head, he finally asked, “How do you know if you’re in love?”

Will was caught off guard by the question.  Who had Chris been kissing?  And why was he asking _him_ of all people?  Oh, that’s right.  He’d admitted to all three of them that he was in love with someone.  So, he should know what it feels like.  He gave it some serious thought.  How did he know he was in love with Ken?  It was hard to answer.  He just was.  He couldn’t remember ever feeling differently about the man from the day they first met, though he knew that couldn’t be entirely right.

Will shrugged.  “You just know,” he said.  “No, wait.  I take that back.  It is entirely possible to be in love with someone and not know it.”

Chris looked at him with an amused expression.  “So, then how do you know?”

“Umm…”

“Dude.  Are you _actually_ in love?”

“Ye _ss_ ,” Will said snippily.

“Well.  How do you know you’re in love?”

“Be-because.”  Will closed his eyes and thought about Ken.  How could he explain this?  He opened his eyes.  “Your world becomes different.  Like, you see everything differently because you have this new information.  You understand the world better.  I mean.”  He let out a noise of frustration.  “Like.  It’s when you learn a math problem.  At first you see all these numbers and operations and you don’t know what to do.  And then you learn how to solve it.  And suddenly, it becomes so clear how you can apply this to other problems.  Or how similar problems can be solved in a similar way, which leads you to understand how other math problems work without ever having to be taught how to do them.  And you can just…do anything.”  Will pulled himself back from the haze he’d gone into.  “Does that make sense?”  He looked at Chris.

Chris was staring wide-eyed at him.  “Holy bejeezus, Will.  You’ve found someone who inspires in you the same zeal and passion you have for math.  You don’t have a normal love.”

“Wha?”  Will made an offended face.

“I mean, you have, like, movie love.”

“Movie love?”

“Yeah, like the kind you see in movies or books.  Where people can move mountains and make that physically impossible leap because they’re motivated by love.  That extremist ideal of what everyone wishes love was really like on a daily basis.  I don’t think that’s common.  I don’t think that’s really what most people find in the world.”

Will was surprised by Chris’ assessment and couldn’t come up with anything good to say.  So, he said, “That’s very cynical of you.”

“Yeah, I guess.”  Chris continued to examine him.

“What?” Will said irritably.

“Be careful with that, Will.  I’m happy for you, but don’t let it get out of control.”

“I—” Will swallowed.  “I won’t.”

Chris’ warning bothered him.  He’d had the same fears about the intensity of his relationship with Ken before.  He put his mask on and rolled his eyes at his friend.

“Whatever, dude.  Maybe you just need to aim higher.”

Chris nodded in semi-agreement.  “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right, Chris.  I’m always right.  When have I _ever_ been wrong?”

“You want a list?”

“You want to keep your balls?”

“So, yes, you want a list?  Because if you’re asking me if I want to keep my balls is the same answer as you wanting a list, well, that’s a yes then.”

Will started to protest and then stopped.  Damn.  Punk had him.

“All right.  Round 4567 to you, Pelletier.  But the war is far from over.”

 

Will leaned on his arm, watching Jake draw pictures of a busty stick figure getting hit by cars and pooped on by birds.  Well, at least he wasn’t bitter about his break-up.

“So!”

Will and Jake started in their chairs and looked up.  They were sitting behind the coach and he was talking to a bunch of glassy-eyed newbies.  Most of the regulars had wisely decided not to show up for anything labeled as an “informational” meeting.  Honestly, what information could possibly be left?  Tryouts were long since over.  But, that’s the way Coach Mayhew worked.  At least he was finally done.  It had been close to an hour and Will was long past ready to go.  Julian (the little bitch) hadn’t even bothered to show up and he wanted to go see Ken.  Ever since he’d decided that he was going to go over after school, the day had slowed down.  But now there was light at the end of the tunnel.

“With that, you’ll notice we’ve come to the end of bullet six under point four on your meeting itineraries in your information packets.  Now we’ll—”

Will stood up and put a hand on the coach’s shoulder.  He stopped talking and looked at him.

“Yes, Will?”

“Here’s the thing, guys.  You’ve got some forms your parents have to sign so that they can’t sue the school if you get hurt while playing.  This Wednesday is the placement tryouts for varsity and junior varsity.  Practices are on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and the Fridays before games, which are usually on Saturday mornings, except for the game against Huntington, which is always on a Thursday.  If you miss any practices the week of a game, you don’t play.  If you miss more than three practices without a valid excuse, you don’t play the rest of the season.  Questions?  Comments?”

The newbies shook their heads.

“Excellent.”  Will patted the coach’s shoulder again.  “I’ve gotta go.”

And he left.  Rush hour was in full swing and he missed one of the trains he wanted.  People were jostling him and seemed to keep getting in his way.  All the pedestrian lights were against him as he made his way to Ken’s building.  He had to wait forever for a stupid elevator to arrive and he dropped the keys twice trying to get them in the lock.  What was going on?  Why was the Universe trying to keep them apart?

He flung the condo door open and searched inside desperately.  Ken was right in front of him, sitting on the couch and appeared to be polishing his shoes.  He looked startled by Will’s entrance.  Will shut the door, dropped his bag, and shrugged out of his jacket in one, hurried motion.  He darted over to Ken, who had put the shoes on the coffee table and was starting to stand up.  Will crashed into him, forcing them to stay on the coach.  He straddled his lap, slid his arms underneath Ken’s arms, and hooked his hands back around on the man’s shoulders.  He put his head to his shoulder, pressing his face to the familiar smelling neck.  He used his arms to force their chests together, and then he went still.  He waited, and listened.  And then he found it.  Ken’s heartbeat against his chest.  He sighed, but it came out more like a sob.  The hiccup made him do it again, and then he just started crying.  There was a hand on his back, and one in his hair.  A voice he loved was whispering soothing words to him.  He couldn’t hear the heartbeat anymore, but he knew it was there.  His distress only lasted a couple of minutes, and then he was able to calm down very quickly.

Will took in a couple slow breaths, breathing Ken deep into his senses.  He was feeling much better now.  Actually, he was feeling embarrassed.  He had no idea why he’d completely lost it.  Ken must be really worried.  He didn’t want to have to tell him he was just being a melodramatic teenager.

“Baby,” Ken’s voice whispered in his ear.  Will swallowed a small moan.  He knew he must be better now.  Ken’s voice wasn’t soothing him anymore.

Will sat back a little and Ken leaned forward to kiss him, but he sat back further.  “Hang on,” he said, and sniffed back some snot.  He groaned in embarrassment and struggled out of Ken’s lap.  He hurried into the bedroom and made a quick right into the bathroom.  He blew his nose and looked at himself in the mirror.  His eyes were red and he looked pale.  Well, paler than usual.  He got a wash cloth out and wetted it down.  He patted it gently on his face and the cool water felt good.  He dabbed his eyes and looked at himself again.  The color was returning to his face.  He ran a hand over one eyebrow.  What had that been all about?  He shook his head and licked his lips.  They were a little chapped.  He bent down and opened the cabinet underneath the sink.  Ken used the nasty blue Listerine.  He preferred the green.  But, he should rinse his mouth out before he went kissing anybody he really cared about.

Once he was back to normal, except for a little mental confusion, he left the bathroom and returned to the main room.  Ken was holding a little mini-fan up to his shoes where they now sat on the dining room table on a paper towel.  He turned off the fan when he saw Will and tried to appear normal, if a little concerned.  But Will could see in his eyes that he was kind of freaked out.  He was so easy to read.  Then Will really looked at him.  His dark hair was gelled into its very serious businessman look and he was freshly shaven. He was wearing a tuxedo sans the jacket.  He looked fucking amazing in it.  Will kind of just wanted to undress him right now, and find out if that bowtie was a clip on.

“So, something must be going on,” Will said.

Ken walked carefully toward him.  “Is that my line?”

“No, it’s mine,” Will said, helping the man to close the distance between them.  “For one thing you’re home early.  And for another you’re in a tux.”

Ken looked down at himself.  “Oh, right.”

Will reached Ken and ran his hands up his chest.  “Is this for the Last Charge of the Light Brigade?”

Ken cocked his head in confusion, and then laughed softly as he understood.  “Yes, yes.  The Women and Children’s Charity Brigade is having their annual fundraising gala tonight.”

“Mm-hmm,” Will said, not looking happy at all.

“How do you know about it?”

“Autumn Rose told me you had ‘offered’ to escort her.”

Ken smiled and petted his head.  “My family is a large supporter of this organization.  I would be expected to go even if Ms. Ward hadn’t asked for the pleasure of my company.”

Will didn’t stop making a face, so Ken leaned down and kissed his cheek.  Then he trailed his lips over his skin and lightly kissed his lips.

“Are you okay?” Ken asked, his voice tight with concern.

“I am now,” Will sighed.  He kissed Ken and moved forward.  Ken stepped backward to accommodate him and Will managed to guide him toward the couch even though he was quite preoccupied with his lips.  Ken resisted when he felt the couch against the back of his legs.  Will pushed harder, but Ken stayed firmly standing.

“Mm, baby, I can’t.  I—”

Ken yelped as Will shoved him over the arm of the couch and landed on him.  Will settled on top of him and began pulling the bowtie undone.

“Oh, don’t, I—damn it.  That took me twenty minutes to get straight.”

“Too bad,” Will smiled against his lips and let his legs fall on either side of Ken’s body.  Ken’s hands found his hips and ground him down onto his.  Will had to stop what he was doing as the pleasure turned him into an inarticulate simpleton.  He wasn’t able to start thinking again until Ken released him.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” the man said.  “I don’t have time and I really don’t want to get this thing all messed up.”

“Don—Don’t worry,” Will panted.  “It’s only going to get wrinkled a little.  I don’t have time to stain it.”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Ken asked around kisses.

“Mm, the reason I didn’t come over last week was because my mom was home.  My dad too for that matter.  Mm.”  Will stopped talking to kiss his lover a little more thoroughly.  Then he eased up to continue the thought.  “Do you know what it’s like to live in a two-parent household?  I sure as hell didn’t.”

Ken might have laughed, but it was hard to tell because the man pushed his tongue into Will’s mouth.  They writhed and undulated a little bit before pulling back some.

“Today was my first opportunity to come over.  There was a meeting for soccer today.  And the coach takes forever to talk.  So, I left early so I would still have time.  Before I have to get haa—” Will closed his eyes as Ken sucked on his lower lip.  It slid slowly out of his mouth and the man dropped his head back onto the couch.  Will languidly opened his eyes and looked at him.  “Home,” he finished.

“But, you’ve come over before when your parents have been home, right?”

Ken stroked his cheek with the back of his hand and Will licked one of his fingers.

“Yes.  But, I’m grounded right now.”

Ken stopped moving.  His brow creased in humor, horror, and disbelief.

“Oh, good God,” the man laugh-groaned and put his hand to his forehead.  “I’m a thirty-two year old man and my boyfriend is _grounded_.  There’s something very wrong with this picture.”

He laughed a little to himself, like a man who had just lost his mind.  Will lay down on his chest and put his chin on his hands so that he could still look at Ken.

“You’re still thirty-two?”

Ken gave him a look.  “What do you mean still?”

“I just mean you were thirty-two when we met and that was half a year ago.”  Will scowled.  “How come I don’t know when your birthday is?”

“March 15th.”

“Ooo.  The ides of March.  Well, then, you’re really only exactly fifteen years older than me.  That’s not that much.”

“Yes, it is.”  Ken sat up on one elbow and struggled to make Will obey him and slide to the side.  After much scooting and rearranging they both managed to get seated on the couch, but Will was still clinging to the man.

“So, I guess you’re in trouble from Thanksgiving?”

Will nuzzled his head against Ken’s shoulder.  “Yeah.”

“Are you okay?  Something was wrong that night.  And you wouldn’t tell me what.”

Will played with one of the black tuxedo buttons on the shirt.  And didn’t answer.

“You said you had a fight with J—a friend.”

He stayed quiet.

“Was it the one whose parents died?”

Will nodded.

“Is he doing okay?  Or, I mean.  Did you guys make up?  Was it just a fight because he was having a hard time that day?”

“Sort of.”  Will buried his face in Ken.  “It was really bad.  Like, really bad.”

Ken turned to him and kissed the top of his head.  “I know,” he said gently.

Will pulled back and looked at him.  “How do you know?”

He smiled and kissed his nose.  “I know you.  I can tell.”

Will settled back against him.  “Look.  I really don’t want to tell you what happened.  And not because I don’t trust you or love you.  I just.  It’s just better now.  And I never want to talk about it or think about it again.”

“Okay.  That’s fine.  You don’t have to tell me everything.  Just as long as you know you can.”

“Yeah.”  Will hugged Ken to him.  He loved this man.

“So, um.  Your friend is okay then.  He got…help?”

“Yeah.  He said he saw a new therapist that night.”

“ _Therapist_ ,” Ken snorted derisively.

“What?  Don’t like shrinks?”

“Depends on their credentials,” Ken said dryly.

“Feh.  I don’t like any of them.

Ken just smiled and rubbed his shoulder warmly.  Will turned in to him and started messing with the top button of his shirt.  He arched his neck up to lick his Adam’s apple.

“Unh-uh,” Ken said, leaning away.  “I need to finish getting ready and you probably need to leave before Autumn Rose gets here.”

Will swore as he crossed his arms over his chest and huffed back into the couch.  “I’m surprised she’s not already over here trying to get you to help her pick out her outfit.”

Ken laughed.  “We already did that.  She got all dressed up and paraded around in her un—best outfits for me.  Then she had to go and have her hair and make-up professionally done.”

Will stuck out his tongue.  “Bleh.”

“Now you know why I like men,” he chuckled, standing up.

“That has nothing to do with being a woman.  That has to do with being _her_.  Most girls are actually quite nice and normal.”

“Ah.  Like the one you used to date?”

“Well…Hey.”  Will looked around.  “Where’s Joyce Greene?”

“Oh.  I—uh.”

Ken walked away from him.  Will sat up straight on the couch.

“What did you do with her?”

“I shut her up in the utility room.”

“What?!”

Will leapt off the couch, but Ken intercepted him before he could reach the laundry room door by grabbing him around the waist.

“I will _not_ have white cat hair all over my tux pants.  I’ll let her out when I leave.”

Will glowered at Ken over his shoulder.

“I gave her a treat.  She’s fine.”

Ken hoisted Will up and slung him around to seat him on one of the bar chairs by the higher end of the kitchen island.  He leaned forward and kissed him.  After a couple smooches, he pulled back with a curious expression.

“Did you brush your teeth in there?”

Will glared at him.

“What?” Ken laughed.  “She’s fine!  I love her as much as you do, baby, but she’s just a cat.”

“Are you going to behave yourself?”

Ken raised an eyebrow.  “Hunh?”

“Tonight.  Or are you like Bruce Wayne?  To hide your secret you act like an idiot and fawn all over the women.  Your family is a big supporter?  So they’ll be going?  Your parents and sister.  Will you have to dance with her?  Will you kiss her to hide your secret?  Will you bring her back here and f—will you bring her to _our_ bed just to make sure she has enough encouragement to help you with the charade?”

Ken gave a slight shake of his head and a tight smile.  “Will, even if I were going to do those things, do you really believe it could ever be with Autumn Rose?”

“I didn’t say it had to be _her_.  Just some her.  Would you do it?”

“Will.”  Ken sighed and stood up straight.  He put his hands on his waist, but he didn’t seem to be upset with him.  He looked like he was about to launch into some serious discussion.  Then he got a snarky look on his face.  “Oh, yeah.  I definitely would.  I mean, I find some nice little socialite with long legs and hooters out to here…”  He demonstrated by holding his hands out in front of his chest.  Will glared at him.  “Or even better…they have some of the beneficiaries show up at the gala.  Homeless boobies.  I could take her home and wash them off.  Or maybe draw designs in the layers of dirt caked onto them.  And then—” Will was sucking on his cheeks painfully hard to keep from smiling.  “Then we could lay plastic out on the couch and I could get some tweezers and carefully pluck out—”

“Stop!” Will shouted.  He started to laugh and then immediately cut it off and put on a serious face.  “I do _not_ want to hear where that thought was going.  And you are sick man, you know that?  I’m just saying you’ve done it before!  You said so!  And I just want to know.  What’s more important to you?  Me or your secret?”

“Before I answer that, is the woman I’d be fooling around with a socialite or one of the homeless ones?”

“Gah!  Kenneth J. West!  Crap!  What’s your goddamn middle name?!”

“Huh?”

“I’m trying to be stern with you here!  I want to say your whole name!”

“Oh.  J.”

“No your name!”

“Calm down, freak.  It’s Jay.  Like, J-A-Y.”

“Jay?”  Will calmed down enough to be irked with Ken’s parents.  “They gave you a middle name that’s the same as your initial?  Is that ‘cause, like, it’s more professional?”

“No.  It’s my uncle’s name.”

“Oh.  Where was I?”

“You were being stern with me,” he said with a little leer.

“Oh, yes.  Kenneth Jay West!  Don’t be an ass!”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s a person who—wait, what?  Who’s what?”

“Who’s Kenneth Jay West?”

Will wiggled his fingers; they were aching to get a hold of his lover’s neck.

“It’s you?”

Ken’s smile was so irritating.  “That’s not my name.”

“Omigod.  Your parents just named you Ken?  They just named you Ken Jay West so your name would always be the same?”

“No.  Ken isn’t short for Kenneth.”

“What’s it short for?”

“Kendall.”

Will cocked his head to the side.  A small smile was trying to become much larger.  He looked his lover over once.  And then again.  And then one more time.  He met Ken’s eyes, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought his name was.  “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Hmm,” Ken said, but didn’t disagree.

“Does only your mommy call you that?”

“No.  No one calls me that.  It’s just a family name.  My parents always intended on calling me Ken.”

“Kenny?”

Ken gave him a partially amused look.  “Until I was eight.”

“Aww!  Cute.”

“Shut it.”

Will reached out for Ken’s hand and pulled him closer.  “Kendall,” he tried the name out in his mouth.  It didn’t feel quite right.  “Kendall.”  That was a little better.  He raised the man’s hand up to his lips.  He pressed a kiss to the knuckles.  “Oohh, Kendalllll,” he moaned.

Ken laughed and jerked his hand back.  “Knock it off.”

“Am I the only one?” Will asked, serious now.  He reached out for Ken and pulled him close.  “Am I the only one who’s ever moaned your name?”

Ken leaned down and caressed the side of his face.  Will leaned into the touch, his lips parting in ecstasy.  Ken kissed those lips and whispered against them, “Second.”

Wills’ eyes snapped open.  He pushed Ken away.

“What?!  Who was it!  Who was the other?!”

Ken snickered.  “Just some guy.”

“Who?”

“No one.”

Will strummed his fingers on the island.  “Rylan?”

“No.”

Will turned on his best death glare.

“Yes.”

He dug his nails into the unyielding granite.  “I _really_ hate him.”

“I know you do, baby.  But, you have to realize.  The person I am today.  The person that you claim to love so much.  A big part of who I am is because of him.”

“Feh.”

Ken ran the knuckle of his index finger down Will’s jaw.  “Hey.  You owe him even more than you realize.”

Will’s brow creased and he looked up at him.  “What do you mean?”

“Uh—nothing, really.”

“No, what?  If he’s that important to you, I kind of want to know more about him.”

Ken shook his head.  “Oh, God.  You really don’t.”

Will had more questions, but Ken shut him up.  They were doing the best they could on the bar seat, but Will wished they were on the other side of the island.  It was remarkably easy to have sex on.

“Whoa.  That’s not a pretty sight.”

They pulled apart and looked at the door.  Rylan was pulling his key out of the lock and shutting it behind him.  He was also dressed in a tuxedo.  Will made a face.  Rylan was definitely the kind of man that looked good in a tux.

“Well, that killed the mood,” Will groused.

Rylan returned his exact look.  “Tell me about it.”

Ken looked at his watch.  “Oh, gosh.  It’s getting late.  Let me get my coat.”

He hurried off to the bedroom and Will hopped off the chair.  He walked over to the utility room and let Joyce Greene out.  She twined herself around his ankles and mewled thankfully.  He looked over at Rylan.  The man was waiting by the entrance, one hand in his pocket.  He looked back at Will.  They started a staring match.  It didn’t last very long because Ken quickly returned with his jacket and was fussing with his bowtie.  He shot Will a dirty look.

“Thanks again,” he muttered.

Will pushed Joyce Greene back inside the utility room before she could run over and ruin her master’s pants.  And get him in colossal trouble.

“Here, give me that,” Rylan demanded crankily.

He stood in front of Ken and began to tie the bowtie.  Ken fixed his shirt cuffs under the sleeves of the jacket.

“You remember the last time you did this?” Ken asked with a smile.

Rylan laughed and Will nearly died of shock.  That man could laugh out of something other than derision?

“I thought I told you never to remind me of that night ever again.”

Ken chuckled and looked up to meet Rylan’s eyes just as he carefully straightened the tie.  Will couldn’t help but to feel jealous and left out.  He didn’t like the idea of someone knowing Ken better than him.  Of someone sharing inside jokes with him.  But he really didn’t know anyone in Ken’s life.  He wasn’t _really_ a part of his life.  He edged closer to the two men.

“So, you’re going too?  To the poor children thing?” he asked Rylan glumly.  He kept the coffee table in between them.

Rylan just looked at him and seemed like he might not answer.  Then Ken discreetly cleared his throat.

“Yes,” Rylan said.

“Is it where you find new employees?”

Ken made a disgusted noise and looked at Will disappointedly.

“It’s where I find new clients,” Rylan said, not in the least bothered by the question.

“Do me a favor will you?”

A corner of Rylan’s mouth turned up.  “And that would be?”

“Keep Autumn Rose off him.”

Rylan laughed.  “You know, I never thought I would ever agree with you on anything, but that is one thing we see eye to eye on.  That woman just gives me the—” Rylan finished the sentence with a shudder.

“Oh, please,” Ken said in a bored tone.  “You two are ridiculous.”

Will stayed on his side of the coffee table as the two men gathered up what they would need for the night.

“Who are you taking?” Will asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rylan replied.  “I’m escorting his sister.”

Will let out a short laugh.  “You trust him with your sister?”

Ken walked closer to Rylan.  “He’s one of the few men I do and there’s only one reason for it.”  He smiled a sweet, cruel smile at his friend.  “He strikes you as at least being bi, doesn’t he?  But Rylan likes for his bitches to be men.”  Ken gently brushed a hand against the unhappy man’s cheek.  “You couldn’t even get it up for a woman, could you?”

Rylan pushed his hand away and gave him a very unfriendly look.  “I’ve never had to try because I’m not a coward.”

They stared each other down.  Will remained quiet and observant.  There was tension between them, but it wasn’t hostile at all.  It was just the weight of a longstanding debate that had never been resolved.  Someone knocked at the door.  Will jumped a little, but the two men didn’t even seem to have heard it.  They just smiled shrewdly at each other.

“Ken?” Autumn Rose’s voice broke the spell they were under.  The tension dissipated and Rylan and Ken seemed to have gotten over whatever it was they’d been caught up in.

“Just one moment,” Ken called out.  He turned to Will.  “Night, baby.  Go home before you get in trouble.”

Rylan snorted and rolled his eyes.  Will ignored him.

“Have fun, I guess.  My parents will both be out of town by Thursday.  I’ll come over then.”

“Okay.  Why don’t you wait in the bedroom, in case she wants to come in for a moment.”

“I’ll wait with Joyce Greene,” he said and went inside the utility room.  The fluffy white cat was sleeping on top of the neatly folded, dirty towels waiting to be washed.  He heard the door open and Autumn Rose exclaimed in delight at seeing the two “dashing” men.  Ken said she looked gorgeous.  Gorgeous.  Why didn’t he use the word “beautiful” or “pretty?”  Was she really that great?  He wasn’t even tempted to peek outside.  He petted the young cat’s head and listened to the idle chatter.  It didn’t last long, and then the door opened and closed.  It was very quiet.  Will went to the door and cracked it open.  He couldn’t see anything at all.  He opened the door farther.  It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the dark room.

“Shit,” he whispered to himself.

It was already after dark.  It was going to be so late by the time he got home.  He was going to be in even more trouble.

 

Chris

 

Chris twirled the lock on his locker very slowly, not particularly trying to find the right combination.  He would look down at it occasionally to keep up the pretense that he was simply trying to get into his locker, but most of his attention was on the lesbians.  His locker was on the corner so he had a clear view of the doorway under which they stood.  The mistletoe had been strung across the entire doorway like a garland.  The taller one with auburn hair had the smaller brunette up against the doorjamb.  Why did guys find girl-on-girl so hot?  He couldn’t define it, but he definitely was enjoying it.  As was the taller one.  Chris realized his fingers had stopped moving and he was staring now.  As were a couple of other guys in the hall.  He watched the brunette shift her weight from one leg to the other, causing her skirt to ride up higher since it was caught on the doorjamb.  He swallowed thickly.  Was he a bad person?

“What is wrong with you?”

Chris and the other two guys in the hallway started guiltily as the auburn lesbian pulled back and snapped at her girlfriend.  The dark-haired one just shook her head.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not into it at all!”

“Well, it’s kind of hard when there’s an audience.”

She shot one of the guys in the hall a dirty look and he blushed and ran into a wall trying to get away.  Chris immediately focused on his locker.  He didn’t want that look aimed at him.  While he got his books and notebooks organized for his first couple of classes the girls debated about who had been more into the kiss.  Chris never found out who won.  He just closed his locker and walked in the opposite direction.  He was heading for Scott’s locker.  He would always make it to school on time, but then he dawdled by his locker too long and was late to homeroom.  Chris wasn’t sure how that was even possible.  He saw his friend slumped against his locker, staring at the ceiling.  Chris was positive it was completely unintentional, but he was kind of striking a dramatic pose and some nearby girls were noticing.  Chris rolled his eyes a bit.  Scott probably had no idea how much attention he now received.  Chris leaned against the locker beside him.

“Hi, Scotty.”

Scott dropped his head onto his shoulder.  “Hey.”

Chris’ first instinct was to shrug his friend off.  Not only were they in public, they were in school.  But the only people around were the same two girls, and they seemed to think it was cute.  So, he indulged his friend.

“How you doing?” he asked.

Scott heaved a sad sigh.  “Fiiiine.”

“Hm.  You sure sound it.”

“Yeah.”

Chris turned his head just slightly.  Scott’s platinum blond hair brushed his lips.  He immediately turned his head back and shrugged his shoulder gently.  Scott straightened.

“Come on,” Chris said and used a hand to push Scott forward by the back of the neck.  He allowed himself to be moved and he obediently followed his friend.  Chris could have been leading him to his own homeroom class and he probably would have gone.  Fortunately for him Chris was nice enough to escort him to his class.  Unfortunately for them both, Chris was so preoccupied with Scott that he wasn’t paying attention where he was walking.

“Hi boys!”

They both stopped in their tracks and looked behind them.  Laney leapt up and grabbed Chris around the shoulders.  He was forced to bend over awkwardly as she planted a kiss on his lips.  Then she let go and grabbed Scott.  Chris noticed her little group of junior friends watching on enviously.  When she was done with them, Laney waved to them both and strutted victoriously over to her friends.

“Omigod,” one gushed.  “You totally kissed a senior boy!”

“Two of them!” another squealed.

Scott and Chris exchanged looks.  Those girls knew Laney was friends with them.  Was it really _that_ big a deal?

“Hey,” Scott suddenly called, “you want to kiss a senior boy?”

Laney’s friends whipped around.  “Seriously?” one gasped.

Laney gave him an irritated look.  Chris smiled at her with his tongue out a bit and she grew even unhappier.

“Two senior boys underneath the north hall mistletoe,” Chris advertised.  “Step right up.”

One of Laney’s friends stepped forward and she grabbed her arm.  “Oh, don’t even,” she growled.

“What?  You don’t own exclusive rights to them, Laney.”

Chris and Scott watched in amusement as the girls squabbled about who got to do it and with which one.  Chris was a little relieved they weren’t all fighting over Scott.  Two of them wanted him first.

“I’ll take a turn,” a voice said from behind them.

Chris looked over his shoulder and saw Sophia step up to him.  Even though she stood on her tiptoes he still had to bend down to accommodate her.  It was slightly awkward, so he straightened just a little, but that forced her against him as she practically dangled from his neck.  She wasn’t nearly as nervous as she’d been that day at her house, so it was quite easy to have a little fun beyond what usual mistletoe etiquette dictated.  Chris had his hands under her blazer, running them over the soft cotton of the dress shirt.  She tilted her head to the other side, and he switched too, enjoying the movement made by their mouths.  It must be pretty good; his ears were ringing.

“Hey, Chris,” someone said to him with a little nudge.  He didn’t respond.  “The bell rang.”

He now recognized Scott’s voice.  He raised one hand from Sophia’s back and waved him away.  He heard a small laugh from his friend, but he didn’t disturb him further.  The last thing he heard was an annoyed feminine voice saying, “Isn’t she a _sophomore_?”

 

It was the last thing he’d heard until Julian had interrupted them and laid a guilt trip on him.  He hadn’t been able to catch her before she disappeared into her homeroom class, so now he had to search the halls for her.  And why was he?  So they made out under some mistletoe.  People did that all the time at Calverton and it didn’t necessarily mean anything.  It was just…“tradition.”  Chris pulled up short and looked down the hallway he’d just passed.  Like Nick Tripp making out with Samantha Deale.  It was just the mistletoe, right?  He continued on his hunt.  Now here was a moral dilemma.  Did he tell Riley what he saw or did he respect the male honor code and not snitch on some guy who was just having an “innocent” kiss with some chick because of a culturally accepted custom?  He decided he wouldn’t lie to her if she asked him about it.

The halls were clearing out, so Chris was about to give up when he spotted Sophia getting a kiss on the cheek from some pimply loser under the library hall’s entrance.  It didn’t really bother him, which is how he knew Julian was right.  But was it really such a bad thing to make out with someone with no strings attached?  Why did everything have to be about a _relationship_?  He decided right then he was totally going to have one night stands in college.

“Hey, Sophia!”

She looked away from the pimply guy she’d been laughing with, and never looked back.  The kid looked peeved and disheartened as he watched Chris approach.  Chris didn’t have much sympathy for him; now he knew what it was like to be friends with Will Harder.  The kid took a hint and wandered off.  Chris stopped in front of Sophia and rocked on his heels.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” she said shyly.

He reached out a hand and tickled her side.  She squeaked and bent sideways to get away.

“Enough of that,” Chris said.  “I’m not buying that shy act anymore.”  He softened the words with a smile.

She smiled back, but kind of looked like she’d acknowledged she’d been busted.  “I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about.”

Chris shook his head amusedly, and then he let his smile fade.  “Look, about this morning.”

She got a knowing look on her face, but let him continue.

“I shouldn’t have done that.  I mean, I took it too far.  I really, _really_ don’t intend to lead you on, but for some reason I just let myself get carried away with you.  But, that doesn’t mean anything.  It’s not like it’s some subconscious desire or something.  This wouldn’t work out.”

Her lips were pressed tightly together and her chin quivered for just a second, but then she smiled and shook her head.  “I get it, Chris.  I really do understand.  I just, kind of like making out with you too, you know?  And I know it doesn’t mean anything.  I mean, come on.  It’s just mistletoe.”

“Rrright.  Mistletoe.”

“So, you know, if you ever feel like just making out with someone, I’d love to get more practice.  I promise I won’t ask for a ring or date or anything afterwards.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.  Chris nodded.  He wouldn’t argue with her now, but he obviously couldn’t take her up on this offer.  Ever.  Well, unless she—No!  He really was a bad person.

Sophia strummed her fingers on the edges of the book she held in her hands.  They rocked awkwardly on their heels together.

“So, are you going to lunch?” she asked.

“Oh, no.  I already had lunch.  I’ve got class now.  I really should go.  The bell is gonna ring any second and I’ve already got one tardy for today.”

She giggled.  “Me too.  So, I’ll see you around.”

“Okay.”

He started to leave.

“Oh, hey, wait!”

“What is it?”

She pointed up.  Chris made a face: mistletoe.  He’d forgotten it was there.  It got worse and worse every year.  Who were the ones who even put it up?  The popular kids or the unpopular ones?  She put a hand on his shoulder and got him to bend over a little.  Then she placed a little girl kiss on his cheek.

“Have a good day,” she said and scampered off to lunch.

Chris rubbed his forehead with his hand.  He had issues, issues, issues.  He turned to watch her as she hurried down the hall.  Damn she was cute.

 

Chris hurriedly copied down the answers from Will’s science homework.  Will was keeping lookout.

“Hey, sorry about this, man.  I just completely forgot we had this due.  Thanks for helping me out.”

“No problem.  You’d be amazed how many times Scott ‘forgets’ there’s math homework due.”

Chris laughed.  “But he’s smart enough to actually do it.”

“I know.  He’s just lazy.”

“But wait, you guys don’t even have the same class.”

“I know.  He just makes me do it.”

Chris wrote his name on the top of his page and handed Will’s back to him.  “He _makes_ you do it?  You’re saying _you_ get bossed around by _Scott_?”

Will stuffed his homework in his messenger bag and made a face.  Chris put his neatly in his notebook.

“It’s not like he _makes_ me.  But he asks me.  With those damn lost, needy puppy eyes of his.  How can someone have _blue_ puppy dog eyes?  Aren’t they supposed to be brown?  And have you ever been able to refuse him when he starts to cry?”

They left the boys bathroom together and Chris conceded that point.

“You’re absolutely right.  I wonder.  Is he really that cute and clueless, or has he been playing us from day one?”

“You know, considering how pathetic he has to be to pull it off naturally, I kind of wish it were intentional.”

Chris laughed and then said “Oh, hey,” as he threw out a hand toward Will.  It hit him in the shoulder and Will let out a whiney “ow” while rubbing the spot.

“What was that for?”

“Sorry.  I just meant to get your attention.”

“Well, you got it.”

“I heard a weird rumor today.”

“Oh, yeah?  What’s that?”

“That you’re being a total kiss whore.”

“What?!  Absolutely not!”

“You’re right, that would imply an exchange of money.  A kiss slut.”

“I am not!”  Will pointed a finger at him.  “And you stay away.”

“Oh, please.  Of the three of us, I am the _least_ likely one to try anything with you.”

“Exactly.  That makes you the most suspicious.”

“Explain that logic.”

The bell rang and Will shot Chris a dirty look.  He’d promised he’d be able to finish copying the homework with enough time for them to get to class.

“You’re lucky all my teachers love me,” Will said and started to jog toward his class.

Chris rolled his eyes and headed in the opposite direction.  Will always acted like class was so important to him, but he cut all the time.  If there was any excuse he could use to get out and roam the halls he would take it.  As for himself, he’d been late to nearly every class today.  One more wasn’t going to hurt; just as long as he wasn’t _too_ late.

“Hey, honey.”

Chris turned at Karen’s voice.

“Hi, sugar.  Uh, I mean brown sug—Uh.  Ex-girlfriend!”

He rudely pointed a finger at his ex and she just smiled amusedly at him.  He was a little surprised by her appearance.  She must have gone to the beauty shop over the weekend.  Her hair was now in dozens of thin, tiny braids.  Her hair was long, but not that long.  It must be extensions.  She had some of them half-pulled back and the rest fell down her back.  It looked nice on her, but he liked it better when she wore her hair naturally.  She approached him slowly, as if not to spook him, and he let her even though he knew he really should get to class.

“I was good, you know,” she said.  “Well, as good as can be expected.  People can’t change _completely_.”  She smiled at him and he had to smile back.  “I did what you asked, for as long as I could.  I stayed away from you.  Gave you some space.  Let you think.  So…what’s the verdict?”

Chris shook his head as he looked at her.  He wished he could give her a better answer.  She deserved it.  “I don’t know,” he sighed in a little aggravation at himself.  “I mean, I missed you.  I missed _you_.  But there have been some things that I just really don’t miss.  You know?”

“Yeah, I do know.  That’s the whole point.  I _have_ changed, Chris.  Well, at least I understand what happened between us and what both of us did to cause those problems.  And now that I’m aware of them I consciously made the decision to change the way I act.  I’m not saying I had a personality transplant or anything.  Just that I’ve learned to take responsibility for my actions and feelings.  But, it doesn’t matter how many times I _tell_ you that, you won’t be able to believe it unless you see it for yourself.  And the only way to do that is to give us another chance.  To just try it one more time.  And that’s where we are now.  Either you’re willing to try again or you’re not.  We only have two choices here.  We try again or we let it end for good.”

Chris understood what she was saying, and it made sense.  But even though it was simply a choice of yes or no, that didn’t make it easy.

“Look, Chris,” she said, showing a little irritation at his unresponsiveness, “I’ll know too, you know?  If it doesn’t work out, I’ll know it too.  It’ll suck, but we’ll just break up again.”

“Yeah.  Because it was so easy the first time.”

She made a face at him.  “Don’t be such a ‘fraidy cat.”

“I’m n—” He did a double take to her.  “A ‘fraidy cat?  A ‘ _fraidy_ cat?  I can’t believe you just called me a ‘fraidy cat.  And it’s really confusing when you still go to the same school you went to when people could legitimately call you that.”

“Oh, shut-up!”  She laughed softly and hit his arm lightly.  “You overanalyze everything.”

“Yeah,” he said catching her hand and holding onto it.  He looked at it rather than her.  “So, does it surprise you that I still think I need more time?”

“No, I guess not.  But, I can’t wait forever, you know?  Someone else is bound to come along and snatch me up.  I won’t waste the best years of my life on you, Chris Pelletier.”

Chris looked up a, little wierded out, but then he could tell she was teasing him.  “Whatever,” he said.  “It’s been like five months and we’re still in high school.”

“Don’t ruin my dramatic moment!”

“Sorry.”

They laughed together and Chris played gently with her fingers.  Why was he still holding her hand?

“Hey,” she said softly.  “We’re under some mistletoe.”

Chris looked up.  They were actually just past the door and were clear of the stuff.  He looked back at her.

“No, we’re not,” he said.

She looked a little disappointed and a touch like she’d expected that answer.  Chris took a step back, and then another, pulling her gently toward him by the hand.  Once they were under the doorway he slid his arms around her waist and bent down to kiss her.  He could feel the smile on her lips, which made him smile.  Their happiness interrupted their kiss for a moment or two, but then they returned to what they did best.  It was hard for him to completely enjoy it; his heart was pounding too fast, which made breathing even harder than it already was.  And yet, that was okay.  It’d never felt so good to be deprived of oxygen in all his life.  He liked holding her.  She was so familiar to him.  He remembered when he used to do this every day.  And he remembered why he’d wanted to.  It was because he liked her.

She pulled back with a small, satisfied murmur, running a hand over his head as she did.  Chris still had his eyes closed, hoping that she’d just start kissing him again.  He thought his wish had come true when she pecked his lips.  But then she said, “We should really get to class.”

He opened his eyes and looked into her warm brown ones.  She looked happy.  Did she know something he didn’t?

“Oh, and, Chris?”

“Yeah?”

“Grow your hair out.”

“Okay,” he nodded.

She pulled their faces close for another kiss and then left him in a daze under the mistletoe.

 

Chris organized his books and notebooks in the order he would need them for tomorrow morning.  Then he checked to make sure he had everything and shut his locker.  Once the door was closed, he suddenly became aware that he was humming.  He was—humming—to himself.  This was not good.  That daze he’d fallen into after his kiss with Karen had stayed with him all day.  Why was he being so stubborn?  Why didn’t he just agree to go out with Karen again?  If things sucked, they sucked.  And then it would definitely be over.  Right?  But what if they did this the rest of their lives?  He didn’t want to be ones of those “on again, off again” couples.  He didn’t want to be the friend that everyone else had a pool going on for when they would and wouldn’t be together.  But, that wasn’t the case yet.  They’d had a bad relationship, and now they were going to try it differently.  If it was still bad, it would only become pathetic if they got back together a third time.  But how on earth could he agree to start seeing Karen again on the same day he’d made out with another chick?  He needed to wait a little bit.

Chris was one of the last ones down the front set of stairs.  Everyone else had gone out the back of the building because there was always less mistletoe back there and nobody wanted to deal with it after school.  It was just supposed to be a diversion during school hours.  So, since everyone was back there, he figured the front was safe enough.  He ambled down the art hallway and saw a tall, familiar figure using the same escape route as he was.

“Julllian!”

His friend turned to see who had called him, and stopped to wait for him to catch up.  He was running a candy cane in and out of his mouth on the opposite side from his lip ring.  He pulled it out and held the sharply pointed candy out to him.

“You want some?”

“No thanks.”

He shrugged and stuck it back in his mouth.

“Where you going?” Chris asked.

“To see my shrink,” he said.  “Though I feel like there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.  Oh, well.”

“So, um.”  Chris really wasn’t sure how to ask this.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“Well, I mean.  I know you have regular appointments.  But, is this like one of those?  Or is something wrong?”

“Oh.  Oh, I’m fine.  It’s routine.”  Chris saw him smile to himself.  “Sort of,” he added softly.

Chris decided not to investigate further.  Then Julian suddenly stopped walking and turned to grab him.  He hugged him tightly and Chris froze, his arms not certain if they should try to push him away or not.

“Yur so grrayt,” he said, trying not to let the candy cane fall out of his mouth.

“Aw, man,” Chris whined and leaned away a little bit, but Julian leaned with him.  His friend took the candy out of his mouth, but Chris couldn’t tell if he was getting it on his uniform or not.

“What?  What’s with the ‘aw man?’”

“I thought all that grabby, gropey stuff you did was just because you were all messed up.  I thought it would go away when you got fixed.”

“Why?  I mean, this is me.”

He turned his head when he said it, so his voice and breath fell on Chris’ neck.  Chris shivered as the vibration moved over his skin.

“No,” he protested.  “You were never this affectionate before.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No.  Trust me.  I’d remember.”

“Well, maybe I always was, but the rules of society kept me in check.  Now I am completely open and honest with myself and unafraid to show my affection for my loved ones, even in embarrassing situations.  And besides,” he murmured, pressing his lips to Chris’ ear, “you know you love it.”

Chris jumped a mile when Julian slapped and then squeezed his ass.  Then his ass of a friend laughed and ran away.

“Sorry!  Can’t stay!  I have an appointment!”

Chris scowled and grumbled to himself as he rubbed his butt to make the weird sensation go away.  It wasn’t normal.  It really wasn’t normal.  He was positive that no other high school boys had relationships like the ones he had with his friends.  Unless they were gay of course.

It was a long drive back home; traffic was terrible.  At least he didn’t have to work today.  He was looking forward to just flopping on the couch and watching sitcom re-runs until his mother got home.  And then he would have to do his homework.  That plan was interrupted as the house phone started to ring as soon as he stepped in the door.  He struggled to get his key out of the lock and get the door shut.  He tripped over some boxes in the hall and lunged across the kitchen to grab the phone before the machine kicked in.  Why did humans feel the need to answer a ringing phone no matter what?  Those lucky few that could ignore it…why he couldn’t he be like them?

“Hello?” he asked, trying to untangle his backpack from around his legs.

“Hello, is this Christo—I mean, Chris?”

“Yes, this is him.”

“He.”

“What?  This is he.”

“No, I’m Chris.”

“I get that, Chris.  The proper response to ‘Is this Chris’ is ‘Yes, this is he.’  Not him.”

“Who the hell is this?” Chris asked flipping on the kitchen light.

“Oh, sorry.  This is Dean Richardson.”

“Oh!”  Chris made a face.  He hadn’t meant to be rude, but seriously.  Who started a conversation by correcting someone?  “Sorry, Mr. Richardson.”

“No, it’s okay.  I should have just said hello.”

“It’s all right.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget that now.”

The man might have laughed, but since he never truly laughed out loud it was hard to hear over the phone line.  And now there was just an awkward silence.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mr. Richardson said, “is your mother available?”

“She’s not home yet.  Is there something wrong?”

“No, no.  Nothing is wrong.”

Relieved with that information, Chris opened the refrigerator door.  There was nothing that didn’t require some kind of preparation.  He’d better check out the pantry.

“So, why are you calling?” Chris asked, his eyes roaming the shelves for something edible.

“Oh, I’m just going to bother her again about some things she has in storage.  They’ve been in storage since the trial actually, and she never picked them up when she moved.  And the payment on it was for ten years, so that will be expiring next year.  Since I’ve regained contact with you I’ve been trying to find out what she would like to do with it.  Since it’s in my name.”

Chris pulled out a bag of Doritos and two packages of Ding Dongs.  “What is it?” he asked, making his way toward the living room.

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

Chris flopped onto the couch and opened the chips.  “You don’t know?”  He opened one of the Ding Dongs.

“No, I didn’t ask.”

Chris tucked the phone under his ear and broke off a piece of the Ding Dong.  He put it on a Doritos and then topped it with another.  He crunched loudly into his snack.

“Leh me geh dis srate.”  Chris chewed a little.  “You picked up a case involving a man known to be drug trafficking, and you let his wife put something in storage for ten years under your name.  And you didn’t even ask what it was or to see it?”

“W-well.  It was at the end of the trial.  After I’d known your mother for some time and believed that she wasn’t involved with anything your father might be.”

“That sounds a little naïve to me,” Chris lectured, making another sandwich.

“I think it’s some of your father’s belongings.  Personal belongings.  Pictures, maybe some clothes.  That’s all.  That’s why I didn’t ask.”

“Hnn.”

“What?”

“Well, two things.  One, I’m thirsty.  And two, my mom said she’d burned all the pictures of him.”

“Oh, I don’t believe she would do that.  And what on earth are you eating?  You’re crunching right in my ear.”

“Sorry.  Doritos with Ding Dongs.”

There was a pause.  “God, I hope you don’t mean together.”

Chris laughed.  And then sighed.  “I so don’t want to go back to the kitchen.”

“Well, what’s more important?  Your thirst or your laziness?”

“Hey!  I am not lazy.  I had a long, busy day.”

“I see.  What’d you do?”

“Um.  Well.”  Chris made a face and stood up to head back to the kitchen.  “I actually missed a lot of class time because I was out in the halls making out with girls underneath all the mistletoe.”

Mr. Richardson laughed.  A real, loud laugh.  Chris suddenly wished he could see what he looked like.  He let the man laugh as he poured himself a glass of milk.

“You done?” he asked on his way back to the living room.

“Yes, I’m sorry.  Sorry.  I just had no idea how tough your life is.”

Chris wanted to say something like “can it” or “bite me,” but he couldn’t.  Mr. Richardson was an adult.  Even if he was making fun of him.  He just flopped onto the couch and said, “Yeah, well.”

He could hear the smile in Mr. Richardson’s voice as he said, “Well, I won’t keep you.  Could you let your mother know I called?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, but don’t tell her what it is in reference to.  Otherwise she’ll never call me back.”

“She probably won’t anyway.”

“Good point.”

“Oh, Mr. Richardson?”

“Yes?”

“How’s Victoria?”

He heard the man make some noises on his end of the line.

“I’m just asking because I didn’t want to be the cause of trouble between you two.  What with our affair and all.”

Mr. Richardson made some more noise, and then he kind of groaned.  “She won’t—leave.”

“What do you mean she won’t leave?  Isn’t she your girlfriend?”

“Well, yes, kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“We’ve broken up.  Again.  Or at least I thought we were.  But she came over last night and made me dinner.”

“Did you do it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“After dinner, did you.  You know.”

“I don’t think that is an appropriate topic for us to discuss.”

“So you did.  It’s kind of hard to tell a girl you’re broken up with her if you keep, well.  Doing her.”

“If you can’t say the word sex to me, then we don’t have the kind of relationship where we can be talking about this.”

“All right.  How’s Versace?”

“Fine.  He’s in my damn lap right now.”

Chris laughed.  “Just admit you like the dog.”

“I never said I didn’t.”

“Sex,” Chris blurted out.  “There, I said it.  So, were you ever dating her for a reason other than…that?”

Mr. Richardson sighed in exasperation.  “That doesn’t count.”

“It so does.  Stop avoiding.”

“Yes, okay?  Yes.  I didn’t just date her for…that.”

“So.  You liked her.  Do you still like her?  Or I mean, even if you do like her, and she says that she’ll change the way she is so that things will be different this time, do you trust that?”

“Are we still talking about me here?”

Chris lay down on the couch and put a hand to his head.  “You’re paid to give advice, right?  It’s, like, your job?”

“I give advice about how to invest large sums of money.”

“Oh.”

“So, what’s your problem?”

“It’s a girl.”

“Obviously.  What’s the problem?”

“We used to date, but it was a bad relationship.  She kind of walked all over me.  So, I dumped her.  Then she came crying to me and said she realized how mean she’d been and she was going to change so we could try again.”

“Hm.  It’s not easy for people to change.”

“I know, right?  But, you know.  I believe her.  And I can tell.  She really is putting forth an effort to change.  But.”

“Is there someone else?”

“What?”  Chris was a little startled.  How did he guess that?  Especially when there wasn’t _really_ someone else.

“Well, normally when a guy is still hung up on a girl and she asks for him back, he jumps at the chance.  Unless he thinks he might have found something better.”

“Still hung up on…I’m not.  And there’s not someone else.”

“You said ‘girls,’ Chris.  You made out with girl _s_ in the halls.  There’s someone else.”

“You don’t understand.  There is _a lot_ of mistletoe at my school.  It’s, like, a thing.”

“I see.  So, you made out with every girl you kissed under the mistletoe?”

“Welllll…define make out.”

“I will not.  You infer my meaning.”

Chris grinned.  What a prude.  “Okay.  Two.  I made out with two.”

“And those two were?  Who?”

Chris made a face.  “My ex and the girl I rebounded with.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Don’t give me any of that ‘mm-hmm’ crap.  I’m a young healthy boy in high school.  There’s nothing wrong with…experimenting.  No, not experimenting.  That makes it sound like I’m starting to fool around with guys.  Exploring.  Yeah, that’s the word.”

“Exploring?  Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“Calling what?”

“Nothing,” the man chuckled.

“Sooo,” Chris started on his second Ding Dong, “you totally avoided the question.”

“What question?”

“About Victoria.”

“What was the question?”

“Uh.  I don’t remember exactly.  Oh, I was gonna ask you.  Do you know much about Northwestern University?”

“It’s my alma mater actually.  Are you thinking of going there?”

“Well.  I sort of looked into it.”  He hoped that wouldn’t make Mr. Richardson suspicious.  It was a private school and the tuition was quite high.  In fact, four years would just about deplete the money he’d gotten from his father.  But Mr. Richardson didn’t seem to notice.  Maybe rich people didn’t think about those kinds of things.  He just started to talk about what a great school it was.  Which segued into talk of college sports, which segued into a debate about whether the Cubs had the same clout as either the Yankees or the Red Sox, which somehow segued into their favorite foods.  Chris was trying to convince him that Doritos and Ding Dongs were a valid form of sustenance because they probably would keep someone alive on a desert island for some length of time when he heard the front door open.  He glanced at his watch.  He’d been talking with Mr. Richardson for an hour and a half.

“Hey, Mr. Richardson?”

“Yes?”

“My mom just got home.  You still want to talk with her?”

“Oh, yes.  That would be great.”

“Okay.  Hang on.”

Chris struggled off the couch, brushing Doritos crumbs from his shirt to the floor, and intercepted his mother in the hallway.

“Hey, Mom.  Mr. Richardson’s on the phone.”

She made a face and he covered the mouthpiece with a hand.

“Be nice,” he whispered.

“Okay, okay.  Hang on,” she grumbled.

His mother went to put her briefcase down and he put the phone back to his ear. “She’s coming.  And sorry I kept you so long.  I just kind of kept babbling.  Like my friend, Scott.  I’m sure you had better things to do.”

“Not really.  The stupid dog hasn’t even stirred.”

Chris laughed and his mother returned.  He handed her the phone and she covered the mouthpiece with a hand.

“You’ve been talking with him?”

Chris nodded.  “Yeah.  He’s a nice guy.”

“Well, maybe.”  She seemed confused.  “But what did you talk about?”

He shrugged.  “Just stuff.”  He started to walk away.  “Oh, and Mom?”  She looked at him.  “When you’re done talking with Mr. Richardson, we need to have a talk.”

“About what?”

“You’ll know once you’re done talking to Mr. Richardson.”

 

Scott

 

There was something different today.  Something about the bright, slightly smelly halls of Calverton was different.  In an ominous sort of way.  He felt like he was being watched.  Like he was being followed.  Scott glanced discreetly over his shoulder.  The same two girls he’d come in with were still behind him, talking to each other.  They didn’t seem to be paying him any attention.  But now there was another group of girls.  And they were all hanging back the same amount of distance.  He faced forward again.  His locker wasn’t too much farther away, but would that really provide him with any protection?  At least then he would know if he was just being paranoid if they continued to walk past him.  He started to round a corner and glanced back.  He stopped in surprise and was a little startled and a lot afraid when he saw that both groups of girls had closed the distance between them and him quite a bit.  He looked at them and smiled nervously.  They all smiled back.  He’d seen those smiles before.  In the cartoons when the big bad wolf was about to get the poor little lamb.  He edged back a step, and then another.  They moved with him, their smiles growing wider.  He bumped against the fire doors connecting two hallways and looked around for an escape route.  What on earth had he done to deserve this?  _Don’t answer that_ , he thought to himself.  Then he looked up.

“Oh.”

He looked back at the girls.  They were sliding closer, waiting for him to take one more step.  He took a step to his right, away from the doorway and the mistletoe.  Then he continued, pressed against the lockers, to inch away from them.  Their faces fell and most of them gave him disappointed looks.  He shrugged and slid around the far corner.  Now he was going to have to take the long way to his locker.  Good thing he came to school early.

He sighed as he adjusted his book bag.  Wouldn’t most normal guys be thrilled that a horde of girls was stalking him down the hall so that they could get him under the mistletoe?  He should be ecstatic.  In all the years he’d gone to Calverton he’d only ever been on the receiving end of a mistletoe kiss three or four times.  He usually had to initiate any such interactions.  And even then it had pretty much only been amongst his friends.  This was a sign he was moving up in the world.  Or at least he was now seen as desirable by the female gender in a way he’d never been before.  This was good news.  This was cause for celebration.  But, he didn’t feel like it.  And he certainly didn’t feel like kissing anyone today.

He made it to his locker without incident and slowly began to enter his combination.  He didn’t understand what all those girls had been doing here so early anyway.  There was a good twenty minutes before the warning bell.  Maybe they were the ones who put up all the mistletoe.  He lifted up on the locker’s latch.  It didn’t open.  He tried harder.  It was still locked.  He groaned and started dialing the combination again.

“Rough morning?” a voice asked.

“Rough life,” he groused.

“Really?  You always seem so happy.”

“Well, yeah, I am.”  He looked over to see who he was talking to, but they were behind their locker door.  “I’m just being melodramatic.  I mean, it’s been a rough few months.  They’ve just been _really_ rough.  It makes it seem like it’s been forever.  Or like, this is my life.”

“I see.  I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay.  Actually I can’t believe I’m—”

The person who owned the voice shut her locker door.  Scott’s heart seized up on him.  The dark-haired lesbian asked him something.  It might have been in English.  He wasn’t sure.  He didn’t understand her.  He didn’t know if he could answer her even if he did understand her.  Words?  What were those?

“There you are!”

Words made sense again.  He and the lesbian turned together.  Mr. Hayden was stomping down the hall toward him.

“He’s after me!” the lesbian wailed.

“You?” Scott looked at her.  “I think he’s after me.”

“No, I bet you it’s me.”

“No, no.  Trust me.  It’s me.”

Scott wondered briefly if she was as dumb as he was.  They’d argued about who Mr. Hayden was after rather than running away.  And now they were both caught by him.

“Even better,” the irritated man said when he reached them, his bald head gleaming in the morning light.  “I’ve got you both.”

Scott and the lesbian exchanged annoyed looks with each other.  It was definitely the other’s fault.  They looked back at Mr. Hayden.

“Ms. McDermott.  Mr. Ramsey.  Do you have any idea what the deadlines are for your college application forms?”

They looked at each other again.  Then they both shrugged at the man.

“Exactly my point!  Most need to be finished by the middle of January.  Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem because it’s still the beginning of December.  However, neither of you have even picked out which schools you will be applying to let alone started filling out all the paperwork!”

“Sorry,” they muttered.

“Well, it’s a good thing you have a kind, caring vice principal like me looking after you.  I could just wait for you to come to me in April, and then let you know you’ll have to wait a year to go to college.  But, I care about my students.  So both of you better get your lazy, clueless butts down to guidance this afternoon or I will drag you there myself!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Ms. McDermott, you come at 2:30, directly after the final bell.  Mr. Ramsey, I expect to see you at 3:00.”

“Wha—!  How come I have to wait?”

“Ladies first,” the lesbian said snootily.

“Right.  So how does that apply to you?”

“Uh!”

“All right you two, flirt on your own time.”  My. Hayden put a hand to his torso.  “It turns my stomach.”  He made a face and walked away.  They both glared after him.  Then they looked at each other again.  The lesbian used a hand to push her long, dark hair over her shoulder.  Scott felt bad for calling her “the lesbian.”  Hadn’t Will told him her name?  Layla.  That was it.  Like the song.

“Well,” Layla said, “I need to go meet someone.”

“Oh, okay.  Sorry.  I didn’t mean it.”

She smiled at him.  “I get it.  It’s a joke, right?”

“Yeah, but like.  I don’t think we’ve ever actually spoken before.  So…”

“No, we did once.”

“Really?”

“Now it’s all making sense.”

“What is?”

“I believe Will and I were making out and you came up and started talking to him.  While we were still kissing.  Will stopped and looked at you and said he was busy and gestured to me.  You said hi and kept talking to him.  And then you left.  You had no idea I was even there.  Did you?”

Scott shrugged.  “I guess not.  I don’t recall ever interrupting Will while he’s been affixed to someone.  Though according to you it’s possible I do it all the time and don’t even realize it.”

Layla giggled.  “You’re funny.”

“Yeah.  And it’s completely intentional too.”

She laughed again and started to walk away.  “No wonder he likes you.”

“Who?” Scott asked, but she turned a corner and was gone.  That was weird, right?  Then he shook himself.  He was supposed to be feeling depressed.  He turned gloomily to his locker and pulled up on the door.  It was still locked.  He cursed and started twirling the dial again.  What the frick?

“Hey, Scotty.”

Scott didn’t take his eyes of the lock.  He wasn’t doing this a fourth time.  “Hey, Julian.”

“I can see your roots.”

Scott squawked in offended dismay and swung a hand out as hard he could.  It clipped Julian’s shoulder and his friend just grinned at him.  He held up a candy cane as a peace offering.  Scott snatched it out of his hand and lifted up on the latch to his locker.  It didn’t move.  He jiggled it violently.  But it still didn’t open.  He squeezed the candy cane and it snapped in half.  He started twisting the dial again.

“So, Scott, have you seen—”

Scott held up a finger and concentrated on his locker.  Julian waited for him to finally get the stupid metal monster open.  He sighed in relief and turned to Julian.

“Yes?”

“Have you seen Anna this morning?”

“No, we didn’t come in together.  But, I’m sure she’s coming.  Why?”

“Oh.  Well.  I kind of felt like she avoided me last week.  Or maybe I was avoiding her.  I want to apologize to her.”

“Well, I think that would be a good idea.”

“Yeah.”  Scott cocked his head as he looked at Julian.  His friend looked kind of upset.  “I’m sorry for what I did to her.  I know how important she is to you.  And as much as I hate what I did to her, I can’t deal with how much that affected you.”

“Julian.  Enough.  Okay?  We’ve already done this.  You’re forgiven.  It’s forgotten.  We’re perfectly fine.  See?”  He held up his broken candy cane and it flopped to the side.  “This is love, man.”

Julian smiled.  “I see that.  So, I do say this out of love.  I really can see your roots.”

Scott pulled back the hand with the candy cane to throw it at him, but he was already halfway down the hall.  Sometimes he forgot that Julian really was a fast runner.  He didn’t play soccer for nothing.  Scott rolled his eyes and slammed his locker shut.  Then he realized he hadn’t actually gotten out his books for his first class.  He closed his eyes and fell against the vile contraption.

 

Scott moved slowly in the crowded halls.  Most of the time classes were staggered so that the number of people in the halls was minimized.  Twice a day however, everyone in almost all grades had to squeeze through the halls.  This was one of those times.  The traffic jams weren’t helped at all by the couples that kept stopping in doorways to giggle and flirt and kiss.  Ah.  To be young and in love.  Scott remembered those days well.

There was some shuffling and complaining in the crowd behind him, and then something ran into him forcefully.  He tripped over someone’s foot and stumbled to the left.  He crashed into another person and grabbed on to her to steady both of them.  Once they were capable of standing upright, he looked at the person he’d nearly killed.  He held Antoinette by the arms.  He stared at her.  Her blue eyes looked back at him, equally stunned.  Then he let go of her.  He started to step back, but someone kept him from moving.

“Well, well.  Look at this.”

Scott turned to find Will just behind him.  He had his hand to the small of his back, which was preventing his retreat.

“Look at what?” Scott glared at his friend.

Will pointed up.  “Mistletoe.  Looks like you two have to kiss.”

Scott’s heart dropped all the way to his feet.  He hadn’t realized they were in a doorway.  He looked up.  Stupid mistletoe.  He looked at Antoinette.  She looked kind of disgustedly bored.  But why was he freaking out?  There wasn’t a rule that said he had to.  Even though he wanted to.  Wait, what?  No.  He was going to get over this.  He didn’t want to kiss the stupid, selfish bitch.

“Whatever, Will,” Scott snapped.  “There’s no rule that says—”

“Yes, there is,” Will insisted, grabbing Antoinette’s wrist to keep her from leaving.  “You have to kiss.  You’re under the mistletoe.  It’s totally a rule.”

“Yeah, but it’s, like, not supposed to be forced sexual contact, Will,” Antoinette said.  “That would be illegal.”

“Sexual contact?  No, no.  Of course not.  Just a kiss.  You have to kiss!  If you’re under the mistletoe there are no exceptions.  _None_.  It’s a damn rule!  Now do it!”

“You’re under the mistletoe too,” Scott pointed out.

“Good point.  I concede.”  Will stepped close to Antoinette and kissed her.  Scott reached a hand out.  He almost grabbed Will by the shoulder to fling him away from her.  But, he had no right to do that.  She wasn’t his.  Will stepped back and looked at Scott.

“See?  I obeyed the rules.  Now you do it.”

“Okay, Will,” Antoinette said impertinently, “if there are _no_ exceptions, then you have to kiss Scott.”  She smiled maliciously at him.

“Now wait a minute,” Scott interjected.  “That is _totally_ an exception.”

“Well, if that’s an exception, then there _are_ exceptions.  So, I claim the ‘I don’t have to kiss jerks’ rule.”

She arched an eyebrow at Scott and crossed her arms over her stomach.  Scott’s jaw dropped.  Say what?  _He_ was the jerk?

“Yeah?  Well.  I claim the—”

He cut off as Will hit him in the stomach.  “There are _no_ exceptions, you two.  You’re under the mistletoe.  You _have_ to kiss.”

Scott rubbed his stomach and looked back at his annoying friend.  He was moving toward him.  Will’s cold hand slid around his neck and then that beautiful face came closer.  He had to close his eyes.  Then Will kissed him.  He moved his hands to push Will away, but somehow they just kind of settled on his waist.  It wasn’t gross or yucky.  Surprisingly, Will’s lips were warm.  It was a disturbing thought, but Scott realized he could do so much more with Will than just kiss him.  Then Will pulled back a little.  He left his arms around Scott’s neck and pulled himself forward to whisper in his ear.

“Just kiss her, you ass.”

Scott felt a mixture of annoyance and happiness.  His friend had set him up, but it was with good intentions.  He still deserved a little flack for it though.

“Does it bother you to have to stand on your toes to kiss someone?” he whispered back.

“No,” Will laughed softly.

Then he let go and stepped back.  He looked back and forth between Scott and Antoinette.

“Go on,” he said.

Scott looked at Antoinette.  She had a weird smile on her face as she looked at the two of them.  Then she looked at Scott.  Her smile slipped away.  She looked, not sick…but not well either.  Did he really disgust her that much?  He looked in her eyes. She looked worried and upset.  It tore at him like a dull knife.  He didn’t want to see her look like that.  He wanted her to be happy.  But he wasn’t what would make her happy.  He should leave her alone.  But his heart was pounding.  He wanted her.  Will nudged him a little, so he let the nominal momentum carry him forward.  He circled his arms around her waist and pulled her close.  She already had her arms around his neck by the time their lips met.

Mistletoe kisses were just supposed to be innocent little things.  Usually.  But he moved his mouth over hers and parted his lips.  Her mouth was already open.  The kiss deepened easily.  He moved his arms to put his hands under her blazer.  He pulled her closer and their bodies pressed together.  Her fingernails gently scraped over his neck.  The resulting frisson made him gasp.  She let out a small noise that definitely only belonged in a bedroom.  They stopped kissing and panted quietly with their foreheads pressed together.

“Oh what the fuck is this?” someone muttered darkly.

They pulled apart at the sinister voice, and then completely separated when they saw Jake not two feet away.

“What the fuck, Antoinette?  At that party.  In the halls.  Any guy who happens to be nearby.  When did you turn into such a slut?”

“Hey,” Scott growled and took a step forward.  “Watch your mouth.”

“And who the fuck do you think you are, Ramsey?”

Jake took a step forward and Scott felt his stomach knot up and his brain start screaming in terror.  He was going to get beat up for the sake of a girl who didn’t even like him.  His one comfort was that he was pretty sure he was hiding all this very well.  Then Will stepped in between them.

“Whoa, whoa, Jake.  Calm down.  It’s just the mistletoe.  Nothing’s going on here.”

“Nothing’s going on.  Then why is this twit always sniffing around my girlfriend?”

Scott tried not to react.  So, Jake had noticed something after all.

“It’s a complete coincidence.  I was walking with Scott and we bumped into her under the mistletoe and then I told Antoinette she had to kiss us and she was like ‘No’ and I was like ‘It’s a rule,’ so she was like, ‘Fine, then you two kiss.’  So, we did.  We all kissed.  It’s the mistletoe rules.  You know?”

“Oh, blow me, Harder.  Like I’m gonna believe that you’re not just covering up for your friend?  I would sooner believe you skipped a soccer practice than kissed a dude.”

“You don’t believe me?  You know what a stickler I am for rules!  Rules are rules.”

“Will,” Jake said, completely annoyed.  “Come on.  Just admit that your friend is an asshole and my ex is a slut.  You don’t have to spread weird, disgusting rumors about yourself.”

“Wha?  That’s not it!  It’s a rule!”

“Will,” Scott said softly.  He didn’t want his friend to get into a fight with Jake.  Technically they were friends too.

“What?” Will turned on him.  “Rules are rules!”

Will turned back to Jake and took a step forward.  He stood on Jake’s foot and the soccer team captain bent over in a little pain, which enabled Will to get a hold of him.  He planted a kiss on Jake and both Scott and Antoinette covered their mouths with a hand.  Oh, damn was he ever going to owe Will for this one.  Will stepped back and Jake was frozen in place.

“See?” Will asked, his voice shaking a little uneasily.  “No big deal.  Just the rules.  Ah.”  He glanced at Antoinette.  “There is one exception to every rule.  You were right.  Exes don’t have to.”  He looked at Scott.  “I’d take a step back if I were you,” he mumbled.

Scott immediately slid out from under the doorway.  Jake finally stood up straight again.  His eyes were bugging out of his head and had a kind of murderous gleam to them.  Scott was praying to God he kept that look squarely fixated on Will.

“Harder.  I swear to—”

“No way!” someone shouted.  “Will Harder is kissing boys?!”

Everyone in the hall turned to watch Jaymz take three giant leaps across the hall and grab Will.  Will got a hand up, but couldn’t stop the fervent boy from getting a hold of him.  A good hold too.  Antoinette still had her hand in front of her mouth and looked amusedly astonished as Jaymz went to town on his friend.  Scott bit his lip.  He was gonna owe Will his first born after this.  Everybody in the hall was laughing or cheering or groaning in disgust.  Jaymz finally pulled back and Will looked a little dazed.  Then a girl stepped up and pushed Jaymz out of the way.

“Well, as long as Will is putting out…”

She fell into him as she kissed him, but he was still unsteady so they fell back against the door jamb.  One girl after another pulled her predecessor off and took her place.  It was like some perverted game of musical lips or something.  But it didn’t look like it was going to stop anytime soon.  Until Liz came over and grabbed the current girl on Will by the hair.  She yanked her off and the girl gasped in pain.

“Will Harder!” she cried, her face red.  “You’ll kiss every girl in the school but me?!”

“Liz, I wasn’t exactly a willing participant in all this!”

“I hate you!” she yelled and ran off.

The crowd had gone a little quiet.  The bell ringing startled everyone and they all scattered.  Will stayed propped against the doorway.  His lips looked a little swollen.  Scott felt terrible.  Sort of.  Will had probably enjoyed some of that.  Jake was gone.  Antoinette looked at him.  She opened her mouth and then closed it.  Then she said, “I have to get to class.”

She fled the scene and Scott figured he was already late, so why bother rushing?  He looked at Will.  His friend turned his head and gave him an undecipherable look.

“Please tell me my suffering wasn’t in vain.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean.  Did you two figure it out?”

Scott cocked his head in confusion.  “Did who figure what out?”

Will’s eyes went from green to brown.  Scott screamed as he was attacked by a beautiful, crazed animal.

 

Scott rubbed his neck and tilted his head to the side, trying to gently work out the aching muscle.  He was still a little sore from Will’s violent attack.  He didn’t know why he’d gone after him.  It had been his idea to start kissing everybody in the hallway.  He hadn’t _made_ him do it.  In fact, it had been Will’s bright idea to instigate the whole mess in the first place.  Sure he had wanted to kiss Antoinette, but he hadn’t _actually_ wanted to do it.  It had been nice though.

Scott smiled remembering it, and then forced himself to stop.  So what if he liked it?  He was obviously going to like it.  He still liked her.  He knew that.  But what had been that feeling he’d gotten back from her?  Had he really felt something?  Or had it been in his head?  And if he had felt something real from her, what exactly did that mean?

Scott shook his head.  He didn’t want to think about it.  He’d just come from Calculus class and his brain was tapped out.  He carefully twirled the dial on his locker.  The door popped open on the first try.  “All right,” he said to himself.  The day was getting better.  He dropped his Calculus book into the bottom of his locker and smiled at the thudding sound it made.  He got his books for his next class and skipped off to find Chris.  They usually walked to study hall together.  He found his friend, leaning against his locker, staring at a paper.  And not looking very happy about it.

“Yo, Chrissy, what’s up?”

“Not my government grade,” he muttered.  “Wait, what?  Chrissy?”

“Yeah, you call me Scotty.  I thought I’d call you Chrissy.”  Scott took a step back from the look his friend gave him.  “Heh.  Or Chris.”

He and Chris started to navigate the noisy, crowded halls.  Apparently Jill Kline had just professed her love to Kyle Laffee in front of everybody.  Needless to say Kyle’s girlfriend, Christina Godfrey, wasn’t too happy about it.  For all the good the mistletoe could bring, it definitely had its evils too.  Though Scott wasn’t sure if he’d seen any of the good things about the stuff today.  He decided he wasn’t going to worry about it.

“So,” he said to Chris, “do you want me to tutor you?”

“What?”  Chris looked at him like he was off his rocker.  “No.”

“Why not?  I’m good at teaching.  And I know a lot of tricks for memorizing things for more math and science oriented thinkers.  Like you.”

“Scott, the last time I let you help me you let the power go to your head, remember?”

“Oh, come on.  We were thirteen and I was still under five feet.  Cut me some slack.”

“I don’t know,” he said, but he sounded like he might be giving in.

“Come on, please?  I promise I’ll be good.  And if I’m not, I’ll do your homework for you for a week or something.  Besides, this will look good on my college applications.”

“Feh.  Using me to advance your own means.  And what college applications?  Have you even started them yet?”

“No,” he admitted.  “But Mr. Hayden totally busted my balls for it this morning.  I have to stay after school.”

“Good.  You need to go to college.  I’m afraid what would happen if you had all that free time on your hands.  The only person I’d be more concerned about than you is Will.”

Scott laughed.  “Come on.  It’s not like either us, even Will, would plot the world’s destruction.”

“No, it wouldn’t be intentional.”

“Hmph.  So.  You want me to help you or not?”

Chris looked reluctantly desperate.  Then he sighed.  “Okay.”

“Great!  We can get started right away.  Well, not today.  I gotta meet with Hayden.  But anytime this week would be good.  Just let me know.  My house is empty, so we can study there.  It might be a better idea too.  It’s better to study in several locations and different surroundings.  Because when you get used to one place, you tend to remember better in that one place and then when you take a test in a different setting, you don’t remember as well.  Isn’t that neat?”

“Yeah, sure.  I have no idea what you just said.  But, your house is fine.”

“Awesome.  You won’t regret it.  Promise.”

“Scotty,” Chris said as he opened the door to their study hall for him, “I already do.”

Scott made a face at him.  “Smart ass.”

“Omigod.  You pervert.”

Chris and Scott froze halfway into the room.  Who was a pervert?  The entire class wanted to know too.  The one who was doing the accusing was one of Antoinette’s friends.  The one on the right.  What was her name?  Natalie.  And she was looking at the two of them.

“You,” she said walking toward them.  “You are a total pervert.  Hi Scott,” she said as an afterthought.

Scott breathed a sigh a relief.  At least _he_ wasn’t the pervert.

“Me?” Chris questioned.

“Yes, you!  I heard that you totally molested my sister in the hallway!”

“Wha—?!”

“Chris!” Scott said disappointedly.

“Oh, shut-up,” Chris snapped at him.  “I didn’t molest anybody.”

“Who’s your sister?” Scott asked Natalie.

“Sophia Smith.”

“Ooo,” he said, turning to Chris with the tops of his fingers covering his mouth.  “Your jailbait.”

“Exactly!” Natalie agreed.

“Oh, come on!  _I’m_ still jailbait.  Like, there’s nothing wrong about it!  And I did _not_ molest her!”

“At least not in any ways she didn’t consent to,” Scott snickered.

Chris hit him.  Scott laughed and then said, “Ow,” as he rubbed the spot.

“Wait,” some kid at the back of the class said, “Who the hell is Sophia Smith?”

“She’s, like, a freshman,” a girl said.

“She’s a sophomore!” Chris declared defiantly.

“I know her!” one of the basketball team members said.  “Nice legs.”

“Shut up, pervert!” Natalie shouted.  “That’s my little sister.”

“She ain’t so little anymore,” the first boy sniggered.

The class laughed with him and Natalie turned a nasty look on Chris.

“See what you’ve done?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Yeah.  Sophia totally came on to him,” Scott said, feeling the need to defend his friend.  “Well, I mean after he first flirted with her at the pool.”

Chris gave him a look.  Scott decided he’d better shut-up since he appeared to only be making things worse.

“What is going on here?” Mrs. Johnson huffed as she came into the room just as the bell rang.  “Sit down, sit down!  Do your homework.”

The class started to shuffle to their seats.  Chris and Scott turned to the teacher.

“Can I have the hall pass?”

The teacher raised an eyebrow at their unison request.

“ _No_.”

 

Scott slid down the banister of the back stairwell and hopped off at the last second.  He liked it when the school was empty.  Especially at this time of year.  One could walk under doorways without worrying about being accosted—

“Ah!” Scott screamed as a hand landed on his shoulder.  He turned and found Mr. Hayden glaring at him with his hands on his hips.

“Boy, there is something wrong with you.  You’re smart and social enough.  But something is not right upstairs.”

Scott frowned.  “Couldn’t I totally sue you for saying that?”

“Only if you can prove that I did.”

“Hmph.”

“And why are you back here trying to break your neck?  You had an appointment fifteen minutes ago!”

“What? No way!  It’s like,” Scott looked at his watch.  “3:15,” he finished miserably.  “How does that happen?” he asked the vice principal.  The man just shook his head and started to herd Scott toward the guidance office.

“I honestly don’t know what to do with you.  Even your no good friends have their applications done.  Hell.  Harder has had his mailed off for a month now.”

“Really?” Scott asked pitifully.  “Where did they all apply?”

“That’s confidential information.”

“Feh.”

“Scott Ramsey, do not pick a school because your friend goes there.  Pick one that offers you the curriculum you’re most interested in.”

“But, I don’t really know what I want to do yet.”

“Then pick a school that has an environment that will suit you best.  Just, get some damn ambition, will you?!”

“Y-y-yes, sir!” Scott stuttered.

It only got worse from there.  Scott didn’t even have a remote idea of what he might be interested in studying.  And Mr. Hayden scared him so much he forgot to mention psychology.  And when he tried to pick schools based on their campuses and offered activities, he couldn’t choose between a small intimate campus or a large spread out one or whether he wanted it to be rural or urban.  Mr. Hayden just about wrung his neck three times.  Only the guidance counselor, Ms. Whitman (who everyone thought was a lesbian), prevented the man from just giving up and kicking him out.  But at last he had the applications started for three schools and the information to take home so he could start writing his essays.  Of course, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to go to two of them.

Ms. Whitman ran out as soon as they were done, which left Scott alone with Mr. Hayden as he packed up his backpack.  He packed very quickly.

“Oh, Scott.”

“Yes, sir!”  Scott stood up straight.  Mr. Hayden just shook his head at him.

“Your father called me last week and I never got around to returning it.  Can you tell him that when your siblings come back to school they won’t have to reapply and their tuition is still good for the rest of the year?”

“Uh.”  Scott was confused.  “Yeah.  Sure.”

“Don’t forget!”

“Trust me, I won’t.  Later, Mr. H.”

“Don’t call me that!”

Scott didn’t turn back.  He just hurried home so that he could talk to his father.  Of course, he wasn’t home when Scott arrived, but at least Kristen wasn’t there either.  And even better, she didn’t come home with his father that night.  His dad had picked up a specialty pizza made at the most authentic pizza joint in the city.  It was a carry-out only establishment and it was always a treat to have it.  So, either his dad had had a craving, or he was going to tell Scott something he didn’t want to hear.

They sat down to dinner in their usual silence.  It often took ten or fifteen minutes before one would ask the other how his day had been, but Scott needed to know why his father had called Mr. Hayden.

“Hey, Dad?”

“Yeah?  Can you pass the cheese please?”

“Sure.”  Scott handed his fathered the grated Romano cheese.  “Mr. Hayden told me to tell you—”

“Speaking of Mr. Hayden, have you started your college applications yet?”

“Uh, yeah.  I’m, like, almost done.”

His father looked at him from over his slice of gooey pizza.

“Well.  You know.  They’re like, partly done.  Anyway.  Mr. Hayden said that if Joanna, Ferris, and Drake come back to school, they don’t need to reapply and you don’t need to pay their tuition again.”

“Mm.  Excellent.”

He took a swig of his beer.  Scott took a sip of his Coke.  He wondered if his dad would have said anything if he’d gotten a beer.

“Actually.  Mr. Hayden said ‘when’ they come back.  Did you tell him they were coming back?  Do you know something about the custody decision?”

“No.  It’s just my assumption.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s a little brazen.”

“Brazen?” his father smiled at him.

“What?  I have a vocabulary.”

His father chuckled softly and wiped his mouth with a napkin.  “We have one final meeting a couple weeks from now.  Just the judge, the lawyers, and your mother and I.  It won’t even be in a courtroom, so you don’t need to come.  The judge said after that meeting he’ll make his decision in January after the holidays.”

“Oh.  And you think you’re going to win?”

“I’m positive I’m going to win.  Don’t worry, Scott.  You’re not going anywhere.”


	20. Chapter 20

Chris

 

Saturday, December 24, 2005

 

Chris pulled open the door to the Denny’s restaurant.  He was hit by the smell of hot grease, toxically strong cleaning chemicals, and he was almost certain a little weed.  He shook his head.  Nothing but the classiest place for him and his friends.  Well, to be fair, it was one of the few places open on Christmas Eve.  The host station was decidedly abandoned, so he scanned the restaurant.  The small area in the front was the no smoking section, and it was in a large horseshoe shaped booth that he saw Will and Julian pouring over the placemat menus like there was some undiscovered treasure that Denny’s was keeping hidden from the world.  Scott was missing of course.

“Hi-ya!”

The exclamation coincided with the large weight that suddenly jumped on his back.  Chris staggered under Scott’s weight and threw him a nasty look over his shoulder.  Scott just grinned at him.  Chris shrugged him off.

“You seem chipper,” Chris muttered.

Scott kept his grin in place and nodded.

“Why?  Doesn’t your life suck right now?”

Scott became completely crestfallen.  He looked at Chris with saddened, betrayed eyes.  Chris counted to three.  And then Scott was suddenly perky and recovered.

“But.  It’s Christmas!”

Chris looked away from him to hide his smile as he ruffled Scott’s hair.  The stupid puppy.  Scott tilted his head to get away from the ruffling.  They made their way over to Will and Julian.  Scott bounced into the booth and kept bouncing up and down.  Chris sat on the other side next to Julian.  He could still feel his seat bouncing.

“Gifts, gifts, gifts,” Scott chanted.  “Aah!”

Will’s hand had moved under the table and whatever he’d done to Scott had made him cry out and stop moving.  Will smiled sweetly at him.  Scott smiled back nervously.

“So,” Scott said, calmer now, “gifts today.  Yay!  Although I guess we all know what we’re getting from Chris.”  He stuck his tongue out at him.

Chris let out an offended noise and was not at all pleased when Julian started to snicker too.

“Shut-up!  So I’m poor and my discount is only good for pretentious, trendy clothing!  Blow me.”

Scott and Julian laughed harder.

“I don’t know why you two are laughing,” Will said.  “You could use some better clothing.”

Julian and Scott stopped laughing.  They looked down at their outfits.  Chris settled back in the booth and started to turn his knife over and over.  Bunch of jerks.

“So, what’s first?” Scott asked.  “Should we do real gifts or joke gifts?”

“Well, honestly, I’ve had enough drama the last few months to last me a lifetime,” Chris said.  “Why don’t we do the serious ones and then the joke ones so we can leave laughing or possibly pissed at each other.  It would be a hell of a lot better than us piling on top of each other in a scummy booth at a Denny’s.”

His three friends exchanged looks and then burst out laughing.  Chris just looked at them.  Had what he said really been that funny?

“Ah-ha!” Julian verbalized his laugh.  “You’ve finally turned the corner, Chris.  You’re worried you’re gonna start expressing your love toward us physically.”

Scott and Will snickered.  He glared at them.

“Never.”

“Never say never,” Will said with a strange laugh.

“Okay, okay,” Scott said digging around in the bag he’d brought.  “Do me first!”

They all looked at him and he remained oblivious to the fact that their teenaged brains were unable to interpret that sentence any other way.

“Volunteers?” Will asked.

Julian raised his hand.  Chris partially covered his face with a hand and slumped down in his seat, but he was smiling.  Scott looked at them.  And then he gasped in exaggerated shock.

“Uh!  Don’t be dirty.”

The three of them sniggered again.  Scott rolled his eyes and tossed a package over to Chris.  It was a lightweight, tall rectangular box wrapped in green paper with prancing red reindeer all over it.  The side wrappings were uneven and he could see part of the box through it on one side.  Tape covered every single possible place the paper could have popped up and there was an off center, bedraggled purple bow clinging by a scrap of tape.  Chris looked at Scott.

“Thanks, buddy.”

“Well, open it first!”

Chris picked and pulled at the paper until he could get a tear in the practically laminated thing.  He ripped the paper off and found that the box was in fact three boxes.  He looked at the titles: Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, and Civilization IV.  He almost felt his eyes tear up.  These had all come out in November and he’d been saving up to buy them.

“Oh.”  Chris hugged the games to his chest.  “Thank you, Scott!”

“That’s more like it,” his friend groused.

Chris looked up at him and smiled.  Scott was leaning on his elbows and smiling back.  He was one of those people who genuinely felt better about themselves by doing things for other people.  Though Chris felt a little bad.  Each of these games was probably around $50 and he’d bought three of them.  What he’d gotten for Scott didn’t cost nearly as much.  He put the boxes on the table and gave them a loving caress.  Then Julian handed him a smallish box.  It was wrapped in birthday paper.  He laughed as he unwrapped it.  Inside was a box that said Fossil on it.  Chris raised his eyebrows.  Had Julian just reused the box?  He opened it and inside was a beautiful, classy watch.

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, I know you’re a computer nerd and everything.  But you don’t always need to wear a watch that has a calculator on it.”

Scott and Will chuckled and he dropped the wrist with his watch on it to his lap.  So what if it was big, black, square and ugly?  It was useful.  He looked again at the watch in the box.  But this one was snazzy.  Karen would love it.  Hmph.  He tried not to make a face at that thought.  He thanked Julian and started to work on getting the thing out of the box so he could put it on.

“Let Julian do that,” Will said.  “Open mine.”

“Oh, okay.”

He handed the watch to Julian and accepted the large, heavy box from Will.  He was a little curious what Will had gotten him.  He was always unpredictable in his gift giving.  His thought processes were always a little too…sophisticated was a good word.  He often had to explain why he’d bought them something, and then it made perfect sense and was often sentimental.  But then again, Chris was also the proud owner of a Garden Groomer Mini.

He ripped off the snowflake paper and found a plain, brown, unmarked box.  He raised an eyebrow at Will and picked at the tape to get the flaps open.  He pulled the tissue paper out.  What on earth had—?

“Oh!”

Chris felt faint.  This couldn’t be real.  He stared into the box.  He was dreaming.  And if he was dreaming, it was the most beautiful dream ever.

“What?  What is it?” Scott leaned over Will trying to see into the box.  Chris carefully reached in and lifted the item out with care and reverence.  “What?  What _is_ it?”

“It’s an original Atari,” Chris said, about to weep from sheer joy.

“Yep,” Will said.  “And there’s a controller and two Pong controllers, and five games.”

“Omigod.  Will.  This is too much!  Where did you find it?”

“E-bay, of course.”

Chris shook his head.  “This is too much.”  He started to put the game console down carefully on the table, thought better of it, and spread out the tissue paper before putting it down.  Julian handed the freed watch to him.  He looked at its silver face and then looked up at his friends.  “It’s too much you guys.  You spent too much.  Especially you, Will.  This must have cost a fortune.”

Will shrugged.  “Not as much as you think.  And besides, my dad felt bad about me getting grounded after Thanksgiving, so he gave me his credit card and told me to go crazy.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Scott asked.  “I mean, I’m sure your mom reads all those statements and stuff.”

“My parents have a joint account, but they also have separate ones.  She doesn’t know.”

“Still sounds risky to me,” Julian said.

“Nah.  My dad and I have learned how to get around her over the years.”

His friends all laughed, but Chris couldn’t do it.  He was feeling bad.

“You guys.  Seriously.  I can’t accept this stuff.  What I got you doesn’t nearly measure up.”

“Ugh.  Blah, ba-blah, ba-blah, ba-blah!”  Scott groaned.  “It’s not about money.  Do we have to do this _every_ birthday and Christmas?”

Chris glowered at him.  “Fine.  Thank you guys very much for your kindness and generosity.”

“You’re welcome!” they chorused in soft, childlike voices.  Chris shuddered.  That was a little creepy.

“Okay!  Fake gifts!”  Scott chortled sinisterly.  Chris squirmed a bit.  All of his friends were vicious little bitches.

“Me first this time,” Julian said and handed him a crumpled Valentine’s Day gift bag.

Chris pulled out the blue tissue paper and then the shrink-wrapped box inside.  He turned it over to be right side up and cocked his head in confusion.  He lowered the box and looked at Julian.

“A baby doll care kit?”

“Yeah, it’s got bottles and diapers and a baby plate and cup.  I thought you might need it if you start dating that Sophia girl.”

“Ahhh!”

Scott’s laugh started as a scream and then he and Will collapsed onto each other as they brayed like hyenas.  Wait.  Was he mixing up his metaphors?  They were braying like jackasses.  That was it.  Chris could feel his face turning red.  Not so much from the gift as the scene his friends were causing.  There was only one elderly couple at another table, but they were looking over at them.  Julian had a total shit-eating grin on his face.  Chris stuffed the gift back in the bag.

“It’s really not that funny.”

“It kind of is,” Will said as he gasped for air.

It took a few minutes for them to settle down.  And they really only seemed to do so because the waiter (who appeared to be a little high) came by and took their orders.  Scott was actually wiping tears away from the corners of his eyes as he handed him his joke gift.  Chris shook his head in annoyance.  Maybe the whole Christmas joke gift thing was a really bad idea.  The gift from Scott was simply rolled up in more of the reindeer paper and tied off at the ends.  It looked like a tube.  God, he was actually scared to open it.  He tore off the ends and pulled out a tube of diaper rash cream.  All three of them started laughing again.

“Is that for Sophia too?” Will managed to get out.

“No.  It’s for him.  I thought he was back with Karen.  I hear this stuff is good for pussy whipping rash too.”

Their laughter was bordering on a decibel that could cause deafness.  He chucked the tube into the bag with the baby doll care kit.  He wasn’t even going to open Will’s.  Their drinks came before they were starting to sound like human beings again.

“You know,” Chris said irritably, “I’m so glad my personal life is so amusing to you guys.”

They snickered again and Will handed him a box.

“No way.  I’m not opening that.”

“Aw, come on.  Trust me. It’s not nearly as creative.  I wish it was.  This one is going to be a disappointment compared to theirs.”

“Feh.”  Chris snatched the box from him and tore the paper off it.  He looked at the box.  It was a coin bank; the kind that shuffled and flipped the coins around before sorting them into separate stacks.

“I thought it might make you feel like you had more money since it takes longer to put it in.”

Scott and Julian covered their faces as they laughed to themselves.  Chris gave Will a snarky smile.

“You give this to me as a joke, but I’m totally going to use this thing.”

Will grinned at him.  Scott and Julian had their faces buried in their arms on the table.  Chris sighed and looked at his bank.  Then he looked at his Atari.  Was that worth the embarrassment of being friends with these jerks?  Yeah.  Kind of.

 

Chris very carefully lifted his precious gifts from the passenger seat of his car where he’d belted them into place.  They were such awesome gifts.  He really did have great friends.  Then he saw the bag with the joke gifts.  He made a face.  They may be good friends, but they were also a bunch of jerks.  He pulled out the baby doll kit and looked at it.  Sophia wasn’t a baby.  She was just a sophomore.  Sheesh.  And it didn’t matter anyway; he wasn’t going to see her anymore.  He wasn’t going to get sucked into more make out sessions with her.  For one thing, the mistletoe would all be gone by the time they got back to school.  He cleared his throat.  December had been way too physical of a month.  For all of his friends if he wasn’t mistaken.  He carried his gifts up the stairs and wondered that if he was truly done with Sophia, did that mean he was going to be with Karen?  He put the box down so that he could unlock the door.  Maybe he just needed a third option.  As he opened the door he could hear the phone ringing.  He started to step inside to get it, but could he leave his Atari outside?  No.  He picked it up and brought it inside and then dashed for the kitchen.  He picked up the phone just before the machine kicked in.

“Hello?”

“Hi, son.”

Chris smiled and felt his insides turn all giddy.

“Hi, Dad!”

“Guess where I’m calling from?”

The giddiness turned to tightness.

“Dad!  What the hell?!  I can’t believe you!  I’m so pissed!  After all we went through so you wouldn’t get in trouble and now you’ve gone and done something stupid again!”

“Um.  Simmer down, would ya?  I’m in Chicago.  I’m just calling from a payphone outside the prison.”

“Oh.”  Chris calmed down.  “Um.  Congratulations?”

“Well, thanks.  Good to know what you really think of me.”

“I’m sorry.  I just…well, never mind.  So, what’s it like being a free man?”

“Well, it’s only been about fifteen minutes, but it’s pretty nice.  And a little scary.  I am worried I’m going to fuck this up.  I really want to do things right.  So I can come see you.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.  Unless, you need some help?  Do you need some money?  Let me give you some of the money we got in the summer.  I mean, it’s really yours anyway.”

“No, no.  Absolutely not.  That’s your money.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll be fine.  I still have some friends here.”

Chris remembered the Thanksgiving dinner at the prison.  “That’s what concerns me,” he muttered.  Louder he said, “But I do worry.”

“And that’s not right.  For the son to have to worry about the father.”

“No, it’s normal.  When people care about each other, of course they worry about them.  And you know, my spring break is in April.  I’ll be able to come out and see you.”

“Ah, Chris.  That’s not necessary.”

“I know.  But I want to.  Besides.  I kind of want to tour Northwestern.  I think I might want to go there.”

“Northwestern?  What’s that?”

“Uh.  It’s a university.”

“Oh.  Right.  It’s a good school.  Right?”

“Yeah, from what I’ve heard.”

Chris hated himself at that moment for feeling better than his father.  He was pretty sure he’d never even gone to college.

“I honestly can’t believe I have such a smart son.  You must have gotten it from your mother.”

“Heh.  Yeah.”

“Speaking of which.  Is she at home?”

“No.  She had to work a half day today.”

“Does she ever take a day off?”

“No.”

“Hmm.”

“Maybe you could call back later.  I won’t pick up the phone, so she’ll have to.”

His father chuckled.  “That’s okay.  I’m sure we’ll talk when she’s ready.”

 _If she ever is._   Chris kept the thought to himself.  “Oh, there’s the call waiting.  That might be her.”

“Well, go ahead and answer it.  I was just calling to wish you a Merry Christmas.  And to tell you I love you.”

Chris smiled.  It sounded like his father and turned in toward the phone and mumbled that last part awfully softly.

“Now I’m gonna go get some beer and a hooker.”

“Wha?!  Dad!”

The man laughed.  “I’m just kidding.”

“No, you’re not.”

He sighed.  “You’re right, I’m not.  Just pretend I am.”

“Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, son.”

Chris hurriedly switched over to the other call.  “Hello?”

“Well.  What’s wrong with you?” his mother asked.

“Uh, nothing.  Nothing.”

“Oh, dear.  Did your friends get you some embarrassing joke gifts this year?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not—yes, they did.”

“You boys are so strange.”

“Yeah.  We’re strange.  Giving each other gifts on Christmas Eve.  And when will _you_ be home to your son?”

“Ohh.  I’m so sorry, Chris.  We just have to finish up tonight.”

“Mom!  Nobody works tomorrow!”

“I know!  And I’ll be home tomorrow.  It’s just, in the real world you don’t get an automatic vacation from Christmas to New Year’s.  We have to work that week and we need to be prepared for it.”

“Okay, okay.  How long will it take?”

“Well…”

“Mom.”

“I might end up going straight to midnight mass after I leave here.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Christopher Pelletier!”

“What?”

“Nothing.  You could meet me up there.  If you like.”  Her voice had a slight lilt of desperate hope to it.

“No, I don’t think I’m gonna go,” he said.

She was silent for a moment.  “That’s okay.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

“All right.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.  Bye.”

Chris sighed and put the phone back in its cradle.  Why had they all met in a restaurant and then gone home?  None of them had families to be with tonight.  Why hadn’t they decided to stay together?  Maybe he’d call them later to see if they wanted to hang out.  He wanted to set up his Atari first to see if it worked.

 

Chris glanced at his watch.  He blinked and did a double take.  Eight o’clock?  Had he been fooling around with his new Atari for over five hours?  Wow.  He was an ubergeek.  He stretched his arms over his shoulders.  His stomach growled.  He’d better go find a frozen dinner.  He munched on a couple of Ding Dongs while he watched his tray of macaroni and cheese heat up in the microwave.  He was shoving a third one in his mouth when the doorbell rang.  He raised an eyebrow.  Who would be coming over at 8:00 on Christmas Eve?  Either Jehovah’s Witness or the landlord with some complaint.  He took his time getting to the door so that he could finish chewing his Ding Dong, and also he didn’t care if he made them wait.  He smacked his lips as he opened the door.  Then he raised a hand up quickly to wipe away any crumbs that may have been around his mouth.

Karen smiled at him from the doorstep.  She obviously knew he’d just been wolfing down processed snack foods and seemed to find it somewhat cute.  She was looking beautiful.  She wore a red and green satin dress with a modest cut, but a short skirt.  Her braids were pulled back into a ponytail.  The harsh light of the front porch bulb did nothing to detract from her soft, pretty features.  He glanced down at himself.  Ratty jeans and a Star Wars T-shirt.  He reached a hand up and brushed the crumbs off his chest.

“Hey, Chris.”

“Hey, Karen.”

“Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

He stepped back to allow her inside.  He closed the door and discreetly checked himself in the mirror on the adjacent wall.  His hair had grown a little bit, but fortunately not enough that his not having brushed it that morning was readily apparent.  He smoothed it down with a hand quickly just to be safe.  Karen turned to look at him and he pretended like he’d just been rubbing the back of his head.  He dropped his arm and smiled at her.

“So.  Hi.”

She smiled amusedly at him.  “Hi.”

“Um.  Do you want something to eat?  Or drink?”

“No, thank you.  I’m fine.”

He nodded.  He shifted his weight anxiously.  He had to say something before things got awkward.

“Um.  You wanna sit down?”

“Sure.”

He started to lead her toward the den, but his Atari and other game systems were spread out in a mess.  But, he didn’t want to make her sit at the kitchen table.  That was a little impersonal.  While he debated what to do she walked past him toward the den.

“Oh, Karen, wait.”

“What?  Oh!”  She laughed.  “Chris.  You could have told me you needed some privacy.”

She winked at him over her shoulder as she carefully stepped over all the wires and controllers and game boxes strewn about.  Chris blushed a little.  He didn’t like video games _that_ much.  She sat gracefully on the couch, spreading her dress out prettily.  He just managed to catch himself before he flopped down like an uncouth hick.  He sat gently and forced a smile.  Then he looked away from her.  Was he the one making things awkward?  Probably.

“So, uh.”  He forced himself to look at her.  He tried to keep himself from blushing, but she looked so pretty tonight.  “What brings you here this evening?”

“I wanted to give you a present.”

She held up a bag to him he hadn’t noticed when she’d first come in.  Chris stared at it, horrified.

“You got me a present?”

“Yes.  But don’t feel all guilty or awkward or like you have to turn it down.”  She gave him a teasing smile.  “You’re not gonna like it.”

He laughed softly and took the bag from her because it would be rude to make her keep holding it out to him.  He untied the frilly ribbons and pulled out the tissue paper and sparkly stuff she’d put in.  Much better wrapping than he and his friends had done.  He looked inside.  Of course.  Clothes.  He smiled and pulled out a beige sweater.  It felt soft.  He was afraid it might be cashmere.  He couldn’t bring himself to check the tag, but he did notice it was from Banana Republic.  That wasn’t exactly a cheap store.

“I think you’ll look really good in that.”

“Thanks, Karen.  But, really—”

“I owe you, actually.”

His brow creased in confusion.  “How so?”

“The sweater you left at my house.  The night my dad caught us in bed.  The stain never came out.  So, I owed you a new one.”

“Oh.”  He laughed.  “Well, thank you very much.”

“And.  Since I knew you would hate that—”

“I don’t hate—”

“Here.”

She held out a card to him.  He shook his head at her.

“Karen—”

“Just open it.”

He took the card and pulled it out of the envelope.  There must have been some sort of joke since the elf on the cover looked pretty smarmy, but the gift card inside it fell out onto his lap.  He picked it up.  It was for Best Buy.

“I thought that might satisfy the nerd within.”  She glanced around the mess in the den.  “And the nerd without.”

“Karen.  Thank you.  But I can’t—”  he turned the card over.  “One hundred dollars!  Karen!”  He thrust the gift card back to her.  “No way.  This is too much.  I can’t accept this.  Not on top of the sweater.”

She grabbed his hand and pushed it back toward him.  “Yes, you can.  What I decide to do with my own money is none of your concern, mister.”

“But, Karen—”

“Ah!”  She put a finger to his lips.  “I won’t hear it.”

He gently gripped her wrist and moved her hand.  “But.  I don’t have anything for you.”

She half-laughed.  “I didn’t think you would.  Maybe I kind of fantasized about it.  You know.  You’d show up at my house and be all like, ‘I have a present for you.’  And I’m all like, ‘Oh, my!  Whatever could it be?’  And you all whip your clothes off and have a big bow around your—”

“Karen!”  Chris could feel even the tips of his ears burning.

“What?” she shrugged innocently.  “It was just wishful thinking.”

He covered his face with a hand.  “Oh, geez.”

She pulled his hand away and placed the tips of her fingers under his chin to make him look at her.  Her fingernails tickled a bit and sent a shiver down his spine.

“I didn’t get you these presents because I was expecting anything in return.  I just wanted to do something for you.”

“Why?”  He looked away from her.  “What have I ever done for you?”

She shrugged again.  “Lots of things.  And well…”  She plucked the gift card from his hand.  “Maybe I did get you _this_ one with some ulterior motives.”

She placed the gift card against his cheek and used it to turn his head back toward her.  His didn’t let his eyes follow the movement of his head.  So, when he turned his eyes to her, he was surprised to find her so close.  She kissed him chastely on the lips.

“I thought maybe the idea of buying some nerdy gadget thing would get you all hot and bothered.  And then I could take advantage of you.”

He laughed and reached up a hand to caress her cheek.  His smile slowly faded as they looked at each other.  He could tell what she wanted him to do.  He licked his lips.  He saw her swallow.  Then he leaned forward and kissed her.  This, of course, wasn’t their first kiss since the break up by any means, but this was the first one that wasn’t induced by sentimental memories, crude horniness, or strategically placed mistletoe.  Chris pulled back a little.

“Can I kiss you more?” he asked.

She smiled.  “Yes, please.”

He slid closer and kissed her deeper.  This felt good.  And not just in a physical sense.  It felt…right?  Familiar even.  Like something he hadn’t even been aware had been missing.  He pulled her closer.  No, he’d known this had been missing.  He’d just been stubborn.  Why had he been so stubborn?  He liked Karen.  And he wanted her.  She was willing to fight for their relationship.  Why wasn’t he?

Those were his last thoughts for a while.  He drowned in the physical sensations, letting Karen take the lead and set the pace.  He easily kept up with her.  Things were getting mighty steamy mighty quickly.  She was the one who finally broke the kiss.

“Hey.  Why don’t we go upstairs?”

“No,” he moaned into her neck, running his hands over the smooth satin of her dress.

“You don’t want to?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“No, I do.  In fact I really do because I was very recently reminded just how long it’s been.  But we need to stay here so we’ll go too far.  Otherwise I might come to my senses.”

Karen laughed at him.  “Yeah right.”

She pushed away from him and stood up.  She pulled him up by the hand and led him to the front of the house.  They arrived in the foyer.

“So, here we are,” she said.  “You can come to your senses now and send me out the door.  Or.  You can take me upstairs to your bed.”

Chris looked at the front door.  And then the stairs.  And then he looked at Karen.

“Upstairs it is,” he said and took her by the hand.  She smiled at him and followed.  “You know, you look like a Christmas present in that dress.”

“That was the idea.  I’m your third present.”

Chris held back a groan as he watched her coyly bite her lip.  He shook his head.  “Am I supposed to follow that comment with some cheesy line about unwrapping you?”

She giggled and was almost skipping behind him as he led her into his bedroom.  Fortunately it was mostly clean.  The bed didn’t look like a complete mess, but the comforter was partially on the floor.  They didn’t need it.

“Well, you can’t unwrap the dress.  It just unzips.  But I found some very interesting lingerie the other day.”

Chris shut the door and turned her around.  He kissed the nape of her neck as he unzipped her dress.  He felt her shiver and ran his fingertips lightly over her arms as he pushed the straps off her shoulders.  The slippery dress fell easily from her body.  He turned her around and kissed her as he guided her toward the bed.  She sat down when they reached it and he stood back up to look at her.  The lingerie was indeed interesting.  It was green and red like the dress, but both the bra and the panties looked like they came off by being untied.  This could be fun.  He walked over to his closet and he heard her stretch out on the bed.  He stood on his tiptoes to reach up on the ledge above the door that he had discovered by accident one day.  It was where he kept his condoms.  His mother had found them everywhere else.  Or maybe she’d just decided to stop looking.  He wasn’t sure.  He took one from the box and pulled his shirt off.  It would be one thing to approach her with ratty jeans, but a Star Wars T-shirt was just so unsexy.

He crossed the room to her and she demurely slid her legs together as she slightly arched her back, her arms above her head.  Chris took in a deep breath.  It was going to take a lot to keep his cool.  He put one knee on the bed and ran a hand over her calf down to her ankle.  He raised her leg a bit and bent down to kiss the inner ankle bone.  He put his tongue to it and then moved up her leg.  She squirmed a little as he made his way slowly up her leg, mostly placing light kisses, occasionally flicking his tongue over a sensitive area.  He followed her leg toward her inner thigh.  He heard a hitch in her breathing.  Then he changed his course and followed the line where her leg joined her hips.  He raised his eyes to look at her.  She was breathing a little heavily and gave him a dirty look.

“Don’t be mean,” she breathed.

He smiled and kissed his way onto her stomach.  The necklace he was wearing was long enough that the metal charm trailed along her skin behind his lips.  He licked her belly button and she twitched under him.  He made a straight line up her sternum and very carefully went between her breasts.  When he reached her clavicle, he licked a long, hot line up her collar bone and then gently bit her shoulder.  She moved under him and one of her hands went to his head, her fingers desperately trying to find a grip in his short hair.  He kissed his way up her neck, giving her earlobe a quick lick before running his lips lightly down her cheek to her lips.  He braced himself above her and kissed her.  Then he pulled back and opened his eyes.  Hers were still closed.  She dug her teeth into her lower lip and looked up at him.

“I can’t believe you’re going this slowly.  I thought you’d want to make up for lost time.”

He smiled.  “I am.”

She let out a breathy sigh and raised a hand to play with the necklace.  “Where’d you get this?”

“From work.”

“What made you decide to buy it?  Or.  More appropriately.  Who?”

“Just one of the girls at work.”

And by one of the girls at work he meant one of the girls who had been _at_ his work.  It had been Sophia’s suggestion he get it.  He’d agreed to it because the other two girls working the registers that night had demanded he should.  All the same, he should take her mind off it.  He leaned down to kiss her and moved one of his hands to her side.  She let out a small whimper.  It was the first of many he managed to draw out of her over the next hour.  When they at last lay side by side, drawing deep breaths and trying to recover from their joining, Chris waited for the guilt.  Or the icky feeling.  Or the sense that what’d they’d done was a bad idea.  It didn’t come.  He just felt content and satisfied.  And happy to have Karen’s head on his shoulder.  That was definitely a good sign.

“Mm,” she murmured, turning to her side and snuggling against him.  “I missed that.”

Chris smiled self-deprecatingly and rubbed his forehead.  “Yeah, me too.”

“I missed you,” she said timidly.

Chris rubbed her arm and stared at the ceiling.  He let the hand that had been rubbing his forehead flop onto the pillow behind him.

“I missed you too.”

“Mm.”  She reached a hand up and rubbed his short hair.  “So you’re growing your hair out.”

“Well, you told me to.”

“That wasn’t an order,” she said with a hint of worry in her voice.

He smiled.  “I know.”  He turned his head and kissed her temple.  Then he moved his hand from her arm and played with some of the braids that were spread out on the bed.  “How long are you going to wear these?”

“You don’t like them?”

“I think they look fine.  But I like your real hair better.”

“Hmph.  Well.  They were expensive to put in.  I thought I’d wear them for a while.  But…I’d be willing to take them out for my boyfriend.  But not just some guy who needed some sex because he was lonely on Christmas.”

Chris laughed softly.  He returned to gently running his fingers along her arm.  They were quiet for a few minutes.  Then Chris said, “I think I’d like to give us another go.”

Karen sat partially up and looked at him.  “Really?  You mean it?”

Chris looked back at her.  Her eyes were searching his.  He was still worried their relationship might turn out to be another disaster, but he really wanted to find out if it wouldn’t.

“Yeah,” he said smiling.  “I do.”

She smiled brightly at him.  “Yay!”  She hugged him and he laughed as she kissed him all over his face.  Then she kissed his lips.  She pulled back with a slightly naughty smile.  “You know what?  I want another go too.”

“Well.  I’ll get right on that.”

They laughed as they rolled over together.

 

Sunday, December 25, 2005

 

Chris opened his eyes.  Something woke him up.  Maybe a sound?  His alarm?  But the sound had stopped.  And today was Christmas.  Why would he set an alarm?  He started to move to look at his clock but a weight on his chest kept him down.  He looked down and saw Karen still fast asleep.  It made him smile.  He dropped his head back onto the pillow.  What had woken him up?  Was it just the sunlight?  He grunted to himself.  Sunlight meant morning.  He had a feeling getting Karen out unnoticed might not be easy.  Karen stirred against him.  He could feel her slowly wake up.  Then he felt her hand on his chest.  He looked down.  She was smiling up at him.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning,” she replied.  Then she looked slightly panicked.  “Oh no.  It’s morning.”

“So?”

“So?  So I spent Christmas Eve with you.  And am not at home for my nice family Christmas morning.  My parents probably noticed.”

“Oh.”

Even with that realization, neither of them was racing to get out of bed.  And there wasn’t much sense in worrying about it.  What could they do at this point?  Well, he supposed they could get dressed and try to pull off that they’d simply lost track of time and fallen asleep.

“Christopher?”

They both tensed at the sound of his mother’s voice.  It had been just outside his door.  Should they try to scramble for their clothes?  The point became moot as the door started to open.  At least they were covered by the sheets.

“Chris, have you seen or heard from Karen?  Her father is—”

She cut off abruptly as she saw them.  And then she quickly stepped back out and shut the door.  They sat up partway and looked at each other.  That was strange.  Usually she stayed just long enough to sigh at them before leaving.  Of course, she’d never actually caught them at such an advanced stage of their physical contact before.  Then through the door they could hear her talking.

“Um, he’s not here.”

Now he and Karen were really confused.

“I think he might have gone over to a friend’s last night because I wasn’t here.  I’ll give him a call and then let you know if he knows anything.”

The door opened again.  Chris’ heart seized up on him.  Now he knew what had woken him up.  It had been the doorbell.  Karen’s father was standing in the doorframe.  His mother stood just behind the man.  She shrugged apologetically at him.  Chris considered freaking out and jumping out his window butt nekkid and making a run for it.  But once his heart started beating again, it was in a normal rhythm.  So, he figured, why bother flipping out?  After all, what was done was done.  There was no way they could hide the situation and apparently no matter how scary Mr. Green was, it wasn’t enough to stop him from sleeping with his daughter.  Mr. Green seemed to have the same epiphany.  The anger that had read on his features kind of slipped away.  Now he just looked resignedly disappointed.  Or was that disgusted?

“Can we have a talk downstairs?” the man asked.

He could see Karen’s head nod.  He thought he managed to get his to move too.  Mr. Green turned away and left.  His mother looked in at them and shook her head.

“Chris, really.”

“What?”

She didn’t reply, but shut the door.  Chris chuckled.  And then he fell back onto the bed and laughed.  Karen looked down at him.

“I fail to see what is so funny about this.”

“Really?  I think it’s hilarious.”

“Apparently.”  She made a kind of worried whimpering sound.  “Oh, I am not looking forward to this.”

“Well, it can’t be nearly as bad as the last time he caught us.”

“I suppose that’s true.  Unless this time he really does kill you.  That would make me really sad.”

Chris sat up.  “‘Really sad?’  That’s it?  I die and you’re just ‘really sad?’”

She smiled and kissed him on the lips.  “Yep.  Really, really sad.”

She tossed the covers off and went in search of her clothes.  Chris just watched.

“Man, this underwear is going to take forever to put back on.  And I don’t have the instructions for it now.”  Chris laughed and she tossed him an unhappy look.  “Stop watching, you perv.  Get dressed.”

“Okay.”

He got dressed in less than two minutes and then had to help her tie the underwear around her well enough that it wouldn’t come undone for the next few minutes or so.  Well, he hadn’t been too helpful.  He’d just kind of been feeling her up a little bit.  She kept slapping his hands and telling him to behave, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.  Even the thought of knowing what their parents must be thinking they were doing considering how long it was taking them to get downstairs didn’t make him want to hurry.

They managed to get downstairs in about fifteen minutes and found their parents having a cup of coffee together at the kitchen table.  Karen paused at the entrance, but Chris walked right on in and poured himself a cup of coffee.  Did Karen drink coffee?  He wasn’t sure.  He’d never been with her first thing in the morning before.  He looked at her.

“You want some?  Or tea or something?”

“Um.”  She looked at her father.  Did she think they weren’t allowed to even talk to each other in front of him?  The man just took a sip of his coffee and kept his eyes focused on the picture on the wall above Chris’ mother’s head.  “I’ll have some OJ if you have any.”

“Let me check.”

So, did that mean she didn’t drink coffee or that she didn’t drink coffee in front of her father?  Had she always been this meek around him?  He had no clue.  He spent as little time as possible around her parents.  He poured Karen a glass of orange juice and brought it to the table.  He sat next to his mother, across the table from Mr. Green.  No sense tempting fate by being within choking distance of the man.  Karen finally managed to make it into the room and sat down in the remaining chair.  All four of them took a sip of their beverages without making eye contact with anyone.

“Before we begin with the larger issue,” Mr. Green said, “Karen, you must realize that this has nothing to do with your relationship with Chris, but with the fact that you skipped curfew, stayed out all night without telling us where you were, and you blew off Christmas which hurt your mother and scared the living daylights out of both us.  So, you are grounded.”

“Yeah.  I kind of figured that.  But it really was an accident.  I didn’t intend to spend the night when I came over.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Chris waited for it.  “And speaking of that, I thought you two were broken up.”

“We were,” Karen said.  “We just.  Got back together.”

“When?”

“Officially?  Last night.”

Mr. Green looked at the ceiling and put his cup down.  Chris wondered if the word “officially” made him think they’d still been sleeping together while they’d been broken up.  Mr. Green looked at Chris’ mother.  She just took a sip of her coffee and shrugged a little bit.  The man looked at his daughter.

“And _that_ has to be a part of the relationship?”

Chris had yet to hear a question he felt he should field, so he let Karen handle it.

“Well.  No.  It doesn’t _have_ to be.  We just.  Want it to be.”

Chris examined a speck on his coffee mug very carefully.  He could feel Mr. Green’s eyes on him.  Then the man sighed.

“Look.  I know I can’t tell you two what you can and can’t do with your own bodies.  Though I wish I could,” he muttered.  “And I certainly can’t tell you two that you can’t see each other.  But we will be having a discussion about this and I don’t care if it’s already too late or it’s stuff you’ve heard before.  You will listen again.”

Chris and Karen nodded.  Mr. Green began.  It wasn’t so much a “discussion” as a lecture, which involved Mr. Green covering a wide range of topics.  He hit on everything from commitment to responsibility to safe sex practices to the consequences to the options they would have about the consequences.  It was quite long.  Chris thought even his mother thought it was little on the windbaggy side.  After all, they’d started having sex well over a year ago.  And they’d yet to spread any disease or produce any babies.  But then again, one of the things Mr. Green had lectured about had been complacency.  So, maybe he shouldn’t be so cavalier about it.

At long last the man seemed to work himself up enough with the consequences of their actions that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it anymore.  He just grumped in his chair and glared at something.  Then he stood up and took his coffee mug to the kitchen sink.

“Thank you for the coffee, Gillian.”

“You’re welcome, Derek,” his mother replied.  She gave Chris a little smile and then wiped it off her face when Mr. Green turned around.

“Karen.  Let’s go.”

“Okay.”

Both she and Chris stood up.  She looked at him awkwardly for a moment.  He wouldn’t mind hugging her or kissing her goodbye, but he had feeling she couldn’t do it.  She just smiled at him and walked around the table.  Chris and his mother followed them to the front door.  Karen turned back to look at his mother.

“Um.  Ms. Pelletier.  Do you hate me?”

His mother looked surprised by the question, and then she smiled.  “No, of course not.  Besides, I trust Chris to know what he’s doing.”  Chris raised his eyebrows.  She did?  He wasn’t sure he trusted himself.  “And, off topic, but that is a very pretty dress.”

“Oh.  Thank you.”  She smiled at his mother and then turned to him.  “Bye, Chris.”

“Bye.”

He looked at Mr. Green.  The man just shook his head at him and then followed his daughter out the door.

“Christopher!”

Chris started and turned around.  His mother had her hands on her hips.

“What?”

“On _Christmas_?”

“Well!  You weren’t around.  I had to celebrate _some_ way.”

“Oh!”  She threw her hands in the air.  “I knew I should have made you go to midnight mass.”  She pointed a finger at him.  “Is all this because of your friends?  Are any of them having sex?”

“Wha?”  Chris had to laugh at the absurdity of the question.  “That is none of your business!”

“I don’t need to know which ones or with who or how often.  I just want to know if you started because they did.”

Chris tried to keep back his smile.  He knew he’d been the first among the four of them to lose his virginity.  “No,” he answered honestly.  “And I don’t know _anything_ about their sex lives or lack thereof.  Okay?”

His mother rolled her eyes.  “Oh, please.  You four are so close I thought you were gay in middle school.”

_“What?!”_

His mother was saved from explaining herself when the phone rang.  She walked into the kitchen and Chris followed her.  What exactly had that meant?  Well, he knew what it meant.  But how could she think that?  Had everyone thought that?  Did people _still_ think that?  Well how could they not after the public display that went on yesterday?  Chris slapped his hands to his face.  He was _not_ going to think about that.

“Ew!”

His mother tossed the phone handset at him.  He just managed to catch it.  It was still ringing.

“What?  Is there a spider on it?” he asked, turning it over.

“No.  It’s Mr. Richardson.”

“ _Mooom_ ,” he gave her a look.  He started to turn it on.

“Don’t answer it!”

“But, it’s Christmas.  He’ll know we’re at home.”

“We could be at church!”

“Seriously, Mom.”  Chris answered the phone.  “Hello?”

“Hi, Chris.  Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“I don’t suppose your mother is available is she?”

“Yes, she is, but she’s being a baby and won’t answer.”

His mother made an outraged face at him.

“I knew it!  That’s why I called on Christmas.  I thought that way she couldn’t avoid me.”

“We do have caller ID.”

“Has she been screening all my phone calls?”

“I’m sure.”

“Fine.  We don’t have to talk.  You do it for me.  It really is time for me to know what to do with the storage unit.  She wouldn’t answer me the one time you managed to get her to talk to me.”

“Sure, no problem.  I’ll talk to her about it.  Oh, hey.  You remember that bossy ex-girlfriend I told you about?”

“Yes.”

“We got back together.”

Mr. Richardson chuckled.  “Really?  Well, that’s good.  Wait.  Is it good?”

Chris shrugged even though the man couldn’t see him.  “I think so.”

“Well, that gives me some hope then.  I got back together with Victoria,” he said flatly.

Chris laughed.  “I guess we’re just a couple of pushovers.”

Mr. Richardson laughed too.  A real laugh.  Damn it.  Why was he never around when he managed to get him to do that?

“I guess we are.  Anyway.  I won’t keep you on Christmas.  Talk to your mother for me.”

“Will do.  Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

Chris hung up the phone and stopped in his tracks on returning the handset to its cradle when he saw his mother’s expression.

“What?”

“Well, you two seem awfully chummy.”

Chris shrugged.  “He’s a nice guy.  Why don’t you like him?”

Chris put the phone back in its holder.  He turned to look at his mother.  She was staring at the floor.

“I don’t—I don’t dislike him.  I just.”  She looked up.  “You were too young to understand.  We—had a _complicated_ relationship.”  She took a step forward and put a hand out in alarm.  “But it wasn’t romantic!”

Chris was amused by his mother’s panic.  “I know.”

She looked confused now.  And a little suspicious.  “How do you know?”

“Well, I asked him—uh, I mean.  Isn’t it time for presents?”

Chris sprinted for the den.

 

Julian

 

Saturday, December 24, 2005

 

Julian scooped up some egg onto his hash browns and then topped it off with a piece of bacon.  He carefully lifted his fork so the wobbling pile of yummy-ness wouldn’t fall back onto the plate.  He quickly shoved it into his mouth.  He sighed in happiness and chewed with relish.  No wonder Americans had such a high incidence of heart disease.  This stuff was awesome.  He felt a little guilty for indulging so exuberantly in the fatty carcasses of animals.  His mother would disapprove.  She had also disapproved of and never understood his desire to exchange Christmas presents with his friends.  She always asked him why he couldn’t just call them “end of year” gifts.  He had responded, “Because they’re Christmas gifts.”  Plus, where would one buy “end of year” wrapping paper?

Sitting with his friends now he didn’t miss his parents quite as much as usual.  And they weren’t nearly so concerned about what he should and should not be doing with his life.  They were a little nosy, but not as focused as the parents of an only child.  He looked around the table and watched them talk about some people at school as they ate.  It was a tad on the messy side.  Chris had been smart to pack up his precious Atari.

“Hey, are you already done eating?” Chris asked as he slathered three different flavored jellies onto his biscuit.

“Yeah.  I was hungry.”

“Well, then, you can start opening your presents.”

Chris handed him a box across the table.  There were some sticky, purple fingerprints on it.

“Hmm.  Wonder where it’s from?” Scott asked as he sipped his milk and kicked his legs under the table.  Will shot him a look and he stopped moving.

“Blow me, Ramsey,” Chris growled at him.

Scott just smiled and started bouncing his legs again.  Will appeared to be letting it go.  For now.  Julian ripped off the angel covered paper.  Chris’ presents were always covered in angels.  It was the only kind of wrapping paper his mother bought.  He opened the box and peeked inside.

“Ooo!”

He pulled out a grey fedora with a white accent ribbon.  Also in the box was a pair of brown lens sunglasses that were obviously more for style than protection from the sun.  Julian placed the fedora on his head and ran his fingers along the brim.  He leaned back and struck a sinisterly-plotting-old school-gangsta pose.

“How do I look?”

“Not bad,” Will nodded.

“Yeah, you’re like the only person I know who could pull that off,” Chris said.

“Put the glasses on,” Scott said.

“They don’t match the hat.”

“So?  I just wanna see ‘em!”

“Fine.”  Julian took the hat off and put on the large framed glasses.  He leaned back and looked at Scott behind Will.  “So?  Do I look like Brad Pitt?”

His friends started cackling.  He straightened, wondering what was so funny.  He put the sunglasses in the box and put the fedora back on.  He did feel kind of cool wearing it.

“Thank you, Chris.  I feel cooler already.”

“No problem.”

“Here,” Scott said, leaning over Will.  “Me, me.”

Julian took the rectangular package.  Scott didn’t really believe in boxes; he just wrapped things up as they were.  So, Julian could tell it was a book of some kind, albeit oversized.  He pulled off the paper and looked at the cover.  It was a scrapbook.  In the center cutout square was a black and white photograph of him with his parents when he was about four years old.  They’d gone to the beach and his parents were in T-shirts and shorts and he was butt naked (though that fact was hidden in the picture).  It was one of the few pictures they’d ever taken where all three of them looked like typical Americans at the same time.  He stared at the picture.  His parents looked so young; they were only 22.

“Um,” Scott started nervously.  “I—I hope you don’t get mad.  I was—I was in your house one day.  Looking around.  Well.  Snooping around.  And I found a box in your parents’ room.  It was shoved into a corner and had a lot of dust on it.  So.  I kind of.  Went through it.”

Julian looked at Scott.  He seriously looked like he was worried Julian might hate him.  He gave him a small smile of reassurance and looked back at the scrapbook.  He opened it and the other three leaned in to look with him.  It wasn’t just a bunch of pictures glued in randomly.  There were pieces of fabric used as backgrounds that matched certain pictures and little odds and ends like a scrap of ribbon from one of his mother’s dresses or a piece of paper with phrases from letters copied down in Scott’s neat handwriting.  The book progressed from pictures of his young, newlywed parents, to them holding their new son, and then Julian growing up.  The last page actually had a very recent picture.  It was of the four of them out on a picnic with his parents a couple weeks before the accident.  His dad was diving into the picture because he hadn’t set the timer correctly.  Julian laughed and felt it come out like a soft sob.  He reached a hand up and found that he was crying.  He hurriedly wiped his eyes and shot Scott a dirty look.

“What the hell, man?  This is so sappy.  You—”  He couldn’t insult him further.  He swallowed and sniffed back the snot forming in his nose.  Why was crying always such a messy affair?

Scott smiled.  “I’m glad you like it.”

Will reached over to the book and turned the pages back toward the front.  There was a picture of Julian with only four teeth clutching a blue blanket as he sat in his mother’s lap.

“Isn’t that your Bluie?” Will pointed to the scrap of blue fabric behind the picture.

Julian looked at it and then reached for Scott.

“You cut up my Bluie?!”

“Only a tiny corner!  It’s fine!  You won’t even notice!  Geez it was buried at the bottom of a box anyway!”

They fought with each other over Will’s head.  He tried to shove them apart.

“All right, all right.  Knock it off.”

They pulled back, but not before Julian reached over Will’s head one last time and took a swipe at Scott.  Scott started to retaliate but Will held up a finger to him and he stopped.  Then Will started to dig around in his bag.

“Well, I’m afraid my gift isn’t going to help you reclaim your cool, tough guy exterior.”

“Oh, great,” Julian mumbled, carefully tucking the scrapbook beside him on the booth cushion so that stray food wouldn’t get on it.

Will put a neatly wrapped box in front of him.  He left his hand on it so that Julian couldn’t start opening it.

“In January, your mom came to talk to me about an idea she had for your 18th birthday present.  I had to end up doing a lot of it myself, so I couldn’t get it done in time for your birthday.  Mostly because I was really unsure if I should even have them finished.  I didn’t know if you would want them, but they’d already been started, so…Hopefully giving this to you at Christmas won’t put a curse on them or something.”

Julian had thought right away he knew what it was, and then he’d thought it was something else.  Now he had no clue what it might be.

“Okay, okay.  Enough with the disclaimer.  Just let me open it.”

Will started to remove his hand and then put it back.  “And you know your Mom and I are different.  So, I left the ones she had done alone, but I couldn’t continue on in her style.  So, they might look a little weird.”

Julian was perplexed.  “Dude.”  He removed Will’s hand and started pulling the paper off revealing an unmarked brown box.  He opened it and pulled out the box that was inside.  It was smallish, but heavy.  The wood was a dark, vibrant red, so it was probably real cherry.  There were some simple decorations scrolling around the sides and across the top.  Carved in the center was a chalice.  In Wiccan belief the chalice was usually associated with the Goddess and women in general, so it was a strange symbol to put on a gift for a male.  Of course, the chalice also represented intuition, the subconscious, psychic ability, and often the element water.  Even still.  It was a strange thing for his mother to want him to have.

“Um.  It’s a nice box.  But what did you have to do with it?”

Julian looked at Will.  His friend was giving him an unpleased look.

“Open it,” he said dryly.

Oh, there was more?  Julian used two hands to gently lift the lid.  The inside was lined with dark red velvet.  Nestled securely inside was a rectangular shaped object wrapped in midnight blue silk.  It didn’t occur to him what it might be until he put his hand into the box to pick up the object.  It moved slightly and he had to put his hand all the way around it.  He placed it on the table and unfolded the corners of the silk one at a time, using his left hand—the one closest to his heart.  Scott and Chris leaned in close to see.

“Uh…are those cards?” Scott asked.

“They’re Tarot cards,” Julian said softly, running his fingertips across the back of the top card.  It was a beautiful royal blue with silver Celtic knots twisting and crawling across the top, leading the eyes to one corner and then back across the middle to another corner only to turn around and head back to the middle.  They created an optical illusion and almost seemed to be undulating of their own accord.  Finally Julian saw what he was looking for.  Somewhere in the tangle, the knot came to an end in the shape of a serpent’s head.  It was very small and quite well hidden; he was surprised he found it so fast.  He moved the top card and looked at the back of the second.  The serpent head wasn’t there.  He leaned close and looked again.  He searched the entire back looking for it.

“Um, what’s he looking at?” he heard one of his friends ask quietly.

Then he found the serpent’s head in a different place.  He looked at the third card.  There was no serpent head in either of the two places they had been on the first cards.

“Holy crap,” he said sitting up.  “These were all handmade.”

“Yep,” Will confirmed.  “Your mother wanted them to be special.

Julian turned over the two cards in his hands.  That meant that all the designs on the faces had been hand drawn too.  And that the pictures had been individually selected for both the major and minor arcanas.  He picked up all the cards and turned them over.  He spread them out in his hands and looked them over.  The style was the same on all of them because they were done by the same artist, but now he understood what Will meant.  Some of the cards he could tell immediately had been designed by his mother.  A couple had obviously been designed by Will.  He wondered how many his mother had gotten done before she died.  She had put a lot of time and thought into these.  And they must have cost a small fortune.  Who had paid for them?  Will?  Tears were falling freely down his cheeks and he couldn’t do anything to stop them, but he wasn’t sobbing.  It was just a gentle, steady flow of tears.  He really hoped the cards were laminated or protected in some way because the salty water was falling off his chin and nose and dripping onto them.  He sorted through the minor arcana and came across the major arcane.  He searched for The Hanged Man, which was his favorite card.  He hesitated as he passed The Lovers.  He raised an eyebrow.  Usually this card was a depiction of only two people.  On this card there was a man with a woman and man kneeling beside him with their arms wrapped around his thighs.  He glanced over at Will.  His friend grinned at him.

“This deck was supposed to represent you.”

Julian shook his head and kept going.  He couldn’t believe the artist had agreed to illustrate an image that was kind of against what the card stood for.  But maybe even in witchcraft the customer was always right.  He found The Hanged Man.  He was tangled in thorns and ribbons and vines and ropes.  His limbs were tied at harsh angles and his body was in an awkward position as it hung upside down from an ash tree.  The expression on his face was one of peace.  It was a beautiful card; his mother had designed this one.

Julian took some napkins from the center of the table and tried to wipe off the cards as best he could.  Then he carefully folded them back up in the silk and placed them in the cherry box.  He would have to look at them later.  He couldn’t take anymore of this right now.  He wiped his nose and shook his whole body, forcing the other three to sit back.

“Okay!  Enough of that!  Geez.  I hate you people.  It’s a good thing we saved the joke gifts.  Give them to me!  Hurry.”

He knew it was embarrassing, but he had to use the napkins to wipe his eyes and nose.  It had been that bad.

“Man, now my gift feels really shallow,” Chris mumbled.

“Doesn’t it?” Julian agreed.

“Uh!  Whatever, asshole!  I thought you were all open and feely now and didn’t care about hiding your affections and feelings in public anymore.  So, why are you so pissy about crying in a Denny’s?”

Julian turned a look on Chris.  “You’re right.  I did say I was more open now.  But, why did you bring up my willingness to be affectionate in public?  Oh!  I see!  Of course, why didn’t I realize sooner?”

Chris had a look of panicked anger on his face.  He started to dive out of the booth but Julian grabbed him and practically crawled on top of him.

“Oh, Chris!  My love, my darling!  Right here in the Denny’s?  Is that how you want it?”

“Julian!  I swear to God—”

Julian turned Chris’ face toward him and kissed him.  He heard Scott gasp.  He’d only meant to get his cheek, but he’d turned his head too far and his lips were pressing onto Chris’.  His reflexive outrage caused his lips to part.  When Julian felt the opening, he couldn’t help himself.  He parted his lips and gave Chris a long, openmouthed kiss.  He did keep his tongue to himself.

It was funny.  He’d spent the early part of his teenaged life trying—and failing—to be attracted to guys, and once he resigned himself to liking women he suddenly didn’t mind fooling around with his friends or openly flirting with grown men.  His mother was right: it was in his nature to be contrary.  Of course now, this was probably going to cost him some pain.  He sat up and quickly pulled back.  He pushed against Will and he in turn pushed into Scott and the three of them slid around the far side of the booth.  They waited anxiously.  They couldn’t see Chris because he was still lying flat on his back and was hidden by the table.  Several long moments passed.

“I think you sent him into shock,” Scott giggled.

“Geez,” Will murmured.  “You haven’t even gone that far with me.”

Julian vaguely heard Scott snicker at the comment, but he couldn’t concentrate because a sharp pain started pulsing in his chest.  It was tearing at that dark wound.  It was guilt and remorse and self-loathing.  He had gone that far with Will before.  In fact he’d gone much further.  But that had been because of what he’d done _that_ day.  He closed his eyes and took in a couple deep breaths.  He tried to remember that Will had forgiven him and that he was different now.  He would never do something like that again, but he needed to calm down.  Letting himself get upset about it was dangerous.  It would lead him back to the pain and the anger.  He needed to control those things.  Finally he opened his eyes again, the sharp pain having been reduced to a dull ache.  Chris was still out of sight.  Now this was just ridiculous.

Julian edged carefully around the booth.  He could see Chris’ legs now.  He didn’t appear to have moved at all.  Julian moved a little bit closer.

“Chris?”

His (ex?) friend suddenly sat up, brandishing a fork.  Julian yelled and headed back the other direction.  Will and Scott were falling all over each other to get out of the booth.  Julian knew he wasn’t going to make it.  He stretched out on his stomach and then sucked in a breath as a fork plunged into the seat cushion right next to his eye.  He froze.  He could feel Chris over him.  Then a dark voice he’d never heard before spoke into his ear.

“Julian.  I’m aware that the four of us have a weird, unusually close relationship.  But the line you draw with me is much, _much_ closer to the conservative side than it is with the other two.  Okay?”

Julian nodded.  He could feel Chris’ presence fade away.  Scott and Will were getting back into the booth, so Julian sat up.  They looked at Chris.  He looked completely normal and was even smiling.  He held out an envelope to Julian.

“Merry Christmas, Julian.”

Julian shuddered at the sweetness in his voice.  Scott was clinging to Will.

“Is he faking it or did he really just erase everything from his memory?” Scott whispered.

Will shrugged.  Julian decided he should just accept the gift from Chris with the understanding that this incident was never to be spoken of again.  He opened the envelope and pulled out several sheets with various pictures on them ranging from skulls on fire to kittens sliding on a rainbow.  Then he recognized the kind of paper they were on.  He laughed.

“Temporary tattoos, huh?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, “so you can think about what and where you want your next one.”

“Ha!” Scott laughed.  “You should put that dragon breathing fire on your ass so it looks like a gnarly fart!”

They all laughed.  Ah.  So there were some parts of them that were still very typical teenage boys.

“Here, open mine,” Scott said.

This one he had actually put into a gift bag, which meant it must be very difficult to wrap by itself.  Julian dug around in the tissue paper and pulled out a dollar store figurine.  It was so cheaply made that the unicorn’s hooves were indistinguishable from the grass it stood on and the colors of its eyes and nostrils weren’t actually on those features.  Julian was confused.  This was definitely a joke gift, but why had he gotten it for him?

“I got that for you because it’s supposed to bring you peace and harmony,” Scott explained.  “Well, that’s what the lady said.  I can’t actually see it to verify that she gave me the right thing.”

“Huh?  What do you mean?”

He looked at Chris and Will.  Even they didn’t seem to know where Scott was going with this.

“Well, what is it?  Can you see it?” Scott asked.

“Um…It’s a unicorn.”

“Oh.  So it is true.  They only appear before virgins.”

The noise was even worse than the pussy whipped rash cream incident.  Julian ran his tongue over his teeth.  Real funny.  _Real_ funny.  Make fun of the virgin.  Julian looked around the Denny’s.  The elderly couple had left, possibly during his attack on Chris.  So there was no one to give them dirty looks that would help them settle down faster.  He strummed his fingers on the table.  The laughing was starting to get a bit excessive.  It was a long time before they managed to get somewhat quiet because every time they started settling down they looked at the statuette and it set them off again.  When he finally thought he could be heard over their sniggering he dealt his jabs.

“Yeah, I may be a virgin, but when’s the last time you even had sex, Chris?”

He shut-up.

“And it may be recent for you, Ramsey, but did it involve nipple clamps?”

Scott gasped in offense.  Julian eyed Will.  He just smiled back at him.

“And I don’t know about you.  But you can’t even admit to when you last had sex because of your whole ‘mystery’ person.”

“This morning,” Will said, smiling like the Cheshire cat.

Julian stared at him.  His mind was blank.  A complete wall of white.  When Will had told him he was in love with someone, he’d always been so vague and never described anything about their relationship or activities.  To hear it now—to have it confirmed—some bitch was touching his Will…He looked away and took a breath.  He needed to stop thinking of Will as his.

“Really?” he heard Scott ask, “this morning?  What a slut!”

“Wha?  I am not!  And I was just joking.  Geez, you guys.  _Anyway_ , in light of your recent activities, Julian, I don’t think my gift is going to be much of a joke anymore.”

Julian snapped out of his momentary depression.  “Oh, yeah?  Why’s that?”

Will handed him a flimsy item wrapped in green paper.  He was pretty certain it was a magazine.  Julian ripped off the paper.  It was a copy of _Out_ magazine.  Scott snickered and Chris made a face, as if reliving some horrible memory.  Julian shook his head with a smile.

“Well, thank you, Will.  I’m sure this will help me rediscover myself.”

“Oh, but it gets even better.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

Julian closed his eyes.  “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.  You now have a _two_ year subscription coming right to your front door.”

Scott and Chris laughed.

“Crap.”

 

Christmas was a vicious holiday.  That must be why his parents decided to screw Christianity and switch to paganism.  There was nothing magical about the whole stupid thing, which was evident by the fact that he didn’t have enough gas in his car to make it home.  He was forced to pull into a Kwik-E Mart and buy their low quality, crappy gas.  He hummed to himself as he pumped the gas.  Should he check the oil?  When was the last time he had the oil changed?  Dagnabbit.  Owning a car sucked.  He jumped when the pump clanked off.  He was never ready for it.  He screwed the cap back on to the tank and turned to put the nozzle up.  As he did so he thought he saw Laney inside the store.  When he finished fiddling with the pump he checked again.  It was definitely Laney.  Why was she at the Kwik-E Mart on Christmas Eve?  Maybe it was a last minute purchase of cream of mushroom soup or something.  Julian felt the pain in chest come back.  That’s what he’d done with Scott and Anna _that_ morning.  Was this always going to happen?  Were everyday comments and experiences going to keep shoving that day back down his throat?  Not that he didn’t deserve it.

Julian punched the button for a receipt.  The machine made some noise and then flashed at him that he needed to go inside to get his receipt.  He groaned.  Perfect.  Did he really even need it?  Mrs. Harder had set him up with a bank account and check card in his name and demanded that he keep all his receipts from all purchases he made with it.  Technically there was nothing the courts could do about him anymore.  His emancipation was a moot point because he was eighteen now, but Mrs. Harder had threatened to become more active in his finances if he couldn’t prove he could take care of them for himself.  His first review was coming up in another few weeks.  He thought about getting back in the car.  Would she really notice one measly missing receipt?  He made a face.  Of course she would.  He locked his car and stomped toward the minimart.  He tried not to be such a baby about it.  It wasn’t that big of a deal.  And he could say hi to Laney.

The door jingled when he entered and the Indian man behind the counter looked up from his magazine.  He looked Julian over once and then returned to his magazine.  That always happened to him.  People would give him a double take or really look him over before deciding he was a harmless little white boy.  He glanced around the store but didn’t see Laney immediately.  He walked up to the counter.

“Hi.  I was at pump seven and it didn’t give me a receipt.”

Without a word the man turned and started using one finger to type some information onto a computer.  Julian stepped back and looked down some of the aisles.  He didn’t see Laney anywhere and he was pretty certain that there wasn’t another exit.  The man was holding a receipt out to him.  Julian took it.

“Excuse me, was there a young girl in here?  Did she leave?”

“I think she went to the bathroom.”

“Oh, thank you.”

He wondered how much of an asshole he would be for wishing the man a merry Christmas.  He decided not to do it, but the man could have been a little friendlier.  Julian walked over to the magazine rack and glanced over the selection.  He looked at the back row and saw the ones with the black plastic over everything but the title.  He couldn’t believe he’d been eighteen for over a month now and hadn’t officially bought any porn.  Maybe Christmas was the time to do it.  But then if he got caught by Laney she would tell everyone.  He sighed.  It wasn’t a secret guys looked at porn, but he didn’t want the girls giggling about it.  He pulled out a magazine about motocross instead.  He’d flipped through about half of it before he realized that Laney hadn’t come out yet.  Or had she walked right by him and he hadn’t noticed?  That didn’t seem likely.  He was right by the door and would have heard it ring.  And he didn’t find motocross _that_ interesting.  He glanced at the counter.  The man was still reading his magazine.  Hmm.  He glanced at his watch.  He had no idea when he came in so he wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed.  Ah!  Brilliant idea.  He pulled the receipt out of his pocket.  At the very least it would have the time it was printed if not when he’d been pumping the gas.  It said 2:31.  He glanced at is watch again: 2:54.

Julian glanced toward the back of the store.  What was she doing in there?  Then he snickered to himself.  Laney wasn’t the type to use public restrooms period let alone skeezy gas station ones.  It must have been an emergency.  She must have diarrhea or something.  Man was he going to make fun of her when she came out.  He went back to reading his magazine.  He kept glancing around, but still managed to finish the magazine before Laney came out.  Now he was a little concerned.  What was she doing in there?  Or had he really missed her when she left?  Was he hanging around in the Kwik-E mart like a loser?

He put the magazine up and walked to the back of the store.  The bathrooms were next to the store room.  He knocked on the door that had half of a picture of a woman on it.  There was no reply.  He knocked again louder.  No one answered.  Maybe she was gone.  He tried one more time.

“It’s occupied, okay?!”

The voice that came out was obviously distressed and choked with tears.  Julian immediately put a hand to the doorknob.  It was locked.

“Laney?” he called out.

He heard her sniffling on the other side.  “J-Julian?”

“Laney, open up.”

“No.  Just go away.”

“I will not.  Open this door.”

“Go away!”

“Open this door or I’m going to break it down!”

He heard some shuffling and then the doorknob twisted.  He grabbed it to make sure it stayed released.  He pushed open the door and looked inside.  Laney was sliding down the wall with her hands over her face.  He looked around to see if there was something wrong with the room.  Everything seemed kind of normal.  Except for Laney.  She was sobbing, and not in a sad sort of way.  She was crying because she was so upset.  From what he could see of her face it was red and splotchy.  He went to her immediately and knelt in front of her.

“Laney.  Laney.”  He moved one of her hands.  “What’s wrong?”

She tried to pull her hand away from him and just cried harder.  Julian was starting to get upset himself.  What was wrong with her?  Did she need to go to a doctor or something?  What had happened?  He wanted to help her in some way.  What could he do?  What did she need?  He started to lean forward to hug her, and in doing so he caught a glimpse of a box on the floor beside her.  He leaned over and picked it up.  He stared at it.  It was a home pregnancy test kit.  _No way._   He hoped he kept that thought internalized.  The box was empty.  Where was the stick?  He looked at Laney.  There was something in her lap.  He reached down hesitantly and picked it up.  He turned it over.  There were no pluses or minuses or color changes to interpret.  It was a digital readout that said “pregnant.”

“Oh, my God.”

He didn’t mean to say it.  It just slipped out.  And of course, it made Laney feel worse.  Her somewhat quiet sobbing now became a loud wail of embarrassed despair.  He leaned forward quickly and hugged her to him.  Her face was buried in his shoulder and her arms were trapped against his chest.  She didn’t struggle to get away and her crying became a little softer.  Mostly because her voice was muffled by his body.  He could feel the heat and wetness against his shoulder.  Tears pricked his eyes.  He stroked the back of her head.

“Shh, calm down, Laney.  It’s okay.  I promise it’s okay.  Just take a deep breath.  Breathe, Laney.”

He felt her try to follow his direction.  She took in a ragged breath and let out a shuddering one.  The second one went a little better.  He felt her stir a little, so he loosened his hold just slightly.  She moved her arms and hugged him back.  She turned her head and rested it on his shoulder.  She was still crying and he could feel her tiny fingers digging into his muscles through his thin shirt.  He rubbed circles on her back and whispered what he thought were soothing, reassuring words.  It took a while, but she eventually stopped sobbing.  He couldn’t tell if she was still crying or not, but she was breathing better and only occasionally sniffing.

“It’s okay, Laney.  I’m here for you.  Let’s go.  We can’t stay here.”

“I can’t go home!” she cried and he could tell that she was on the verge of breaking down again.

“Shh, shh, settle down.  You’re coming with me.”

“But it’s Christmas.”  She cried a little more and then tried to speak.  It was difficult to understand her.  “I can’t not be home on Christmas.  But I can’t go home.  I won’t be able to keep it together.”

“Are your parents still not talking?”

She sniffed.  “W-what?”

“Are your parents still not talking?”

“No, not really.”

“Then call them both up and tell them you’re staying with the other.  Then you can come home with me.  That’s the beauty of divorce.”

“But what if they ask why I’m—”

“Just hang up.  You’re supposed to be with your mom, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, tell her that you feel sorry for your dad and you just want to spend Christmas Eve with him since you’re going to spend Christmas with her.  Heck, you won’t even have to call your dad since he’s not even expecting you.”

“Mom can tell when I lie.”

“Then don’t.  Just say you feel sorry for your dad.  And it would be nice to spend time with him.  And that you’ll see her tomorrow.”

“I don’t know Julian…”

“All right.  Then I’m taking you to your mom’s.”

She sat back and held out her hand.  “Give me your cell phone.”

He dug it out of his pocket and handed it to her.  While using her shaking hands to dial her mother’s phone number he picked up the test kit box.  He read the directions on the back.  It seemed unlikely that Laney managed to screw this up.  Remove cap, pee on absorbent end, wait ninety seconds.  He wondered how common false positives were.  Then he had to wonder how on earth it was possible she was pregnant.  Who the hell had she been sleeping with?  He tossed the box in the trash can and told himself not to judge.

So, while he tried not to make any judgments, he couldn’t help but to wonder who could possibly have done this to her.  Done this to her?  Didn’t she participate?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  He didn’t know the details.  Hell, she could have been raped for all he knew and not told anyone.  He prayed to whatever deity might be listening that that wasn’t the case, and instead focused on possible impregnator candidates.  Laney was popular, but she tended to mostly hang out with girls.  He’d never really seen her with a group of boys before nor had he ever seen a lovesick crush following her around.  Of course he didn’t pay _that_ much attention to her, and he certainly wasn’t with her every day after school.  But, it just didn’t seem likely that it would be one of the kids from Calverton.  The only boys from there she hung out with with any regularity was the four of them.  And certainly none of them were the culprit.  Unless…had the person Will fallen in love with been Laney?  That would definitely be something he’d want to keep a secret.  Julian knew the idea was preposterous, but he allowed the idea to develop a little bit in his brain.  He tried to imagine Laney and Will being cutsie and cuddly.  All he got was Will yelling at her that she ought to take school more seriously.  Naw.  It couldn’t be Will.  He’d sooner believe Will had switched to guys than was dating Laney.

He came out of his thoughts at the sound of his cell phone snapping shut.  Laney had finished her call and he felt a little guilty for not being able to think of anything else in this situation other than who was the baby daddy.  She handed his phone back to him and wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

“So, how did it go?” he asked.

“It was fine.  She didn’t even ask any questions.  We had a fight this morning, so I bet she thinks it’s because of that.”

“I see.”  Poor Laney.  Julian reached out a hand and combed his fingers through her short, brown hair.  He pulled her forward and hugged her again.  She hugged him back and buried her face in his chest.  The top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulders.

“I’m so stupid,” she mumbled.

“No.  You’re not stupid.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, if you insist.  Come on.  Let’s go back to my house and I’ll get you some tea and if you want we can talk about it.  Or you can just relax and take a bath or go to bed.  Whatever you like.”

“Thank you, Julian.  I really, really—”

She didn’t finish her thought.  They separated and he picked up the pregnancy test box.  Should they keep it in case they needed to read some pertinent information off it?  Perhaps about false positives?  He tossed the box in the trash.  That wasn’t likely, was it?  The people who got pregnant the easiest were the ones who didn’t want to.  That was kind of a weird quirk of the universe.  Laney was still holding the white read out stick.  She shoved it into her jeans’ pocket rather than throwing it away.  Being a guy, all Julian could think was that that was a little gross because she’d peed on it.  He shook his head.  If he was going to be chivalrous and take care of her tonight, he needed to stop thinking about how gross pregnancy was.

They left the bathroom together and walked toward the front of the store.  As they passed the counter the man behind it turned a page in his magazine and said, “Are you going to pay for that pregnancy test you stuffed under your shirt?”

Laney covered her mouth with a hand and looked mortified.  Julian pulled out his wallet and tossed a twenty dollar bill on the counter.  He had no idea how much it cost, but it couldn’t be more than that.  He took Laney by the arm and led her out the door.  The whole way to his house she sat in the passenger seat hugging her knees to her chest.  He made certain to drive very carefully and defensively because she hadn’t put on her seatbelt.  Once they arrived she uncurled stiffly, like she’d aged sixty years on the short ride.  She followed him obediently inside the house and then stood awkwardly in the front hall.  He took her coat from her and hung it up.  She didn’t say or do anything.  This was so unlike Laney.  But of course, how was he expecting her to act?

“Laney?  Do you want to lie down?  Are you hungry?  I can make you some tea.  I’m pretty sure I still have some of my mother’s valerian infused tea.  It’ll help you feel better.  Physically anyway.”

She nodded numbly.  “That would be nice.”

Julian guided her into the kitchen and sat her down at the table.  Then he put a kettle on to boil and started rooting through his mother’s collection of teas and herbs.  He kept glancing at Laney while he worked.  She just sat at the table and miserably picked at her fingernails.  They waited in silence for the water to boil.  When the tea was steeping, Julian sat next to her.  He didn’t know if he should start the conversation.  If she didn’t want to talk about it, he shouldn’t say something and make her feel like she had to.  He strummed his fingers on the table and then made himself stop.  Laney looked at him with a very small, amused smile.

“Go ahead,” she said softly.

His first question was, of course, who was the father, but he figured he shouldn’t open with that one.

“Do you know when it happened?”

She nodded.  “Yep.  There’s only one week when it could have happened.  No other options.”  She turned the mug in front her with her fingertips.  “Which means…I’m three months pregnant.”

“ _Three months?!_ ”

Julian made an effort to reel himself in.  He hadn’t meant to explode like that.  Laney blinked at him, a little startled by his outburst.

“I’m sorry, Laney, but how could you not have known sooner?”

“ _Because_.  I just started having my period a couple years ago.  I’m still irregular.  I’ve gone two months without one before.  A few times actually.  That’s why I didn’t even think anything of it until the third month came and went.”

“But.  There weren’t any other signs or anything?  Did you get sick?”

Laney paused as she thought for a moment.  Then she shook her head.  “No.  I never did.  I guess that’s why it never occurred to me.”

“Yeah, but, you’d had sex, right?  You didn’t think to check after the first month?”

“No.  It was, like, only four or five times in one week.  It just.  Didn’t seem likely.”

“So, uh…I mean.  Did you.  Well.”

Laney pulled the tea ball out of her cup.  She took a sip of the tea and made a face.  “Do you have any sugar?”

“Yeah.  Hang on.”

Julian retrieved some sugar and sat down.  How could he ask her his next question?  It was Laney.  It was too weird to think about.

“Are you trying to ask who the father is?” she asked, spooning heaps of sugar into the tea.  That was kind of counterproductive to the soothing properties of the valerian.

Julian had actually been going to ask if they’d used a condom, but the father one was also a good one.  “Uh, yeah,” he said, taking a sip of his tea.  It was still a little weak, so he let it steep longer.

“Don’t feel awkward about asking.  That would have been my first question.  I’m surprised it wasn’t yours.”

“Yeah…” Julian looked away.

“And you know, just because I know who the father is doesn’t make it any better than a girl who has three possible candidates.”

Julian became really concerned.  “Why?  Who is it?”

She turned her head almost completely away from him and muttered something.

“What?”

She sighed and tried again.  “Just some guy…in my father’s poker group.”

“What?!  Like, one of your father’s friends?  That’s sketchy as hell, Laney!”

“I know!”

“And gross.”

“Uh, Julian!  I know.  I already feel stupid and disgusting.”

“Sorry, sorry.”  He reached out and took her hand.  He shook his head.  “How did that happen?  You weren’t—did he force you?”

She shook her head.  “No.  No, it wasn’t forced.”

“So.  How did you two—Geez, saying ‘hook up’ just sounds wrong.”

Laney hung her head and tried to pull her hand away, but he held on tightly.

“You remember the back to school dance?  And how you said you’d try dating me?”

“Uh, yeah.”  Julian felt a little guilty about that.  He’d never gone through with that.

“Well, I got it into my head that I needed to be… _experienced_ for you.”

Julian almost laughed.  If only she knew.  He was still a virgin himself after all.  He looked up when Laney let out a soft laugh.

“I totally attacked Chris in the car after the dance.”

Julian had to laugh.  “For real?”

She smiled.  “Yeah.  It totally freaked him out.”

“I can imagine.  Though I wonder why he didn’t go for you.  He apparently likes ’em young now.”

“I know, right?  Who was that sophomore who kept slobbering on him all month under the mistletoe?”

“His rebound.”

“Hmm.  I guess that makes sense.  She does seem quite the opposite of Karen.”

They were quiet a moment.  The light conversation seemed to make the situation graver.  It was a normal conversation, but they couldn’t ignore that no matter what happened nothing was ever going to be the same for Laney again.

“Anyway,” she said, “he gave me the ‘little sister’ speech.  Which I totally don’t get because he doesn’t actually _have_ a sister.”

Julian smiled.  Laney put her free hand to her head like a sudden headache had hit.  He gave her a moment and then squeezed her hand.

“So, continue with how this is my fault without it actually being my doing.”

“It’s not your fault,” she mumbled.  “I don’t think it is.  It was my fault for being stupid.  For thinking like a child.  For thinking if I could just be ready for more ‘mature’ things, you would see me as something other than ‘Little Laney.’  I tried to find guys at Calverton that I could…fool around with I guess.  I even cruised around the mall some.  But, it’s hard to pick up guys, you know?”

Julian shrugged.  “I’ve never _really_ tried before.”

“Well, if you did I’m sure you’d have no problem,” she groused.  “But it was weird and awkward for me.  I didn’t know what to say or how to imply I didn’t want a date.  Just a make out session.  It made me feel dirty.  And like I was a slut.  And I hadn’t even done anything!”

She took a gulp of her tea.  And then another.  It seemed like she was stalling.  He gave her hand another gentle squeeze.

“Hey, if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to, okay?”

Laney shook her head.  “I feel like I have to tell somebody.  It might as well be you.”

“So, you didn’t talk with anyone about this?  Not even Liz?”

“No.  I didn’t want anyone to know what I’d done.  I mean.  I felt _so_ stupid.  And pathetic.”

Julian didn’t know what to say.  He didn’t know how she should feel or whether or not he was in any position to complain about her sleeping with a man probably in his 40’s seeing as how he was trying to nail his ex-shrink.

She sniffed and continued.  “It was the first weekend in October.  It was my father’s turn to host the poker game.  I was staying over at his apartment that weekend and I went there straight from activities after school.  So, I was in my uniform.  I actually noticed that several of his friends were checking me out when I walked by.  I didn’t think anything of it.  A lot men look at girls in school uniforms.  It’s a weird fetish, don’t you think?”

Julian shrugged.

“Then I was in my room just messing around.  My door was partially open.  I noticed someone pass by.  They have to go by my room to get to the bathroom.  Then at one point I kind of noticed that someone paused outside my door.  I could tell he was looking at me.  So I—”  She stopped talking and covered her face with hand.  “God, I can’t say it.  It’s so terrible.  And slutty.”

Should he prompt her?  He waited a little and finally she spoke again.

“I bent over.  Like right at the waist so that my skirt rode up and my legs were kind of spread.  It must have been like, so obscene.  I was intentionally provoking him.  And I turned to look at him to let him know I knew he was there.  So.  He took the hint.  Or the bait, I guess.  He came in and shut the door.  I didn’t even have time to think about what I’d done or what I was offering or what he might do.  It was kind of impressive.  He got his pants unzipped really fast, and got my skirt up and my panties down in one motion.”

“Whoa!  Whoa!  Stop right there.  I don’t need _any_ details.”

“Sorry.  So then the next day—”

“Wait, back up.  You didn’t finish.”

“You said you didn’t want details.”

“I don’t.  But.  What happened?  What’d he—do to you?”

“What do you think?”

Julian couldn’t respond.  Strangely, he was wildly curious to know exactly what the man had done to her.  But, he really didn’t want to know either.

“Um.”  Laney looked at the ceiling.  “Okay.  Um.  He sat on my desk.  And pulled me into his lap.”  She looked at him as if checking to see if that was still more than he needed to know.  He wasn’t sure what kind of expression he was making.  “I was, uh, facing away from him.  And it happened really fast.  I really don’t think he even realized I was a virgin.  Although it didn’t really hurt.  It made me wonder if my hymen was already broken from horseback riding when I was younger.  Anyway, like I said, it was fast.  And a little weird.  But I _think_ I had an orgasm.”

“Okay.”  Julian put his hands in the air.  “We’re back in too much information territory.”

“Okay, fine.  So, that was that.  Then the next day he came over.  And I was all like, ‘my dad’s not here.’  And he was all like, ‘I know.’  So, I was like, ‘oh.’  So, we did it again that day.  And then he asked to meet me after school, which I did a couple times the following week.  We did it in the back of his pickup truck.  Really romantic, right?  But, the point was to get experience, so I told myself I didn’t care.  But it never really lasted long nor was it very involved.  Then I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore and he said he didn’t either.  He said he was worried my father might actually kill him if he got caught.

“So, that was the extent of it.  After that I figured I didn’t really need experience.  I’d just wait for you.  But then you never asked me out or anything and I was all like, ‘great; that was for nothing.’  And honestly…I kind of sort of not really forgot about it.”

“He was that good, huh?”

“Now is not a time to be concerned about anyone’s male pride.”

“Sorry.  So, I guess one of those times he didn’t use a condom?  Oh.  I guess it was that first time.”

“Well…”  Laney looked away.

“What?”

“He never used one.”

“Melanie Newberry!”

“I know!  I told you I was stupid!  And now I’m paying for it, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.  Have you gotten tested for anything else?”

“N-no.  B-but it’s been three months!  And I haven’t gotten sick or had any outbreaks and it’s not painful when I pee.”

She smiled sheepishly.

“Laney.  HIV doesn’t manifest that way.”

“Don’t scare me!”

“I think a little fear would be appropriate right now.”

“You think I’m not afraid?  I’m scared out of my frickin’ mind, Julian!  I’m three months pregnant!  What the hell am I going to do?!”  Tears formed quickly and fell down her cheeks.

“I know, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”

“It’s so hard to believe,” she cried.  “I mean.  I can’t feel it.  I can’t see it.  How do I know it’s really there?  How do I know that I’ve completely fucked up my life?  Just because some little stick says so?  I just can’t process this right now.”

Julian moved out of his chair and hugged her again.  He didn’t want her to start crying again.  Not because he couldn’t handle a girl crying, but because he didn’t want her to be upset.  But how could she not be?  This was such a serious thing.  It really was impossible for a guy to understand.  Even if he was the father, guys were just so disconnected from it.  He pulled Laney tightly to him.  There was something growing inside of her.  Another life living in her body.  She was right: it was hard to fathom.

“Shh, it’s okay, Laney.  Everything is always less scary in tomorrow’s light.  Why don’t you take a hot bath and then we’ll eat Christmas cookies until we puke.  Or.  Would that be bad for the baby?”

Laney sniffed in his ear.  “Do you even _have_ Christmas cookies?”

“Yeah, I totally bought some.”

“But.  It’s not even 4:00 yet.”

“That’s okay.  If you want some real food, I can cook too.”

“You’d cook me dinner?”

“Of course.  What do you want?”

“Whatever.  I’m not picky.”

“No, you’re not.  I like that quality about you.”

“Yeah.  Though maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be pickier about some things, you know?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

He stood up and helped her rise from the chair.  He took her by the hand and led her upstairs.

“Are you taking me to your parents’ room?” she whispered, sounding a little afraid.

“Yeah.  The bathtub is bigger.”

“Um.  That’s okay?  You won’t mind?”

“No.”

“ _They_ won’t mind?”

Julian laughed and looked back at her.  Her eyes were wide and she had a loosely curled fist to her mouth.

“They’re gone, Laney.  There’s no one to care what you do in the bathtub.”

She nodded but didn’t seem convinced.  He dropped her off with instructions on how to work the faucets and where to find some bath salts and bubble bath.  Then he went to get her a towel and something to wear when she got out.  She might be creeped out to wear his mother’s clothes, plus Laney was way smaller than his mother had been.  So, he got one of his old T-shirts for her.  It would probably be really long on her.  He considered getting her a pair of his boxers as well, but he was pretty certain those would just fall off her hips.  He didn’t know why he’d never noticed how petite she was before.  He returned to the bathroom with the towel and the shirt, and she was sitting on the edge of the tub, trailing her hand in the water.  The water was looking milky; she must have added something.

“Here you go,” he said quietly, hoping he wouldn’t startle her.  “You can dry off with this and put this on.  If you need pants or something, I can try to find something, but they might be a little big.”

She shrugged.  “I’ll see if I need them later.”

“Then we can have dinner.”

“You’re not going to serve me in here?” she asked with a small smile.

“Not unless you put in a whole lot of bubble bath.”

She nodded.  “Yeah.  I’ll be down in a bit.”

“Well, take your time.  It’ll probably take me at least an hour to get something ready.”

“Okay.”

Julian petted her head.  “You’re not a bad person, Laney.  And I promise you, the world hasn’t come to an end.”

“If you say so.”

She started taking off her shirt, so he left.  He was pretty certain she’d done that in order to get him to leave.  Maybe he shouldn’t have convinced her to come with him.  Maybe what she needed was her mother.  Unless she never intended for her to find out about this.  He had no idea if Laney planned on keeping the baby; they hadn’t talked about that.  She probably didn’t know herself.  She had just found out today.  Julian shook his head.  This was heavy.  He’d never been happier to be a boy in his life.  He couldn’t imagine being faced with a choice like that.  Well, for him it probably wouldn’t be a choice.  His parents had raised him to believe that a life was a life and all life was sacred.  And while the Wicca religion did respect a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body, the premise behind the religion was to respect all living and natural things.  That was still very much ingrained in his very being and he knew he would never be able to abort a child.  No matter how unreal or parasite-like it seemed.

He distracted himself from thoughts of Laney’s impending choice by making chicken piccata.  It was a specialty of his father’s.  Since Thanksgiving he’d been a little better about going to the grocery store and keeping fresh food in the house.  A good thing too.  He’d hate to tell Laney he’d make her dinner and then just order pizza.  That would be pretty lame.  Of course he hadn’t ever paid that close attention to what his father had done when he’d cooked; he’d never thought he wouldn’t have the opportunity anymore.  He sighed and then started to sing to keep himself from going too far into that emotion.  He needed to be strong for Laney tonight.

He got really into his cooking and singing and was eventually dancing by the time he got to the plating of his meal.  When he started to head to the table with dinner in hand he found that he had an audience.  Laney was sitting with her feet on a chair and leaning on one elbow as she watched him.  The T-shirt was stretched over her knees and her hair was still wet and slicked back.  It made her look even younger.  He put a plate down in front of her, waiting for some comment, but all she said was, “Thank you.”

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Water is fine.”

“You got it.”  He headed for the refrigerator to get out the Brita water.

“Thank you, Mr. Timberlake.”

Julian paused as he pulled the pitcher out.  He shook his head.  He should have known better.  As he sat down with her and they began their meal, Laney continued to harass him about his apparent new found calling as a pop star.  He let her tease him.  And he let her talk about any topic she wanted to.  If she didn’t wanted to talk about the pink elephant, then that was fine.  She kept up her idle chatter as she helped him with the dishes and then started to head up the stairs.  Julian glanced at his watch.  It was only six o’clock.

“Laney,” he called from the bottom of the stairs, “are you sure you want to go to bed now?  It’s only six.”

Laney stopped and looked back at him.  She looked tired.  And a lot older.  But not mature older, like haggard older.  She smiled tightly at him.

“Yeah.  I guess I’ll have to eat the cookies tomorrow.  I just feel like I want to go to sleep.”

He nodded.  “Okay.”  He started up the stairs.  “There should be a new toothbrush in one of the drawers in my bathroom.  You can use that.  And I’ll go get the guest bedroom ready for you.”

“Okay.”

Julian walked down the hall to the guest bedroom.  He wondered if he’d ever changed the sheets after his grandmother left.  The woman had probably changed them herself.  Hopefully.  He opened the door, flipped on the light, and looked around.  It was a good thing the furniture was light-colored; it made the layer of dust harder to see.  He walked to the bed and folded down the blue quilt.  Then he folded it up completely and tossed it in the closet.  It was a cold night and Laney would probably need another blanket, but Aaliyah had made that quilt.  He folded back the sheets and then went searching through the hall closets for some more blankets.  When he returned to the room, Laney was huddled in the bed, propped against a pillow.  He walked over and sat beside her, tucking her under his arm and against his body.

“Why—”

She stopped.  Julian lightly stroked her hair in encouragement.  She could ask her question.  “Why” questions were always hard to answer, but it was good that she was willing to try to talk about it again.

“Why are there so many toothbrushes in your bathroom?”

Julian opened his mouth to recite the beginning to his perfectly constructed speech.  Then he laughed.  He hugged Laney tightly to him.

“W-what?” she asked, sounding confused and a little anxious.

“Nothing.  There are just a lot in there because the guys stayed with me a lot this summer.  When I was still scared to be alone.”

“Oh.”  She tilted her head up to look at him.  “You were scared?”

“Terrified.  I felt so lost.  So out of control.  No, not out of control, but like I _had_ no control, you know?”

She nodded.  “Did it get better?”

“Well.  It got worse before it got better.  But, yeah.  It got better.  But.  Can you keep a secret?”  She nodded.  “Even though I’m better now, I’m still a little scared.  I might always be.  But, I use that fear to help keep me grounded.  And to help me remember all the things that I have that make it okay to be scared.”

“What could ever make it okay to be scared?”

“The fact that I have so many people who care about me.  The fact that because of them, and because of _me_ , I’m strong enough to handle all the scary stuff life throws at me.”

“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“No.”  He glanced at her.  “But is it working?”

She snuggled against him.  “A little.”

“Good.”

She sighed sadly.  “Thank you, Julian.  So much.  I don’t deserve it.  I don’t know why you’re taking such good care of me.”

“Why on earth do you think you don’t deserve it?”

“Because I’m a bad person.”

“Laney—”

“No, I am.  I had time to think about it in the bathtub.  I’m selfish and shallow.  And really immature.  I only think of myself.  I’m mean to people who I _think_ are annoying or deserve it just because they have better hair than me.  I’ve never had a serious thought in my head.  I’m stupid.  I never think things through.  I never do anything for anybody else—”

“Laney—”

“I can’t be somebody’s mother.”

The silence took on a ringing sound, filling their ears with the echo of her last words.  Julian rubbed her arm and kissed the top of her head.

“Laney.  You’re not a bad person.  Trust me.  You wouldn’t have so many friends if you were a bad person.  I mean, not to sound conceited, but the seven of us wouldn’t want to hang out with you.  Even Will likes you.  And there aren’t many people he does like.  He’s polite to almost everybody, but he doesn’t actually like a lot of people.

“So you’ve been looking out for number one a lot.  So you’ve made some mistakes and your fair share of bad decisions.  That doesn’t make you a bad person.  It makes you human.”

She sniffed and he worried that he’d made her start crying again.

“Thank you, Julian.  I really love you.”

“I—”  Julian hesitated.  He didn’t want to say anything that she would take the wrong way.  In her current state, she might be more susceptible to inferring what she wanted to from his statements.  But did that mean he had to be a jerk and not respond to her?  Did he have to be an insensitive, scardy cat boy?

“You know,” she said, preventing him from either saving or damning himself, “I wish I could sleep with you.  Then I could pretend it’s yours.”

Julian raised his eyebrows.  “Well.  That’s not going to happen.  But…”

Julian stood up and then scooped her up into his arms.  She seemed surprised, but she didn’t struggle or make things awkward.  He was easily able to carry her from the guest room to his bedroom.  Of course, his sheets probably weren’t any cleaner, but he could certainly keep her warmer.  He put her into his bed and hesitated as he pulled the covers up.  Seeing her in his bed, dressed in nothing but one of his old T-shirts with one shoulder exposed by the stretched out neck and her legs bare from mid-thigh down…he could see how someone would find her sexy.  He could see how a man would see her as a young woman, as a sexual being.  For a moment it looked like there was stranger in his bed.  He didn’t even recognize her anymore.  Then she turned her head into the pillow and her profile looked like Laney.  He covered her with the blankets and duvet and leaned down to kiss her temple.

“Go on to sleep.  I’m going to stay up for a just a little while, and then I’ll stay with you tonight.”

She nodded.  “Thank you.”

He clicked off the lamp that was on his nightstand and picked his way carefully across his room.  He turned back in the doorway and looked at her face.  He could just see it in the soft light that trickled into his room from the bathroom.  She looked like she was already asleep.  He closed the door quietly and let out a deep breath.  Wow.  He shook his head and headed down the stairs.  Cornelius sat at the foot.  He wagged his tail and let out his tongue when he saw Julian.

“And just where have you been?” Julian asked the dog as he patted him on the head.

Cornelius didn’t respond, but followed him into the kitchen.  He was such a strange dog.  He liked Will and Chris and Scott and the boy he’d done a science project with in ninth grade, but there were some people he just didn’t like.  Julian stopped and looked back at the dog.  Now that he thought about it, Cornelius didn’t like girls.  He hid whenever the whole group of them got together, just like he’d hidden from Laney tonight.  Julian sat in a chair and rubbed the mutt behind the ears.

“Are you a misogynist?” he asked him playfully.

Cornelius let out just the tiniest of sounds.  Julian laughed and mussed up his doggy hair.  “Bad dog!  Or, maybe you’re gay?  Hmm.  I guess my parents could have been happy to know they had a socially unacceptable dog.”

Cornelius wagged his tail.

“Of course.  Lately.  I’ve been a little weird, haven’t I?  I wonder if it’s due to some natural feelings that are just now coming out…or if I just don’t care anymore.”  He gave the dog a vigorous ear rub.  “I hope that’s not the case.  That would be pretty sad.”

Julian stayed up for a little bit longer and ate Christmas cookies by himself.  Cornelius helped a bit.  He let Cornelius outside for a last bathroom trip before bedtime.  As he stood at the back door he looked at his neighbor’s house.  The Christmas tree glowed in the window and the parents were putting presents under the tree and filling the stockings.  Those kids were getting a visit from Santa.  Fortunately he’d never been visited by Santa, so he didn’t have to feel sad about his parents not sneaking around for him this year.  Well.  They probably would have stopped before now even if they had celebrated Christmas.  But, whatever.

Cornelius came running back in and Julian went around making sure all the lights were off.  He’d left them on a lot in November after the time change.  When his electric bill had come in, he’d started paying attention to that kind of stuff.  Cornelius started to follow him up the stairs and beat him to the top.  Then he sat down and wagged his tail until Julian caught up.

“You know, you’ll have to share the bed with Laney tonight too.”

He scratched the dog’s head and wondered if Cornelius would still try to sleep in his bed.  He decided to go ahead and take a shower and realized in the middle of it that he was stalling.  He should have thought through his idea better.  Sleeping with Laney might be a bad idea.  Not for her.  He had a feeling she would know to interpret it as friendship.  But what if he felt her pressed up against him or he smelled her girl scent and he… _reacted_ …to it?  How much would their relationship change even if she had no clue it happened?  Julian considered sleeping in the guest room as he brushed his teeth.  Was he really that afraid of being a horny teenage boy?  Yep.

He tiptoed in the dark to his bedroom and then opened the door quietly.  It was pitch black.  He thought he remembered seeing his pajamas in a pile on the floor just to the left of the door.  He bent over and searched on the floor, occasionally lifting his head to see if there was any stirring in the bed.  There was none.  Finally, after a banged elbow and some soft cursing, he found the boxers and T-shirt and quickly changed into them.  He walked cautiously to the far side of his bed and put out a hand to feel his way to the top.  He encountered Cornelius stretched out where he intended to sleep, with his head on the pillow and everything.  Julian climbed over the dog, getting a licked face for his troubles and settled in between the dog and the girl.  He put his feet under the covers and inched his way down until he was lying flat.  On one side of his head the pillow was damp due to Laney’s hair; on the other side of his head was an already snoring dog.  How on earth did that mutt fall asleep so fast?  Julian consciously got his body to relax.  Then he listened to the quiet of the room.  Well, as quiet as it could get with a grunting canine less than six inches away from his ear.

“Julian?”

His eyes snapped open.  It wasn’t that he’d forgotten Laney was there, but it was such a shock to hear a girl’s voice in his bedroom.  When it was dark.  And they were in bed.

“Y-yes?”

“Would—would you mind if I moved closer?”

“N-no.  Not at all.”

He felt Laney shift and then she moved closer.  She had turned toward him and put her head on his shoulder, snuggling into his side.  He felt one of her bare, smooth legs hook on top of his.  His body went rigid.  He could tell by her breathing that she had fallen back asleep.  He listened to the rhythmic breathing of the dog and his friend.  He tried to let it soothe him, but he was hyperaware of Laney.  He wasn’t feeling aroused, exactly, but it was a very new feeling for him.  That thought helped him calm down.  If this was a new feeling, then it wasn’t something he had felt before.  And he had most definitely felt sexual desire before for Dr. Gorman.  So, clearly, that’s not what this was.  It was fairly easy to talk himself into believing that he would feel the same sort of weirdness with any girl who did this to him.  In fact, it seemed rather like if a guy had done this to him, he’d be feeling the same way.  He’d be _very_ aware of where the guy was, and not sure what to do about it.  Ah, yes.  It all made sense now.  Secure in his belief that the feeling was weirdness, he fell asleep.

 

 

 

 

Sunday, December 25, 2005

 

Julian felt something cold and wet on his cheek.  He raised a hand and brushed it away.  It came back.  He swatted it away again and peeked one eye open.  Cornelius was sitting on the bed, nuzzling him with his nose.  He had kind of a worried expression in his eyes.  Julian made a face at him.

“If you need to pee then you should _say_ something.  Weird dog.”

He was almost afraid to look over at Laney.  He was still partly asleep, but he hadn’t forgotten a bit of what had happened yesterday.  What if he turned over and seeing her in the light of day he still saw that sexy stranger who had slung a sensuous leg over his body last night?  What if he suddenly wanted to have sex with Laney now?  Could he deal with checking her out everyday like some dirty pervert?  Cornelius shifted his weight.  He wouldn’t wait much longer; Julian had to find out now.

He turned his head to look at Laney.  He put a hand to his mouth to keep himself from laughing.  She was sleeping with her mouth wide open, a little bit of drool coming out, with her legs curled up underneath her creating the bubble butt effect with the covers.  She looked cute.  And so completely unsexy.  He had a feeling he would be safe for life around Laney now.

Julian swung his legs out of bed and Cornelius followed him out of the room.  He stretched his arms over his head and yawned as he walked down the stairs.  He had no idea what time it was, but Cornelius tended to wake up around six or seven.  But he had gone to bed around 9:30 last night.  So, he shouldn’t be tired.  He couldn’t believe he’d gone to sleep at 9:30.  He hadn’t gone to bed that early since elementary school.  He let the dog out the backdoor and put the kettle on to make some tea.  He tried to think back to some of the Circles his mother had hosted for the women of the Coven.  They had often talked about different herbal teas and what they were good for.  He knew lemon balm was soothing, but what was good for pregnancies?  Some berry leaf, but which one?

Julian stopped rooting through his mother’s collection and put his hands on the counter.  He dug his fingers into the granite until his knuckles turned white.  Did he even need to worry about taking care of Laney’s baby?  She was going to have to make a decision.  Of course, that was assuming she was wavering on it.  He didn’t know anything about Laney’s beliefs or feelings on the subject.  Though if she was already three months pregnant, it would be very difficult to find any alternatives.  Was she really a full three months pregnant?  When did she say it happened?  The first week of October?  Maybe he should count the weeks.  He let Cornelius in and then walked over to the calendar that was hanging on the wall by the refrigerator.  It contained pictures of various crystals and information about their uses.  He started to pull the pushpin out when he heard some noises.  He stopped moving and listened.  Yes, there was definitely some noise coming from the front of the house.  Julian walked slowly toward his front door, wondering what on earth was outside.  As he drew closer, he realized it was voices.  At least two, sometimes three, and they sounded like they were arguing.  But, it didn’t sound like his friends.  And they wouldn’t come over on Christmas Day.  He started to head toward a window to peek outside, and then the doorbell rang.  He raised an eyebrow.  Whoever it was certainly thought they were supposed to be there.  But who would be arguing on his front stoop early in the morning on Christmas?

He opened the door without trying to peek through a window.  The argument the four people were having continued for a moment.  He considered shutting the door and pretending like he wasn’t home, but then one of them spotted him.

“Julian!”

Julian stepped back into the house as his Mormon grandmother flung her arms around his neck.  He put up a hand and awkwardly patted her on the back as his Greek grandmother came into the house and tried to shove the other one out of the way.  His two grandfathers smiled from the porch, but then they too barged right in.  Everyone was talking, even the Mormon grandfather who tended to be quieter.  They were wishing him a merry Christmas and asking him how he was and generally complaining about how the other set of grandparents was intruding and causing problems.  Well, the grandmothers were.  The Greek grandfather was trying to get them to shut-up.  After all four of them had taken a turn squeezing the life out of him, he stood shell-shocked in his foyer.  Then his grandmothers both complained that he would catch his death in so little clothing and that he needed to be wearing slippers and that he shouldn’t be trying to heat the entire town so the door should be shut.  When Julian at last found the cognitive power to speak again, all he said was, “Why aren’t you with your families?”

“We are, dear,” his Mormon grandmother smiled at him.  “You _are_ our family.”

He smiled weakly at her.

“We spent Christmas Eve with everyone else like it was Christmas,” Greek grandfather explained. “We wanted to be able to come see you.  Since it’s such an important day.”

“Yes,” Mormon grandfather said, “we thought you might be alone and we thought you should have some family with you for the holidays.”

“Of course, it was _our_ idea,” Mormon grandmother said with a sidelong look at the Greek one.

“Iz no matter idea,” the woman glared right back.  Then she looked at Julian.  “Vee vere afraid dat you be lonelee.”

Julian stared at them.  “Are you joking?  It’s _Christmas_.  We _never_ celebrated Christmas.  Not once.  This holiday doesn’t really mean anything to me.  Where were you guys on Thanksgiving?!”

The four of them took that in.  They glanced at each other and then looked back at Julian.  Clearly they hadn’t thought about that.

His Greek grandmother held up a large picnic style basket.  “Vee brought food.”

Julian smiled and wrapped an arm around his grandmother’s shoulders.  “How rude of me, please come in.  _Yia-Yia_ , did I tell you how much I missed you?”

His grandmother smiled and grabbed his jaw with a hand giving him a good shake and then a friendly pat on the cheek.  He flexed his jaw as she went to set the basket on the kitchen table.

“Julian, what’s all the noise?”

Julian froze in a panic as he looked up.  Laney came in from the other side of the kitchen, rubbing her eyes and wearing nothing but his T-shirt.

“Oh.  My.  Goodness!”

That came from his Mormon grandmother.  His Greek one was saying something in Greek.  Probably nothing pleasant.  He heard soft exclamations from his grandfathers as they joined him in the room.  Julian crossed the room to Laney and tried to get her to turn around.

“Put some clothes on,” he mumbled.  “My grandparents are here.”

“Julian.  How—”

He turned to face his grandmother.  “You don’t understand.  She’s just a friend.”

“Dat even worse!  Freends wif benefits!”

Julian blinked at his Greek grandmother.  She knew about stuff like that?  Then all four of them started talking.  He wasn’t really sure what they were saying; they were talking loudly over each other and there was no way he could get a word in edgewise.  This sucked.  This was why he didn’t like them.  They judged people way too quickly.  Well, they wanted to pitch a hissy fit over this?  He’d give them a reason to.

“You know what else?” he shouted over the nagging and admonishing.  They quieted down.  “She’s pregnant too.”

The kitchen went silent.  Except for Laney hissing his name in displeasure.  He turned to look at her and shrugged.

“What?  You are.”

The kitchen erupted into even more noise, as he knew it would.  And his two grandmothers pushed him out of the way to get to Laney.  They put their arms around her shoulders and brought her into the kitchen, guiding her to a chair at the kitchen table.

“Have a seat, poor thing,” his grandmother said.  “And look what you’re wearing!  It’s much too cold.  Julian, go find her a robe or _something_ , please.”

“Vould you like someting to eat?” his grandmother asked Laney, opening the picnic basket and pulling out a plate piled high with sticky buns.  Julian’s mouth watered.  He wanted one.  Laney nodded enthusiastically and one of the grandfather’s was ordered to find a plate for her.

“You know,” Mormon grandmother said, combing her fingers through Laney’s hair, “I know these days it’s common for girls to be unsure of what they should do.”

“Marrige iz beeg responseebilitee,” said the other.

“And I know we don’t know the whole story, and we certainly won’t pressure you into marrying him, but you know we would help you two out.”

“I have freend who make vunderful dress.”

“And,” the woman said placing her hands comfortingly on Laney’s shoulders, “there are some choices that are more difficult than marriage.  But, surely you must want to keep the baby, right?”

“Um…”  Laney looked overwhelmed.

“Grandma!”

Everyone looked at him.  He’d never addressed any of his grandparents by that term.  He only used their last names or the Greek nicknames, which didn’t hold much meaning for him.  But somehow, the word “grandma” had just slipped out.  And now that he had everyone’s attention again…

“It’s not mine,” he said.

“Oh, shh,” Laney said.  “Don’t tell them yet.”

Everyone went quiet again.  And they were all looking at him.  His Mormon grandmother looked a little pale.

“It’s…it’s not yours?”

“No, it’s not.  That’s what I was trying to tell you.  She’s just a friend.  I’m helping her through a difficult time.  She needed someone to be with her last night, so I let her _sleep_ over.”  Never mind _where_ she slept.  “That’s why she’s wearing my shirt.  She obviously doesn’t have any clothes here.”

His Mormon grandfather cleared his throat.  “Julian, I apologize.  We shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that.”

Julian shrugged.  “It’s okay.”  He was surprised to find he mostly meant that.

“So,” Laney said, picking at the sticky bun, “instead of being the vessel for your precious great grandchild, I guess I’m just a dirty whore?”

His Mormon grandmother closed her eyes at the word and put a hand to Laney’s shoulder.  Then she opened her eyes and looked at Julian, before smiling kindly at Laney.

“Of course you’re not.  And you shouldn’t think like that.  Some do preach that way, and I’ll admit, I’ve been less than sympathetic to girls in your situation before.  But God loves _all_ of his children.  No matter what they do or say, he has an infinite capacity for love and forgiveness.  I have learned my lesson the very hard way not to judge others who make decisions that differ from my beliefs or to hold grudges against them.”

“Dis iz true,” the other one chimed in.  “One bad deecizion does not make you a bad person.”

Laney finally smiled a real smile.  It looked like she actually believed that now.  Julian couldn’t believe how gracious his grandparents were being about this.  He kind of felt as if he could begin to forgive and accept them now.  Call it a Christmas miracle.

“Of course, dat is eef you are not promisceeous slut.”

“ _Yia-yia_!”

 

Scott

 

Saturday, December 24, 2005

 

Scott could feel himself grinning as he looked around the Denny’s table at his friends, but he couldn’t help it.  He was so happy.  Life was good.  Even though it was kind of crappy at the moment, life was good.  Mostly because he and Anna had started talking again.  Really talking.  The way things had been before the whole sneaking around mess.  Actually, the way things had been before José.  They were able to talk (babble) normally about almost everything.  It made him realize that what had made everything in life bearable up to this point was because he’d always had Anna there to see him through it.  When he’d gotten his first and only “C” in fifth grade, Anna had been there for him.  When he didn’t make the cut for the soccer team in seventh grade when he’d been trying to tag along after Will and Julian, Anna had been there for him.  When he’d been dumped by his first girlfriend in eighth grade, Anna had been there to tell him he’d been an idiot for dating her in the first place.

And even as their issues changed through puberty and entering high school their relationship had been able to change and grow too.  They were able to handle all the “grown-up” stuff they were now going through.  They were able to help each other come to grips with the fact that they were slowly becoming adults.  They were able to heal and move past the trials their relationship had been through lately.  And things were back to normal.  They really could talk about almost anything together.

Of course, the “almost” anything they couldn’t talk about was Antoinette.  That was the only subject they couldn’t even acknowledge let alone bring up and discuss.  But maybe they would be able to one day.  After enough time had passed and he’d gotten over her.  And that was the problem: Anna couldn’t understand why he liked her in the first place; forget why he was still hung up on her.  It was a good thing that they couldn’t talk about it now though; he didn’t want to have to explain it to her until he was capable of doing so without crying.  He wondered how long it was going to hurt like this.

He sighed.  Now he was all depressed.  Every time he thought about her, it brought his whole mood down.  More than his mood.  His whole being felt weighted down.  He just needed to stop thinking about her.  He didn’t know how one was supposed to go about getting over someone, but he had a feeling crying in his room and listening to Enya wasn’t a way to do it.  He just needed—

“Ooo!  Presents!” he exclaimed as Chris tossed a box at him across the table.

“Looks like it’s time for Scott to go,” he said.  “Before he depresses all of us.”

Scott looked up from scratching at the sides of the box.  “Why am I depressing everyone?”

“You’re not now,” Will smiled.

“Oh, okay.”

Scott tore the angel-infested paper off the box and flipped it over.  There was the Abercrombie & Fitch logo.  He made fun of Chris for getting them all stuff from that store, but he secretly loved it because he had no idea what was fashionable and looked good.  He relied on the things that his mother and Chris bought for him.  He shook the box until the lid slid off and then he ripped out the tissue paper.  He cocked his head in confusion.  He picked up the item in the box.

“Khakis?”

“Thank God,” Will and Julian sighed together.

“What?” Scott demanded and looked at the dark leather belt that he’d also been given.

“Scott,” Will said, “you’ve been wearing the same pair of khaki pants for like, the last five years.”

“Oh, don’t exaggerate.”

“It’s been a really long time,” Julian countered.  “They’re ratty and ugly and they don’t fit you right.”

“Look, I don’t make a habit of checking out other guys,” Will said, “but you look awful in those pants.”

“You should change now,” Chris finally joined in.

Scott was in shock.  His pants were awful?  But he loved these pants.  “What, now?” he asked meekly.

“Now!” they shouted.

Scott scowled and huffed out of the booth.  He trudged slowly and petulantly across the restaurant.  He didn’t like the Denny’s bathroom.  It smelled funny.  And what was he supposed to do?  Change with his shoes on?  He ended up having to balance very carefully on top of his shoes once he removed them as he took off the old pants and put on the new.  He looked at the old pants.  So there were a few holes in the ankles and the crotch was looking a little threadbare.  Big deal.  Nobody ever saw those parts anyway.  And if they’d really been that bad, Antoinette would have said something to him about it.  Wait, had he ever worn these pants around her?  These were his comfort pants; he usually dressed up when he went to see her.  Maybe she never had seen them.

Scott groaned and leaned against the bathroom stall door.  He wanted to see her.  He wanted to talk to her.  He wanted things to go back to the way they were.  Just like with him and Anna.  Of course, things hadn’t been normal between him and Anna when things had been “normal” between him and Antoinette.  Could he only have one or the other?  Why was he even worrying about it?  He could never have Antoinette.  She didn’t want him.  Scott put his hands to his eyes and wiped away the moisture that had formed there.  He stood up straight and wadded his old pants into a ball.  He left the stall and threw them away.  He didn’t need comfort pants.

When he returned to the table Chris was salting Julian’s ice cream sundae.  Scott guessed he was still a little mad about the sexual harassment.  That had been funny.  They whistled and cat-called when they caught sight of him.  He did a little turn and modeled off the pants before sitting back down next to Will.

“Thank you, Chris.  I feel like a whole new me,” he said in a girly voice.

They all chuckled and Scott scrunched all the paper he’d destroyed into a ball and looked expectantly at Will and Julian.  One of them needed to give him a present.  Julian gave him a large, birthday gift bag.  He tossed the paper out right and left, eliciting a noise of displeasure from Will as he attempted to shield his milkshake.  In the bag was another bag.  More specifically, a grey and muted orange messenger bag.  Scott pulled it out.  It was large and made of soft canvas and—

“Ooo!  Pockets!”

Scott poked around in the bag, taking delight in all the new features this bag had that his old one didn’t.  His old one was really little better than a curved piece of fabric with a handle attached.

“Wow, this is really spiffy!  Thanks Julian!”

“Yeah, and it’s also not falling apart,” he smiled back.

“Wha—?!  My bag is _fine_.”

“There’s a hole in the bottom of it!”

“And you’ve tied a knot in the broken strap so that you can still carry it on your shoulder!” Chris laughed.  “It’s real fine.”

“So?” he grumbled.

“So, you needed a new one,” Julian said.

Scott picked at a corner of the bag.  The pants, the bag.  His friends had bought him presents he _needed_.  They were taking care of him.  It was nice and he appreciated it, but he wished he didn’t need to be taken care of.

“So, what’s from you?” Scott groused at Will.  “New shoes?”

“No.  Surprisingly, your shoes are fine.”

“Geh.”

Will handed him a tiny box.  He was almost afraid to open it.  What if it was some kind of ear and nose hair trimmer?  Did he need one of those?  He discreetly touched his nostrils with the back of his hand like he just had an itch.  He didn’t feel anything sticking out.  He tore the paper off the box, and then turned it over.  He started to hyperventilate.

“Omigod!  Omigod!  Will!”

“Yes.”

“You got me an iPod Nano?!  Kyaa!”  Scott threw his arms around Will’s neck.  “Omigod you are so cool!”

Will laughed and ruffled his hair.

“I win,” he said.

“You win what?” Scott asked, not breaking the hug.

“We had a bet going to see who could make you act the most like a puppy.”

Scott pulled back in dismay.  Will now used both hands to muss up his hair.

“I won.”

“You cheated,” Julian pouted.

“I did not.”

“The rules clearly stated that we had to buy him things he _needed_ ,” Chris said.

“Oh.  But I _totally_ needed an iPod Nano,” Scott said.  He was going to elaborate, but Will’s fingers were gently and smoothly running through his hair now as opposed to ruffling it.  It felt nice and relaxing, and yet sent chills down his spine because his fingers were so cold.

“How do you get your hair this soft?” Will asked.  “It should be totally destroyed with all that bleaching.”

Scott smiled and reluctantly pulled away from the petting.  “It’s a secret.”

“He uses fancy women’s salon shampoo,” Chris said smugly.

Scott shot him a dirty look.  “It’s unisex, thank you very much.”

“Oh, excuse me.”

His friends snickered at him.  Punks.  He was glad he’d gotten his awesome gifts, but now he was worried.  It was time for the joke gifts.  How mean had they decided to go?

“Here, this one is also from me,” Will said.  “My joke gifts this year really aren’t very good.  But, I saw this and thought of you and I had to get it.”

Scott uneasily took the gift bag from him.  Will’s mind worked differently from the rest of them.  There was no telling what kinds of things might remind Will of him.  He dug inside the bag and pulled out a clay jar with a cork in the top.  It looked like it was full of green slime.  He turned it around and looked at the label.  He laughed.

“What is it?” Julian and Chris ask together.

He showed them the jar.  “Sister repellant,” he said.

They both laughed, though it was a tish uneasy.

“Is that still a problem?” Julian asked.

Scott shrugged.  “Not really.  I think she’s starting to get over it.  Plus, since we don’t live together anymore, that’s really helped a lot.”

“How long is that going to last?” Chris asked.  “When will the judge make his decision?”

Scott shrugged again.  “Sometime in January.  My siblings might be moving back in with me.  At least, my father seems to think so.”

“And, that would be good, right?” Will asked.

Scott stopped his shrug.  “I don’t know.  My dad has been weird ever since this all started.  I don’t really want them to experience that.  But, maybe he’ll be better once they’re back.  Maybe he’s just more willing to let me see his flaws since it’s just me.”

They all went quiet and looked at their fingers.  He hadn’t meant to kill the cheerful mood.  Well, that’s what he got for pretending life was good when it really wasn’t.

“Here,” Chris said, tossing him a small package.  “Maybe this will help you feel better.  At least, it’ll help you feel pretty.”

Scott raised an eyebrow.  “And why is that?” he asked, opening the package.  Inside were platinum blonde hair extensions.  He laughed and immediately clipped them to his short hair.  There were only two of them, so he had one kind of to the center and the other to the far left of his head.  He tossed the hair around.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Disturbing,” Will stated.

Scott tossed his head about, enjoying the feeling of the hair swishing around.  At times he did miss his long hair.  He looked at Julian.  His blood immediately ran cold.  Julian’s smile was…if a snake could smile that would be the expression it would make.  Julian held out a red, satin-covered box to him.  As far as he could tell it wasn’t wrapped.  Scott didn’t want to take it from him.  Julian continued to hold it out to him.  Will and Chris were looking back and forth between them, biting their lips to keep from laughing and/or smiling.  He didn’t think they knew what was in the box, but they all knew it couldn’t be anything good.

Scott finally mustered up the courage and reached out to take the box from Julian.  It was a little bit heavier than he’d expected.  He turned it around until he found the gold clasp on the front.  But he didn’t open it.  He just looked at it.  It was about four inches wide, but less than an inch tall.  So, he knew it couldn’t be anything really embarrassing like a dildo or something, but who knew what Julian had found for him.  Maybe he was being paranoid.  Maybe it wasn’t anything sexual at all.  Why had his mind immediately gone to sex?  He glanced at Julian again.  That snake smile.  That’s what it was.  That was the expression a snake would make if it could smile and was about to sexually abuse someone.  He took in a quick breath, unsnapped the clasp, and lifted the box lid by the barest fraction.  He immediately snapped it shut again.

“What?” Chris burst out.  “What is it?”

“What is it?” Will asked.  He turned to Julian for an explanation.  Julian didn’t say anything.

Scott started to tuck the box away underneath his other gifts, but Will lunged for it.  Chris was halfway across the table too, yelling at Will not to let him put it up.  Scott struggled with Will and they wrestled over the box.  Will tried to tickle him to get him to let go, but Scott wasn’t very ticklish.  It was one of his characteristics he was extremely grateful for.  He was able to keep Will at bay.  That is until Will reached a hand up and pinched one of his nipples.  Scott gasped in shock and the box was yanked from his loosened grip.  He tried to stop Will, but he already had the box open.  He put a hand to his mouth and laughed in surprise.

“ _What is it_?” Chris demanded.

Will reached into the box and pulled out the item.  A pair of red fur lined handcuffs dangled from his finger.  For a moment, there was silence.  And then the restaurant was filled with raucous laughter.

 

The laughter was still ringing in Scott’s ears.  He was so embarrassed.  He already thought he was a freakish, perverted deviant; he didn’t need his friends using it as a punch line.  But what was really insulting about the whole thing was that they found his sexual aberration “cute.”  Why had they said that?  What on earth was cute about a guy liking being tied up?  Maybe they just didn’t really think of it in a sexual context.  Maybe they thought he was too sweet and innocent to actually know about or to be doing those kinds of things.  And yet, he was quite certain he’d done a lot worse than they’d ever imagined.  Even more than Julian had, and he knew that he was into pain.  Aside from Antoinette, no one could possibly know just how messed up he was.  Well, maybe the guy at the magic shop had an idea.

Remembering the tall pretty boy he’d very unintentionally run into made him think about the conversation they’d had.  He’d offered to help Scott out if he and his girlfriend ever broke up.  Scott was pretty certain he and Antoinette were through for good.  And surely it would be hard to find another person whose sexual tastes ran the same as his own.  Most people weren’t into that sort of thing, so that meant whatever new girlfriend he may acquire in the future would probably be into much tamer sex.  And of course, that new girlfriend was way off in the distant future as far as he could tell.

Scott dug out his wallet from his back pocket.  He opened it up and pulled out the business card the man had given him from where he kept it hidden in between his student ID and library card.  It was dangerous to always have it on him, especially since he knew his friends would have no qualms about going through his stuff—he wouldn’t have any about rifling through theirs—but he couldn’t leave the card at home.  He doubted his father would ever go snooping in his room, but it was just something he didn’t want anybody ever to see.  So, then why did he still have it?

He shook his head and looked at the logo for Blue Boy.  It was extremely innocuous.  And while someone could guess at the double entendre behind the name if they knew what they were looking for, to the outside observer it would probably be hard to guess what kind of company it was.  That was definitely intentional.  It usually was a bad idea to go around broadcasting that you were into an illegal business.  He flipped the card over.  Tyler Williams.  Scott knew he would never seriously consider calling him.  For one thing, as open as he was with his friends, he just wasn’t into guys.  And for another, he probably couldn’t afford Tyler’s services.  But it was interesting to think about.  With Antoinette out of the picture, it was disturbingly impossible not to think about the kinds of things Tyler had promised to do to him with his last look.  Maybe if it wasn’t Tyler though.  Maybe if it were a girl.  Maybe Tyler knew some of the ladies who were in the business.

Scott rolled his eyes and put the card back in his wallet.  He had problems.  Weird, messed up issues.  Would he really want to hire some random person to hurt him?  The only reason he’d let Antoinette do it was because he’d trusted her.  Well, the first time it had mostly been because he’d felt the need to distract her per Chris’ request.  And he’d been in a dark enough place that he kind of needed it no matter who it was.  But after that, she had never gone further than he was comfortable with and always stopped when she sensed that he was becoming anxious.  Which rarely happened because she seemed to intuitively know his limits.  He tapped himself hard on the forehead with his index finger.

“Stop thinking about her,” he murmured.  “It’ll go away eventually.”

Scott sighed dramatically and unlocked the door to his big, empty house.  He knew it would be empty.  No mother, no siblings, and tonight, no father.  He was off with Kristen for a date and then would be going to his office’s Christmas party.  He figured his dad was spending as much time with her as he could now because tomorrow his mother was bringing over the other kids and they (minus his mother of course) would be staying through New Year’s.  For now though, he was completely alone.  He sighed again and put the big birthday gift bag down on the coffee table in the family room.  It was beat up and worn, and since it had all his Christmas presents in it as well, it flopped to the side and threatened to fall off the table.  He watched it for a moment, but it didn’t move, so he left it alone.  He headed toward the kitchen to get something to eat.  Never mind that he’d had a three course meal at Denny’s; he was still hungry.  Well, maybe “hungry” was a strong word.  But he could definitely still eat.  He rifled through the pantry looking for some junk food: nothing.  Then he spotted the cookie tin on the counter.  Scott bounded over to it and peeked inside.

“Yessss,” he said with a subdued fist pump.  His father hadn’t finished them off.  Kristen had made four or five different kinds of cookies and dessert bars.  There was probably at least two of each kind still left.  Scott tucked the tin under his arm, poured himself a large glass of milk, and headed back into the family room.  He flopped onto the couch and got the TV on all without letting go of the cookies or spilling his milk.  He checked the time.  It was nearly 5:00.  They’d all left the Denny’s not long after 2:00.  What on earth had he been doing that it had taken him this long to get home?  No wonder he was hungry.

He’d only been munching on his cookies and staring at the TV for ten minutes before he sighed in boredom.  Should he call somebody?  The four of them had stayed at that Denny’s over four hours.  None of them had had anyone to go home to, so they were all probably still alone now.  So why had they left?  It had just seemed like they were supposed to.  In years past they had all been told what time they needed to be home by to do family things (with the exception of Julian of course, though he had been told when to stop bothering the others).  This year, not a single one of them had family activities planned for tonight; not even Chris.

He sighed again.  Maybe he should consider calling his mother before bugging his friends again.  But that would be a bad idea.  His mother would probably start complaining that his father had left him alone on Christmas Eve and then Scott would feel obligated to defend him and they would get into a fight.  He really wasn’t in the mood for that tonight.  Plus, he and his mother had never really reconciled from what had happened at Thanksgiving.  There would be no sense in stirring up more trouble.

He could call Anna.  She would be more than willing to talk with him about the lameness of family things at Christmas time.  Though maybe she would feel guilty since their problems were completely different this year and wouldn’t want to talk like usual.  Then he remembered that every Christmas Eve she had to go with her family to a party thrown by her parents’ friends.  More than likely she would answer her cell phone if it rang, especially if it was from him, but he didn’t want to get busted by her dad.  On more than one occasion Scott had been given flack from Mr. Norwood for calling during family events.  The last thing he needed was a lecture from a big, scary black man.  He really wondered how Chris had had the balls to date Karen for as long as he had; Mr. Green was even scarier than Mr. Norwood.

So, who could he call?  Julian?  Scott felt a mild uneasiness form in the pit of his stomach.  What if it would be like calling him on Thanksgiving?  What if the same thing happened?  What if Julian was upset and they didn’t have Anna there to make him restrain himself?  Scott put the cookie tin down and sat up, burying his face in his hands.  He felt guilty.  He’d told Julian that he trusted him and took him at his word when he said he was better, but he couldn’t help feeling a little worried.  He couldn’t forget the cold apathetic snarl on his face or the cruel words he’d said to Anna.  It was impossible to forget the mild violence he’d showed him.  Up until that day violence and Julian were antonyms in his mind.  They were no longer.  That wasn’t fair to Julian; he deserved a second chance.  But that didn’t mean Scott needed to bother him tonight.  He scoffed at himself.  He was such a coward.

He jumped off the couch and started to pace.  Maybe he could talk to someone about it.  Maybe one of the other two was still a little unsure about Julian.  Of course, he couldn’t talk to Will about it.  He was certain Will had completely dismissed the day as an anomaly.  Julian hadn’t changed in his eyes.  Or, if he had, it wasn’t in a bad way.  No matter what had happened between them that day, Scott was certain Will would forgive Julian anything.  And he was starting to suspect that Will had.  Neither of them had told him or Chris what had happened between them on Thanksgiving, but Scott was positive it had been severe.  Especially based on Will’s reaction to his present from Julian.  It bothered Scott that something so devastating happened that they couldn’t even tell him and Chris about it.  That meant it was something near unforgivable.  And yet, Will had forgiven him.  So, obviously he wouldn’t want to listen to someone saying they were still a little scared—no, not scared—worried about Julian.  Plus, with his parents gone tonight, he might want to spend some time with his “mystery girl.”

So that left Chris.  But he was always bugging him.  Maybe he wanted a break.  Scott shrugged.  Oh well, that would be his problem.  Scott sat back down on the couch and grabbed the phone from the end table.  He was about to dial Chris’ number when the phone rang.  Scott squealed and dropped the phone.  He glanced around the empty room to make sure he was definitely alone and no one had witnessed that little pathetic display of girlishness.  He picked the phone up, and even though he didn’t recognize the number he answered it.  Even telemarketers were company of a sort.

“Hello?” he greeted his mystery caller.

“Hi, Scott.  Uh.  It’s Karen.”

Scott flicked some fuzz off his knee.  “Karen who?”

“Um.  Karen Green.  You know.  Chris’—ex-girlfriend?”

Scott froze.  Should he turn the phone off before she started to slime through it and tried to kill and/or infect him?

“Um.”  What was he supposed to say?  He’d already said hello.  What else was there to say to her?

“Yeah, I know it’s weird that I’m calling you.”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“Well, I just needed to know something.”

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Um.  Do you know if Chris is working tonight?  Or if his mom is?”

“Um.  He’s not.  And his mom said she’d be working a half day, but I’m sure she’ll stay later.  She always does.”

“Ah.  I see.”

“Why?” he demanded to know.

He heard a soft noise over the line that might have been a half-choked laugh.  “Well, I want to go see him.  Alone.”

Scott felt some weird combination of emotions that he couldn’t even begin to define.  “Don’t do anything to him,” he said as firmly and harshly as he could muster.

She laughed softly again.  “I won’t do anything to him he won’t want.”

Scott gulped.  He was able to define part of that mix of emotions as male pride that his best friend was going to get some.  But, that was a very weak component.  The others were much more prominent, so he let his displeasure leak into his voice as he said, “Karen, I mean don’t do anything to hurt him.”

“Scott, I know what you meant.  I’m not going to hurt him.  I don’t _want_ to hurt him.  I never want to do anything that will make him unhappy or bring him pain.”

Scott’s brow creased as he scratched at his pants leg.  He frowned into the phone.  That was a nice sentiment, but did she mean it?

“Scott,” she said after he didn’t respond for some time, “I love him as much as you do.  Well.  _That_ may not actually be humanly possible, but I do love him almost as much as you.”

“Tch.  What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the four of you are a little strange.”

“Oh, hush.  Why don’t you go bother Chris now?”

He could hear the smile in her voice.  “Okay.  Hey, one more thing.”

“What?”

“Do you think a gift card to Best Buy will get him excited?”

Scott let out a small laugh and leaned back against the couch.  “He gets excited talking to the fat, pimply guys that work there.  A sexy girl waving around a free pass to his candy store will definitely get him going.”

Karen laughed.  “Aww, Scott.  You think I’m sexy?”

Scott blushed.  “Shut-up!  Merry Christmas, Karen,” he snapped and hung up on her.

He made a face at the handset.  Stupid girls.  Stupid, stupid girls.  He sighed and put the phone back up. He guessed that meant he couldn’t call Chris now.  Well, maybe he should call and warn him she was coming?  Nah.  He’d be fine.  So.  That meant he had no one to call, no one to hang out with, and nothing to do.  What _eve_ r.  Lamest Christmas ever.  He picked up the remote and began flipping through the channels.  He came across the _A Christmas Story_ marathon on TNT.  That was better than nothing.  He resumed eating his way through Kristen’s Christmas offerings.

He’d been lying on the couch for an hour before he was certain that the bag with his Christmas presents in it was moving.  He looked over at it and stuck out an arm.  He couldn’t reach it.  He shrugged and decided not to worry about it.  If it fell, then it—the bag flopped completely to the side and some of the contents spilled onto the table and then onto the floor.  Almost as if by some cruel working of fate the red satin box tumbled right up to the edge of the couch.  He tried to ignore it; pretend like it wasn’t there.  It was impossible.  Finally he reached down and picked it up.  It had gotten considerably darker and he hadn’t turned on any lights.  It somehow made it sketchier to be fiddling with the box in the semi-darkness.  He continued to turn it over and over in his hands.  Why was he pretending like he was going to be able to resist?  He was going to open it, so he might as well do it.

Even with that thought it was still ten minutes before he pushed up on the clasp.  He opened the lid and looked at the handcuffs.  They were really kind of funny.  It was such a well known gag that it was hard to believe he was actually a part of the cliché.  He tapped part of the metal with his finger and then just made a noise of irritation (mostly at himself) and pulled the cuffs out.  Also in the box was a key.  He took it out and placed it behind him on the end table.  He had little doubt that before too long his perverted curiosity would get the better of him and he would try them on.  So, he wanted the key to be within reaching distance.  The last thing he needed was his father to come home and find him handcuffed to the banister or something.  Should he test to make sure the key worked first?  Good idea.  He slid it in and turned it once.  The lock immediately released.  That was good to know.  He put the key back in the box, closed it and made sure the clasp was secure, and then put the box on the table.  Then he opened the box and took it out.  He wanted to keep his eye on it.  If he couldn’t see it, it was bound to disappear at a most inopportune moment.

He played with them, feeling the individual clicks as the cuffs got smaller and then the ratcheting as they unlocked and came loose.  He was trying to tell himself to be rational; to not be so curious.  Handcuffs were handcuffs.  He’d had a plastic pair when he’d been younger.  He’d used to play cops and robbers with his friends all the time.  He was usually the bad guy, so he knew what it was like.  Of course, plastic wasn’t the same as the cold bite of metal.  But these had fur.  So, was it soft?  Or hard?  He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Just get it over with,” he mumbled to himself.

He put one cuff around his left wrist and snapped it closed.  He twisted it a little bit.  He hadn’t put it on tightly and the fur was much softer than he thought it would be.  It didn’t feel bad at all.  He put his fingers around the cuff and squeezed it as tight as it would go.  It kind of hurt.  That was more like it.  He swallowed.  It was tight.  He could feel it restricting his bones even without moving his wrist.  When he did try to flex it, it dug into his skin and hurt even more.  He checked to see if that was as tight as it would go.  It was.  So, even at its max, it wouldn’t hurt _that_ much and it probably wouldn’t leave any marks.  Nice.

He shook his head in mild disgust.  What was wrong with him?  He was so weird.  He closed his eyes in shame and moved his hand to his groin.  He’d gotten a little excited when he’d tightened the cuffs to the point of pain.  He was so weird.  He was so wrong.  He was so—the free cuff fell down between his legs.  He opened his eyes and looked down.  He gave himself a light caress.  Seeing the cuff on his wrist and the one sliding over his groin made it all the more potent.  He gritted his teeth.  He should stop, but he moved his hand again.  The thought came into his mind that he should call Antoinette.  What would she do if he called her and told her what he was doing right now?  How would she react when he described the scene to her?  She’d be so pissed.  He continued to move his hand and dropped his head back onto the arm of the couch.  He closed his eyes and reached behind his head to grab the phone.  He stopped when his hand closed around it.  What if he called and her father answered?  Or worse one of her younger siblings?  That would be creepy.  Besides.  It was frickin’ Christmas.

He sat up and grabbed the key off the end table.  He had a momentary panic attack that the key wouldn’t work now, but it unlocked as easily as it had the first time.  He put the cuffs and key back in the box and snapped it shut.  Then he picked up all the gifts that had fallen to the floor and put them back in the bag.  Then he propped the bag against the table to keep it from falling over again.  He sat back down on the couch and groaned in annoyance.  He was still feeling aroused.  He considered his options and finally decided to just give in to it.  He grabbed the remote and flipped to the HBO on demand section.  The “after dark” section had some softcore porn, and it was free.  And because it was free it didn’t show up on the bill that someone had watched it.  So, his father would only know if he looked at the saved programs list within 24 hours, which Scott knew he wouldn’t.  And even if he did Scott was quite certain that he wouldn’t care that his teenage son had watched some racy shower scenes involving surgically enhanced women and their closest friends.

But, of course, he had to be the biggest goober on the planet.  Rather than just turning on the first one he came across, he felt the need to read the little summary for each one.  Like it really mattered what the “plot” was about.  He spent so long perusing the titles that he pretty much got to the point where he really didn’t need it anymore.  But, he decided to turn it on anyway.  He sat back and watched, not really getting into it.  This was another reason he was a non-practicing homosexual: he didn’t really like porn.  It always seemed so silly to him.  And it rarely ever got him excited.  In fact, this particular one was so stimulating he fell asleep.

When he woke up it was completely dark except for the soft glow of the TV.  He rubbed his eyes and sat part way up.  He wondered what time it was.  Maybe his father would be home soon.  He’d told him he’d help him with stuffing the stockings for his siblings when he got back from the office party.  Scott picked up the remote to turn off the TV, but then saw the movie that was highlighted on the menu.  He’d seen that one earlier and read the description of it, but he’d chosen not to watch it.  Why not?  Because it involved some blonde chick teasing a guy tied up to a bed?  Maybe.  He was completely back to normal now, so he figured there wouldn’t really be much harm in looking at it for curiosity’s sake.  Maybe this could help him see that he really wasn’t that big of a freak after all.  Or at least, if he was, he wasn’t alone.

He gathered the cookie tin and the empty glass together as he waited for it to start.  He’d probably be bored with this one too and then he could take care of the dishes.  There was no meager attempt at a plot in this one.  The scene started right away with a mostly naked man tied to a bed post and a blonde woman in a dominatrix outfit.  Scott stared.  The outfit looked a lot like Antoinette’s Halloween costume.  He put the cookie tin and glass down and leaned forward on the couch to get a better look.  He shook his head with a smile.  This was so funny.  Why would anyone find this as a turn on?

The woman suddenly slapped the man and he let out a cry of pain and jerked on his restraints.  Scotts’ reaction was immediate.  He closed his eyes in despair.  God he was sick.  He leaned back on the couch and watched the scene play out.  He thought maybe he could watch the whole thing and then run upstairs to the bathroom, but he was rapidly losing his will power.  Finally he reached down and unzipped his pants quickly.  He didn’t need to think about what he was doing.  That always just made it worse.  He reached a hand in and started to chew on his lower lip.  Hard.

The door to the garage opening was accompanied by high-pitched giggling.  Scott froze, his brain refusing to acknowledge that this was actually happening for a moment.  And then he leapt off the couch, desperately trying to get the movie to stop playing.  Then he ran around the corner of the family room and tried to move as silently as possible through the dark front room as he made his way to the downstairs bathroom.  A figure was standing in the doorway to the garage, but he was too preoccupied with his guest to notice Scott.  Scott got inside the bathroom and closed and locked the door.  He leaned against the sink and squeezed the marble tightly.  He glanced down at his watch: 11:43.  Why hadn’t he checked the time before he started the second movie?  His father had told him he wouldn’t stay out that late.  And now what was he supposed to?  Even with the shock, it wasn’t going down.  He couldn’t stay in here until it did, could he?  Maybe his father wouldn’t think about him.

“Scott?”

Scott cursed himself and rolled his eyes.  Why did he have to think that?

“Yeah?” he called out.

“Where are you?  Can you come here please?”

“Yeah, one second.”

Wait.  Why had he responded?  He could have pretended he was asleep in bed.  Unless his father went upstairs to check on him.  Scott shifted his weight.  Did he have time to finish it up?  No.  And he couldn’t.  He was too weirded out.

“Christ,” he muttered and carefully zipped up his pants.  Maybe if they’d left the lights off they wouldn’t be able to tell.  He took in a deep breath and started to leave the bathroom, telling himself to think about grapes.  That actually immediately began to help.  Out in the foyer the lights were all on as well as in the kitchen and the open hallway upstairs.  “Excellent.”

He jumped onto the stairs and stood behind the railing.  It would provide some cover at least, and hopefully it wouldn’t be too much longer before he wouldn’t need it.  His father was hanging Kristen’s wrap on the coat stand by the front door and she was dancing by herself in a slinky black dress.  He looked back at his father.  The last thing he needed to do was look at a well-endowed woman in a low cut dress.

“Hey, Dad,” he said.

“Hi!”  That was Kristen.  She ran up to him and leaned on the banister.  “Hi, Scott.”

“Hey, Kristen.”

He turned back to his father and gave him a look.  His father just put his hands in the air in helpless acceptance.

“So, how was the party?” Scott asked in an innocent, slightly sarcastic voice.

“It was nice,” Kristen grinned.

“Was there alcohol?” he smiled back.

“Scott,” his father warned.

“There was champagne!  I love champagne!  It makes you feel like celebrating!”

Kristen started to dance again.  His father paused beside him on the stairs and they watched the woman together.

“Wow, Dad.”

“I know,” he sighed.  “And if I didn’t look like enough of an ass bringing a younger woman as my date to a work party, she flirted with my boss.”

Scott chuckled and tilted his head as he watched Kristen move about.

“And _his_ date flirted with me,” he said, a little perplexed.

“Whose date?”

“My boss’.”

“Really?  Are you fired?”

“Probably not.  I mean, they were only flirting with us when they and every other woman in the room weren’t throwing themselves at Rich Harder.”

“Oh.  Will’s dad was there?”

“Yeah.  His mother was invited by the people from the merger that we invited.  She’s their legal representation and having her there was kind of like a slap in the face to the company.”

“Wow.  Politics wait for no holiday.”

“No, they don’t.  Ugh.  I am so beat.”

“We still have to do the stockings,” Scott reminded him.

“Yeah, I know.  Let me take a shower first.  You stay down here and watch her.”

His father started up the stairs.

“What?!  Are you joking?”

“I won’t be long.  Just, make sure she doesn’t try to get into anything.  Or if she gets sick direct her to a bathroom.”

“Dad!  You do it!”

“Scott—”

“No, seriously.  Like shower with her or something.”

“Scott, I’m talking like fifteen minutes.  Deal with it.  Trust me.  It won’t hurt you to be a little extra good tonight considering what you’re getting for Christmas tomorrow.”

“Ooo.”

He watched his father’s back as he walked up the stairs.  He was broader in the shoulders than Scott would ever be.  Then he wondered what his father had meant.  What had he gotten him?  Hopefully it wasn’t an iPod.

“Hey, Scott.”

Scott looked back at Kristen.  She was leaning on the banister again and smiling at him.

“So, what’s going on?” she asked.  “Are we celebrating?”

“Yes, but not until tomorrow.  Tonight, we’re calming down.”

“Calming down?” she asked with a disappointed look.

“Yep.”  He hopped off the stairs and took her by the hand.  “Come with me.”  He led her back into the family room, turning on lights as he went.  He glanced at the TV and fortunately it was not showing anything even remotely suspicious.  He sat Kristen on the couch and then had to crawl on the floor under the coffee table to retrieve the remote control.

“What’s in the bag?” Kristen asked.

“My Christmas presents,” he grunted as he backed out from under the table.

“Can I look?”

“Nope,” he said, pushing her back onto the couch again.  “Here we go,” he said, flipping on the TV.  He found the _A Christmas Story_ marathon again and Kristen clapped her hands.

“Oh!  I love this movie!”

“I know, right?  It’s great.  Enjoy.”

Scott started to leave but she grabbed his wrist and he fell onto the couch.

“Stay and watch it with me.”

“Uh, I really think I should get to bed before Santa comes.”

“But your daddy told you to watch me.  So stay with me.”

Scott sighed.  “Okay.”

Scott shifted and settled into the corner.  They watched the credits roll over the family eating Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant.

“Well.  Looks like it’s over.”

He started to get up, but Kristen pushed him back down.  “Look!  It’s starting again!”

“Yeah.  It’ll start again in two hours too.”

She didn’t hear him—or ignored him—and snuggled into the back of the couch.  Their shoulders were touching.  Scott gripped his pants with his fingers.  Maybe he should focus on the movie.  Her head dropped onto his shoulder and she turned into him, hugging his arm.  Scott passed a hand over his face.  He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do, so he just left her there.  He slumped further into the couch and watched the pudgy little kid admire his BB gun in the store window over her head.

 

Sunday, December 25, 2005

 

Scott stirred and his eyelids fluttered in the morning sun.  He wasn’t used to this kind of brightness.  His room was usually much darker.  So, where had he fallen asleep last night?  Antoinette’s bedroom got a little more light than his, but he’d never spent the whole night over in her room before.  Anna kept her room dark.  Chris’ was about the same as his.  The room in Julian’s house tended to have green morning light because of the curtains.  Will could sleep in and through anything.  He didn’t even use the blinds in his room.  Maybe that’s why it was so bright.  But why was he sleeping over at Will’s?  He rubbed his eyes with one hand and looked around.  No, this wasn’t Will’s; this was the family room in his house.  He tried to move his other arm, but something warm and solid was holding it down.  He looked to see what it was and saw blonde hair splayed across his chest.

“Antoinette?”

“Hmm?”  The owner of the hair stretched awake and looked up at him.  Kristen blinked at him like she didn’t really recognize him.  “Who’s Antoinette?”

“Um.”  Scott was fully awake now.  “No one,” he said, trying to assess what was going on.  He and Kristen were on the couch together with a blanket spread over them.  The TV was off.  He glanced toward the Christmas tree and the fireplace.  The stockings were stuffed and there were three times as many presents under the tree than there had been last night.  His father must have found them asleep on the couch last night and decided not to disturb them.  Scott made face.

“Dad!  You are so weird!”

“What?” Kristen asked, sitting up and elbowing him in the solar plexus as she did so.  He oofed and stayed lying down.  “Oh, sorry.  But why is your dad weird?”

“Because he let us sleep together on the couch.”

“Oh.  Well, I think that’s nice of him for not waking us up.”

“I’m his son and you’re his mistress.  It’s weird to let us sleep together!”

“Well, if you say it like that it sounds all dirty.  All we did was sleep.”

“I know.  But, still.”

“And who is Antoinette?”

“No one,” Scott repeated and struggled to sit up.  He watched Kristen run a hand through her hair as she yawned.  She looked like she was feeling alright.  “So, how are you feeling?” he asked.

“Hmm?  Oh, fine.  Great in fact.”

“Really.  You don’t have a hangover?”

“Uh, nope.  I tend not to get them.  Plus, I didn’t have _that_ much to drink.”

“Yeah, but I heard that champagne hangovers are the worst of any of them.”

“You know, if Antoinette is just ‘no one’ why would you call out her name when you woke up next to someone?”

He narrowed an eye at her.  “Don’t change the subject.”

“All right fine.”  She crossed her arms and sat back against the couch.  Scott stayed against the arm so he could look at her.  “I wasn’t drunk last night, okay?  I thought it was the only way your dad would bring me home with him.  I honestly thought you’d be with your mom.  I just didn’t want to be alone on Christmas.  You know?  So there.  There’s my pathetic story.  What’s yours?”

Scott did feel sorry for her.  He knew what it was like to be alone.  He’d been alone last night.  But he’d at least had the knowledge that his family would be coming over on Christmas morning.  He fiddled with the fringe of the blanket they’d been covered with.  Confessing to her would be like confessing to a stranger.  It wouldn’t matter if he told her anything.  He doubted she would tell his father.  Especially if she was trying to get and stay on his good side.

“Antoinette is the girl I’m in love with.”

“Aww!  That’s so romantic!”

“Not really.  It’s unrequited and I’m trying to get over it.”

“Aw.  That’s so sad.”

He shrugged.  “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not!” Kristen cried.  “Unrequited love is the worst!  You poor thing!”

She hugged him tightly and Scott almost wanted to laugh.  He patted Kristen’s shoulder awkwardly.  He felt like he should be comforting her.  Obviously the one with the worst problem was her.  It was quite apparent to everyone that his father wasn’t in love with her.

“Hi, Scotty!”

Scott pulled back slightly and broke into a grin when he saw Ferris and Drake running toward him.

“Hey, guys!” he said.

He started to get up to hug them and as he did he noticed that his sister and mother weren’t far behind.  His mother took in the scene.  Scott wondered just how sketchy it looked.  The widening of his mother’s eyes and her fingers slowly curling into fists were good clues that she wasn’t going to take this well.

“What in the hell in going on here?” she demanded harshly.

“Nothing, Mom.”  Scott struggled off the couch and to put distance between him and Kristen.  “We were just—”

“Get the hell out of here!” his mother screamed, advancing on Kristen.  Scott got in his mother’s way and Kristen tried to untangle herself from the blanket and her dress.

“Mom, calm down.”

“One isn’t good enough for you?  What kind of woman _are_ you?  He’s seventeen years old!”

“I didn’t—”

“Mom, nothing happened!  We just fell asleep on the couch, that’s all!  Nothing happened!”

“She shouldn’t be here in the first place!  And don’t be so naïve, Scott!  She’s just trying to—”

“No, she’s not!”

They continued to shout out at each other as Scott kept his mother from getting to Kristen.  They had the only exit blocked, so all Kristen could do was stand on the other side of the couch on the verge of tears.  He didn’t even know what his siblings were doing.  Finally his father walked into the room.

“What is going on here?” he asked.

Everyone stopped shouting and moving.  His siblings didn’t rush to greet their father as usual.  Everyone was too scared to draw attention to themselves.  His father saw Kristen and looked at his mother.

“What?  Why are you screaming?”

“Why am I—”  She turned away from Scott and stood up to his father.  They weren’t much different in height, but it was pretty impressive that she was showing the man no fear.  “Why is she here?  It’s _Christmas_.  You knew your _children_ were coming over.  Why was she sleeping with my son?!”

“They were just sleeping, Susan.  Nothing happened.  Jesus.  Calm down.”

“Don’t take this lightly, David!  Don’t be fooled by her, you penis-driven idiot!  She’ll get her hooks into him early!  She knows he’ll get the money from you.  Then she’ll be able to have a young one when you’re too decrepit to service her!”

“That’s not what it was like,” Kristen cried desperately.  “I wasn’t—I would never—”

“ _You_!”  His mother pointed a finger at the woman and walked toward her.  Scott got in her way again and his father was right behind her.  “Do not speak to me _ever_!  Get your whoring ass out of my house!”

His father grabbed his mother by the shoulder and spun her around.  “Susan, shut-up!”

“Don’t touch me!”

Scott backed away from his parents as the screaming intensified.  It was so loud it was actually hurting his ears.

“I’m sorry.”

Scott turned toward Kristen.  Had she said that?  She was whispering and it was hard to hear over the yelling.

“I’m so, so sorry.  I’ve ruined your Christmas.”

Scott smiled bitterly at her.  “Don’t feel bad, Kristen.  Don’t think for a moment this wouldn’t have eventually happened even if you hadn’t been here.”

She turned her eyes to him and looked absolutely devastated.  “I’m so sorry, Scott.”

He realized she wasn’t apologizing for anything she might have done.  The yelling was a hell of a lot worse now, but it was quieter.  His parents had moved out of the room.  They tended to pace and beat up furniture when they fought.  Scott took Kristen by the arm and led her from the room.  His parents were by the stairs and were completely oblivious to anything else around them.  He got Kristen to the front door and handed her her wrap.

“Do you need me to call a cab?” he asked.

“No, it’s okay.  Your father drove my car here.”

“Do you have your keys?”

She picked up a small purse from the front hall table.  “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Okay.  Well.  Bye.”

She looked at him like she wanted to say or do something.  Then his mother began a tirade of insults about Kristen using words Scott wasn’t even familiar with.  Kristen turned and left.  Scott leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the front door.  He was getting a headache.  His parents were totally freaking out.  He could understand his mother being so upset, by why did his father always respond to it?  If he would just keep his temper, the fights wouldn’t get so bad.  Did he really resent his mother that much?  Scott turned around and watched his parents take the fight into the kitchen.  He couldn’t remember if anything breakable was sitting out on the counter.  Then he saw his siblings standing by the corner of the family room.  Joanna looked mad and the twins looked sad, upset, and scared.  Scott walked over to them.

“So, Christmas is ruined, huh?” he asked.

The twins nodded, tears starting to form.

“Not even!” Scott said, bending down to be closer to them.  “Who wants presents and candy for breakfast?”

Drake smiled.  “Are we going to eat the presents?”

That made Ferris smile.  Scott grabbed them both up in his arms.  “Maybe!  If you’re not careful I’ll eat them all!”

They squealed and Scott struggled just a little under their combined weight.  Oh, his little brothers were getting bigger.  He turned to Joanna to see if she would follow them into the family room.  She was glaring at him.

“What?”

“What were you doing with her?” she asked angrily.

“Nothing,” Scott sighed and put the twins down.  They ran for the Christmas tree.  He followed them.  “We fell asleep on the couch.  That’s all.  And I mean, I know it was really bad that she was here when you guys got here, but Mom is totally overreacting.”

“But, Scott.  Do you like her?  Not like, _like_ like her, but do you not mind her?”

“I mind her a lot,” he replied and dug around under the tree looking for presents for his brothers to open.  Then he stood up and tossed a package to Joanna.  She started in surprise and tried to catch it, but it bounced off her fingers and fell to the floor.  She picked it up and gave him another glare.  This one was more familiar; a kid sister annoyed by her big brother kind of glare.

“That’s from me,” he said.

She moved further into the room and sat down by the tree.  The twins were shouting and laughing and showing each other and Scott what they had gotten.  This year he already knew.  He’d had to do most of the shopping from Santa this year.  Even with the crackling of unwrapped paper and his siblings’ excited voices he could still faintly hear his parents.

“Scotty, this one’s for you!”

Scott looked at Ferris.  His mouth was surrounded by a ring of chocolate already.  Kristen had made them a breakfast casserole and some sweet rolls for their Christmas morning breakfast (even though she knew she wouldn’t be joining them), but it looked like they wouldn’t be hungry for it for some time.

Scott took the small package from his brother and accepted the excited hug from his little sister as she squealed about getting the latest Ashlee Simpson CD.  He’d also bought her some rather expensive jewelry, but it was the fifteen dollar piece of plastic that she really cared about.  Scott tore open the paper on his box and only briefly glanced at the tag.  It was from “Santa.”  So, his father had done some shopping on his own.

“Dun dun dun Trans-for-mers!” his brother sang as he played with his new action toy.

Scott opened the lid to the box.  He stared at the item lying on the fluffy white cotton.  It was a key.  And attached to the key was a keyless entry remote with the BMW logo.  He stared at it for several minutes, not believing what he was seeing.

“No fucking way.”

“Awwwwwwwwww!” his brothers scolded him.

Scott leapt up from the couch.  He ran into the foyer and listened to hear where his parents were currently fighting.  They sounded like they were still in the kitchen.  He ran inside and found his father leaning against the sink, his arms crossed over his chest, frowning very unhappily at his mother as she paced the floor and screamed at him.

“Is this for real?” Scott shouted.

They both looked at him.  Scott waved the key around.

“Is this for real, Dad?  Where is it?!”

His father looked confused.  And then a little crushed.  “You already opened it?  I wanted to be there.”

“Well, like we were going to wait for you guys.  Your shouting matches last for hours.  Literally sometimes.”

His mother was just gaping.  Then she turned on his father.

“You bought him a car?”

His father shrugged.  “He’ll need one when he goes to college.”

“No college allows freshmen to drive cars, you ass!”

“Hey.  I’m sorry you can’t afford to buy him one yourself, but he deserves to have a car.  He should have had one for his sixteenth birthday, but I deferred to you, remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember.  And bring it up in front of him so that he’ll resent me even more.”

“He doesn’t need me for that.”

“David—!”

“Anyway,” Scott cut in again.  “Is it here?”

“Yeah, it’s the garage.  I’ll show it to you.”

“Cool!”

“Stop!” his mother shouted.  “You can’t do this.  You can’t give him a car!”

“Jesus Christ, Susan!  What is your problem?!  What do you want from me?!”

“I want you to give me back the life you took away from me!  I want you to start acting like a mature man and father in his 40’s!  I want you to stop trying to buy your children’s affection!”

“He’s not buying me, Mom,” Scott shouted.  And then took in a breath to speak in a calmer voice.  “I would still love him even if he gave me nothing.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.  He’s a despicable man.  Why do you _always_ stand up for him?”

“He’s my _father_.”

“So, you think some blood tie erases all his sins?  That he should be forgiven anything just because he managed to knock up a woman?”

“Well, what about you!” Scott shouted.  “You seem to think it means a whole damn lot that you’re my mother!  What have you ever done for me?!”

She looked astonished for a moment.  And then she took a step forward and slapped him.  She used so much force that his whole head whipped to the side.  The pain radiated out from his cheek and marched down his spine and limbs.  He heard a choked gasp followed by a thump.  He looked up and saw that his father had his mother by the throat against a wall.

“You hit my child again and you won’t live to regret it,” his father hissed darkly.

“Dad, Dad!”  Scott stepped forward and put a hand on his father’s shoulder.  “It’s fine, I’m fine.  Let her go.  She didn’t hurt me.  Don’t let the others see.”

Scott glanced toward the kitchen entrance, terrified that his siblings would all be standing there.  He swallowed in sick relief when he saw the empty doorway.  His father immediately let go when he reminded him that his other children were nearby.  His mother rubbed her throat and stayed pressed to the wall.

“This has got to stop,” Scott said forcefully.  “No more.  This cannot happen around them, okay?  Do you realize that your children are out there opening their Christmas presents by themselves with the soundtrack of their parents violently screaming at each other in the background?  Why can’t you two think about _them_ for once, huh?  I don’t care how angry you are.  Or what he’s done to you.  Or what your parents forced you to do.  Or how crappy your lives have turned out.  You should care most that _their_ _lives_ turn out better than you’d ever dreamed yours would!”

“Why aren’t you including yourself in that, Scott?” his father asked.

Scott shook his head.  He didn’t have an answer for that.  And he didn’t know what to say next; he’d lost his train of thought.

“I can’t do this anymore,” his mother whispered.  “I can’t see you anymore.  I can’t _see_ you ever again.”

“At least there’s something we can agree on,” his father replied.  “After this last hearing, it’ll be over and done.  And now that Scott has a car, he can drive the other three over to see you when it’s your turn for a visit.”

His mother’s eyes hardened.  Scott bowed his head.

“Dad,” he said reproachfully.

“David Ramsey.  You are a right bastard.”

“I don’t disagree,” the man said quietly.

Scott rolled his eyes.  “Look, whatever.  I’ll be the go between, okay?  You two don’t have to ever speak again.  In fact I refuse to _let_ you two ever speak again.  You can talk through me.  I won’t mind.  Just as long as you leave the other three out of it.  No matter what happens in January, it’s over between you two.  Okay?  And Mom, you have to know that even if you win, I’m staying with Dad until graduation.”

She didn’t respond.  Scott looked back and forth between them.  He didn’t want to leave them alone together but he couldn’t stand the sight of either of them at the moment.  He left the kitchen and headed back for the family room.  As he passed by the garage door he remembered the keys in his hand.  He walked to the door and opened it.  He had to smile.  It was blue and it was beautiful.  He walked down the steps and trailed his hands along the shiny exterior as he made his way around the back.  It was a 650i coupe.  And it was so pretty.  He unlocked the door and sat in the driver’s side.  He gripped the wheel and put his forehead to it.  He wondered what they would do if he just drove away.  He wanted to drive away.  He wanted to go away and never come back.  There was nothing for him here.  Well, there was the guys.

Scott sat back and blew air out through his mouth.  How sad was it that the only thing he had in life was three boys?  Three boys that everyone thought he was gay for.  Now that he was sitting up he saw that his father had followed him into the garage.  He had his arms folded on the roof of the car and was looking at Scott through the hole they made.  They just looked at each other for a few moments, not speaking.  Then his father squatted down and sighed.

“I’m really sorry, Scott.  For everything.”

Scott leaned into his father and the man hugged him tightly.

“Why couldn’t you have just hidden it better?  You said you did it for so many years.  Why did you stop?”

His father didn’t answer, but tightened his grip even more.

“Just promise me you’ll stop fighting with her, okay?  No matter what she says or does just keep your temper.  Do it for Joanna and the twins.”

His father sighed.

“Do it for me.”

He nodded.  “Okay.  I understand.”

He pulled backed and looked at Scott intently.  He gently stroked a hand down his cheek.  It was a little tender from where his mother had slapped him.  His father frowned.

“Damn.  That might bruise.  I could kill her.”

Scott gave his father a look.

“Sorry.  Sorry.  Does it hurt?”

“Not really.  I can take a lot of pain.”

“Oh, yeah?  You don’t seem the type.”

“Yeah, I know, right?  I didn’t think I was either until she—”

Scott cut off.  What was he about to tell his father?

“She who?”

“Uh.  Mom.  When she hit me, I realized it didn’t hurt that much.”

His father gave him a knowing smile.  “Son, I can tell the difference between when a man is thinking about his mother and when he’s thinking about a woman.”

Scott blushed and looked away.  “We need to drop this, Dad.”

“Okay.  Why don’t you come inside and we can open the rest of your presets?  I promise your mother and I won’t say a single uncivil word to each other.  At least, I won’t.  I promise I’ll keep my word to you.”

“Okay.”

Scott got out of the car and shut the door, his hand lingering on the handle.  He didn’t want to leave her.  She might get lonely.

“You know, Dad.  All my other gifts are going to be kind of lame after this one.”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to open this one first.”

They smiled at each other and then stepped inside the house.  There was shouting and squealing and laughing and barking.  Barking?  Scott looked at his dad and he was making another face.

“Damn.  Why can’t you kids wait to be given your presents before opening them?”

Scott ran toward the family room.  His brothers and sister were sitting on the couch and all trying to hold and pet a very excited and squirming chocolate lab puppy.  Scott smiled happily.  He’d wanted a puppy since he was three, but their mother never let them get one.  He stopped smiling and glanced at his mother.  She had her arms crossed over her chest and was looking unhappily at his father.

“You got them a puppy,” she stated.

Scott looked at his father.  “You know, this is looking like you’re trying to buy us.”

His father shrugged.  “I always had a dog growing up.  I like them.  It’s as much for me as it is for them.  I mean, I’ll be the one having to walk and feed it after the first month or two anyway.”

Scott shook his head.  He didn’t want to watch the silent, heated battle that would take place between his parents.  He grabbed the puppy out of his siblings’ arms and they all cried out in dismay.  He sat in the arm chair and put the puppy in his lap.  It licked his face.  Scott let out an ecstatic whimper.  It was so cute.

“Come on, Scott!” Drake cried.  “You have to let us play with Optimus Prime too!”

“His name is SpongeBob,” Ferris contradicted his twin, which he rarely did.

“No, we’re calling him Dumbledore,” Joanna said.

“Well, I hate to break it to you guys,” Scott said as he gently turned the puppy over, “but she might object to those names.”

 

Will

 

Saturday, December 24, 2005

 

Will slouched back in the booth.  He was feeling a little full from the pancakes, hot wings, and milkshake he’d had.  But he might still order a piece of carrot cake.  Carrots were healthy, right?  He rubbed his belly and watched Julian and Chris try to coax a smile out of Scott.  He was still a little upset from the “joke” gift from Julian.  Well, he was probably more upset by their reaction to it, but really, could he blame them?  He wondered where Julian had gotten them from.  Probably the Internet.  Unless the rumors were true and the “magic” shop was really a front for drugs and sex toys.  Julian always shrugged and said he didn’t know when asked after the rumor’s veracity.

He glanced at his watch.  They’d been there for over three hours now, but none of them were in any sort of hurry to leave.  They had no one waiting for them at home.  His parents were going to a business holiday party that was taking place at the Four Seasons in the city.  They’d informed him that since the party would probably run fairly late and they’d already be at a hotel that they would just spend the night in the city.  Meaning they wanted to stay in the hotel so they could have loud, nasty sex.  Will rolled his eyes up into his head and tried not to vomit just thinking about it.  Gross.  Parents should stop having sex once their kids were old enough to know what it was.

The one upside to all that nastiness was that it would leave him free to go see Ken.  And to spend the night with him.  The reason why he hadn’t rushed through opening presents with his friends and run over to his condo as soon as possible was because he couldn’t see him until late tonight.  He had an office party too.  He didn’t understand why companies didn’t have these parties the weekend before Christmas.  It was kind of hard to call it a politically correct “holiday” party when it was taking place on Christmas Eve.

The waiter came by to clear their dishes away.  He wasn’t looking particularly happy anymore.  His buzz must have worn off.  They all looked at each other, trying to decide if they really needed more food.  They decided to give it another half hour and then would check again.  The waiter left, looking resigned to the fact that they might still be there for a while yet.  Scott was looking perky again and Chris had finally stopped fingering his knife while shooting sharp looks at Julian.  That must mean everyone was reasonably recovered enough to focus on him.

“Okay,” he said, putting his palms flat on the table.  “My turn.  What’d y’all get me?”

Chris handed him a standard, clothing sized box and sighed at him.  “It’s not an Atari,” he said.

Will just smiled and started picking the tape off the corners.

“Oh, don’t start that,” Scott groaned.

Will ignored him and carefully unfolded one end of the paper.  Then he started on the other end.  Then he carefully separated the paper where it had been taped together in the middle.  At last he took off the paper in one solid rectangle.  He then folded it neatly and placed it on the table.  His friends were leaning on their hands with their elbows on the table, waiting patiently for Will to finally open the box.

“See,” Julian said, “this is why you put his gifts in bags.”

Chris waved a defeated hand.  Will ignored them all and slid the top off the box.  He carefully pulled back the tissue paper and looked at his present.  It was a button down shirt from Abercrombie & Fitch, so no real surprise, but it was a vibrant Kelly green.  He pulled it out and shook it out to see the whole thing.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been wearing green more,” Chris said.  “I thought you might like it.”

Will grinned.  “I love it.  It’s perfect.”  He wondered how Ken would react if he came home one day and found him on the bed wearing nothing put this shirt.  He forced back his dirty laughter and systematically refolded the shirt the way it was done in the store.  He looked at Chris.  “Thanks, man.  I’m glad you take note of what I wear and stuff.”  He gave him a suspicious and slightly flirty look.  Chris sat up and dropped his jaw in offended disbelief.

“That’s not it and you know it!”

The other two sniggered and Chris crossed his arms in a huff.  Will had finished putting his gift back together (including putting the paper back around it) and set it beside him on the booth.  He placed his palms on the table again.  Next.

“Okay,” Scott prefaced his gift, “I never know what to get you, okay?  You are like the _hardest_ person on the planet to shop for.  So, while I was in the scrapbooking place, I saw this collage photo frame.”

“So, you’re telling me what it is before you give it to me?”

Scott handed him the box but wouldn’t let go when Will tried to take it.

“Please don’t call me gay,” Scott whimpered.

Will pulled the box from his grasp and began to unwrap it, one corner at a time.  Scott kept his eyes covered the whole time.  He really didn’t know what was so gay about a picture frame.  Unless Scott had put a naked picture of himself in it.  Will froze as he had the paper halfway off and glanced sidelong at the blond.  Had he put a naked picture of himself in it as a joke and now it was too late?  Surely not.  He wasn’t that big of a goober.  He turned the box over and looked at the picture on the front.  It was four black rectangles of different sizes held together in the middle without a larger frame unifying them, so it had an asymmetrical look to it.

“It’s nice, Scott.  Why would I think you’re gay?”

“Oh, open it, you twat.  I didn’t just buy you a picture frame.  I’m not that cheap.”

“No, you’re sentimental,” Chris said with a laugh.

Scott gave him a look but didn’t respond.  Will popped the tabs on the top of the box and slid the Styrofoam holder out.  He pulled off the top piece and looked at the picture frame.  It looked like the one on the box, but the pictures weren’t the generic ones that come with all frames.  They were of him.  They were in black and white and depicted him playing soccer.  The top left frame had a picture of him tying his boot on the bench before a game.  The top right one had a picture of him running on the pitch, pointing a finger, and shouting to someone in the heat of play.  The bottom left had one of him taking a shot.  And the last frame was one of him celebrating with his team after a goal.  Julian was in that one as well.  Will smiled as he looked it over.  He looked so cool in these pictures.

“This is really awesome, Scott.”  He smiled at his friend.  “Thank you.”  He looked back at the pictures and saw Julian staring intently at them.  “Though maybe this should have been Julian’s present,” he chuckled.

“Can I have it?” Julian asked with no hesitation.

Will clutched it to his chest.  “No!”  He started to carefully put it back into its packaging, but then he stopped and looked at the pictures again.

“When did you become so good at photography?” he asked Scott.

“Uh…”  Scott embarrassedly rubbed the back of his head with a hand.  “It wasn’t me.  Antoinette actually took those pictures.”

“Whoa!  Creepy!” Julian made a face.

“Yeah, like, stalker,” Chris chimed in.

“You guys.  It’s not like that.  She took them while she was dating Jake.  She would take pictures at the games and Will was in a lot of them because he’s usually the one with the ball.”

“He is a ball hog,” Julian acknowledged.

Will gave him an offended look.

“She just uploaded the pictures onto my dad’s computer when she was over once.  And they were still on there.  Actually, in this one,” Scott said, pointing to the one of Will trying his shoelaces, “I cropped Jake out of it.  She’d taken it of him, but her camera is such good quality that when I blew up the background it still looked good.  So…Um.  I hope you don’t mind that it’s your Calverton uniform.”

Will smiled.  “No, I do enjoy playing with the Calverton team.  They look better than the summer league uniforms anyway.”  He looked at Scott knowing he should leave him alone, especially since he’d gotten him such a nice and thoughtful gift, but he couldn’t help himself.  “Creating an homage to me _is_ a little gay though.”

“Uh!  You promised you wouldn’t say it!”

“No, I didn’t it.”

“And it’s not an homage,” Scott groused.  “It’s a collage.  There’s a difference.”

Will just smiled as he put the frame back in its box.  When it was safe and secure he put his hands on the table and turned to Julian.  Julian was looking at him.  It seemed like he might have been staring at him for quite some time.  He was worrying his lower lip with his teeth, his lip ring getting chewed up too.  It made Will feel a little uneasy.  Julian didn’t look very well.  All the mirth and joy and happiness he’d been exhibiting earlier were practically gone.  Will felt distressed.  Why did he bring out the pain and sadness in his friend?

“So,” Julian said quietly, “I thought a long time about what I should get you.  I wondered if I should just get you a nice present and let it go at that.  But…I had to get you something that…”  He swallowed and then licked his lips.  He seemed nervous.  Why was he nervous?  Will wanted to reach out and touch him, but he stayed put.  “Thanksgiving still bothers me,” he confessed.  “What I did to you…”

He trailed off and Will tried not to look at Chris or Scott to see if they were looking curious or suspicious.  He didn’t want to feed the fire if they already were.  They’d never told Scott and Chris exactly what had happened between them on Thanksgiving.  Will was certain Julian didn’t want them to know what he was capable of and Will just didn’t ever want to think about it again.  It had no place or bearing on their relationship.  It was just some…weird anomaly of character.

Julian shook his head.  “Anyway.  I needed to express my feelings from that day, so I painted.  I tried to put everything I was feeling into it, but it just didn’t come out right.  I must have started over at least three times before I realized that while I thought I was trying to paint something angsty and regretful and repentant, I was actually just painting my feelings for you.  So.  I had to start over again.  And this time, I just painted what came to me.  What you inspired in me.  And…I got this.”

Julian got on his knees and reached behind the booth where it curved out from the wall.  He had been the first one at the Denny’s, so Will had no idea he’d put something back there.  He pulled out a large 2x3 canvass and turned it around for him to see.  He was immediately struck by its beauty, but he didn’t know what to make of it at first.  And then his eyes followed the swirling blues and whites and found that the brushstrokes made patterns of perfectly symmetrical shapes running up and down and across the canvass, occasionally resolving into a green or a red or a yellow, but the colors were so subtle they practically blended into the blue.  Will put a hand to his mouth to stop the sound he was about to make from coming out.  Two tears fell from his eyes and one hit his wrist.  He wanted to look away from the painting, but he couldn’t.  It was supposed to be about him, but all he could see in it was Julian.  At last he managed to close his eyes.  Two more tears fell from his eyes and he kept his hand firmly over his mouth.

“Will.  Are you okay?” Julian asked, his voice trembling.

Will nodded.  “I was so worried.  Part of me thought you meant what you said that day.  And I know in a way you did.  But if that’s how you feel about me…is it really…”

He stopped.  He didn’t want to completely breakdown here.  He sniffed back the tears and lowered his hand while opening his eyes.  He looked at the painting again.

Julian hadn’t responded to his partial question.  Based on the way his chin was shaking he probably couldn’t speak without crying anyway.  Will tentatively reached out took the painting from Julian.  He let out a deep breath filled with relief and happiness.  He’d been worried that Julian would never fully be able to forgive him for letting him get to that point.  For not noticing his pain.  For lying to him.  But being able to actually _see_ how Julian felt about him…he knew that nothing would ever be able to come between them.

Will caught a glimpse of Chris out of the corner of his eye.  He didn’t look uncomfortable at all, but he did look like he was debating whether or not he should leave.  Will and Julian were already wiping away the last of their tears, recovering quickly from the sudden burst of emotion.  It was hard to stay emotional at a Denny’s for one thing.  Will turned to Scott.

“Can you put this beside you?” he asked.

Scott nodded, wiping tears from his eyes as he did so.  Will tried not to smile at his overly sensitive friend.  Chris wasn’t so nice.

“Why are _you_ crying?” he asked.

Scott put the painting down very carefully on the booth and said, “I’m not!”

He used both hands to wipe his eyes dry.  Chris tossed him a napkin across the table and Scott used it to blow his nose.  Will turned to Julian.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

Julian shrugged.  “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

They let out a small laugh together and looked at each other.  This was getting entirely too sappy.

“Geh!” Will proclaimed.  “Hurry!  Someone give me a joke gift!”

“Here, take mine while these two goobs recover,” Chris said.

Chris handed him a flat rectangular object.  _A book_ , he immediately assessed.  He carefully peeled the tape and paper off and read the title.  He stuck his tongue between his lips as he smiled.  _The Mathematics of Marriage_.  He looked up at Chris.

“After our conversation together,” Chris said, “ I thought that this might be the next logical step.”

“What conversation?” Julian asked suspiciously.

“Yeah, what were you two talking about?” Scott demanded to know.

Will gave them looks.  “The hell, guys.  Since when is it weird for us to have a conversation?  We do it almost every day.”

“Heh, heh.  Do it,” Scott snickered.

“Oh, good Lord,” Will sighed as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling.  “Just give me your gift you big loser.”

“Okay!”

Scott handed him a bag.  Will hated bags.  They weren’t fun to open at all.  Especially if they didn’t even have a ribbon tying the two handles together.  And this wrapping job was pitiful.  The item had just been put into the bag and then one wadded up piece of mismatching tissue paper had been shoved on top.  He supposed he couldn’t complain too much; it was just the joke gift after all.  He pulled out the black, faux-leather bag by the plastic handles; it was a toy doctor’s kit.

“I thought you could use it for practice while you’re in college getting ready for med school,” Scott said with a grin.

Will gave him the kind of smile that he hadn’t directed at anyone other than Ken lately.  “Are you volunteering to play doctor with me?” he asked teasingly.

“Sure!” Scott replied, grinning away.

Will stared at Scott, dumbfounded.  He heard the loud smacks as Chris and Julian’s hands hit their foreheads.  Scott lost some of his glee as he looked at them.

“What?” he asked, genuinely confused.

Will didn’t know what to do.  He was certain Scott knew what it meant to play doctor with someone.  Well, at least he always laughed when it came up as a joke, so even if he didn’t actually know what it was, he knew what its connotations were.  Will considered telling him about the little gaffe he’d blundered into, but he’d already been mean to him once today.  He’d let this one go.

“Nothing,” Will said patting his shoulder, and then turned to Julian.

His friend had a picture frame in his hand.  He hadn’t even attempted to wrap it.  Sometimes Julian knew exactly the ways to needle him most.  He scowled at his friend.

“More pictures?  Are they all about me?  Are you guys trying to tell me something?”

“What?  That you’re vain?” Chris asked.

“No, that I’m an awe-inspiring subject.”

“Oh, right.  Wouldn’t want you to think you’re vain.”

Will let the comment slide with no more than a raised eyebrow.  All the same, Chris looked a little concerned.  It was so great.  He’d scared his friends to the point where he didn’t have to actually go through with his threats anymore.  He took the picture frame from Julian and flipped it over.  He looked at the picture and then turned it ninety degrees.  Then he turned it upside down.  Julian took it from him and turned it around to what he assumed must have been right side up.  He couldn’t tell what it was.  It was drawn in crayon on beige construction paper.  Was it cotton candy without a stick?

“What is this?” he asked, looking to Julian for an explanation.

“It’s a picture of a pink elephant.”

“An elephant?” Will laughed looking back at the picture.  It looked nothing like an elephant.  “This is really bad.   Even for a kid.  Is this one of yours?  I thought you could draw better than this when you were in elementary school.”

“I could.”

“So, what’s up with this?”

“This,” Julian announced proudly, “is a Will Harder original circa 1993.  I found it in a box with a bunch of my old stuff.”

Will tried to keep his horror under control.  “Then this isn’t mine,” he denied.  “It’s yours.”

“Nope.  Look here.”

Julian pointed to the bottom of the picture.  The initials WWH were scrawled with a blue crayon.  Will kept his eyes focused on the initials.  In his peripheral vision he could see Scott and Chris silently cracking up.  Yes, Julian knew exactly how to get to Will better than anyone.  He’d framed his failure.  Art: the one thing that had always eluded him in his pursuit to be better than everyone else at everything.  Granted the drawing was from when he was five years old, but it was pretty terrible.  Every five year old knew how to draw an elephant.  Or at least give it ears and a trunk.  Of course.  That was it.  It wasn’t an elephant at all.

“It’s not an elephant,” Will said like he knew exactly what he was talking about.  “I remember doing this.  It’s, like, abstract.”

Julian took the picture from him and removed the back of the frame.  He showed him the back of the construction paper.  The title “Pink Elephant and Brick” had been written on it, by a teacher most likely.  Will flipped it back over and looked at the red blob he’d mistaken for a pool of the cotton candy’s blood.  That must have been the brick.  Scott let out a noise and buried his head in his arms on the table to muffle the sound.  His shoulders were shaking he was laughing so hard.  Chris was in nearly the same condition on the other side of the booth.  Will looked at Julian.  Julian smiled at him and brushed his knuckles lightly against his cheek.

“You can hang it up on the wall next to all your fancy degrees one day.  To help you remember your origins.”

“Oh, believe me.  No matter how hard I try to forget you turds, I’ll never be able to.”

Chris and Scott seemed to find this hilarious.  They finally started laughing out loud.

“An elephant?” Scott gasped.  “I thought it was a naked mole rat with TB or something!”

“Ha!”  Chris thumped the table in his glee.  “I thought it was Krang on the rag!”

Scott howled with laughter.

“What?” Julian asked.  “What you’d say?  Krang?”

“Yeah, you know the slimy brain thing that was Shredder’s sidekick on _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_?”

“No.  I didn’t watch TV as a child, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Will strummed his nails on the table, trying to ignore the cackling hyenas around him.  He looked at the picture again.  He turned it forty-five degrees.  Ah, there it was.  He could see the elephant now.

“No, Will,” Julian said, draping an arm around his shoulders, “it still doesn’t look like an elephant.”

 

Will ground his teeth together as he parked his father’s car in the driveway.  He didn’t even fucking like elephants.  Not even when he was a child.  Why had he drawn one?  Or, attempted to draw one.  Stupid pachyderms.  He’d hated _Dumbo_ too.  What the hell title character didn’t say a single damn word in his own movie?

He unlocked the front door and immediately started formulating a plan.  He needed to go upstairs to get his present for Ken, change clothes, and then head over to Ken’s condo for some quality time with Joyce Greene until Ken got back from his party.  Actually, if he hurried, he might catch him before he left.  Will decided to amend the plan slightly by stopping off in the kitchen for a piece of his grandmother’s fruitcake.  He was regretting not ordering that carrot cake now.  The fruitcake was good, but not great.  What fruitcake was?  But this one was at least edible.  Only his grandmother could make edible fruitcake.  His father had tried her recipe a few times but it never came out quite the same.  He looked around his dark house.  That fruitcake was the only thing Christmassy about it.  His parents didn’t do Christmas.  Neither did either of his grandparents for that matter.  One of them just did fruitcake.

Will heard voices in the kitchen and slowed down as he approached.  Were his parents home?  He paused at the corner to the kitchen and peeked inside.  Then he blinked in surprised and stared.  His father was sitting on the counter leaning back slightly on his hands.  His legs were spread and his mother stood in between them.  His father’s shirt was halfway unbuttoned and his mother was fooling with the remaining buttons, but Will couldn’t tell if she was doing them up or undoing them.  The look on his father’s face as he smiled at his mother…it was just wrong.  Okay, he admitted that parents had sex, but they didn’t have sex like _that_.  His father looked…sexy.  Like he was in control of his mother completely.  Will would never have thought there was any aspect of their relationship that his father would have the upper hand in.

He tried to look away, but he couldn’t.  His parents hinted and implied and teased him about the fact that they had sex all the time, but this was the first time he’d ever had any actual evidence of it.  And it was wrong.  They were old.  They were parents.  They shouldn’t still have _that_ kind of sexual appetite.  Then Will was forced to acknowledge that his father wasn’t that much older than Ken.  In fact, his father and Ken were closer in age than his parents were to each other.  And Ken’s sexual drive was obviously quite healthy.

He could hear that his parents were talking, but he couldn’t make out any words.  His mother leaned forward and kissed his father.  She looked lost in it.  He’d left his eyes open.  When she pulled back he gave her a haughty look and she moved forward a little, pressing in between his legs.  Will’s jaw dropped.  He whipped back around the corner of the hall.  He was freaking out.  _No, no.  Make it stop_.  His cell phone rang.  He spazzed out and desperately tried to get it out of his bag to make it stop.  He didn’t even get a chance to see who was calling him.

“Will?” his mother called out.  “Are you there?”

He froze.  Should he run back to the door like he had just come in?  But he’d been standing so close and his phone had rung so loudly.  He put it in his bag and rounded the corner.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said calmly.

Both his parents were standing on the floor about a foot apart and his father’s shirt was completely buttoned.  If he had walked in on them like this he never would have known that they’d been…he swallowed.

_Don’t think about it._

“Well, that’s good timing.  I was just calling you.”

Will stared at her.  _She’d_ been the one who’d called?  She’d called her son while she’d been molesting her husband?  Did they do that all the time?  How many times had he talked to them on the phone while the other was doing dirty things?  He felt his eyebrow tick in annoyance, but he didn’t want them to know that he’d seen anything, so he forced his features to remain neutral.

“Why were you calling?” he asked, making his way over to the fruitcake.  He was definitely eating a big piece now.  He needed something heavy to keep down the contents of his stomach.  He saw that it was on the part of the counter behind where his father had been sitting.  Could he touch that place ever again?  Could he touch anything in his house anymore?

“I need you to drive us to the hotel tonight,” she said fluffing up her hair.  He glanced at her.  She looked completely normal.  He looked at his father.  He had a small smile on his face that any other time he would have thought meant nothing.  But he knew that smile.  He used that smile himself.  His father was laughing at him.  He turned away from him.  Jerk.  What was so funny about having your son walk in on you being intimate with your wife?

“Why?” Will demanded unwrapping the fruitcake and sliding a knife out of the wood block.  He gave his father a meaningful look as he did and the man’s smile just widened.

“Because parking is expensive.  I called the hotel and it’ll cost nearly $40 to park in their garage overnight.”

“So what?” Will grumbled, chopping through the fruitcake.  “You’re rich.  Just suck it up and pay it.”

“Well, I also want you to come.”

Will turned on her, forgetting a little about the grossness he was experiencing.  “You want me to go your client’s Christmas party?!  No way!”

“You don’t have to stay.  I just want you to meet my client.”

“No, Mom.”

“Will,” she said, using a tone that no longer held as much clout anymore because he’d seen her fawning over someone like a lovesick junior high school kid.

He sighed.  “Do I have to dress up?”

“Yes, please.”

“What time are we leaving?” he asked, looking at his watch.

“Seven o’clock sharp.”

“Well, then we better head upstairs,” his father said, looking at his mother.  “If we want to have enough time to get ready.”

“Enough time?” Will questioned.  “You’ve got like, over four hours.”

He looked up at his parents.  They exchanged looks and then looked back at their son.  Will’s stomach turned.

“Your mother takes a long time to, uh, do her hair.”

He thought he saw his mother try to hide a laugh.  Will dropped the piece of fruitcake in his hand back onto the foil wrapper.  He wasn’t hungry anymore.  He stomped out of the kitchen.

 

Will sat slumped in the backseat of his father’s car as he drove them to the Four Seasons in the city.  He had been forced wear a suit but had refused to put on a tie.  He was going for the dressy casual look.  Fortunately this party wasn’t black-tie; otherwise his mother might have made him wear a tuxedo just to show up and say hi to someone.  He was very unhappy.  He could be snuggled up on Ken’s bed right now with Joyce Greene watching the _A_ _Christmas Story_ marathon on TV.  But no~oo.  He was all dressed up and going to meet a bunch of old boring people.  People even older than Ken.  So that meant they were _old_.  Why did his mother want to show him off?  Usually her husband was good enough.  Then he had to wonder if his client had a daughter or something.  That could be the case.

Will made a point of looking bored and put out all the way from the parking garage to the top floor where the party was being held.  They were in a circular hallway with the main party room being in the center.  As far as he could tell the room would have no windows, but as he glanced inside one set of large double doors he could see that the entire ceiling was a glass dome.  It was pretty cool.  There was elevator music coming from inside the room, and it sounded live.  This client had apparently spared no expense.  There was also some murmuring from people already inside the room.  His parents seemed to be waiting in the hallways, which he didn’t mind.  He didn’t want to have to smile and look pleasant.  Though he wasn’t likely to get any free food out here.

“Ah, Marilyn!”

His mother nudged him and he stopped looking grouchy as a man approached them.  The man greeted his mother with a double kiss and then shook hands with his father.  His mother briefly pointed out that he was her son, but then started to lead the man away saying that she would be right back over her shoulder.  That better not have been the client she had intended to introduce him to.  Will looked at his father.

“Dad.  Why am I here?”

“He has a niece.”

“Oh.  Is she cute?”

“Should you care?  I thought you were in love.”

Will blushed and looked away from his father.  Why had he ever told him anything?  His father ruffled his hair.

“Don’t be so gloomy.”

Will pushed his hand away.  “This is not gloomy,” Will snipped.  “This is something else all together.  Trust me.”

His father smiled at him.  Will made a face in return.

“Oh, Rich!  Can you come here a moment?”

His father held back a sigh.  “Duty calls.”

“What duty?” Will scoffed.  “Trophy husband?”

“Why, yes.  If you’re going to be a trophy husband yourself one day you need to be prepared to take on certain duties including but not limited to making business rivals disgusted and/or jealous.”

Will rolled his eyes.  His father touched him under the chin lightly as he left him.

“That’s what it means to have an older lover.”

Will’s brow creased as he watched him walk over to his mother.  Then they disappeared around the curve of the hall.  Had his father meant that?  Did he think of himself as just a tool for his mother?  He remembered the look he’d given her in the kitchen earlier that day.  No, not a tool.  Closer to a weapon.  And a willing one at that.  Would he be willing to play the part of the pretty trophy boy for Ken?  Yeah, probably.  If he asked him to.

“So.”

Will turned at the voice.  He smiled at Ken, who was by himself.

“Never mind you being somewhere you shouldn’t be.  I see you flirting with a very attractive, older man…I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but it was highly suspicious.”

Will made a slightly distressed face.  “It looked like we were flirting?”

“A little bit.  But I will be calm.  I’m sure there’s an explanation, right?”  He was smiling at him, so he was teasing him.  Mostly.

Will just gave Ken a patient smile.  Ken looked at him for a moment.  And then he looked a little embarrassed.

“Oh.  You’re related to him, aren’t you?”

Will grinned at him.

“Damn.  I feel a little stupid.”

“Only a little?”

Before Ken could retort someone called out this name.  Ken looked over his shoulder to see who was addressing him and then turned back to Will making a face.  “Ugh.  It’s that damn jackass from the merger.  I didn’t even want to invite him; it’s a _company_ function.”

“Did your daddy make you?”

Ken gave him a dirty look before putting on a perfect, pleasant mask and turning around to greet the man as he approached with Will’s parents.  The man was probably older than Ken, but he obviously took care of himself.  He had one of those annoying square-shaped jaws that were usually reserved for lifeguards named Chip.  He wasn’t taller than Ken, and Will could tell that that kind of irritated him.  He had his mother’s arm wrapped around his own and his father trailed slightly behind them.

“Ah, Mr. West, good evening.  This is a fantastic location.  Thank you so much for inviting us this evening.”

“My pleasure, Mr. James.  After all, once you’re merged with Kilton, Banks, and Lowe you’ll be as good as merged with us.”

“I hope so.  Being affiliated with Q*West Enterprises is definitely the boost our company could use.  After all, I only have one Jaguar at the moment.”

They both laughed, but in that I-don’t-like-you kind of way.  Will caught his father’s eye.  He was amused too.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mr. James said, “allow me to introduce you to this striking lady.”  He unwrapped his mother’s arm from his so he could present her to Ken.  “Do you know Marilyn Harder?  She’s acting as our legal representation on this matter.”

Ken and his mother shook hands.  He could tell they were sizing each other up.

“I know her by reputation but have never had the pleasure of meeting her in person.”

“Yes, it is an honor to finally meet the man who nearly cost me a multi-million dollar case.”

“Not for lack of trying,” he smiled politely at her.

They laughed the way he and Mr. James had earlier.  Will raised his eyebrows.  Whoa.  Was his mom always such a bitch?  He guessed that was why she was so good at what she did.  He glanced at his father.  He was looking even more amused.  And if he wasn’t mistaken, a little turned on.  Gross.

“Oh, allow me to introduce you to my husband…”  She trailed off and turned so that he knew it was now time for him to come forward.

“Hello.  William Harder.”

His father stepped up to Ken and held out his hand.  Will watched Ken’s reaction to him as they shook hands.  They held each other’s gaze for a moment and Will saw Ken’s eyes flick down over his father’s body.  He would have been irritated and a little jealous, but it was kind of too ridiculous to bother.  They released hands and his mother moved a hand in Will’s direction.

“And that is my son, Will.  Mr. James’ niece is going to be attending Calverton next year when her family moves here.  I know you’re graduating this year, but I thought maybe you two could talk and you could get her up to speed on the way things work here.”

“I rather imagine they work the same way at every whitewashed prep school in the country.”

The adults all laughed, but his mother gave him a pointed look.

“Well, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind the company over the summer before you leave for school,” Mr. James said.  Will thought, _I might._   “So, I’ll be sure to have my secretary exchange their information with yours,” the man continued to his mother.

They chuckled together and Will saw both Ken and his father try not to roll their eyes.

“So, shall we go in?” Mr. James asked the group.

“Oh, please go in without me,” Ken replied.  “I’m waiting for my parents to arrive.”

“Ah, I see.  Well then, I guess that means I get to escort the most beautiful and intimidating woman into the room all by myself,” he said with a smile to his mother that was just this side of being a leer.

His mother laughed and took his proffered arm.  “Oh, Mr. James.  You’ve already paid for my services; there’s no need for flattery.”

They laughed together as they walked inside the room.  Will looked at where his father had been left behind.  He was running his tongue over a tooth and looking none too pleased.  He dug into his pocket and handed Will his car keys.

“See if you can find a Jaguar on your way out.”

Will gave him a little salute.  “Aye, aye.  Have fun.”

“Hn.  Mr. West.”

“Mr. Harder.”

Ken and his father looked each other over again.  His father looked back at him and smiled before entering the banquet hall.  There were still people milling around in the hallway, but they were more or less alone.  He turned to Ken and was about to speak when Ken grabbed him by the collar and pulled him forward.  Will put out a hand to steady himself, his toes were dragging the floor.  He looked up at Ken.  He was looking a little crazed as he eyeballed him.

“Your mother is Marilyn Harder?  _The_ Marilyn Harder?  The woman responsible for destroying whole companies and making grown men cry in court?”

Will blinked innocently at him.  “You mean The Ball Breaker?”

“Yeh-ss.”

“Um.  Yes.”

He gave him a little shake.  “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“You never asked.”

Ken released him and put a hand to his waist.  Will straightened his coat.

“You never connected our last names?”

“No,” Ken said in such confused disbelief that Will wanted to laugh.  “You two were just in completely different worlds as far as I was concerned.  And I mean.  She seems like the type of woman who wouldn’t take her husband’s name.”

Will laughed.

“And speaking of names,” Ken said giving him a little nudge.  “You never told me you were a junior.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

“Oh.  So, you’re a fancy ‘the Second.’”

“Nope.”

Ken looked perplexed.  “Third?”

Will shook his head.

“Fourth?” his voice had risen in pitch just a touch.

Will laughed again.  “No, nothing like that.  We don’t have the same name.  It’s like this really bizarre tradition going back something like ten generations on my father’s side.  The first born son is named William and his middle name is his mother’s maiden name.  I’m William Wright and my father is William Richmond.  My dad only goes by William for formal occasions.  He usually goes by Rich.”

“Hmm.”

Their conversation ended.  The only thing left to do was grab each other and go at it like a couple of rabbits against the curved wall.  But, they refrained.  Barely.

“Gosh, I’m going to sound like such a hick saying this, but the bathrooms here are amazing!”

Ken turned at the voice and Will looked to see a beautiful woman walking up to them.  She had dark hair and eyes, and there was a slight tint to her skin.  She looked like she might be whatever the heck Jessica Alba was; ethnically speaking of course.  She wasn’t _that_ hot.  Though she was quite attractive in a modestly cut red dress.  She had a nice smile too.  She flashed it at Will when she saw him.

“Hi,” she said.

She was apparently quite friendly too and not terribly concerned about the formality that most people at these functions tried to use in order to be even more snobbish.  She seemed sweet.  And then the bitch hooked her arm with Ken’s.  Will looked at Ken.  The man cleared his throat.

“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed the bathrooms,” he said with a slightly uneasy laugh.

“Oh, shh,” she said, lightly swatting his arm.  “Don’t bring that up.  I thought you were alone.  I didn’t even see him.  Gosh.  I’m so embarrassed being all impressed because someone handed me a towel and there were mints and those blue things you see at barbers to sanitize combs.”

Ken laughed for real this time and they smiled at each other.  Will almost kicked him in the shins.  Ken must have caught his look because he cleared his throat again.

“Um, Angela, this is Will.  Will, this is Angela Moreno.”

Will wasn’t sure if they should shake hands, but she reached out for his, so he felt obligated to return the gesture.  She had a good grip.

“So, does he work for you?” Angela asked, looking amusedly confused.

“Um, yes and no.  It’s very strange.  I just found out my cat sitter is the son of the most feared woman on the Eastern seaboard.”

She laughed and then suddenly stopped, though she was still smiling.  She slapped Ken’s arm again.  She was flirting.  Poorly.

“Oh, don’t say that in front of him.  I’m so sorry,” Angela said.  “He has no manners.”

“It’s okay,” Will shrugged.  “I just won’t clean out the litter box for a month.”

He gave Ken a look to let him know he meant it.  But it wasn’t because of the comment about his mother.  Ken looked distressed.  He hated cleaning out the litter box.

“So, are you parents here yet?” Angela asked Ken.

“No, not yet.”  He checked his watch.  “I wonder where they are.”

“Well,” Will said with a little displeasure in his voice, “I’ve gotta go.  Did you remember to feed the cat before you left?  And if you didn’t are you going to be out late?  If so I can run over and feed her since I’m already out.”

“Oh, wow, that’s very kind of you,” Angela said, smiling away.  “You must really like his cat.  I like her too.  She’s a real sweetheart, isn’t she?”

Will clenched the keys in his hand tightly.  It hurt quite a bit but he was pretty sure he maintained his neutral expression.

“Yes,” he said flatly, his eyes flicking to Ken.  “She’s very sweet.”

Ken looked like he wished that either Will would leave or Angela would shut-up.  Possibly both.

“Um,” Ken said, licking his dry lips, “we shouldn’t be out too late.  I’m sure this party won’t go past eleven or twelve.  It is Christmas Eve after all.  So, I’m sure I’ll be home before too long.”

Will felt Ken’s look was a little too blatant, but Angela didn’t seem to pick up on it.  Will nodded and hoped he wasn’t being as obvious as Ken as he looked back at him.

“Got it.”  He shook himself.  “Well, you two have fun tonight.  I’ll see you around, Mr. West.”

“Goodbye, Will!  It was nice meeting you!”

“You too, Ms. Moreno.”

“Oh, Angela is fine.”

“Angela.  Merry Christmas to you both.”

“And a Happy Hanukah to you too,” she said with a little wink.

“Oh.”  Will felt himself blush just a little.  She really was pretty.  “Sorry,” he said.

She smiled at him.  “Goodnight.”

Will gave them a little wave and then turned and headed for the elevators.  He allowed himself to frown.  Not so much because she was obviously Ken’s date and had been over to his condo before, but because he kind of liked her.  She wasn’t so bad.  Better than Autumn Rose for sure.

When the elevator doors opened a dignified looking man and his wife stepped off the lift.  Will watched them walk elegantly across the hall toward Ken.  Those were Ken’s parents.  Is that what his parents would be like when they were older?  Possibly.  He laughed at the thought and was more than grateful that he was finally on his way to Ken’s and could snuggle up with Joyce Greene.  Which he did on Ken’s bed so that they could watch TV together.  It wasn’t his fault the only TV in the place was in the one room she wasn’t allowed in.  Even so at 11:00 he picked up the large kitten and took her back out into the main room.  He may disobey Ken’s rules, but that didn’t mean he wanted to get busted.  There were some rules Ken had that if Will broke them he was treated to an exasperated lecture followed by a few hours up to a few days of grumbling and dirty looks.

Will didn’t think it had anything to do with him personally or even his age.  He had a feeling Ken would react the same way to any girlfriend or boyfriend of his that broke his rules.  He couldn’t imagine any relationship really succeeding when one of the parties was such an intense control freak.  It worked out between them because Will just really didn’t care that he upset Ken sometimes or that he got scolded for it.  Only someone who was both completely apathetic to being controlled or getting in trouble for not being controlled could deal with that.  Plus, Will thought he was cute when he got all huffy.

Fifteen minutes later he was reading the book he’d found on Ken’s nightstand, sitting Indian style on the couch with Joyce Greene in his lap.  The book was a very old John Grisham novel.  Ken must have been working on it for years.  He really did work too much.  He glanced up as the knob rattled and the door opened.  Ken entered, alone.  Of course.  Will didn’t know why he’d had a momentary concern that Angela would be with him.  Ken smiled when he saw him and walked across the room.  Will started to move the kitten so that he could get up, but Ken crawled over the arm of the couch and stretched out so that he could hug Will.

“Hey, baby.”

He kissed him and Will forgot about the book and the kitten.  The book fell from his fingers and hit Joyce Greene on the head.  She let out an aggravated meow.  Ken pulled back and petted the offended cat.

“Hello, other baby.”

He kissed her on the head and Will started to pet his head.  Ken sighed in pleasure and laid his head beside Joyce Greene in Will’s lap.  It was a little hard to run his fingers through Ken’s hair because of the gel, but if he kept working at it, it would get softer eventually.

“It’s only 11:15.  Lame party?”

“No.  Well, yes.  But my date was called away.”

Will snorted.  “ _Date_.  Feh.”

“Well, at least it wasn’t Autumn Rose, right?”

“I guess,” Will grumbled.

Ken wrapped his arms around Will’s waist and closed his eyes.  He had a small, happy smile on his face.  It made Will happy that it was because of him.

“So, are you going to have a ‘date’ every time there’s some party?”

“For formal occasions it’s expected.”

“Hmph.  Go stag.”

“Mm,” he replied vaguely.

“Or take me,” Will mumbled very softly.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

Joyce Greene stood up and balanced awkwardly on his knee for a moment.  Then she arched her back in a stretch and curled up in a ball beside Ken’s face.  She started purring loud enough for Will to hear her.  Will smiled and continued to pet his lover.

“Is that you or the cat?” he asked.

Ken chuckled and turned his face down.  He said something, but Will couldn’t understand him.  And he was also distracted by the vibration and warmth the movement sent toward his groin.  He pushed on Ken’s shoulder a little.

“Ah.  Can you sit up?”

“Why?” came Ken’s muffled voice; he didn’t move an inch.

“Because.”

Ken raised his head and Joyce Greene fell into the hole made by his legs.  She didn’t seem to notice and continued napping.  Ken suddenly grabbed his face and kissed him hard.  Will was so startled all he could do was let out a soft sound of pleasure and take it.  Then Ken pulled back, smiling happily.  Will wondered if he was a little tipsy.  He couldn’t really taste any alcohol on him, but maybe the taste of champagne didn’t linger like some spirits.

“Wait here,” Ken said.

Then he rolled off the couch and disappeared into his bedroom.  Will let his head fall back onto the couch.

“Joyce Greene, I don’t mean to sound like a pervert, but you might not want to stay in my lap for much longer.”

She twitched in her sleep, but remained where she was.  Ken returned with something behind his back.  Will raised his head and smiled.  Awesome.  Presents.  Ken plopped down onto the couch, practically on top of him.  Will rested his elbow on the back of the couch and began to run his fingers through the hair at Ken’s temple.  As far as he could tell all the hair was still dark and untouched by grey.  That was surprising considering how much stress he put on himself.  He wondered if he dyed it, but then he remembered that Ken’s father still had a dark head of hair with only a little bit of grey streaked through it.  Maybe it was just good genes.

“You let the cat on the bed again?”

“Geh—”

Too late Will tried to play it cool.  He got a slightly disapproving look from Ken, and then the man just smiled and kissed his cheek.

“I’ll have to punish you for that later,” he murmured.

Will’s heart thumped against his chest and he closed his eyes as the words went straight to his lower body.  He swallowed with a little difficulty and decided that even if he wasn’t intoxicated, Ken had definitely had some kind of alcohol tonight.  He felt him pull back and opened his eyes.  He was holding a small box out to him.  Will smiled and took the box.  He shifted a little and settled his shoulder against where Ken’s shoulder met his chest.  Then he began to meticulously unwrap the box.  Ken played with Will’s hair absently while he took his time with the gift.  The innocent stimulus kind of made Will want to hurry up.  Once the paper was off, Will raised his eyebrows at the brand name on the box: Tag Heuer.  Those were fuckin’ expensive watches.  He opened the lid and found a beautiful, silver watch inside with three additional dials on the face.  He hadn’t the slightest idea what those might do.  He’d have to read the manual.

“Oh, my God,” Will said.  “This is beautiful.”

He took it carefully out of the box and put it on.  It was a little loose.  Ken twisted it around Will’s wrist.

“We can have that adjusted.”

Will smiled up at him.  “Thank you so much.  This is awesome.”

“You really like it?”

Will leaned forward and kissed him.  “I love it.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Ken pulled out another box from behind his back.  “Okay, here’s your real gift.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked.  He put a hand over the watch and pulled his wrist away from Ken.  “You can’t have it back.”

Ken laughed at him.  “You can keep it.  I did get that for you, but I have also never forgotten that I am indeed dating a seventeen year old.”

Will scowled and took the box from him.  This one he wasn’t so careful about opening.  He only undid the tape on one side and slid the box out of the wrapping paper.  He stared at the item in his hands for a moment, not believing what he was seeing.

“Oh, my God.  Aaah!”  Will started bouncing up and down on the couch.  Joyce Greene raised her head.  “Oh, my God!  Is this real?”

“Yep.”

Will cackled and hugged his DS Lite to his chest.  “How did you get this?!  These haven’t even been released yet!”

Ken smiled.  “I called in a favor.”

Will leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Ken’s neck.  He hugged him back and kissed his neck.

“See?  I didn’t get this kind of reaction for the watch.”

“Oh, whatever.”

Will pulled back and looked at his new toy again.  He was sorely tempted to open it right then, but he knew he would get absorbed in it for at least a couple hours, so he reluctantly set it on the coffee table.  He was about to reach down and get Ken’s gift where he’d hidden it behind the end of the couch, but Ken pulled him close and kissed him.  Will responded and before too long hands started to roam.  Will pushed back on him a little.

“Mm.  Wait.  You need to open your present.”

Ken actually looked a little surprised.  “You got me a present?”

“Well, of course.”

“Oh.”  He brushed the back of his knuckles down Will’s cheek.  “But what do you get the man who has everything he ever wanted?”

Will blushed and felt his heart attempt to break its way through his chest.  He started to take deeper breaths to ensure that he got enough oxygen.  Looking at Ken’s beautiful face, staring into his loving eyes, he felt that sense of perfect, crushing love again.  He loved this man so much it hurt.  He dropped his eyes so that he could get himself under control again.  When he felt reasonably calm he reached back to get the gift.

“Exactly!” Will stated like he was irritated.  “Rich people are impossible to shop for.  It was really hard to find one, so you better appreciate it!”

“I’m sure I will,” he said, his voice just a touch patronizing.

Will made a face at him.  “I like, even went online to one of those gift search engines to try to get ideas.  But you know what all the suggestions are for thirty-something boyfriends?”

“Dinner of the month club?”

“They’re all pervy games!”

He smiled.  “What do you mean?”

“Like, a board game where you strip and do dirty things to each other as you play!”

“Oh!”  Ken laughed.  “Was there a wide selection?”

“Quite,” Will said impertinently.  “So, it was completely useless!  Well.  Not completely.  I did find this.”

Will handed him the box.  Ken raised an eyebrow at it.

“It’s not dirty,” Will sighed in annoyance.

Ken laughed softly at him and took the box.  Unsurprisingly, he was an undo every piece of tape individually kind of un-wrapper too.  It made Will feel less like a tool for always making his friends wait on him.  It also meant he and Ken were a good match.  It was true that opposites attracted, but you had to have _some_ similarities, otherwise it was just a mess.  That was why Chris and Karen would never work out.  While he waited for Ken to work on the other side of the box, he pondered if Chris was going to stay firm in his resolve to not date Karen or give in to it.  He supposed that all depended on whether or not that little sophomore would put out.  Sex was one of the three primary motivators in life.  At last Ken got the paper off.  He turned the box around to look at it.  Will watched him as he tried to figure out what it was.  It looked like a model sports car, but it was small and kind of funnily shaped.  Then he must have read the label on the box.  He broke into a grin.

“This is a computer mouse?”

“Yep.”

“Ha!  That’s so funny!  I didn’t even know they made stuff like this.  So, does it need software, or does it just plug in?” he asked turning the box over.

“It has a USB connector with a wireless signal.”

“Oh, that’s clever.  So, I could use this for my notebook very easily.”  He looked at the front again and laughed.  “This is so funny.  A sports car mouse.  I love it.”

“Don’t fake it,” Will intoned admonishingly.

“I’m not!  I am going to use this.  I may be a micromanaging workaholic, but I will use this mouse in front of all my colleagues and clients.  Even my dad.  I love cars.  And now, I can think about them even when I’m working.”

“That’s a little scary, you know?”

“Yeah.  A little.”

Will laughed in spite of himself.  He never liked to encourage Ken into thinking that he was funny.  He quickly schooled his features and tried to look irritated again.

“Unfortunately I can’t buy you a real car.”

Ken was reading the back of the box, but he made a face at his comment.  “I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Why not?”  Will winced internally.  His tone had been a little bratty.

“Because.  Cars are very personal things.  I generally don’t buy premade cars anyway.  They’re all custom built.”

“Wow.”  Will processed that.  “I mean, wow.  Seriously, this obsession is kind of news to me.  Maybe I should reevaluate some things here.”

Ken looked at him with a scolding look.  “Now, Will.  Any man that owns an Aston Martin has a love of cars that is unhealthy.  It’s just one of those accepted facts of the Universe.”

“I see.”

Ken put the mouse on the coffee table and then picked Joyce Greene up out of Will’s lap.  He settled her in his and began to stroke her back.  She stretched out in his lap, just the tip of her tail flipping back and forth.

“Thank you, baby.  I really appreciate it.”

“Unh-hunh.  You’re probably wishing I got you one of those pervy games instead.”

“I do not,” Ken chuckled, running his fingers through Joyce Greene’s fur.  Will felt a flash of irrational jealousy toward the cat.

“Well, even so, I got you one anyway.”

Ken looked up at him and he dangled a small, red felt bag from his fingers.  He could see a lot of thoughts and possible reactions whirring around in Ken’s brain.  He was obviously trying to pick the one that wouldn’t piss him off.  He finally went with a small smile and said, “What is it?”

Will was a tad disappointed with that reaction.  He was too rational for his own good.  Will undid the drawstring of the bag and dumped the contents out into his hand; it was four dice.

“Well, you roll the dice.  And they tell you what to do.”

Ken reached out and took one of the dice from him.  He began to read the sides aloud.

“Hmm.  Kiss, lick, suck, bite, rub…Oh my.”  He smiled at Will.  “Insert?”

Will smiled back at him.

“I take it one of those other dice tell you on which body part to perform this action?”

“Yep.”

“Oh my,” he repeated.  “So, what are those other dice for?”

“I’m not sure,” Will said looking at them.  “I haven’t read the instructions.  But I think one is for like putting time limits on an action or disrobing instructions and the other I think is for adding condiments or something.”

“Like catsup?” Ken asked, looking perplexed.

Will gave him a look.  “Like, whip cream.”

“Oh, right.”

“Catsup?  You freak.”

“What?  You said condiment.  Condiment means catsup to me.”

They were quiet for a moment.  Ken petted the cat and Will jiggled the dice in his hand.

“So, wanna give it a try?” Will asked.

“Yeah,” Ken said, holding out his hand for the other die.  Will gave him the one with the body parts and put the other two on the coffee table.  Ken was rolling the dice in his hands like he was in a bad casino movie.  Then he gave them a little blow.  Will rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.  Then Ken let them go.  It was kind of a wild throw and one landed on the seat cushion in between them and the other bounced on top of the back of the couch and then fell onto the floor behind it.  They took no notice of the one that had fallen because the one on the couch read: organ.

“Well,” Ken stated.  “Now that’s a start.  So.  What am I supposed to do?”

Will swallowed a little tightly.  “Check,” he said, nodding his head toward the back of the couch.

“I can’t.  The cat’s in my lap.  You check.”

“Oh, yeah right.  Like I’m bending over this couch to look.  Pervert.  You look.”

“Oh, fine,” Ken said, feigning exasperation.  He picked the cat up and wisely put her on the floor rather than handing her to Will.  He leaned over the back of the couch.  “Well.  That’s interesting.”

“What?  What’s it say?” Will demanded.

Ken sat back on the couch holding the die.

“Wait, you picked it up?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then it doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because all I’ll have is your word for what it says.  Like I trust you.”

“Uh!”  Ken pouted at him.  “That hurts, Will.”

“Whatever.  Just roll again.”

“Fine.”

Ken rolled the dice in a more controlled manner and released them gently onto the couch cushion.  They read: Kiss Lips.  Ken smiled.

“Now that’s a good start.”

Will smiled and started to lean forward, blocking Joyce Greene as she attempted to jump back up onto the couch.  Ken put his hand on Will’s face and pushed him back.

“Wait a minute.”

“For what?” Will growled.

“Well, what does this mean?  I mean, I rolled the dice, so is this what I get to do to you, or what you get to do to me?”

“Um.  I’m not sure.  I really didn’t read the instructions.  Actually, I don’t think it came with any now that I think about it.  So, I guess we can decide whichever one we want.  Will you get your hand off my face?!”

“Huh?  Oh, sorry.”  Ken moved his hand.  He was obviously putting way too much thought into this game and not getting the point of it at all.  “Which would you prefer?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.  Just think about the difference of rolling the dice and then knowing what you get to do to me versus rolling the dice and then seeing what I get to do to you.  It seems more fun the latter way.”

“Okay.  We’ll do it that way then.  Geez.  You are such a loser.”

Will moved forward and wrapped his arms around Ken’s neck.  He pressed his lips lightly to Ken’s thinking about just giving him a chaste little smooch to aggravate him, but he wanted more himself.  He opened his mouth and Ken followed suit.  He wondered if it would be cheating if he put his tongue in his mouth because that was technically “licking.”  Well, he didn’t think it was cheating.  Ken could contradict him if he felt like it.  He rose up on his knees so that he could push down into Ken, forcing his head back.  This kiss was deeper than the first couple had been this evening, and now Will could detect the slight tanginess of the champagne he’d had.  The taste excited him.  Ken was always a little more aggressive when he’d had something to drink.  Will pulled back, but before he left him completely he kissed his upper lip and then his lower, and then gave a quick peck to both.  He sat back on his heels and smiled.

“I like this game already.”

Ken licked his lips and didn’t really seem like he’d understood Will’s words.  He shook his head a little and then took in a deep breath.

“You know, sometimes I forget how much of a slut you were before you met me.”

“Wha—?!  What- _ever_.”

Will snatched the dice off the couch.  He started to rattle them around wildly in his hands, griping to himself about how Ken was such a bigger slut than he was or would ever be.  Ken had definitely had more sexual partners than he’d had.  So what if he’d made out with more people than Ken had?  That didn’t make him a slut.  It made him popular.

“So…” Ken started, watching Will really shake the dice around.  “What happens if you get something like, ‘insert nipples’?  What does that mean?”

Will shrugged.  “Roll again?”

He let the dice go and they bounced on the cushions a couple times before settling.  Joyce Greene jumped up on top of them.  She turned one of the die over.

“Ooo, look what it turned in to!” Ken said.

He reached forward and started to grab Will.

“Hey!  That’s cheating!  That’s not what it said!  You have to do what it—ah.  Nn.  Y-you’re such a cheaterrrr—Nm.  Ken.  St-stop.  Ah.  Oh, God.”

 

Sunday, December 25, 2005

 

The bunnies were sleeping.  They looked completely worn out.  Sated even.

Will’s eyes fluttered open.  There was sunlight in the room, so it must be morning, but he didn’t feel like he’d gotten very much sleep.  Why had he woken up?  He turned his head and tried to go back to sleep.  As he did so he realized he’d laid his cheek back down on Ken’s chest.  He allowed himself to feel the rest of his body to see where he was in relation to Ken.  He was on top of him.  Completely.  He smiled to himself.  This was odd.  He rarely ever just stretched out on top of Ken and went to sleep.  And even if he did, by morning he was usually pushed to the side because breathing became an issue for his lover.

He was startled out of his peaceful drift back into sleep by loud banging coming from the front of the apartment.  Or at least, he thought that was where it was coming from.  It was possible it was down the hall or next door or something.  Was someone putting together a new piece of IKEA furniture?  No, that was ridiculous.  The people who lived here were too pretentious to shop at IKEA.  Regardless of where the furniture came from, it was none of his concern.  He closed his eyes again.

“What is that?” Ken asked.

Will giggled because the vibrations from Ken talking tickled all the way down his body.  He figured Ken would stop caring in a moment and go back to sleep too, so he didn’t bother to respond.  Then the man sat up, forcing Will to slip to the side.  He made a noise of disgust.

“Is that the door?” Ken asked.

“Who cares?” Will grumbled.

He felt Ken lean over to look at his nightstand clock.

“Jesus Christ.  Who the fuck is that at 8:00am on Christmas morning?”

“Whoa,” Will mumbled, hooking his arms around a pillow and pulling it close.  “You slept past 6:30?  I might die of shock.”

“Well, I was up until 4:30,” he replied dryly.

Will smiled and hugged his pillow tighter.  “Mmm.”  He opened one eye and saw Ken sleepily rubbing his eyes.  “Did you ever find that other die?”

Ken laughed softly.  “Nope.”

The banging started again.

“Geh.”

Will blinked.  Had Ken just made that noise?  He hadn’t realized he’d rubbed off on him so much.

“Look, it’s probably Rylan,” Will groused.  “Just ignore him.”

“No.  If it were Rylan he would have just walked in.  He does have a key.”

“Ye-ah, about that…” Will started, a touch acidly.

“Well, I better I check to see who’s at the door,” Ken changed the subject and hopped out of bed.  He searched around the room for a moment before finally opening a bureau drawer and getting out a clean pair of underwear and a T-shirt.  He slid into them and then walked out of the bedroom.  Will cuddled up with his pillow again.  It was soft, but that’s not what he wanted.  He wanted solid and warm.  He wanted Ken.

He was very nearly asleep again when the bedroom door banged against the wall and Ken ran in whisper-yelling frantically.

“Get up!  Get up!”

“Eh?” Will said, lifting his head.  He’d almost forgotten where he was and was a little disoriented.  He turned toward the noise and saw Ken holding all their clothes in his arms and picking up anything he found on the bedroom floor.  He ran to the closet and threw everything inside.  Now Will was a little more awake and a lot more concerned.  Ken didn’t just throw things into his closet.  His lover ran back over to him and grabbed him.  Will yelped as he was dragged across the bed and then thrown over Ken’s shoulder.  The man carried him to the closet and dropped him off inside.

“Sorry, baby.  But stay here and be quiet.”

He started to shut the door but Will put out a hand.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Ken closed his eyes and sighed heavily.  “My parents and sister are here.  My mom wants to take us all out for Christmas brunch.”  He opened his eyes again and looked a little ill.  “They might want to stay and chat for a little while first though.  Hopefully you won’t have to be in here too long.”

Will didn’t know how to react at first.  Then he figured he could flip out about it later with Ken.  For now, he needed to be rational.

“So, where’s my DS Lite?  I can stay in here all day if you need me to as long as I have that.”

“It’s in the pile of clothes somewhere.”  Ken started to shut the door and then stopped.  “Could you straighten that—”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

Ken shut the door and Will put his hands on his hips.  Then he looked down.  He was still frickin’ naked.  He grumbled and started to dig through the mess to find his underwear.  He put them on and one of Ken’s dress shirts.  A clean one too, just to piss him off.  Though he didn’t know why he was being mean to his lover.  It wasn’t his fault his parents had come over.  And Will certainly wouldn’t have reacted any differently if it had been _his_ parents.  Plus, Ken had a lot more to lose if his parents found out about them.  He resigned himself to some time in the closet, but that would be cool.  He really wanted to play with his DS Lite, and now he had an excuse that wouldn’t make Ken feel bad that he’d chosen that over snuggling up with him after breakfast on Christmas morning.  He made a face as his stomach growled.  Why had he made himself think of food?

He decided to focus instead on his new toy.  He briefly flipped through the manual, but he didn’t really care what it said.  He threw it aside and started taking the console out of its plastic wrapping.  Before long Will slowly came to the sickening realization and acceptance that the DS Lite didn’t come with any games.  Nor was it pre-charged.  He sighed.  So, he had a DS Lite, but he’d have to wait several months until the release date before he could actually use the stupid thing.  And as for now, he had nothing else to do.  He supposed he could go through Ken’s closet, but he doubted there was anything in it but organized clothing.  He just didn’t have or keep… _stuff_.  He was quite safe from ever being called a packrat.  So, Will sat down on the floor and started reading the manual for his new toy.  If nothing else he would really know how to use the thing when he was finally able to start playing with it.  He wasn’t really sure how much time passed, but he was more than halfway through the manual before he started to think that this little “pre-brunch chat” sure was taking a while.  Maybe they had left and Ken hadn’t had the chance to come back and tell him.  But, wouldn’t he have had to open the closet to get dressed?  He tried to remember if there was a suit or some other clothes hanging in the bathroom or in the laundry room.  What if he was sitting in the closet all by himself for no reason?  But what if he went to go check to see if people were still around and they were?  Ken would murder him.  Probably claim he was some street urchin who had crawled in off the streets and was trying to rob him.

“Feh,” Will groused to himself.

The closet door opened.  Will looked up and stared.  He didn’t know what else to do.  There was nowhere to hide.  No way to try to look casual and like he normally hung out in stranger’s closets.  The woman didn’t seem to know what to do either.  She just stared right back at him.  She was pretty and curvy with wavy, honey blonde hair to her shoulders.  She didn’t look much like Ken.  She had an oval face and a differently shaped nose and lips.  But her eyes were the same dark blue.  They weren’t as pretty as Ken’s, but he could tell they were related just from the eyes.  Will wasn’t sure if he should say something or just wait for her to slowly back away and shut the door.  He was a little surprised when she smiled smugly at him.  The expression was slightly irritating because it was kind of like the same patronizing little smile Rylan often gave him.

“So,” she said, her voice pleasant, but lower and huskier than he’d expected.  “You must be the reason Ken’s been so happy lately.”

“And you must be his sister.”

“Yep.”

She was grinning now and he could see her eyes flicking over him as she took him in.

“How’s the appendix?” he asked.

“Missing,” she replied.  She leaned against the closet door and tilted her head as she looked at him.  Then she put her lips together and nodded approvingly.  “Not bad.  Not bad at all.  But…how old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Hmm.  Way to go, little brother.”

Will smiled in spite of the situation.

“So.  Well.  We’re going to go to brunch soon.  So, it looks like you’ll have to spend Christmas alo—oh!”

Will started as she suddenly cried out and pointed a finger at him.

“Clever, clever boy!  If you’d said eighteen I would have known it was a lie immediately.  But, since you said nineteen why would I question that?  Sure, you look young, but you wouldn’t try to stretch it too far.  How old are you really?”

Will smiled nervously.  “Uh…”

“Come on, come on.”  She smiled sweetly at him.  “You can tell Auntie Kennedy.”

Will closed his eyes for a moment and put his hand in the air.  He looked back at Ken’s sister.

“Wait a minute.  Your parents named their kids Kennedy and Kendall?”

“Ooo.  He told you what Ken is short for?  Must be love.  But don’t change the subject.  How old are you?”

“Almost eighteen.”

“Almost, eh?  Oh, my.”  She sighed wistfully as she looked him over again.  “I want one.”

Will grinned.  Ken’s sister was kind of fun.  And she was helping to explain parts of his personality.

“It’s just no fair,” she pouted.  “He always did date hotter men than me.”

“Um.  Maybe a silly question at this point, but, you know that he’s gay?”

“Oh, please.  I’m not an idiot.”

Will laughed softly in amazement.  “He doesn’t know you know.”

“I know.  I let him think that.  It makes him think he’s happier that way.  But anyway, I was just supposed to be running to the bathroom quickly.  I really just wanted to come in here and rearrange some of his shoes.”

She snickered evilly and Will laughed.  Then he immediately covered his mouth with a hand.  Kennedy West gave him a playfully admonishing look and shushed him.

“I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be though.  Our mother is trying to make his apartment more ‘women friendly’ so that it won’t scare off his dates.  Bah!  Like Spartan decorating and masculine colors are what drives them away.”

Will rolled his lips in and just stared at the woman.  Ken’s quirks made so much more sense now if he’d grown up with this.  He’d probably been beaten up every day of his life.

“Anyway.  So, if you want to entertain yourself, there should be a green box somewhere on one of these shelves.  You should look through it.”

“Um, okay.”

“But not the red one, kay?  Green means go, red means no.”

“Got it.”

“Okay.  Well, I hope to see you again sometime.”

“Uh, yeah.”

She started to leave but then came back.  “Oh, how rude of me.  What’s your name?”

“Will.”

“Well, it’s nice meeting you, Will.”

She started to shut the door again, but then she came back in.

“That cat.  Was that because of you?”

“Um.  Yes.”

“I thought it was.  Well, I thought it was because of some significant other.  Did you just want him to get you one because your parents never let you have one?”

“Um.  Well, I wanted him to get her to give me an—well.  It’s complicated.”

“I bet.”

She looked him over again before giving him another smile and finally leaving and shutting the door.  Will let out a long breath.  Whoa.  He contemplated this meeting.  His immediate first impression was that he liked Ken’s sister.  She seemed very straight forward and unafraid to voice her thoughts and opinions.  She was also a good person in general if she paid enough attention to her brother to know when he was happy or not.  She would make a good sister-in-law.  He covered his face with his hands and flopped backwards as he laughed at himself.  He was really insane.  Truly and completely insane.  And that was Ken’s fault.

He moved his hands and stared at the yellowy light coming from the fixture on the ceiling.  It must be the one bulb in the entire condo that wasn’t a compact fluorescent.  The man loved green so much he wanted it even in its metaphorical form.  Then Will saw something pushed into the corner of the shelves above his head.  It was covered by neatly folded sweaters, so he never would have seen it if he hadn’t been below it.  He rolled to his stomach and looked up at it.  It looked like a green box.  Why had his sister told him to look in that?  It was to entertain him she’d said, but he certainly didn’t trust her.  She was too much like Ken.  He stood up and decided his curiosity would win out eventually, so he pulled the long, thin, light-weight box off the shelf.  He sat back down on the floor and shook the lid gently to get it to slide off the box.  He looked inside.  It looked like it was full of photographs.  Hmm.  So Ken wasn’t a neat freak, perfectionist in one way at least: no photo albums or scrapbooks.  Just a box.

Will used a finger to sort through some of them.  The pictures seemed kind of old and appeared to be of a family doing various things.  Two parents and a boy and a girl.  Will picked up a black and white picture of a fat baby in a sailor outfit.  It dawned on him what these were.  These were Ken’s family pictures.  And this ugly, chubby baby was…Will turned the picture over: Kenny, 6 months old.  Will flipped it back over.  He covered his mouth with a hand to keep the laughter in.  Ken’s sister had told his boyfriend where all his embarrassing baby and childhood pictures were.  Man was she evil.

He picked up another picture.  Then one had a skinny straw-haired girl of about five trying to hold a big one year old baby.  She was grinning and one tooth was missing. The baby was cross eyed and looked like he was either trying to poop or burp.  Possibly both.  Will rolled onto the floor in a fit of silent giggling.  He’d never thought of Ken as anything other than cool, mature, and beautiful.  It was awesome that he’d been such a gawky, funny-looking baby.  He dug around through the photos some more and found that once Ken had lost his baby fat around four years old, he’d gotten rail thin.  He was actually quite scrawny as a child, but most of the pictures were of him playing outside in a park or on a boat; his sister was usually close by.  Seeing his childhood body type made Will realize that Ken probably would still be scrawny if he didn’t make a concerted effort to go to the gym for at least an hour four days a week.

Will also looked on a little jealously as Ken seemed to progress through puberty with no awkwardness or acne (though he was still skinny as a rail).  Even he had been looking a little gross and greasy when he’d been in middle school.  Or maybe Ken had just not saved any of those pictures.  That was entirely possible.  Then he found pictures of him at high school age.  He’d apparently filled out some and gotten less scrawny.  Either that or he’d started going to the gym.  Maybe he’d played a sport in high school.  Will made a mental note to ask.

Most of the pictures were group photos, and Ken was always surrounded by six or seven people.  Often times there were more girls in the pictures than boys.  There was one girl in particular who made several repeat appearances.  In one picture Ken was even holding her hand.  Ah, the poor thing.  The girl he’d dated in high school to cover up his gayness.  Well, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.  He also noticed that in none of the pictures, even the ones that looked like they had been taken at school, neither Ken nor his friends were wearing uniforms.  Had Ken gone to a public school?  Interesting.

Finally he came across a photograph that was a close up of Ken by himself.  It looked like a school picture, possibly for senior year since he was wearing a tie.  Will looked closely at the picture.  It looked like Ken.  One would easily be able to match this picture to a current one but…he looked so young.  This is what Ken looked like when he’d been Will’s age.

Was he attracted to him?  Would they still have gotten together?  It seemed unlikely without the bizarre circumstances of their meeting pushing things forward between them.  It was just so strange.  He honestly didn’t know the kid in the picture.  He loved who he had turned in to, so he supposed in a way he did love the seventeen year old Ken too.  He put the picture back in the box and was about to put the lid back on when he saw a photo sticking partway out from the pile toward the bottom.  He pulled it out.

It was a shot of a vintage, red Mustang.  Someone older probably could have told him exactly what year it was, but he couldn’t tell just from looking.  It was clean and shiny and looked very pretty.  And leaning against it in jeans and a black tank top was teenager Ken.  Will could tell he was trying to be cool as he posed with his car, but his smile was closer to a grin than a cool street racer guy.  Will turned the picture over.  Written on the back was March 15, 1989.  Will didn’t even have to do the math.  It was Ken’s sixteenth birthday.

“Ah, so that’s how it began,” Will murmured.

He thought about that.  1989.  He’d been one year old.  Ken was getting his first car and he was still in diapers.  Weird.

He turned the picture back over.  His eyes were immediately drawn to the figure at the car.  Will ran his thumb over the image, taking in the lean muscles, narrow hips, and youthful face.  Again, it was unmistakably Ken, but not the one he knew.  But this stranger…this stranger Will was definitely in love with.  He fingered the picture and swallowed.  He was suddenly very thirsty.  No, not thirsty.  He started to reach a hand between his legs to encourage the tingly feeling he was getting, but then froze when he remembered he and Ken weren’t alone in the condo.  He cleared his throat and set the picture aside.

“Simmer down,” he quoted Chris’ favorite expression to himself as he put the lid back on the box.  He stood up and slid it back under the sweaters.  As he did so he saw that there was another box on the shelf.  This one was red.  Why had Kennedy not wanted him to look at this one?  He tapped his fingers on the green box for a moment and then pulled out the red one.  Oh, well.  If it was something unpleasant he’d just have to accept the responsibility for the consequences.

He sat down on the floor again and opened the box.  It was just more pictures.  Though most of them were of some young man that Will didn’t recognize from the high school pictures.  Then there was a picture of him and Ken standing side by side wearing T-shirts that read “Stanford University.”  That’s where Ken had gotten his MBA.  This guy must be his roommate or a friend from school or…Will blinked at the next picture.  Ken and the stranger were kissing.  Ah.  So, this was an ex-boyfriend.  Maybe that was why Kennedy hadn’t wanted him to see it.  From the closeness and angle of the shot, Will guessed that the stranger was holding the camera.  At least there wasn’t a third party witness to this.  He turned the picture over, but the back was blank.  So, he couldn’t get a name.  Will tossed the picture back into the box (front side down) and looked at the stranger more closely in another picture.

He was cute.  Ish.  But Will didn’t really feel jealous because he was much better looking.  And this poor guy had probably gotten shafted pretty badly.  These were post college mid-twenties guys.  Hanging out, having fun.  Dating.  Doing…things.  And Ken had probably told him he was never coming out of the closet so they couldn’t be together forever and they’d had a huge messy breakup.  Or then again, maybe Will was letting his imagination run wild.  It was entirely possible they had broken up because Ken had moved back to the east coast.  But what if they hadn’t broken up?  What if he was just the guy Ken fooled around with when he was in California on business trips and didn’t have access to his Blue Boys?  Will felt his eyebrow tick in anger.  He’d kill him if he kept old lovers stashed around the country like an emergency gay attack kit.  But then, that could be his imagination again.

Will tossed all the pictures of the ex-boyfriend (because he obviously had to be an _ex_ ) back into the box and dug around to see if there was anything else of interest.  He saw a few pictures of what looked like a college dorm room.  This had to be from when he was at Dartmouth.  He found a picture of Ken wearing the T-shirt Will had now claimed for his own.  He looked adorable.  He so wanted him.  Like, right now.  Then he saw a picture of Ken and a girl as she sat on his lap at his desk.  There was no computer on it.  Geez, his boyfriend _was_ old.  The girl was laughing and had an arm draped possessively around Ken’s neck.  Ken was smiling, but he had a weird expression on his face that Will couldn’t quite interpret.  And his eyes weren’t quite on the girl.  They were focused somewhere not included in the picture.  Then Will noticed a mirror behind Ken. He brought the picture close to his nose and strained his eyes to see what the mirror was reflecting.  There was a guy sitting on the lower bed of a set of bunks.  He had his arm up and his hand curled into a loose fist while he used his tongue to push out his cheek: the universal pantomime for sucking dick.  The picture didn’t show the person’s features clearly at all but Will had no doubt that it was Rylan.  And now Will could interpret the expression on Ken’s face: amusement and irritation.

Will shook his head.  That poor girl.  Yet another one to fall prey to Ken’s desperate need to hide his homosexuality.  He really wondered how Ken had been friends with someone like Rylan all these years and had never been forced to come out of the closet.  Rylan was the kind of man who would tell someone else’s secret and then say it was for his own good that it was out.  The fact that Rylan had been willing to keep Ken’s secret must mean he really cared about him.

“Feh.”

His one good quality: he had enough sense to like Ken.  Will dug around the box, hoping to find a better picture of Rylan.  He was curious to see what he looked like younger.  Rylan just seemed like the kind of person who had been born as a sour, sex-addicted thirty year old man.  The most he could manage to find was a picture of Ken’s mom holding a box on what looked like either move in or move out day from the dorm room.  In the background Rylan was taking something off the wall.  He was shirtless.  And Ken was leaning on a desk; his eyes glued to Rylan’s chest.  That one turned his stomach a little, and once again they were so far in the background it was hard to distinguish much of Rylan’s features.

Apparently the red box had pictures of all the things that might give him away as a gay man.  Maybe the pictures of Rylan were in another box.  Will grumbled as he put the lid back on the box.  Why weren’t there any pictures of _him_ in the red box?  Then he had to wonder, had Ken ever taken a picture of him?  Had they ever been in a picture together?  Not that he could remember.  He made another mental note to bring his camera for the next time he saw him.  But for now, the picture with the hottie next to the sports car would have to do.

He’d just finished rearranging the sweaters back over the boxes exactly as he’d found them when the door to the closet opened.  Ken came in and shut it firmly behind him.  He was wearing pants now, but only the T-shirt he’d pulled out earlier.  He looked stressed to the point of breaking.

“What’s up?” Will asked.

“I have to get dressed.”  Saying that seemed to help him somewhat.  He started to pick out a dressy outfit to wear for his family’s outing.

“So, brunch?” Will asked.

“Yes.  We all have to go and celebrate Christmas or something.  I don’t know.  I think my mom is just depressed that she doesn’t have any grandkids.  Oh my God.  I’m about to die.  All I can think about is that you’re right behind a thin little wall.  I’m freaking out.  Are you wearing one of my _clean_ shirts?”

“Yep.”

Will sidled over to him and hugged one of his arms.  He didn’t complain that it hindered his ability to button his shirt.

“Can I have this?” Will asked, showing him the picture of teenaged Ken showing off his new vintage car.

“What?  Sure, whatever.”

He reached over to his rack of ties, not caring or much noticing that Will was still attached to him.  He managed to tuck in his shirt, get his pants zipped up, and get his tie tied all without the full use of his left arm.  When he was done he turned to Will and captured him in a desperate kiss.  Will was left stunned and breathless when Ken pulled away.

“Sorry, baby,” he said as he put on his shoes.  “I don’t want to leave you alone on Christmas.”

“It’s okay.  I’ll see myself out.”

Now that he was fully dressed Ken turned to Will and put his hands on his waist.

“And when did you go through my stuff?” he asked, indicating the picture in Will’s hand with a nod of his head.

“Your sister told me to.”

Will kept his expression neutral.  He waited for his words to sink in.  Ken just stared at him.  Will was wondering if he was going to have to say something like “ _She_ said it was okay,” in order to get the point across.  But then Ken took a small step forward.

 _“What?!”_   He tried to lower his voice.  “My sister saw you?” he rasped.

“Yep.  Oh, and she totally already knew that you’re gay.”

He just stared at him, his jaw slightly ajar.  Maybe Will shouldn’t have mentioned it after all.

“Kenny!”  That had to be his mother.  “Hurry up, dear.  We’ll miss our reservation!”

“I thought no one called you Kenny anymore,” Will smirked.

Ken was still too shell-shocked to respond to his teasing.

“That’s right, Ken,” his sister called out in a sing-song voice.  “It’s time to come out of the clos~et!”

That brought him out of his stupor.  He looked royally miffed.  He stomped forward and threw the door open.

“Kennedy!” he hissed.

Will peeked his head out of the closet.  Only his sister was in the room and the bedroom door was shut.  Ken marched right up to her, but he was too angry to get any words out.  Kennedy just ignored him and pretended to adjust her outfit.

“So, I met your toy over there.  Oh, excuse me.  Boyfriend.  He’s cute, little brother.  Well done.  Well done indeed.”

“Kennedy!”

“Yes?” she said, finally looking up at him with a sweetly innocent smile.

“How the fuck long have you known?”

“Since you were eight.”

Will snickered.  Ken turned to him and pointed a warning finger at him.

“Shut it.”

“Now, now,” his sister scolded him.  “Be nice to him.  _You’re_ the one lucky to have _him_ , you know?  I’m so jealous.  He’s totally cute.  Totally jailbait…” she trailed off and enjoyed his look of distress, “but I’d probably do him too.”

Will laughed and then remembered to be quiet.  Ken tossed him a nasty look as he stomped over to the dresser to put his watch on.

“Go ahead,” he snapped.  “He’s straight after all.”

“Really?” Kennedy asked, looking at Will.

He shrugged.

“Kenny!  Kennedy!  What are you two doing in there?”

“Ugh,” Kennedy said.  “Why _did_ they name us Kennedy and Kendall?”

The doorknob started to turn and Will darted back into the closet, pulling the door shut behind him.  He could hear Ken and Kennedy trying to tell their mother that they were ready to go and ushering her back out into the main room.  They would probably be gone before too long, but even still, he should wait a little while before he came out.  He dug around the pile of clothes on the floor again and found his new Tag Heuer watch.  He put it on and felt cool just for wearing it.  He’d give it half an hour, just to be safe, and then lay down on the floor with his hands behind his head.

What a great Christmas.


	21. Chapter 21

Will

 

Saturday, December 31, 2005

 

What a shitty New Year’s.

Will was pissed at Ken.  It turned out that the woman he’d met at the Christmas party was a woman Ken had met at the Poor People Brigade (or whatever that charity event had been called) and they’d actually been “seeing” each other since then.  So, they’d been on dates together, they’d gone to a Christmas party together, she’d met his parents, and now they were celebrating New Year’s together.  Most people would call that kind of relationship “dating.”  Like girlfriend-boyfriend dating.

Will was so ticked off.  He’d wanted to stay in and celebrate New Year’s alone with Ken.  But no~oo.  He had another damn “work” party to go to.  Honestly, Will felt that Q*West Enterprises spent too much money on parties.  But then again, they were ranked pretty high on Forbes’ list of top companies to work for in the US due to employee satisfaction and happiness.  Whatever.  Just because the employees liked it didn’t mean Ken always had to go.  Though according to Ken he did.  Will ground his teeth as he remembered the conversation they’d had.

 

“Good God, Ken.  Do you have to go to every single fucking work event?”

“Yes, Will, I’m the _CEO_.  This is what my life is like.  This is what my life has _always_ been like and what it always _will_ be like.  I’m sorry if you can’t handle that.”

He crossed his arms and looked challengingly at Will.  Will bit his tongue, literally, to keep from saying anything back.  That was the kind of thing someone said when they were daring their partner to break up with them.  He decided to change the topic slightly.  After all, it wasn’t really the party that was the issue.

“So why does it have to be _Angela_ again?”

“Because I can tolerate her company.”

 

Will had been cruelly tempted to ask if he could tolerate sex with her too, but he’d kept that to himself.  He was kind of afraid the answer might be yes.  As much as their relationship was a secret, Will felt that it was _real_.  That they were committed to each other.  If Ken slept with a woman, even if it was only to keep up his charade, it would mean that not only was he cheating on him, but that he was _capable_ of it.  How could he do that?  Will couldn’t imagine being physically intimate with anyone else for the rest of his life.  Why didn’t Ken feel the same way?  Didn’t he love him?

So now, since he had no plans, he’d allowed his friends to convince (bully) him into going to some sketchy party in the city in an old abandoned warehouse about five blocks from the ritzy part of the city and half a block from the ghetto.  Both the air and the ground were vibrating from the techno music pouring out of the building.  Will hadn’t gone inside yet.  He was sitting on the ledge of a very large window with some broken panes and staring back toward the brightly lit epicenter of the city.  The warehouse was on a hill and there weren’t very many tall buildings around it, so he was able to quite clearly see downtown.  He had an especially good view of the Rommel building, where Ken’s work party was being held.  It was about eight blocks away and lit up like a Christmas tree.  He knew the party was on the third to top floor and he also knew where exactly on the building that was.  It was the floor that had no walls but floor to ceiling windows to give a great, encompassing view of the city.  It was a bright band of light in the tall building.  Even though a lot of windows were lit up in the building, it was impossible to miss that ostentatious floor.  He could also see little people milling around and mingling with each other.

Will glanced at his watch: 11:28.  Ken was probably there.  With Angela.  He shivered violently and then rubbed his bare arms vigorously.  He was only wearing jeans and an old Math and Science Camp T-shirt and it was close to freezing outside.  He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been there staring at that stupid floor in that stupid building with its stupid people and stupid parties.  Will sneezed.  Maybe he should go inside.  He pushed himself off the window ledge and followed a group of people inside.

Even though the place was packed full of people and there were hot work lamps everywhere providing light, it wasn’t very warm inside.  The place wasn’t heated and it had a lot of broken windows.  The music wasn’t nearly as deafening as Will thought it might be; thank God for small favors.  As he looked around the throng of gyrating and talking and drinking and laughing people, he realized he should have come in a group with his friends after all.  He’d probably never find them in this mess.  Not that he wanted to.  He wasn’t in the mood to talk or be friendly.  He was feeling angsty.  And no matter how mature he should be for his older boyfriend, he was still a teenager and he indulged his feelings of pubescent misery.

He was offered a cup of beer on his way in.  Every shred of common sense told him not to take it.  This party was likely to get raided by the cops eventually and he didn’t need to be caught with alcohol in his hand.  The beer had probably been sitting out for a while and warm beer was usually crap not to mention he was certain it was the cheapest shit on the face of the planet.  And who knows if it hadn’t been laced with something.  Or had had rat turds fall into it.  He took the cup from the overly pierced guy with dreadlocks and walked further into the jumble of people.  He drained the cup on his way to the center of the building and then tossed it on the floor.  He was smallish, maybe drinking one beer that fast would give him enough of a buzz to enjoy himself a little bit.  Well, maybe he could help it along.  He grabbed another cup off a nearby table.  Quite possibly it was someone else’s drink.  Quite possibly one of the two dudes who were making out on the nearby couch.  Will wondered where all the furniture had come from.  He dodged a flying white object.  And the ping-pong table.

Will was gulping down the second cup of beer when he spotted Liz through the crowd.  He made a face at the nastiness of the beer.  He didn’t like beer.  He liked wine.  Geh!  Wine.  And why did he like wine?  Because of stupid Ken.  Will looked Liz over and finished off the cup without even tasting the stuff anymore.  She was wearing a mini skirt and a tube top.  She was covered in glitter and sweat, and dancing with a group of girls.  He should sleep with her.  That would show Ken.  If he wanted to screw women, he could too.  In fact, he’d probably actually enjoy doing it.  Liz looked great.  He remembered their one night together.  He regretted not taking his time with her then.  He wanted to really explore her.  He wanted to know everything there was to know about a woman’s body.  He swallowed thickly.  He was getting a little excited thinking about it.  He tossed the second cup on the floor too and started over toward Liz.

“Whoa!”

Someone stumbled into Will, but before he could turn around and snarl at the person Julian helped the stranger stand up straight.  Will immediately became calmer when he saw Julian.  And felt more than a little silly for letting his jealousy control him like that.  He didn’t even want to think about what the repercussions might have been if he’d made it over to Liz tonight.

The man using Julian for support was tall, skinny, and pretty.  And completely wasted.  His eyes were glassy and his face was a little red.  But, he appeared like he was still more or less in control of his faculties.  It seemed to Will that he wasn’t clinging to Julian because he couldn’t stand but just because he wanted to hold on to him.  Julian smiled at him and moved closer so that they could talk over the noise.

“Hey, Will.  So you did come after all.”

Will sighed.  “Yeah, I had nothing else to do.”

“Have you seen the others?  I kind of lost track of them.”

“No, you’re the only one I’ve seen so far.  And…Liz.”

“Damn.  She’s looks hot tonight, doesn’t she?”

“Uh.  Yeah.”

“Don’t be rude!” the stranger complained, slapping Julian on the chest.  “I’m not a fashion accessory; introduce me to your gorgeous.  Friend.”

“I’m not being rude.  I’m being polite by not introducing you to my dear friend and making him suffer.”

Will had to smile at the hurt and shocked offense that spread over the man’s features.  He recovered quickly and turned to Will.

“My name is Tyler.  I’m Julian’s co-worker.”

“I’m Will.  And, Julian has co-workers?”

He looked to Julian for an explanation.  Julian looked a touch uneasy.

“Uh, yeah.  I kind of got a part time job.  Nothing major.”

“What is it?”

Tyler leaned forward and caressed a hand down Will’s face.

“You’re really hot,” he slurred, but his eyes had suddenly gone into sharp focus.  Will felt his stomach jump around a little bit.  That was quite an intense look.  It wasn’t hard to figure out what Tyler was doing to him in his head at that very moment.  Will forced down his excited nervousness and smiled at him.

“Why, thank you.”

Julian pulled Tyler back.  “Sorry about him.”

Will shrugged.  “It’s okay.  You’ve certainly done worse.”

Will regretted saying it even before the sentence was completely out of his mouth, but he kept up his playful smile.  Hopefully Julian would know what he meant.  Hopefully he wouldn’t know that Will had unintentionally thought about Thanksgiving.  That’s not what he meant.

_Please, Julian, understand._

Julian smiled back at him.  “Yeah and probably will do worse in the future.”

Will heaved an internal sigh of immense relief.  Their slightly tense moment was broken up by Tyler getting distracted by one of the ping-pong balls flying through the air.  Will now realized it had nothing to do with table tennis and everything to do with a very rowdy game of beer pong.  They both watched Tyler run to join the fun.  Will could tell that Julian looked a little worried.

“You wanna go after him?” he asked.

“Yeah, I kind of do.  Are you alone?”

“Yeah.  But I think I’ll go look for some of the others.  I don’t really want to get hit in the head with a loose pong ball.  Or get roped into playing.”

“Okay.  I’ll see you later then?  The countdown, right?  I wanna kiss.”

He gave him a grin and a wink and then ran after Tyler.  Once he was gone Will’s momentary reprieve from pissed depression was over.  It came back even stronger.  Stupid, stupid Ken.  He should be kissing him at midnight.  Asshole.  He better leave the party before he did something stupid.  He didn’t feel like going outside yet, so he went to the back of the building and found the stairs that lead up to the next floor.  Quite possibly there would be a lot of sex going on up there, but he was sure he’d be able to avoid most it.  Besides, there was a lot of sex going on downstairs too he discovered as he averted his eyes from the couple under the stairwell.

When he reached the landing he could hear most of the noise was coming from his left, so he turned right and headed down a short quiet section of hallway.  He passed by an open door and stepped inside.  He hugged himself as the temperature went down by at least ten degrees.  There didn’t appear to be anybody in the room though there were signs that squatters lived there.  He picked his way over to window and found some interesting objects along the way: a hubcap, a baby doll, a copy of the Book of Mormon, and a crocheted sock that appeared to be around five feet long.  Will reached the far side of the room and found a pair of high-powered binoculars on the window ledge.  He picked them up and looked at them.  This was even stranger to find here.  These things weren’t cheap.  Then he noticed that almost all the lens surfaces were scratched and one of them had a small crack.  There was no strap and they looked pretty beat up.  He wondered if they still worked at all.  He put them to his eyes and looked out the window.  The image was a little distorted due to the crack, but he could still see pretty clearly, and they were amazingly strong.  He looked around the neighborhood and tried to figure out why they were here.  There had to be a reason.  Then he caught a glimpse of someone in a window.  She was by herself listening to music as she played on her computer.  The room had two lofts and two desks in it.  Most of the windows in the building were dark because it was winter break.  The building was one the city university’s female dorms.  Will shook his head with a small smile.  Was it really necessary to come spy on poor college girls in order for someone to get their jollies?

Then Will started looking around the surrounding area.  He could see someone pick their nose in their car as they waited at a red light several streets over.  These things were awesome.  He scanned the sidewalks and saw a couple having an argument.  Then he saw a cat eating out of a dumpster.  Poor thing.  Then he saw into an office window where a businessman appeared to be working.  This late on New Year’s?  That guy was a loser.  And while he was thinking of loser businessmen, he raised the binoculars and scanned the city’s skyline.  He wound up looking at the night sky, so he lowered the binoculars for a moment to locate his target and then looked in the observation floor of the Rommel building.  The binoculars were powerful enough that he could see people’s faces pretty clearly.  Of course, he could only see one side of the building and he was certain that the room was huge though he had never been in it himself.  Will leaned forward and bumped into the wall, so he raised a knee and climbed up onto the ledge.  He continued to scan the crowd of snooty people who were rubbing shoulders and feeling awfully important.  At least his parents weren’t there this time.  They’d gone to Puerto Vallarta for the week.  And he was going to pretend it was just for the snorkeling.

Then he spotted someone he knew.  Scott’s father was handing a woman a drink.  She was about their parents’ age and not particularly attractive, though she was well-dressed and styled nicely.  She had very short brown hair and was wearing a dress that was age appropriate unlike a lot of the other executives’ wives who were parading around in couture gowns with low backs and even lower necklines.  He wondered if it was just a business associate because he was pretty certain that Scott said his father’s girlfriend was a very attractive blonde.  Maybe she couldn’t make it tonight.  She might have decided to go to a real party instead of a dull work affair.  The woman waved and smiled politely at some.  He moved the binoculars to see who it might have been.  It was Ken.  And Angela was beside him.  She was wearing a black gown with some sparkly stuff on it.  Again, it was a modest cut, but it was satiny and formfitting and she looked amazing in it.  Angela really was a gorgeous woman.  And her flirting had gotten better.  She was sexily wiping the corner of her mouth with a red, manicured nail.  And giving Ken “eyes.”  It was a good look.  Too bad her date was gay.

The crowd around them got excited and waiters quickly scurried to hand out the rest of the champagne flutes on their trays.  Ken and Angela already had theirs.  Then Will heard noise from downstairs.  He couldn’t understand what the crowd was shouting but based on the rhythm and cadence it must be the final countdown to New Year’s.  He kept the binoculars trained on Ken.  He and Angela were counting down together.  The downstairs of the warehouse erupted into wild shouting.  Calmer celebrations began at the Rommel building.  Ken and Angela toasted each other and took a sip of their champagne.  Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

 

Sunday, January 1, 2006

 

On the goddamn fucking lips.  Will huffed in annoyance and kept watching.  It hadn’t been terrible.  It had just been a closed mouth little peck.  Then a woman next to Ken turned him away from Angela and planted a kiss on his lips.  He looked startled.  When that woman was done with him, another latched on.  Will smiled maliciously.  It was kind of like when he’d gotten stuck under the mistletoe after “helping” Scott out with Antoinette.  Only Ken didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much.  He looked a little panicked as about six different women got their hands on him.  He supposed the office New Year’s party would be the only time you could get away with sexually harassing your sexy boss.

When at last he was released, he looked a little stunned and turned back to Angela.  She looked like she was trying hard not to laugh.  Then she reached up a hand and wiped away what Will assumed had to be lipstick.  Then her hand lingered on his face for a moment longer than was necessary.  She looked up at him.  No, she _gazed_ up at him.  And he was looking right back.  Will gripped the binoculars tightly.  Ken leaned down to meet Angela in another kiss.  This one was neither a peck nor close mouthed.  Will clenched his jaw.  They didn’t pull apart.  He started counting.  Ken moved his hands to her waist.  Five.  Angela wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.  Ten.  Other people started to take note of them.  Fifteen.  Will let out a shout and threw the binoculars.  They crashed through the window and disappeared into the night.  He flinched slightly when he felt a shard of glass graze his face.  He turned and ran from the room.  He ran down the stairs and pushed and forced his way through the crowd to the exit.  Then he started in a dead run for the Rommel building.  He pulled out his cell phone and had trouble dialing because he was running so fast.  The bastard better answer.  It rang and rang and then went to Ken’s voicemail.  Will kept running and dialed again.  What was his problem?  Was he so absorbed he couldn’t hear it?  Did he see it was him and felt too guilty to answer?  He started to feel a stinging in his eyes as Ken still didn’t pick up on the third try.  It hurt worse than his burning lungs and aching legs.  He was running too fast.  And he was pretty certain he’d nearly gotten hit by a car as he’d crossed a street a block back.  Finally, on the third ring of the fourth call, he answered.

“What is so urgent?” Ken snapped at him.

Will couldn’t answer.  He had no breath.

“If you just called to wish me a happy New Year’s, it could have waited.

Will had slowed down just enough to be able to speak.

“In a couple minutes you’re going to be wishing that’s why I’m calling.”

“What’s wrong?” Ken asked, sounding less angry and more concerned now.  “Why are you breathing so hard?”

“I’m running.  I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Be where in a minute?”

Will hung up on him.  He was less than a block away now.  He slowed down and walked the rest of the way.  He didn’t want to burst through the doors looking like a crazed freak.  He struggled to get his breathing under control.  He was upset to discover that it wasn’t just because he’d been running so hard that he was having such trouble with it.  Ken had called him back, but he’d ignored him.  Now he was at the entrance to the Rommel building.  He walked past the valet attendants who didn’t pay him any attention.  Inside the lobby there were two employees and a security guard at the front desk.  They looked him over and took in his attire, but nobody said anything to him as he deliberately walked up to the board that had the evening’s listed events.  There were several companies having their parties in the building.  Q*West Enterprises was on the Skyline floor.  Well, duh.  He was pretty certain each event would have some sort of security or host stand verifying that people were where they were supposed to be.  How was he going to get in?  He’d figure that out upstairs.  He walked further into the lobby toward the elevators.  He could tell one of the employees wanted to say something to him, but he didn’t make eye contact with her, so she let him go.  He waited impatiently for the elevator, but he was also feeling a little queasy.  This was stupid.  What was he going to do?  Bust into the room and start yelling at Ken like a jealous lover in front of his colleagues, probably his parents, and Scott’s father to boot?

The elevator doors to his left opened and Will walked over to them.  He started when he saw Ken standing in the elevator.  He had his arms crossed in annoyance and when he spotted Will he didn’t seem surprised.  He just looked even more irritated.  Will glared right back at him.  They stared so long the doors started to shut.  Ken reached out a hand and stopped them.  He stepped off the lift and used his already outstretched hand to roughly grab Will by the arm.  He forcibly hauled him toward the back of the lobby.  Will went with him mostly because he was really hurting his arm and he couldn’t get free.  He noticed Ken glancing around furtively as he moved as quickly as possible to get him hidden away from anyone or anything that might see him.  He ducked into a coat closet for one of the first floor banquet rooms and flung Will halfway across the long, narrow space.  Will stumbled forward and held his arm, feeling it throb as it was finally released from the vice-like pressure.  He turned around to look at Ken, trying not to come off like a riled up badger, but not entirely sure he succeeded.  Ken’s eyes were a little on the crazy side too.  He shook his hands in the air.

“What the fuck, Will?!”

“That’s my line, asshole!  Why were you kissing her?!”

“It’s New Year’s!  That’s what you do!”

“This was different!  You were making out with her!”

“I was not!”

“You were too!”

“I was—”  Ken cut off and closed his eyes, realizing he was getting sucked into a “did not-did to” fight.  He looked at Will again.  “How do you know?” he asked calmly.

“I saw you!  Fifteen seconds.  It lasted _fifteen_ seconds.  Or was it longer than that?  Fifteen seconds was all I could stomach!”

Ken looked at the ceiling in the utmost annoyance, almost looking like he might laugh.  He looked back at Will and shook his head at him.  “I’m not doing this now.”  He started to turn and leave.

“Then when?” Will demanded.  “After you’ve fucked her?!”

Ken turned back to him.

“Can we talk about it then?!”

The man took a menacing step forward and whispered harshly, “Lower your voice.”

Will gritted his teeth, but his lips were curled back.  It probably looked like he was snarling at him.

“Look,” Ken snapped, “what I do in my private life is none of your concern.”

Will was floored.  Completely dumbfounded.  Had he actually just said that?  It didn’t even make sense!

“ _What?!_   I _am_ your private life, you retard!”  Will immediately pulled everything back.  He was going about this the wrong way.  He was arguing like a child.  He forced his voice into a normal speaking tone and took a step forward, trying to appear diplomatic but afraid he came off as desperate.  “Why does it have to go so far?  Just _tell_ your parents you’re dating someone.  You don’t actually have to do it!”

“Yes, I do!”  Ken ran a hand over his brow and forced himself to calm down too.  “They have to meet her.  They have to see her.  And for that to happen she has to stick around and _want_ to stick around.  And God, I finally found one I can stand to be around.  I kind of like her.  I’m just laying the groundwork for later, that’s all.”

“Later?” Will squawked.  “What’s later?!”  He was losing his composure again.  That was a joke; he’d never regained it.  “How long are you going to do this to me?!” he cried, tears stabbing his eyes.

“Now you’re saying my lines, Will.  How long until you get bored or come to your senses?  How long until you find someone else?  You’re leaving for college in less than a year.”

“ _So?_ ”

“Will.”  Ken shook his head at him with a humorless smile.  “Do you _really_ think this is going to last once we’re apart?”

“Yes,” he replied with no hesitation.  He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it wouldn’t go down.  “Don’t you?”  He hated how pitiful that came out.

Ken was quiet.  Will could feel his heart every time it crashed into his ribcage.  His heartbeat was slowing down.  With every second of Ken’s silence, his heart faded on him.

“No,” Ken said softly, “I don’t.”

Will’s heart stopped.

“I know it’s going to end one day.  It has to.  So.  I need someone for when that happens.”

Will let out a small, sick sound.  He turned away from Ken and felt like he was going to throw-up.  He couldn’t get his lungs to inflate.  He put a hand to his stomach and took a step back.  He suddenly realized he couldn’t see anything.  His vision was going black.

_Don’t faint._

He drew in a breath and his vision cleared.  He looked at Ken’s shoes.

“Are you ending it now?” he whispered.

He was surprised he’d managed to form an intelligible sentence.  Ken was quiet again.  Will wanted to look at him.  What kind of face was he making?  Was it his cool, calm, and collected face?  Was it his patronizing, grown-up face?  Will squeezed his eyes shut.  Why wouldn’t he answer him?  He drew in a ragged breath and forced his head up.  As he did so he realized he had rivulets of tears streaming down his cheeks.  He sought out Ken’s face.  He cried harder—in relief—when he saw that Ken looked as distressed as he felt.

“Should we?” Ken asked, his voice shaking.  “It might be for the best.”

Will let out a gasping sob.  He sounded horribly pathetic.  “Don’t you love me at all?” he wailed softly.

“God.”  Ken took a step forward and grabbed one of Will’s shoulders with his hand.  “More than I thought it was possible to love someone.”

His voice was so thick with unshed tears he didn’t even sound like himself anymore.  Will put one hand on Ken’s where it rested on his shoulder and the other he used to grab Ken’s lapel.

“Then don’t leave me.  Don’t say I can’t see you.  Please, don’t send me away.  It’s okay!”  He pulled his tears back, though it didn’t really work.  He forced a smile.  “It’s fine.  I don’t mind!  You can date all the women you want.”  Ken’s brow creased and his eyes wavered.  He tried to pull back, but Will held onto him.  “You can tell me when and where you can see me.  You can fuck all the women you want.  Just please…don’t…”  Will drew in what felt like a dying breath.  “Just don’t…please…”  He pulled Ken down and kissed him hard.  But he didn’t have enough air to make it last more than a second.  He pulled back, but kept their faces close together.  “Please, Ken.  Please.”  The words barely came out as a whisper.

“Will.”  Ken’s voice cracked on his name.

Will shook his head.  “Please.  Whatever you want.  However it has to be.  I don’t care.  I’ll throw away my pride.  Get married if you want.  I’ll be your mistress.  Or whatever.  I swear, I don’t care!”

“Will, shut-up!”  He wrapped his arms around the shaking boy and kissed his face.  “Don’t say such stupid things.”

He kissed him all over his face until their lips found each other.  He moved his hand to Will’s jaw and held them together.  Will put both his hands behind his neck and pulled him down harder.  They were so worked up it didn’t take long for their distress to turn into passion.  Will was gone.  He had no thoughts left in his head, just a sharp pain his chest that seemed like it could only be healed if he could force Ken completely into him.  Ken tried to push their bodies apart.

“Nn, no, Will.  We can’t.”

“We _have_ to.  Now.  Here.”

Will already had Ken’s pants undone.  He used one hand to work on his jeans while he pushed down on Ken’s pants with the other.  Ken put his head back, shaking it no, but he wasn’t trying to stop him.

“It’s gonna hurt,” Ken said trying to distract himself from Will’s hand.

“Good,” Will stated.  He grabbed Ken’s hand and sucked on his middle and index fingers.  He got them wet and then pulled his face close to Ken’s again.  “That way I’ll know it’s real.”

Ken picked him up and turned around.  He slammed Will against the wall.  Will tried not to squirm so much as Ken attempted to get him ready.  It was uncomfortable against the wall.  There wasn’t a lot of room between the opening and the hanger pole.  He was being jabbed by hangers and he was pretty sure his shoulder blade was against a light switch.  But it didn’t matter.  Soon, he wouldn’t be able to feel any of that.  All he would feel would be Ken.  But the man hesitated.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he ground out, clearly not really caring if he did as long as he got to be in him.

Will put a hand to his face and made him look at him.

“You could never hurt me.”

Then he was inside.  Will’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open in a soundless cry.  His head fell back.  It was such a weird sensation.  He could still feel the light switch.  And there was a fur coat beside his face, scratching his cheek and smelling faintly of musky death.  And it hurt.  It really hurt.  But it was okay.  Because it was Ken.  It was desperate and clumsy and even though they both achieved climax it was hardly pleasurable.  They panted against the wall, nearly crying from the pain—though none of it was physical.

They finally separated and began to weakly rearrange their clothes.  Will looked at Ken.  He felt heartbroken.  It was the first time after sex with him that he ever felt something close to shame.  He felt like he’d forced him into it.  Ken wouldn’t look at him.

“I have to get back,” he said, still staring at the carpet.

Will drew in a deep breath against the wall, feeling where his shoulder would be bruised in the morning.

“Are you going to have sex with her?”

“Maybe,” Ken said, his voice flat.  “Don’t come over tonight.”

He walked out of the coat closet without once looking at him.  Will put a hand to his mouth and slumped to the floor.  He felt completely sick, like he might throw up and pass out.  They had been so happy at Christmas.  What had happened?  Why was it turning out like this?  Was it him?  Did he not show Ken how much he loved him?  Was he really such a sociopath that Ken had no idea how he felt about him?

Will fell to his side and curled up into a ball.  The movement hurt.  He cried.  He didn’t know what to do.  He didn’t know what was going to happen.  They had never finished their conversation.  Or had they?  Was that it?  Was it over?  Outside the room he heard a burst of laughter followed by loud, ecstatic talking.

Was that the world?  Were people still living and breathing?  Did they still think the sun was going to rise tomorrow?  Those poor bastards.  They had no idea the world had just ended.

 

Scott

 

Saturday, December 31, 2005

 

Scott tried not to let his jaw drop all the way to the floor as the two girls walked by him wearing what he was certain didn’t actually qualify as clothes.  Didn’t they know it was cold in here?  He blushed as he looked away.  If their protruding nipples were any indication they probably did.  He coughed as he got a whiff of some sweet smoke.  He couldn’t believe he was at such a skanky party.  There was alcohol and drugs and he was positive the people going upstairs were looking for a private place to have sex.  Of course, those were the ones who wanted privacy.  There were quite a few who didn’t much care about doing it right beside the row of kegs.  It was really kind of gross.  And he seemed to be the only one not participating.

The girls were boozing it up pretty hard.  He’d come with Chris and Julian as well, but they’d somehow gotten separated and he’d been left behind with the girls.  Liz and Laney were really knocking them back and even Riley had had more than a couple drinks.  And it was definitely showing.  The jacket she’d been wearing had come off revealing a lacey tank top.  It looked okay on her, but she really was flat-chested.  Though Nick Tripp didn’t seem to notice.  Or at least, he didn’t seem to mind.  Scott blinked in astonishment as he watched Riley and Nick “groove” together.  He had no idea Riley could be so…frisky.  This was a whole other side to her.  No, this was just a whole new her.

And that was exactly the reason he had chosen to abstain.  He just knew that if he ever got drunk bad things would happen.  He’d be the buck naked idiot hanging off the roof divulging every personal aspect of his life his muddled brain could manage to remember.  Nothing but trouble.  And while he was on the subject of trouble, he watched Anna dance up to him.  He could tell even before she slid an arm around his neck that she was a little tipsy.  She pressed herself close to one side, making sure his leg was between hers.  She smiled up at him and the glitter on her eyelids sparkled.  He knew she wasn’t drunk, but he had a feeling only alcohol could induce her to be this blatant about her sexual interest.  He put his hands on her waist and moved slowly to his own beat.  Maybe he should drink something; it might make this situation less weird.  No matter how hot Anna was or which part of her body was rubbing agonizingly close to his groin, she was still Anna.  And it was freaky to have her curling her fingers in his hair and giving him a smile that was promising him he could do whatever he wanted with her.

He leaned close so he could say to her without shouting, “How drunk are you?”

“Not drunk,” she purred.  “Just…uninhibited.”

“Oh, yeah?  So, since you’re not drunk I can totally take advantage of this situation and not feel guilty about it, right?”

She giggled.  “Go right ahead.”

Scott bent his knees a little and began bobbing to the beat with one hand in the air, snapping his fingers.  He had a goofy expression on his face and was pretending like he was trying to get it going on with Anna.  She laughed and held on tightly as his movements nearly knocked her off balance.

“You are such a dork!”

Scott jumped around and bent over.  He started shaking his booty next to Anna.  She was cracking up and had forgotten her intended plan to seduce him.  Well, for the moment anyway.  Then something shoved his head to the left and he stumbled to the side.  He stood up and turned around, now standing next to Anna.  Before he could fully process who had shoved him, lukewarm, frothy beer splashed against his chest and up onto his face.  A few people around them took notice, but no one stopped what they were doing.  Riley was so engrossed in Nick that she hadn’t seen anything at all and Laney and Liz were pointing and laughing like a couple of drunken girls at a frat party.  Scott slung his hands out to get some of the beer off them and watched speechless as Antoinette pushed her way through the crowd.  He felt Anna lean close to him.

“Okay.  So, this may be a dumb question, but what was that all about?  I thought you two weren’t even talking anymore.”

“We’re not.”  Scott’s eyes never strayed from her golden head as she made it to the far side of the room.  “But I’m gonna find out what her problem is.”

Anna fiercely grabbed onto his arm as he took his first step.

“Don’t worry about her.  She’s probably just drunk and jealous.”

“I don’t care.  I wanna go tell her off.”

Anna didn’t let go of him.  “Scott, why even bother?  Why do you care why she’s a stupid bitch?”

Scott looked at Anna.  His first reaction had been to snap at Anna and defend Antoinette.  But he didn’t.  He gently pulled his arm from Anna’s hands.

“Because I need closure,” he said.  “So, I can.  You know.  Move on.”

He didn’t think he was giving her a meaningful look, but she would probably infer whatever she wanted from him.  She nodded.

“You know, that might be a good idea.  It’ll be good for you.  I don’t know all the particulars—for which I’m very grateful—but the way it ended was a little abrupt, huh?”

Scott averted his eyes.  “To say the least.”

“So, I think it’ll be good to go talk—or yell—it out.  Then it won’t be hanging over your head anymore.”  She put a comforting hand to his shoulder.  “Then you’ll be free to get back to your life.”

He smiled at her.  “Exactly.  Hopefully this won’t take too long.  I’ll be back soon.”

He turned from her, the smile already gone from his face.  He headed in the direction he’d seen Antoinette go and searched the crowd vainly, hoping to get a glimpse of her.  She’d been wearing a modest black skirt and a purple tank top and her hair had been pulled back in a messy ponytail.  She didn’t look like her usual self.  She almost looked like she’d come at the last minute.  Or had been dragged here at the last minute.  Then he spotted her on the stairs.  He ran through the crowd and took the stairs two at a time until he caught up to her almost at the landing.

“Excuse me,” he said in an exaggerated voice.

She turned around and then scowled when she saw him.

“Excuse what?” she snapped, continuing on her way.

“Uh, you got something on my shirt.”

“Oh, please forgive me,” she said putting a hand to her chest and walking away from him down a hall.  “It was an accident.”

“Oh, really?” Scott said snippily, following close behind her.  “Because the whole throwing motion kind of gave me the wrong impression.”

“It was an accident because I wasn’t aiming for you,” Antoinette growled.

“Hey.”  Scott grabbed her arm and forced her to stop.  “You better watch it.  I won’t tolerate you going after Anna.”

“Oh, shut-up!”

She shoved him and he smacked into a doorjamb.  Why was she so freakishly strong?

“You have already ruined my whole night!” she declared, pointing a finger in his face.  “I just got here.  I haven’t even had a single drink yet so I don’t even have a buzz to help me stomach the disgusting scene of you macking on that mixed bitch!”

“Whoa!” Scott said, grabbing her finger and pulling it to the side.  This was really bizarre.  He knew Antoinette wasn’t racist, so why was she pulling the race card now?

“Back off!” she yelled, jerking her hand away from him.

“What the fuck, Antoinette?  What did Anna _ever_ do to you?  And why the hell do you even care if she does it with me?”

“Because it’s sickening!” Antoinette spat out.  “Seeing you with someone!  It’s so gross!  It reminds me of the things _I_ did with you and it makes me want to kill myself!”

Scott felt that like a physical blow to the chest.  He sickened her?  All that time he’d thought he’d found someone who understood him.  Someone who didn’t think of him as a demented freak.

“And now you’re doing those things with her!” she yelled, not noticing the wound she’d inflicted.  “Right in the middle of freaking public.  Where everyone can see you!  Where _I_ can see you!  You’re such an asshole!  You’re so mean!”

“ _I’m_ mean?!”  Scott took a couple steps forward and was a little validated when she took two steps back.  “You dumped me when I could no longer serve a purpose to you!  You were only interested in satisfying your own psychosis!  You _used_ me.  You never even _liked_ me!”

Her eyes bugged out from her head and in almost any other situation it would have been funny.  Now, it just made Scott nervous.  He took a step back and she advanced on him one step.

“You are such a complete idiot!” she bellowed.

“ _I’m_ an idiot?!”

“Yes!  You, you jackass!  I have ‘liked’ you since the ninth frickin’ grade!”

Scott took a moment to process those words.  Ninth grade was…three years ago?  Had he known Antoinette in the ninth grade?  He didn’t think so.  So why did she…did she say she _liked_ him?

“Say what?” he asked, totally lost.

She put her fingers to her temples and looked like she had a migraine.  He thought for a moment she was about to turn and walk away from him, but she stayed put and dropped her hands.  She looked up at him and when she spoke she was a little bit calmer.

“When I moved here, I wasn’t pretty, Scott.  I was chubby and had no figure to speak of.  Braces, glasses.  The whole nine yards.  You were like, the only person who even looked at me.  Who saw me and would take notice of me even though I was outside of your little private school cliques.  Aside from my teachers, you’re the only one who even talked to me.”  She got a distant look in her eyes and her lips involuntarily pulled into a small smile.  “You were so nice.”  Her eyes hardened a little and she focused on him again.  “But you were so popular.  You hung out with the really cool kids.  And the really cool kids seemed to think that you were cool too.  You were definitely on that ‘in crowd’ pedestal.”

Scott didn’t interrupt her, but the irony wasn’t lost on him.  He’d always thought that he was the insignificant bug that had been singled out by the hottest girl in school, and yet he couldn’t even remember her before she got so hot.  Was he the asshole after all?

“So.  I worked hard to slim down and look better.  It all happened over summer break like some cheesy movie.  I got my braces off; I got contacts; I grew several inches and went from an A cup to a C cup.  Everyone noticed.  _Everyone_ , Scott.  But not you.  No, you couldn’t even remember talking to me the year before.  I was so pissed.  I mean, what did this mean?  Normally when the ugly girl is ignored, she turns hot and then teases the stupid boy for rejecting her when she was ugly.  But you accepted me when I was ugly and couldn’t care less that I had turned out to be pretty!  So, are you an asshole or a nice guy?  I figured maybe you were just a nice guy who was dumb as a brick.”

Scott didn’t argue with her.  It didn’t seem the time, and she might be right.

“So, I figured, well, that’s all right.  He may be dumb, but he’s sweet.  And that’s got to count for something.  So, how do I get him to notice me?  Well, I got myself a hot boyfriend to make you jealous.  Did you even notice?  Of course not!  I tried to make you notice me for _two_ years!  I swear, I was starting to think you were gay.  So, finally.  My last ditch effort was to make it dirty.  ‘Let’s cheat on Jake, okay?’  That’ll be fun.  That’ll be _wrong_.  And all of a sudden you were interested.  Do you have any idea how that made me feel?!”

Her distressed voice went right to his heart.  He started to reach out to her but stopped himself.

“And on top of that,” she continued, her voice becoming even thicker, “when I finally do have your attention you don’t even care!  Because Anna is so important!  Anna this and Anna that.  ‘How is Anna doing?  I can’t concentrate on you, Antoinette, because I’m too worried about Anna!’  You’re such an asshole.”  She stopped and brushed away a couple of tears.  When she spoke again her voice was shaking.  “You were _with_ _me_.  You were so nice to me.  But you love _her_.”

She looked away from him and angrily wiped away more tears.  Scott didn’t try to respond right away.  His chin was quivering and he knew if he tried to speak he’d start crying like an idiot.  Why did she still have this power over him?  Why did he care that she was hurting?  He swallowed and started to speak, but she cut him off.

“Don’t deny it,” she accused, “I know you love her.”

“I do love her,” he stated firmly.  “But I’m not in love with her.”

“Oh, shut-up.”  Antoinette turned away from him.  “I can’t even look at you.”  She started to walk away but Scott grabbed her and pulled her back around.

“I’m not in love with her.”

“Let go of me!”

She struggled against him, but he gripped her biceps tightly and refused to let go.

“Scott!  Stop!”

“I’m not in love with her!  I _know_ I’m not in love with her!”

“How?” Antoinette demanded.  She hadn’t stopped fighting him and she was starting to get loose.  “How do you know?  You are so fucking clueless you could be and not even know it!”

She twisted out of his grasp and started to leave again.

“I know I’m not in love with her because I’m in love with you!” Scott shouted.

She stopped in her tracks.  She turned slowly around to face him.  He saw her lips move, but the word didn’t come out.

“Do you have any idea what it was like for me?” Scott cried out.  “Every time we were together I kept thinking: Who is she thinking about?  Her boyfriend or her father?”

Antoinette put a hand to her mouth.

“And I tried not to care.  I really did.  But I just wanted to be with you!”

His brain gave him one last chance to shut up.  Did he want her to know all this?  Maybe if she knew, then he’d be able to accept her rejection.  And that would be the closure he needed.  Plus, his heart was screaming louder than his head.

“That’s why I kept lying to you.  When you would ask me how I felt or if I was really interested in you or if I was starting to fall for you, I lied and said no.  I was afraid that if I told you how I really felt you’d freak out and break it off with me.  After all, it was just an experiment for you.  It was just a game.  The last thing you wanted was something serious.  You didn’t need any more baggage.  So I hid my feelings just so that I could stay by you.  I thought you didn’t care about me, but I didn’t even care.  I knew it was sick and wrong, but I just wanted to be with you even if you didn’t want me.  And then, I had this ridiculous hope that you wanted me too.  But come to find out, I was right all along.  You told me that since it wasn’t ‘wrong’ to be with me anymore that you didn’t want me!  Do you know how that made _me_ feel?!”

Antoinette stepped forward but Scott didn’t retreat.  She looked angry, but he was feeling angry too.

“I only said that because I didn’t want to be rejected!”

“You didn’t want to be rejected?  What the hell?  You had two boys falling all over themselves over you!”

“Look!  I wanted to tell you that I had broken up with Jake and wanted to be with you, but I was scared because you’d never—admittedly I might add—shown any real interest in me outside of the sex.  And then you were over at Anna’s!  I couldn’t bear the thought of telling you that I loved you and then you telling me you were with Anna!  I didn’t want that.  I couldn’t take that!”

“I _left_ Anna to go to you that day.  I wanted to comfort you.  I wanted to tell you how I felt.  I _chose_ you!”

“Do you still feel the same way now?” she shouted.

“What?!” he hollered back.

“Even now!  After everything!  Do you still love me?!”

“Yes!  Okay?!  Yes!  Though you’re making it easier not to every day you pull stupid shit like this!”

“Well what am I supposed to do?” she wailed.  “The person I love loves somebody else!”

“So you still love me too?!”

“God, I don’t know why, but yes!”

“So, you love me?!”

“Yes!”

“And I love you?!”

“Apparently!”

Scott stopped shouting.  “So, why are we fighting?”

“I don’t know!”

Antoinette put her hands to her face to wipe away her tears.  She looked desolate.  Scott reached up a hand and stilled her movements.  He used his thumb to brush away a glistening teardrop.  Her eyes were red and her nose was running.  He’d never seen her look more beautiful.  He started to lean down but she put a hand to his chest and stopped him.  Her eyes were focused below his face.

“Not unless you mean it,” she sniffed miserably.

He put his fingers under her chin and tilted her head up.  She kept her eyes down.

“Antoinette.  Look at me.”

After a short struggle she managed to get her eyes to meet his.  He smiled gently.

“I love you.”

He could feel her start to tremble.  Tears welled up in her eyes again.  He leaned down and kissed her.  She started crying harder, which made it difficult to kiss her, but he didn’t stop.

“Scott.  Scott.”  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close.  “Scott.  Is this happening?”

In answer he put his feelings into the kiss.  He could feel his love reciprocated by her.  How had he never felt this before?  It all made so much sense now.  He held her in his arms and wondered how he’d gone two months without her.

He slowly moved his lips over hers.  The kiss was relaxed and sweet, like they had their whole lives to stay joined together.  She moved slightly.  All she’d done was shift her weight, but it had caused a little friction between them, and suddenly, the kiss changed.  There was heat and need and the desperate force of repressed desire.  Tongues were now actively involved and Scott had his hands on parts that weren’t exactly G-rated.  Or PG for that matter.

“Mm.”  He groaned inwardly.  Was he the one making those stupid noises?  “Antoinette.  Ah.  Are we going to do this here?”

“Nm.  C-can you wait?”

“No.”

He picked her up and thrust her against the doorjamb he’d unintentionally found earlier.  Her legs were wrapped around his waist and they’d found a better use for their mouths than talking.  He leaned his weight into her to keep her up while he used his hands to undo the fly to his new khakis.  Now his luckiest pants ever.  He could feel her balling her skirt up into her fists.

“Oh, my God,” he said as she broke the kiss to look down to better see what she was doing.  “I missed you so much.”

“Nn.  Scott.”  She shifted against him, using a hand to remove the last barrier between them.  “Hurry.  Make us one again.”

Scott blushed and stopped moving.  “That’s a little cheesy,” he mumbled.

“Oh, hush up.  Don’t ruin it.”

“Sorry.  Ah, damn it.  Can’t we do this lying down or something?”

“Uh!  I am not that heavy!”

“No, not that.  I just want to be on top for once.”

“Scott,” she said a little menacingly, “we have the rest of our lives for that.  For now…just…”

She moved and his automatic reaction joined them together.

“Oh, yes!”  She arched against him but he put out a hand to the wall to still their movements.

“Oh, shit,” he said between clenched teeth.

“What?  What’s wrong?”

“Just.  Um.”  He licked his lips and concentrated very hard on grapes.  “Just don’t move yet or this reunion isn’t going to be very fun for you.”

He heard her soft laughter and then she undulated her hips.  “Mm.”

“Antoinette!  I mean it!”

“So do I, Scott.  Come on.”  She moved again.  “Come onnn.”

He closed his eyes and panted into her neck.  “Antoinette.”  He forced his head up and looked at her.  “I do love you.”

“I love you, Scott.”

They kissed.  Downstairs they could hear the crowd screaming excitedly as they counted down to the new year.  Scott’s movements were hard and jerking, but it was all they needed.

“Ten…nine…eight…!”

“Ah, Scott…yes!”

“Seven…six…five…!”

“Ann…I’ve wanted you.”

“Four…three…two…!”

“S-so long.”

“One!”

“Aahhhh!”

 

Sunday, January 1, 2006

 

Scott wasn’t sure which one of them had screamed louder, but he was glad the downstairs crowd was being as rowdy as it was.  He struggled to stay standing, especially with Antoinette’s added weight.  He gulped in air and could feel and hear her trying just as hard to draw in a breath.  Even though he could barely breathe he kissed her neck.  His next breath drew in her honeysuckle scent.  He nearly lost it again.  He’d missed her so much.  He pulled back enough to look at her.  Her cheeks were flushed and her heavy lidded eyes looked glazed over with satisfaction.  He petted her slightly damp hair and kissed her.  He was forced to pull back again to draw in a breath.  Geez.  Maybe he needed to start doing some aerobics.

“S-sorry,” she panted.

“For what?” he asked, completely confused and a little worried.

“N-no—”  She cut off to swallow and lick her lips.  Then she said, “No condom.  Please don’t be mad.”

He smiled and kissed her cheek.  “I don’t care about that.  Certainly not right now.”  He rested his head on her shoulder.  “You’re still on the pill right?”

“Unh-huh.”

“Well then.  No—”  He opened his eyes.  “Oh, God.  This can’t be happening.”

“Why not?  What’s wrong?”

“Not this.  That.”

He turned his head away and he could feel her turn to look at what had gotten his attention.

“Oh.”

“Have they left yet?”

“No.”

He waited a moment.  “Have they left yet?”

“Nope.”

“Fuck me,” he grumbled.

He turned his back toward the hallway a bit and they used the relative privacy to disentangle.  Scott zipped his pants up and glared at the stupid khakis.  They were not living up to their new status.  He turned back around and found that both Anna and Jake were indeed still standing in the hallway.  Jake’s face was like stone.  He had no idea what was going on in his head.  And while he could read Anna’s face pretty well, there were so many emotions and they were changing so frequently it was hard to pinpoint any one in particular.  Then she took a couple steps forward.  He recognized the look on her face quite well now.  He closed his eyes and braced himself for the blow.  There was sharp crack in the air, but no pain.  Scott opened his eyes.  Anna had full on bitch-slapped Antoinette.  Scott felt as stunned as Antoinette looked.  Then Scott recognized the look on Antoinette’s face.  He lunged forward to keep her from gouging Anna’s eyes out.

But that’s all he managed to do.  She was pushing against him and screaming at Anna as she tried to claw her face off.  Anna was on the other side shouting right back and attempting to grab Antoinette’s hair.  He was getting a little scratched up, but fortunately they didn’t seem to be inflicting too much damage on each other.  He glanced at Jake.  He was just standing there, watching them struggle.  Well, Scott supposed that technically it wasn’t really his problem.  Both girls were screaming at the top of their lungs, calling each other names and declaring possession of him.  It was a touch degrading.  Then he noticed that Anna was crying.  She looked completely devastated.  It made his guts wrench.

“Look, you slut!” she cried around her tears, “I’m not giving him up!”

“Giving him up?!” Antoinette shrieked.  “He’s not yours!  He doesn’t want you!  All these years!  All this time that you’ve thrown yourself at him!  Has he ever even acted like he wants to do to you what he just did to me?!”

“Aaah!”

Anna redoubled her efforts and Scott felt his shoulder wrenched back and a nail grazed his cheek.  He fell aside and the girls really got a hold of each other.  He didn’t know what to do.  Jump back into the middle of it?  Ask Jake for help?  He turned to appeal to the soccer team captain.

Jake punched him in the eye and then quickly delivered an uppercut to his jaw.  Scott went down with a hard, loud thump.  The girls immediately stopped fighting.  They both rushed to him, one squatting down on either side.  He was only vaguely aware of this though.  His head was spinning.  He’d never been hit that hard before in his life.

“Omigod!  Jake!”

He was pretty sure that was Antoinette.  He had no idea which one had their hand on his head and which one had a hand on his chest.  The dizziness cleared and was replaced with pain.  And the sharp, coppery taste of blood.  He winced slightly and opened his eyes.  Jake was standing over the three of them, staring down at him.

“This doesn’t make us even, Ramsey.  Not by a long shot.  But.”  He glanced at Antoinette, and then looked back at Scott.  “I’m going to let it go at that.”

He gave Antoinette another long hard look before he turned and walked away.  Antoinette watched him leave and then turned her attention back to Scott.  She tucked the hair that had been pulled loose from her ponytail behind her ear.

“Scott?  Are you okay?”

He didn’t reply.  Not because he couldn’t but because he was concerned Jake might have heard the conversation that took place before the sex.  Hopefully he’d simply correctly assumed their relationship wasn’t something new and that he and Anna hadn’t watched the whole show.

“Scott,” Anna said sharply.  “Answer me.  Are you okay?”

“Y-yes.  I’m fine.”

He attempted to sit up and they both helped him.  Fortunately the dizziness didn’t come back but his eye and especially his jaw were hurting so much he wanted to cry.  He held it back.  Instead he tried to look tough by touching his mouth with his fingers.  There was no blood.  So, his lip hadn’t been cut. He must have cut the inside of his cheek on his teeth.  He swallowed and tasted a little more blood.

“Scott.”  That was Antoinette.  “Will you go out with me?”

He was startled by the question and was firstly panicking that she was saying this in front of Anna.  Then he realized that Anna obviously knew about their relationship, so it wasn’t like she was blowing their cover.  He didn’t look at either girl.

“Geez, Antoinette.  Do you have to do this in front of Anna?”

“Yes.  It needs to be in front of her.  Will you go out with me?”

He hung his head.  He understood why Antoinette wanted to do this in front of Anna, but couldn’t she think about the position this was putting him in?  He felt like such an asshole.

“Yes,” he answered.  “I will.”

“Why?”  Anna’s voice was heartbreaking.  “Why?  She’ll just cheat on you too.”

He shrugged.  “Maybe.”  He could feel Antoinette sit back in shocked offense.  “But I love her enough to trust that she won’t.”

He couldn’t see or hear either of their reactions to that.

“You—you love her?”

Scott turned to Anna and grabbed her arms.

“We’ve both dated people before, right?”  He pleaded with Anna with his eyes, begging her to try to understand this.  “We’ve gone out with people before and still stayed friends.  Does liking Antoinette mean I have to lose you?”

Her brows were scrunched painfully close together and her mouth was tight.  She dropped her head and sucked in a couple weepy breaths.  Then she raised her head and looked at him.  She was trying so hard to smile at him.

“Of course not.  We’re still friends.  We’ll always be friends.”  She used one of her hands the best she could to wipe away a tear due to the fact that he still held her arms.  “And when this skank breaks your heart.  Again.  I’ll be here for you.”

He could see her looking over his head at Antoinette.  He could only imagine what her expression must be like at this moment.  Then Anna looked back at him with a sad smile.  She stood up and he let her go.  Then she walked away from them.  Scott watched her go.  He should go after her.

_And do what?_

He felt two of Antoinette’s fingers on his wrist.  He turned to look at her.  She was watching her fingers trace patterns on his skin.

“If—if being with me meant you had to give up Anna…would you still do it?”

He used a hand to raise her chin.  She looked at him and he smiled tenderly.

“Yes.”

She looked surprised.  To put it mildly.  He laughed softly at her reaction and brushed back her hair.

“I love you.”

Her features wavered between crying and smiling.  She nodded.

“I believe you.  And I trust you.  I promise I’ll be nice—well.  I promise I’ll behave when I’m around her.  And I’ll try _really_ hard to be okay with you being friends with her.”

“Antoinette.”  He knew she was no Mother Theresa, but her willingness to try was quite endearing.  “Thank you.”  He leaned forward and gave her a kiss for her trouble.  She pulled back.

“Oh my God you taste like blood!  Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  I’m pretty sure it stopped.”

She caressed his jaw.  “Poor, Scotty.”

This was the first time she’d ever called him Scotty.  It was also the first time someone calling him Scotty made his heart pound.  He leaned forward to kiss her again, but she stopped him.

“But I don’t like her.  And I don’t think I ever will.”

Scott laughed.  “We’ll see.”

He pulled Antoinette close and kissed her deeply.  He was almost certain he’d never been happier in his life.  Possible broken jaw and all.

 

Julian

 

Saturday, December 31, 2005

 

Julian walked around the pulsating warehouse.  This was his first ever truly sketchy party.  But it wasn’t as much fun as he thought it might be.  That probably had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t had to sneak out or lie to his parents to come here.  He watched his fellow partygoers with a little bemusement.  He didn’t really understand the appeal of a party like this.  Unless someone wanted to get drunk, high, or have sex with strangers, what was the point?  Then he realized that that was the point.  So of those three choices which one did he want to do?  He really just wanted option four: dance and rock out to the music until the big countdown.  He sighed and looked around the vast space.  He had no idea where his friends were.  Will said he’d be coming late and he’d lost the others when he’d stop to observe a game of quarters.  Wasn’t that a game you played at a bar or when you were being lazy on a Friday night?  It certainly didn’t seem the type you’d want to play at a rowdy party when there were other things to do.  After two minutes of watching he’d determined that he was right: it was a lame game to play outside of a bar on a slow night.  And two minutes was all it had taken to completely lose track of his friends.

Julian had somehow wandered over into the make-out section.  It seemed like everyone was in pairs (or groups of threes) and going at it like there was no tomorrow.  Did New Year’s bring that out in people or was it just the combination of being young and horny?  Most likely it was the latter.  He stepped over a couple rolling around on a dirty sheet of canvas and walked around a couple girls who were unintentionally giving a show to several nearby boys.  Julian paused as he went by.  He was pretty certain that was the auburn haired lesbian from Calverton, and he was definitely sure she wasn’t with the dark-haired one.  That was an interesting development.  When they broke up they went after Will usually; he’d never seen one of them with another girl before.  He looked around to see if he could see the dark-haired one anywhere.  It was kind of too dark in this corner to see much of anything so he headed back toward the light.  He glanced at his watch.  This was getting to be pathetic.  Should he call Will?  He started to sit down on a couch but was stopped by something solid and an exclamation of irritation.  He jumped to his feet quickly and turned around to apologize to the couple he’d sat on.

“Sorry,” he said, though they seemed to have forgotten about him.  He started to walk away but someone called after him.

“Oh!  Hey, wait!  Julian!”

At first he wasn’t sure if he was the one being addressed, but he turned around at his name.  Someone was struggling to get out from underneath the guy he had sat on.  The person skipped over to him, grinning.

“Hi, Julian!”

“Oh hey, Tyler.”

The pretty boy’s tallness and skinniness was exaggerated by his tight, low slung jeans and old, ratty T-shirt.  He reminded Julian of Will the day they’d gone to “check out the city’s university.”  He pushed his hair back with a hand and it fell right back where it had been.

“Wow,” he said.  “So, this must be, like, the only place left in the city to come to, huh?  I mean after they turned Jax into a junior high school adolescent party scene.”  He shuddered.  “Ugh.”

“Yeah, it’s the only place for people like me to come.  But why are you here?  You’re over twenty-one.  You can get into clubs.”

Tyler shrugged.  “Clubs aren’t really my scene.  They’re too…controlled.”

 _Controlled?_ Julian thought with a lifted eyebrow.

“But I’m really glad you’re here,” Tyler continued, laying a hand on Julian’s arm.  “I, like, miss you.”  He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Julian’s neck.  Julian could smell the alcohol on him.  He was totally trashed.  “You rarely come to work and when you do I’m always hidden away in that stupid office and Rylan won’t let me out to play.”  He kept Julian in his embrace but pulled back enough to look at him.  “We should totally hang out, you know?”

Julian smiled at him.  He looked very serious.  Well, as serious as a person three sheets to the wind could be.  “Yeah, we should.”

“No, really.  I mean it.  Like, as friends.  I know you don’t like boys.  C’mere, c’mere.”  He pulled on Julian’s hand and brought him back to the couch.  The guy Tyler had been making out with was long gone.  He sat down and pulled Julian down beside him.  “Which is a real shame, you know.  That you don’t like boys?  Because you are _so_ my type.”

“And what’s that?  Male with a pulse?”

“Uh!”  Tyler slapped him on the shoulder.  “Don’t be mean!  ‘Cause I’m totally serious.  You’re tall, dark, and fucking handsome.  And I mean that you’re handsome enough for fucking.”  He laughed at his own joke.  “Heh.  Yeah, and you’re totally angsty.  Horribly traumatized.  You’re probably emotionally vacant and a complete asshole to the one you date.”

“Actually, I’d say I’m very emotionally available.  About almost anything.”

“Really?”  Tyler pulled his knee up onto the couch and twisted sideways so he could look straight on at Julian.  He put his elbow on the back of the couch.  “Then maybe you’d finally be the one who’d be good for me.”

Julian looked at Tyler’s eyes.  They looked more sober than he was acting.  “Do you have a history of destructive relationships?” he asked in his best Dr. Corbin imitation.

Tyler laughed cynically.  “Can escorts really have real relationships?”

Julian felt his brows crease in compassion.  Just because someone chose a certain lifestyle didn’t really mean it was what they wanted.  Or that it was actually a choice for that matter.  Tyler reached forward with the arm on the back of the couch.  He combed his fingers through Julian’s hair.  He was gazing openly at him.

“Yes, Julian March,” he murmured, “I would love to have you pound me into a mattress one day.”

Julian had to laugh at his description.  He gave Tyler a slightly scolding smile.  “Just don’t hold your breath, okay?”

Tyler nodded and leaned forward.  It seemed like Julian had been aware of Tyler’s intentions, but he was still a little surprised when he kissed him.  Mainly because it wasn’t a little peck or smooch.  He was going at him with full force.  Julian’s first instinct was one of panic and confusion.  He started to think about what he was going to do, but then his brain started having trouble functioning.  Tyler was _amazingly_ good at this.  The escort pulled back and licked his lips.  He smiled at Julian and wiped the corner of the stunned boy’s mouth with an index finger.  Julian swallowed and took in a breath.

“Wow.  That’s some technique.”

“Well,” Tyler said flirtatiously, “I do have a lot of experience.”

He started to lean forward again, this time moving very slowly and watching Julian for any signs of resistance.  Julian thought about stopping him, but he couldn’t help himself: he was a little curious.  Tyler put his lips gently to his this time.  Julian briefly wondered if this would count as leading him on.  He had kind of sort of confessed to having feelings for him.  But maybe he was too drunk to remember this later.

It was interesting to kiss him.  It didn’t really feel any different from kissing a girl, but he couldn’t get it out of his head that this was in fact a guy.  Tyler moved suddenly and straddled him.  He started a little bit in surprise, but he was completely under Tyler’s control now.  He’d never been kissed like this before.  And Tyler’s tongue was—good grief he didn’t know that was possible.  He could hear and feel that it was wet and noisy.  This was a “dirty” kiss.  It felt great.  And it wasn’t just kissing; he was sucking on his tongue and lips and biting him gently when they needed a little space for air.  It was so, so, _so_ good.  He really couldn’t care less that Tyler was a guy.  And there was no way he was going to be able to forget that he was.  Their groins were rubbing together and Tyler was very excited.  Julian realized he was starting to head in that direction himself.  He couldn’t believe this.  He held onto Tyler’s hips and tried to participate in the kiss, but he was turning into a puddle of goo under Tyler’s skillful hands and lips.    He was really getting turned on.  Maybe he was bi-curious after all.  Maybe?  It rather seemed like he was at the current moment.

“Mm, baby boy,” Tyler pulled back with a slightly mocking smile.  “Let’s dance.”

Julian tried to process his words.  He licked his lips.  He could still feel Tyler on him.  And he wanted more.  Tyler reached a hand out to his right and waved it around in empty air over a table.  He looked at the vacant spot.

“Where the hell is my beer?” he asked.

He slid off Julian and looked around the table like it was just hiding it from him.  Julian saw Will tossing a cup to the floor and about to head off somewhere with a very determined look in his eye.  He stood up and was about to greet him when Tyler fell off balance from bending over too far and stumbled into Will.

“Whoa!”

Julian grabbed Tyler and hauled him back.  And not a moment too soon.  Will looked like he might have taken Tyler’s head off.  When his eyes met with Will’s there was a noticeable change in his friend.  He looked calmer, more like himself.  He hoped he was doing okay.  It seemed like something was definitely bothering him even before Tyler ran into him.  He was now looking Tyler over carefully.  Probably because he was someone he’d never met before and he was being awfully friendly with Julian.  He had an arm around his shoulder and was pressing the full length of his body down his.  He hoped Will would just attribute it to him being drunk.  Either way he should distract Will as best he could from the drunken escort.  He smiled and stepped closer to his friend.

“Hey, Will.  So you did come after all.”

Will’s eye twitched.  “Yeah, I had nothing else to do.”

“Have you seen the others?  I kind of lost track of them.”

“No, you’re the only one I’ve seen so far.  And…Liz.”

“Damn.  She’s looks hot tonight, doesn’t she?”  He hadn’t really noticed her tonight, but he wasn’t an idiot.  Will didn’t mention anything without a purpose.  He wondered if he was planning on doing something stupid tonight.  Like sleep with Liz.

“Uh.  Yeah.”

Will averted his eyes and looked a little guilty.  Mm-hmm.  Julian knew it.  Hopefully now he would get over whatever bug was up his ass and think with his head instead of his dick.  Especially if he really was so in love with this mystery person.  If he loved someone more than him, then he better have enough sense not to cheat on her.

“Don’t be rude!” Tyler interrupted them and slapped Julian on the chest.  “I’m not a fashion accessory; introduce me to your gorgeous.  Friend.”

“I’m not being rude.  I’m being polite by not introducing you to my dear friend and making him suffer.”

Tyler gasped in offense and looked like he might bite him.  And not in the fun kind of way.  He got over it quickly though and returned his attention to Will.

“My name is Tyler.  I’m Julian’s co-worker.”

Julian stiffened at the word “co-worker.”  Maybe Will wouldn’t notice.

“I’m Will.  And, Julian has co-workers?”

 _Damn it_.  Should he deny it and say Tyler was just drunk?  No, Tyler would then argue and spill the beans about where he worked.  And besides, it was one thing to lie by omission and another to lie to someone’s face.  He should just be as honest as he could.  He owed Will that much.

“Uh, yeah.  I kind of got a part time job.  Nothing major.”

“What is it?”

 _Crap_.  Was there any way to talk around this particular job?  Then Tyler saved him.  He leaned forward and caressed a hand down Will’s cheek.  The action did succeed in getting Will’s attention, but it also kind of peeved Julian.

“You’re really hot,” the escort slurred, sounding drunker than he had five minutes ago.  Had Tyler done this on purpose to distract Will?  Was it working?  He looked at Will.  His friend seemed a little overwhelmed by Tyler’s intense look, but he smiled politely at him.

“Why, thank you.”

Julian pulled Tyler back.  “Sorry about him.”

Will shrugged.  “It’s okay.  You’ve certainly done worse.”

Julian’s first reaction was to smile at the joke.  Then he noticed that Will’s face leeched some of its color and his eyes and mouth tightened.  He had meant it as a joke, and Julian had understood that, but there was Thanksgiving again.  Coming between them.  Would things ever be normal between them again?  Possibly not.  And that was his fault.  So, it was his job to make Will feel better.

Julian smiled at him.  “Yeah and probably will do worse in the future.”

Will’s face immediately relaxed and Julian was glad that they still meant so much to each other.  Their moment was interrupted by Tyler getting distracted by the ping pong ball that went flying by his head.  He cried out in glee and ran over to the game of beer pong going on nearby.  He tripped as he went and got back onto his feet a little unsteadily.  Was it not an act?  Was he really that drunk after all?

“You wanna go after him?” Will asked.

He turned back to his friend.  Of course he’d be able to tell what he was feeling and thinking.  “Yeah, I kind of do.  Are you alone?”

“Yeah.  But I think I’ll go look for some of the others.  I don’t really want to get hit in the head with a loose pong ball.  Or get roped into playing.”

“Okay.  I’ll see you later then?”  Julian thought about letting it go at that, but he might as well let Will know that even though he felt guilty as hell about Thanksgiving, he really had no intention of completely stopping his routine assaults on his beautiful body.  “The countdown, right?  I wanna kiss.”

Will smiled brilliantly at him and Julian returned the gesture.  Then he gave him a little wink as he ran after Tyler.  His other pretty boy was now working his way in for a turn at the table.  He smiled sexily at two girls and they let him take their turn.  Julian wondered if Tyler would ever sleep with a girl if it suited his purposes.  Or if he just knew how to use his assets to get what he wanted.

Julian moved closer to Tyler and put up a hand to decline his offer to be his partner.  Tyler shrugged and pulled one of the girls drooling over him closer.  He took a ping pong ball colored with red marker and bounced it across the table.  It landed perfectly in one his opponent’s cups and she squealed as the beer splashed up onto her.  Julian did a double take as he noticed the two girls playing against Tyler were Liz and Laney.  The crowd around them chanted as Laney chugged the beer with the ping pong ball in it and then cheered when she spit the ball out of her mouth.  She let out a wild holler and stacked the cup in a set of empty ones already nine cups high.  Hopefully some of those were Liz’s.  Julian pushed his way over to Tyler and tugged on his collar to pull him closer.

“Hey, I’ve gotta go help a friend.”

“That’s cool.  Later.  Oh, you suck!”  He yelled at Liz as she missed his cup by a good two feet.

Tyler didn’t seem to care that Julian was leaving him.  And why should he?  Maybe the real question was why did Julian feel a little irked that Tyler didn’t care he was leaving?  He shrugged off the feeling and walked around to the other side of the plywood board that was serving as their table.  He put a hand to Laney’s shoulder and she turned to see who had touched her.  She smiled when she saw him.

“Hey, Julian!”

She returned to her game.  Tyler just got a ball into Liz’s cup.  Julian had a feeling this wasn’t the first time he had played beer pong.  He took Laney by the arm and pulled her away from the table.  The crowd started to boo, but someone took her place and they were happy again.  He led Laney over to a sparsely populated part of the building and looked down at her.  She looked up at him with mostly puzzlement, but also a touch of irritation.

“What?” she asked.

“Um.  What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why are you drinking?”

“Um.  Because it’s New Year’s?  So, I’m going to get back to it.”

She started to walk away from him but Julian stopped her and moved her back in front of him.  He looked at her closely.  She looked completely unconcerned with any of her actions.  Maybe it was because she had nothing to be concerned about.  He hadn’t talked with her a whole lot after Christmas; it was possible she had gone somewhere and had it taken care of.  But how did he ask that?

“Um.  What about the baby?”

She laughed.  “What baby?”

Julian stared at her in shock.  Was she for real?  “Did you—”

Laney grabbed his hand and jerked him across the room.  She made a beeline for the exit and Julian was forced to stumble after her.  He actually tried to stop her once but someone got in his way and she pressed on.  Finally they burst outside and found that while there had been a lot of people outside earlier, the place was deserted due to the cold.  It hit Julian like a slap in the face.  He was thankful he was wearing heavy jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt.  Laney was in nothing but a short skirt and a halter top.  Her skin immediately pricked up in goosebumps and she hugged herself tightly.  He stepped forward to hug her, but she stepped away from him.  He stopped in his tracks and watched her.  She wouldn’t look him in the eye and was staring miserably at the ground.  She didn’t look drunk at all.

“Laney.  Did you have—”

“Shh!  Shut-up!  Don’t say it so loudly!”

He knew he hadn’t been speaking loudly at all, but he lowered his voice anyway.  “Sorry.  No one’s out here anyway.”

“ _I’m_ out here.  And I don’t want to hear you say it.  I don’t want to think about it.  I want to pretend like it never happened.”

He took a discreet step forward to get closer to her.  “Laney, I’m so sorry.  Did you go by yourself?”

“Go where?”

“Um.  To get…um.  To have it…”

“No,” she said closing her eyes.

“Then why are you drinking?”  He hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory when he said it, but it finally made her look at him.

“Because I don’t want it!” she shouted.  She looked scared and upset.

“Okay, that’s fine.  But, you know, alcohol won’t cause you to miscarry.  It’ll just mess the baby up.”

“Well, what I am supposed to do?” she cried stepping forward and grabbing onto his arms.  “I can’t get an abortion without parental consent.”

“Not in this state.  You don’t need it.”

She swallowed.  “Well.  I don’t have a car.  I can’t get there on my own.”

“I can drive you.  If you want.”

She looked like this was all happening too fast.  Then she stared up at him like she was begging him to make all the decisions for her.  If he would just tell her what to do she would do it.  He was willing to help her with that, but he also knew he couldn’t allow his own personal feelings to cloud his judgment while he was helping her.  He had to help her do what _she_ wanted.

She nodded and clutched tightly at the sleeves of his shirt.  “Okay.  Okay.  But, maybe I should think about it some more?  I mean, I’ve been trying so hard to pretend it didn’t happen.  I just need to think for a little while.”

“Of course you can take time to think about it.  But…”

“But what?”  She took a step further into the security of his arms.

“Laney, if you really are already three months pregnant…it’s not illegal to terminate a pregnancy later on.  But it is very, _very_ difficult to find doctors willing to do it past the first trimester.  You don’t have a lot of time.”

“H-how do you know all this?”

“Class project.  Look.  Why don’t you think on it a couple of days?  We can always fudge the dates.  They can’t ever tell for certain.  Not usually anyway.”

“No.  No.  What’s there to think about?  I can’t have a baby!  I’m only sixteen!  I need to do it.  As soon as possible.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes!”

“Then we can do it tonight.”

“What?”  She laughed a little crazily and stepped away from him.  “No way.  It’s so late!  And it’s a holiday.  Nobody will be open.”

“I know a place,” he said softly.

She put a hand to her stomach and looked like she needed some air, which was not a good sign since she was already outside breathing in some very sharp, stinging cold air.  Then she looked down at her hand.  She jerked it away from her abdomen.

“Okay,” she said.  “Let’s go.”

They had to walk several blocks in the frigid air to get to Julian’s car.  He’d wisely decided to park it in a public garage in the non-sketchy part of the city.  Julian kept glancing at Laney as her teeth chattered and she rubbed her arms vigorously.  She’d probably brought a jacket, but it was obvious they couldn’t go back inside for it.  They were now in a different world from where that party had been.

Julian leaned his arm on the window as they drove across the city.  He shouldn’t be doing this.  Not because of what was going to happen to the baby, but because he felt like he was rushing Laney.  She really hadn’t had any time to think about this.  She’d found out only a week ago and had been pretending like nothing was wrong.  This was not something she needed to do last minute.  But, it was true: not many people would abort a child after the first trimester unless extenuating circumstances were involved.  If she really felt she couldn’t handle going through an entire pregnancy, then maybe it was better to get it done now.  He glanced over at her.  She was picking at her nails and staring at them blankly.  Maybe it would be best to do it without letting her think too much.  Maybe this was one of those things that if you thought about it too much it just made it worse or impossible to do.

Julian turned into a narrow alleyway and parked in the tiny lot behind a group of buildings.  He barely even had the engine turned off before Laney was getting out of the car.  She obviously didn’t want to have another chat about it and just wanted to get it over with.  He got out and led her toward the entrance.  She almost looked angry now.

“So, why do you know about this place?  Have you driven a lot of your girlfriends here?”

“No,” he replied.

It seemed she was spoiling for a fight—some kind of distraction.  He didn’t oblige her.  They walked into the clinic in silence.  Julian was very surprised to find three other women sitting in the tiny waiting room.  They walked up to the counter; the woman working the desk was behind bullet proof glass.  She was reading a book and twirling her red, curly hair around a finger.  She looked up at them and took a moment to asses them.

“There are some condoms on the counter there.  Help yourself.”

“We don’t need a condom,” Julian said.

“Are you here for birth control pills?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

She stopped twirling her hair and sorted through some papers.  She grouped several together and put them on a clipboard.  She slid it under the small slit in the window.

“Fill these out and return them to me.  It should be about an hour.”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

Julian took the clipboard and led Laney over to two vacant chairs.  One woman looked at them, but the other two paid them no heed; they were busy watching Ryan Seacrest talk very excitedly to some celebrity on TV while a little timer steadily ticked down in the corner.  It was nearly midnight.  Julian started filling out the forms for Laney, occasionally asking her for some information he didn’t know.  When he was done he walked up to the counter and turned in the paperwork.  He returned to his seat and saw Laney staring blankly at the TV.  There was about thirty seconds left.

“Aren’t you embarrassed?”

Julian was startled by her soft voice.  The TV was turned down pretty quietly, so hearing her voice in the still room was quite loud even though she was talking softly.

“Am _I_ embarrassed?” he whispered back.

She nodded.

“No.  Why would I be?”

“Because everyone must think you’re the asshole who knocked me up.”

Julian smiled and put an arm around her.  She laid her head on his shoulder.  “I don’t care what other people think.  I want to be here for you.”

He heard her sniff.  “I wish you were,” she said, her voice shaking just a little.

“An asshole?” he teased her.

“No.  The one who—”  She cut off.  There was no need to finish the sentence.

The people on TV started to get really excited.  The Seacrest was even more manic than usual.  The other people in the waiting room and even the woman behind the counter looked up as they got down to the last seconds.

“Happy New Year!” the people on TV shouted gleefully.

 

Sunday, January 1, 2006

 

The raucous noise on TV continued as the people in Times Square started to sing Auld Lang Syne.  The people in the waiting room watched quietly.  One woman went back to reading her magazine.

“Well, that was anti-climatic,” said another.

Julian agreed.  One by one the women were called, but they never came back.  There must be an exit in the back of the clinic.  He supposed it must be hard to walk back through a room of people who knew what you had just done.  Even if they were there for the same thing.  At last, forty-five minutes after New Year’s, it was Laney’s turn.  He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to accompany her or not, but he got up and followed her to the back rooms.  No one tried to stop him.  The woman who had called them didn’t appear to be a doctor, just a nurse or technician of some kind.  She was very kind and gentle with Laney, but it still felt really wrong.  For some reason it felt even worse than the time he’d brought Dawn here.

Dawn was the daughter of one of the members of his parents’ former coven.  They’d only been fourteen at the time and he could never understand why she’d come to him for support, but it was how he’d learned about this establishment that catered especially to those girls and women who wanted it taken care of in complete confidence.  That’s why the clinic was only open late at night.  He wondered what had happened to Dawn.  A few months after, her father and mother had divorced and she’d moved away.  It was weird to have been present for such a momentous, life-altering day in someone’s life and yet truly know nothing about them.

“You want to do an ultrasound?” Laney asked, pulling Julian out of his memory.

Up until this point he’d been hanging back by the door.  Now he stepped forward and almost stood between Laney and the nurse.

“Is that really necessary?” he demanded.

The nurse seemed to understand why he was upset.  She smiled carefully at him.

“Both procedures can be quite dangerous, especially if the woman isn’t really pregnant.  We can’t perform a blood test right now because our technician has gone home for the night.  We have to verify that she is in fact pregnant.  An ultrasound is the easiest and fastest way to do that.”

“Can’t she do one of those pregnancy test kit things?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s just not reliable enough.  We must be certain.”

Julian held back his sigh.  Laney looked at him.

“It’s okay, Julian.  I don’t mind getting an ultrasound.”

He looked at the stupid little girl.  Of course she didn’t mind.  She wasn’t even thinking about what it would show her.  He stepped back and the nurse prepped Laney for the ultrasound.  He didn’t want to look at it.  When he’d brought Dawn it had been so easy.  She looked like her normal self when they came in, he waited in the waiting room, and she liked like her normal self when they left.  It was like he’d taken her to a regular old doctor for a checkup.  This would be different.  He didn’t want to see it.  By this point it would kind of look like a human.  Also like a freakish alien parasite, but humanoid nonetheless.  And they were about to kill it.

“There it is,” the nurse said.

It was like a programmed reflex.  Both he and Laney looked at the grainy screen.  It had a huge head and a wormy body.  But it unmistakably had a head with arms and legs and little, tiny toes and fingers.  The nurse didn’t even have to point it out to them.  They could see it.  They could see its little hand moving around.  Julian felt a little lightheaded.  That thing was inside of Laney.  He couldn’t take his eyes off it.  He could tell Laney was in the same state.

“Would you like to have a picture of this?” the nurse asked.

“What?  No!” Laney cried.  “Why would I want a picture?!  I’m here to kill it!”

She gasped in horrified shock and put her hand to her mouth.  Tears started falling.  Julian reached out and tried to comfort her.  The nurse turned off the machine.

“I’m sorry.  I—Well, never mind.  Would you like to hear your options or do you need a minute?”

“Could you give us a minute?” Julian asked.

“No,” Laney forced out.  “I’m fine.”  She sat up on the table and clutched Julian’s hand tightly.  “Please tell me what’s going to happen.”

“Well.  There are two options.  The first is the vacuum method.”

“Vacuum?”

Both he and Laney echoed the nurse.

“Yes.  It is a procedure where the fetus is, essentially, vacuumed out of your uterus.  We’ll give you some local anesthetic and you’ll feel a little discomfort.  During the procedure you should feel little to no pain.  We’ll keep you a couple hours afterwards for observation, and then you can go home.  Afterwards you might be a little sore, but it will pass in a few days.  The other option is that we will give you a dose of drugs that will induce a miscarriage.  You’ll bleed heavily for several days, but it shouldn’t be any worse than during a normal menstrual flow.  Of course, considering how far along you are, I’d advise against that method.  I think the vacuum method would be safer and easier.”

The nurse waited for Laney’s response.  She was trembling on the table and squeezing his hand so tightly her knuckles had gone white a long time ago.  Neither he nor the nurse pressured her for an answer.  After several minutes of silence passed, Julian turned to the nurse.

“Do you think we could have that minute now?”

“Of course.  I’ll come back in a little while.”

She left the room and they were left alone.  For the first time Julian heard the loud ticking of the wall clock.  He turned to Laney and gently rubbed her back.

“Did you understand her?” he asked.

She nodded stiffly.

“So.  What are you thinking?”

She shook her head, her face breaking down.  “I don’t know.”  She started to cry and bent forward.  He stopped her from completely folding in on herself and hugged her.  He didn’t speak, but just let her know he was there through physical contact.  She said something, but her voice was muffled by his body and her tears.

“What was that?”

She sat up a little and put her head on his shoulder.  “How horrible would it be if I was pregnant in school?”

“I don’t know.  It depends on the people, you know?  Some of them can be stupid and cruel.  But you know we’ve got your back, right?  You know that none of us would ever let anybody do anything to hurt you.  Of course, you know, we can’t stop them from talking.  And the staring and whispering…it won’t be easy Laney.  I know that’s not comforting, but it’s the truth.  Just like we’d always be there for you.”

He felt her nod.  “Maybe.  Maybe adoption is a better idea.  I know I can’t keep it myself, but that doesn’t mean someone else wouldn’t like to have it, right?”

“If that’s what _you_ want.  There is no wrong decision, Laney.”

“Yeah, right,” she muttered.  She sat up and wiped her cheeks dry.  “Well, all I know right now is that I can’t do it tonight.  I _can’t_.  But, I also know that if I don’t do it tonight I’ll never be able to.  So.  I guess that’s that.”

Julian wasn’t entirely sure what she had decided, but he guessed that meant she’d decided to keep it.  Or at least, give birth to it.  He took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze.

“Well, then let’s ask the nurse about some things you’ll need so she’ll be healthy.”

“She?”

Julian shrugged.  “It looked like a girl.”

Laney half-laughed.  “You’re ridiculous.”

When the nurse returned she and Laney had a pretty long talk and more pamphlets than Julian could count were handed to her.  No matter how serious Laney was about this now he knew she was never going to read all of those.  Finally, they left the clinic around 1:30 in the morning.  All the way from the city to Laney’s mother’s house she read the pamphlets and would tell Julian any particularly interesting tidbits she came across.

“Holy crap.  Her pancreas is already making insulin,” Laney reported as they pulled into her driveway.

“Well, then feel free to start eating sugar.”

She laughed softly and remained in his car.  She wouldn’t look up at her house.  She sorted through the pamphlets and looked like she was trying to find a place to hide them for when she went inside.  Her outfit didn’t offer much cover for her let alone the stack of prenatal information.

“Hey, Julian?”

“Yeah?” he repressed a yawn.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?  Not yet.”

“Not a word.”

“Not even Will.”

“Not even Will.”

He crossed his heart.  Laney smiled weakly at him.

“Thank you, Julian.  So much.  I can’t even imagine how terrible this could have been if you hadn’t been here to help me deal with it.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged modestly.  “I know you would do the same if it was me.”

She rolled her eyes with a little laugh.  “You’re such a jackass.”

He smiled and leaned over to hug her.  He kissed her on the cheek and then cupped her face in his hands.  He kissed her on the lips.

“You’re gonna be okay, Laney.  I promise.”

She looked like she tried to smile, but this one didn’t come out.  “Thank you.”

She got out of the car and walked slowly up to her front door.  Julian watched to make sure she got in safely.  Then he stuck around for a few more minutes in case she came storming out of the house crying.  It didn’t seem like there was going to be a knockdown, drag out fight between Laney and her mother.  At least not tonight.  He backed out of her driveway and started to drive home.  He passed by his street.  He wondered where he was going.  He was feeling a little tired.  He should go to bed, but he kept driving.  He drove out of town and started heading back for the city.  Where on earth was he going?  That was a stupid question.  He was going to see Dr. Gorman.  But why had he suddenly decided that he had to see her tonight?  That he needed to be with her tonight.  He’d had two demonstrations of how sex was bad tonight.  Tyler had showed that being horny was not a good reason to decide to have sex and Laney showed that the consequences could be quite dire.

He was parked on the street in front of her building in what seemed like no time.  He looked up at the tall building.  Maybe he was just here to talk.  Yeah, right.  He wanted sex.  He got out of the car and casually approached the building.  Now how exactly was he supposed to get inside?  More than likely if he buzzed Dr. Gorman she would ignore him or tell him to go away.  He had no doubt she was asleep.  He had no doubt she’d been asleep half an hour after midnight.  If she’d even made it to midnight.  He walked up to the steps and looked inside the glass door.  Two guards were watching TV.  He knocked on the door.  One guard looked over his shoulder and then pressed a button on his counter.  There was a buzzing sound and the lock released.  Julian opened the door and stepped inside.  They must get paid squat if this was how carefully they guarded the place.

Julian shook out his limbs as he rode up in the elevator.  Why was he so nervous all of a sudden?  Then he wished he’d grabbed a condom out of the jar on the counter in the clinic.  Maybe she’d have some.  Or maybe she was on the pill.  Did all women take it?  He had no control over his mind as it thought of a multitude of weird problems that could arise as he walked down the hall.  When he stood in front of her door he shook out his limbs one last time.  He wondered exactly how pissed she would be at him for waking her up like this.

He knocked on the door.  He knew he’d done it too quietly even if she’d been wide awake during the middle of the day.  But it had sounded so loud in the hallway.  He didn’t want anybody else getting up and looking out in the hall to see who was making all the noise, but he wanted to see Dr. Gorman tonight.  He knocked louder and waited.  He couldn’t hear anything moving inside the apartment.  Was it possible she’d actually gone out to a party and was still boogying the night away?  No way.  He knocked louder and little bit longer.  He was trying to decide if he should try a fourth time or just go home when the door opened.

Julian hoped the slightly disgusted curl of his lip wasn’t as prominent as it felt.  The man in front of him was about three inches shorter than him, wearing nothing but Jockey shorts, and sporting some very hairy legs.  He had one those slightly sunken in chests and it was sprinkled with a couple hairs here and there.  He wasn’t overweight at all, but he had no muscle to speak of.  He was quite average.  Even his face fell into that category or neither ugly nor handsome.  He had quite a bit of scruff growing in and a very displeased look on his face.

“Can I help you?” he asked.  “At 2:30 in the morning?” he added grumpily.

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Julian said.  “I’ve got the wrong apartment.  Sorry to disturb you.”

He smiled and backed away.  The man narrowed an eye at him, but just stepped back inside and shut the door.  Julian turned and started toward the elevators.  He knew he hadn’t had the wrong apartment.  So, he supposed that meant the relationship was over.  He wondered if she was going to call to let him know or just planned on telling him the next time he showed up at her doorstep.  He pushed the button for the elevators and sighed as he realized that all three carriages idled on the lobby floor.  He was going to have to wait for one of them to drag its sorry self up seventeen floors.  He heard a door open and close behind him, and then the soft pad of bare feet jogging down a carpeted hall.  Julian turned and saw Dr. Gorman hurrying up to him.  He wished he hadn’t looked at her.  She was wearing short shorts and a tank top thin enough to tell she wasn’t wearing a bra even at a distance of five feet.  Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun and she had no glasses on.  The way she carefully checked out the floor as she approached him led him to believe that she must be seeing things a little fuzzy at the moment.  He swallowed hard as he looked her over.  She was way too hot for that guy in her apartment.

When she finally looked up at him, she squinted, kind of ruining her hotness a bit.  But a very little bit.  He noticed she was clutching something in her hand.  It looked like her glasses.  They stood awkwardly in silence for a moment.

“Um, you want to put those on?”

“Put what on?”

“Your glasses?”

She looked at her hands.  “Oh, right.”  She slid the glasses into place and kept her eyes focused down.  Finally she raised them up slowly to look at him.  She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

_That’s right.  Look at what you’re giving up to have Sasquatch back there._

“I’m sorry,” she started.  “I didn’t intend for you to see that.”

“I’m surprised you intended for yourself to see that.”

She put a hand on her hip.  “Julian.  Don’t displace your anger at me on Barry.”

“I’m not.  He’s ugly.  And seriously.  His name is Barry?”

She didn’t react to his taunting, though he could tell she wanted to.  Instead she took in another breath and lowered her hand back to her side.  She searched his face with her eyes.

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight.  I’m not sure why I thought that, but I just didn’t think you would come over.  It wasn’t my plan for you to catch me with another man.  That’s not how I would end a relationship.”

He half sighed.  “But you do want to end it.”

She looked sad as she said, “I don’t think you need me anymore.”

“I don’t need you anymore.”  He took a step forward and brushed a wisp of hair behind her ear.  “I _want_ you.”

Her lips parted on a breathy exhalation of air.  He could just barely hear the small moan that escaped her involuntarily.  He traced his fingers lightly on her bare shoulders and took another step closer.

“J-Julian.  You’re only eighteen.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And I’m almost forty.”

“So?”

She put her hands to his elbows as he trailed his fingers down her arms.  Her eyelids were starting to flutter in pleasure.

“So, we both know that this would be temporary.”

“Well, yeah.”

She gripped his elbows tightly to stop him from moving and cleared her throat to help her clear her head.

“Did you hear the part about me being almost _forty_?  I don’t want something temporary.  I want to get married.  And in order to do that, I need to be open to any potential long term relationships that come my way.  So, when Barry asked me out, I couldn’t very well ask him to wait on me while I had a fling with a barely legal former patient.”

Julian laughed softly, trying to mask his disappointment.

“I understand, Camellia.  I’m not angry.  Well, I mean I’m upset I can’t have sex with you, but I’m not angry with you or anything.”

“Well, thank you,” she said dryly.

They smiled at each other.  She took a step away from him.

“And anyway, this really is for the best.  I think it would be very bad if I ever got a taste of you.”

“Why?  ‘Cause no other man would ever measure up?  Ever again?”

“Oh, hush up!”

They smiled at each other again.  Then they looked awkwardly at their toes.

“Well,” Julian said, “goodbye, Dr. Gorman.”

“Goodbye, Julian.”

He leaned forward tentatively, trying to gauge whether or not she would be receptive to a goodbye kiss.  She didn’t try to stop him, but he decided to be good and went for the cheek.  Then he figured if this really was their last kiss, it needed to be real.  He moved slightly and kissed her lips.  He pulled back a little.  She was looking at him with just a touch of regret.  She took his face in her hands and kissed him.  Then she pulled back.  They looked at each other from centimeters apart for a couple seconds.  Then they lunged together, lips and arms tangling together.  He picked her up and they thumped against the wall.  Her legs circled his waist.  She moaned louder and he moved his lips to her neck so he could hear her better.  He sucked on her neck hard.  He wanted Barry to notice the mark he was going to leave.

“Oh, Julian.  Yesss.  Oh, God.  Why do I always…unnn—”

She grabbed his face and forced their lips together again.

“Mm, wait,” he said and pulled back just a little.  He hooked a finger under her glasses and slid them off her face.  Then he started kissing her again.

“Mm.  That’s no-uh-t.  Fair.  I can’t—hah—your lip—ring.  Ah.  Ah!”

This was not good.  He was totally going to wind up doing her in the hallway.  Why did she have to be so hot?  Why did she have to feel so good?  Why did her voice drive him crazy?  What did he see in this uptight, fashion disaster of a woman?

She moaned and arched against him.  The sound and motion went straight south.  Oh, yes.  That was why.  There was a dinging sound and movement to his left, but he paid it no heed.  What he did heed was a very startled woman’s voice saying, “Oh!  Oh my!”  Dr. Gorman on the other hand didn’t seem to notice, so he decided he wouldn’t bother to let her know.  He continued to kiss her.  After all, this was going to be the last time, right?  They had better make it last.

“Julian!”

He jerked back slightly.  His name had been said with such a disapproving and fatherly tone that he was forced to pay attention to it.  He turned his head and saw Ken looking absolutely confounded.  His expression of consternation made him smile.  He couldn’t help himself.  Though his smile made Ken narrow an eye at him in displeasure.  He now took notice of the woman beside him.  She was cute rather than pretty, but her exotic looks made her really sexy.  Along with the slinky black dress she was wearing.  He didn’t bother to release Dr. Gorman as he grinned at Ken.

“So, who’s your lady friend?”

Dr. Gorman minded a little bit.  She struggled against him and he let her down.  She put her glasses back on and looked back and forth between Ken and his guest.  She looked so flustered he knew she’d never be able to get out a coherent sentence.  She seemed to realize that too, so she turned and walked quickly down the hall toward her apartment.

“Bye, Dr. Gorman,” he called out.

She gave him a look as she ducked inside her apartment.  His grin hadn’t faded at all as he turned back to Ken.  The man’s eyebrow was raised in a perfect, disappointed arch.

“What?” Julian questioned, “Are you going to try to be my father?”

Ken crossed his arms in a huff but didn’t say anything.

“Soooo,” Julian tried again, “are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Julian,” he said testily, “this is Angela.  Angela, this is Julian.  He’s my boy—”

The man cut off abruptly.  Julian smiled.

“Your boy?  As in your home boy?”

Both he and Angela snickered.  Ken didn’t look amused; just slightly panicked.

“Um.  No.  My—uh, my—”

“ _Your_ what?” Julian asked, trying to be as difficult as possible and wondering what Ken was tripping over.

Ken closed his eyes a moment and forced out, “My friend’s best friend.  No.  I mean, my best friend’s boyfriend.”

Julian and Angela raised an eyebrow.

“No.  I mean.  He’s my best friend’s employee.  Yes.”

“Or maybe your boyfriend’s best friend?”

Angela laughed and Julian wondered if she was laughing for the same reason he was.  Ken wasn’t laughing at all.

“Um, I’m sorry,” he said.  “He is my best friend’s employee.  I think I might be a little drunk.”

“A little?” Angela teased him gently.

Ken cleared his throat and looked at Julian.  “Well, Julian.  I think you should be getting home, don’t you?”

“Why?  It’s not like anyone’s waiting up for me.”

“Oh.  That’s right.”  His brows furrowed together and Julian was a little alarmed by his sudden expression of emotion.  Ken leapt forward and crushed Julian into a frantic embrace.  “I’m so sorry,” he said, almost sounding like he was crying.  “Are you lonely?  Are you sad?”

“Uh…”  Julian had his arms in the air and wasn’t sure if he should touch Ken or not.  He saw Angela giggling to herself as she watched them.  She must be a little tipsy herself.  Julian patted Ken awkwardly on one shoulder.  “That’s not what I meant.  I wasn’t referring to my parents.  I just meant I have no one to have sex with.”

“Oh.”

“You really are drunk, aren’t you?”

Ken turned his face in toward his neck.  He whispered very softly so that Julian could barely hear him.

“It’s the only way I can go through with it.”

Julian realized he was referring to the woman.  He’d brought her here to have sex with her.  Why?  Was he in the closet?  Going so far as to sleep with women was a huge frickin’ lock to put on that door.  Julian turned his head so that his face was hidden from Angela’s view and his lips were close to Ken’s ear.

“So, maybe that’s a sign you shouldn’t do it.”

“I have to,” he breathed painfully.

Julian rubbed his shoulder.  “Ah.  Well, then let me help you get in the mood.”  He flicked his tongue over the man’s earlobe and gave his crotch a squeeze.  Hopefully they were turned enough that Angela couldn’t see.  Ken started up with a barely repressed yelp.  Julian gave him a little wink as he stepped over to the elevator and pushed the call button.  Ken turned to the woman.

“Uh, um.  I’m sorry for all this craziness.”  He waved a hand in Julian’s general direction.  As if _he_ was the reason for all the crazy shit Ken had been doing.  “I am a little drunk.”

Well, at least he was taking some responsibility for it.  The elevator arrived with a ding and Julian stepped on.

“That’s okay,” Angela said.  “I’m drunk enough myself to want to ask him if he’d like to join us.”

Julian slung out an arm and stopped the doors from shutting.  He grinned at the woman.

“Are you serious?  Because I totally would.”

“Go home!” Ken ordered with a bossily pointed finger.

“Fine,” Julian groused.

He grumbled all the way down to the lobby.  Everybody but him was gettin’ it on tonight.  It just wasn’t fair.

 

Chris

 

Saturday, December 31, 2005

 

Chris flopped down onto the arm of a couch, sweating and breathing hard.  He knew it was cold in the warehouse but all the dancing he was doing was giving him quite a workout.  Of course, he used the term “dancing” loosely.  Karen flopped down on the same couch arm between his legs.  He wrapped an arm around her middle, not caring that he was hot and sticky.  He leaned forward and put his face to her hair.  He wasn’t the biggest fan of sweaty girl smell, but he was more interested in her softly textured hair.  He raised a hand and played with a lock between his fingers.  He felt her laugh as she turned part way to look at him over her shoulder.

“Are you still messing with my hair?” she asked good-humoredly.

“I like it.  Your real hair.”

“Well good.  I changed it back just for you.  My mom nearly pitched a fit.”

“Nearly?” he murmured, leaning even closer and kissing her neck.

Her skin trembled under his lips and when she spoke her voice was a little breathy.  “She’s the one who paid for the braids you know.  I hadn’t even told her anything but she demanded to know if I was always going to obey the wishes of my boyfriend.”

Chris laughed and hugged her.  “And what did you tell her?”

“I told her that as long as it was you, I just might.”

“I hope not.”

She turned in his grasp.  “What do you mean?”

He turned her so that she was sitting sideways on the couch arm.  It spread his legs a bit wider than he was comfortable with.  He kissed her slightly furrowed brow.

“I just mean that it’s great that you’ve changed from crazy control freak girl—”

“Uh!”

“—but if you give in to everything I say then you wouldn’t be you.  And I like you.”

She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck.  “Oh really?”

“Mm-hmm.”

They kissed, but only for a moment.  They both pulled back with dry mouths.

“Ugh.  I think we worked it a little too hard on the dance floor,” she said.

“Yeah.  You want me to get us something to drink?”

“Yeah, but do they have anything other than beer?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

He stood up and gave her a peck on the cheek before he began his quest.  He also took the opportunity to look for his friends.  He’d come in with Julian, Scott, and the girls, but once he’d found Karen he’d completely lost track of them.  He caught a glimpse of Liz and Laney playing beer pong.  And Liz was looking hot.  He didn’t know why it always came as a surprise to him when he acknowledged that fact.  Liz was a nice enough girl, but Will certainly hadn’t dated her for her personality.  At least, not in the beginning.

He made a quick circuit of the bottom floor of the warehouse and managed to snag a couple of Cokes that hadn’t been mixed with Jack Daniels yet.  Soda wasn’t the best thing to drink when you were dehydrated, but it was certainly better than beer.  As he made his way back to Karen he saw Antoinette throw her beer on Scott.  His first reaction was simply to laugh.  It was funny.  Then he realized he ought to be a little more concerned, but Scott just looked completely miffed.  He didn’t seem devastated or anything, so he must be okay.  Then after a brief conversation with Anna he ran after Antoinette.  Chris shrugged.  Scott could handle himself.  Well…Yes.  He could handle himself.  Could he handle Antoinette?  The boy would have to learn sometime.

As he approached the couch they had been sitting on he saw Karen talking with Darryl.  Darryl the big black basketball player (because Calverton had no football team) and former rival.  He didn’t even feel a twinge of jealousy.  So, what did that mean?  That he didn’t really care about Karen, or had that always been his personality?  Maybe he shouldn’t be so laidback concerning his girlfriend.  He walked right up to them and interrupted their conversation by thrusting Karen’s drink out to her.  They both looked at him and Chris smiled politely at Darryl.

“Oh, hi, Darryl.  If I’d have known we would meet up with you I would have gotten another drink.”

Oh, so that’s why he didn’t feel jealous.  He was a cocky bastard.  But that was cool.  Darryl kind of made a face, but didn’t respond to him.  Karen just smiled and draped herself over Chris’ shoulders.

“Hey, baby,” she purred and kissed him.

He smiled and kissed her back before turning to half-lean/half-sit on the couch arm.  He popped the top on his drink and took a sip, watching Darryl’s reaction.  He was in the process of a tremendous eye roll.  He gave Karen a look like one black person gives to another when they’re about to discuss crazy white people.  Chris was more familiar with that look than he would have liked to be.  Darryl looked at Chris and put out a diplomatic hand.

“Look, no offense to you personally, Chris.  I actually don’t mind you all that much.  But, Karen.  Why are you dating a white boy?”

Karen placed a hand on Chris’ shoulder lovingly.  Well…possessively.  “Love is color blind, Darryl.”

“You weren’t blind when you first started dating him.”

“No, I certainly wasn’t.  I wanted to date a really hot guy.”

“Oh, whatever,” Darryl rolled his eyes again and crossed his arms.

“No, seriously.  I mean,” she smiled devilishly, “have you ever seen him naked?”

“Yes, actually I have.”

“Wha—?!”  Karen startled herself into standing up straight.

“Gym class, babe,” Darryl smiled at her.

“Why were you looking?” Chris mumbled, mostly to himself.

“Hmph,” Karen eloquently retorted.  “Well, then.  You must know.”

Darryl shrugged.  “He looked like a skinny, pasty white boy to me.”

“Oh yeah?”

Karen turned to Chris and lifted up his shirt.  Luckily he was sitting/leaning in such a way that it emphasized his abs in a good way.  She ran her hand over them.

“Ooo.”

Chris laughed softly and gave a quick lift of his eyebrows at her.  She giggled and turned to face him, still rubbing his abs.  They leaned closer together and kissed.  He put his hands to her hips and pulled her in between his legs.  Karen put her hands to his stomach and caressed his heated skin.

“Yuck.  You two make me sick.”

Chris was peripherally aware that Darryl had left them, which was probably a good idea on his part.  Chris’ hands had already started to wander and Karen had moved her hands to his back so that she could continue her rubbing with her torso.  He had already been hot and excited, and this was just escalating things to the point of full blown arousal.  He hated it when they got like this in public, but like hell if he was going to stop.  He was only forced to momentarily slow down when someone bumped into him as he ran by shouting, “It’s almost time for the countdown!”  Then Karen pulled back and he frowned.  She wiped at the corner of his mouth; presumably to get rid of some smudged lipstick.

“I guess the countdown to New Year’s is gonna happen soon.  Should we find our friends?”

“In this mess?” Chris asked, looking at the mob of people that was getting bigger and closer together.  “Besides, neither of us is going home with who we came with.”

He grinned at her and gave her butt a playful pat.  She giggled and bounced around in his hold.

“Good point.”

She bit on her lower lip and slowly moved her eyes to her left.  He followed her line of sight and saw the stairs.  They looked back at each other.  There was a moment’s hesitation, and then they both jumped off the couch and ran for the stairs hand in hand.  They fought their way upstream as the party-goers (that were conscious of it) gathered in the middle of the warehouse around the screen projector that was showing the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  As the crowd counted down, they counted up.  They reached the top of the stairs just as the crowd screamed in excitement.  Chris pulled Karen to him and gave her the first kiss of the New Year.

 

Sunday, January 1, 2006

 

He’d meant it to be a quick little smooch, but they stayed joined.  Calmly kissing and lightly running their fingers over the other’s body.  They were interrupted as someone crashed into them on his way down the stairs.  Chris stumbled forward and made sure that Karen didn’t fall over.  Then he looked at the jerk who had shoved them and started to yell out something nasty.  He stopped the insult before it came out and instead said, “Was that Will?”

“Um.  I’m not sure,” Karen said, looking after the person who had already disappeared among the crowd.  “Do you want to go check?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Oh, wow.  You mean I’m taking priority over one of your non-sexual boyfriends?  I’m honored.”

“Ha, ha,” he said grumpily.  It really kind of bothered him how everyone defined his relationship with his friends as them being his boyfriends.  No matter how platonic their implication might be.  He looked right and then left down the hall.  He decided to go left.  He pulled Karen along after him and found something else to talk about.

“So, you know, there probably aren’t going to be any beds or anything up here.  We’re gonna have to do it on dirty blankets.  Or a window sill or something.  You’re okay with that?” he asked looking back at her.

She moved up by his side and hugged his arm.  “Chris, if it’s with you…a sewer would be fine.”

Chris made a face.  “Ew.  Well.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, okay?”

She laughed.  “Okay.”  She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, which tripped them up a bit.  They laughed as they stumbled down the hall, kissing as they went.  Then Karen pushed back on him a little, so he went for her neck.

“Mm, Chris, did you hear that?”

“No,” he said, sucking on her pulse.

She slapped his shoulder.  “No seriously.”

Chris pulled up and cocked his head in an exaggerated listening pose.  He waited and actually listened a few seconds.

“Karen, I don’t hear anything.”

He leaned forward to attack her neck again but a sharp yelp made him pull up short.  He stood up straight.  He gave Karen an admonishing look.

“Geez, Karen.  It’s just a couple that had the same idea as us.  Don’t be all pervy by listening to them.”

“No,” she said, her brow furrowing with worry.  “It doesn’t sound right.”

“So maybe they’re doing it wrong.  Can we give them pointers later?”

“That’s not what I mean!  Chris, I’m completely serious!  It’s like someone’s scared or fighting.”

Chris held back a sigh and listened again.  There was a thump from the room next to them.  Karen nudged him.

“Go check it out.”

“Wha—?!  No way!”

“Chris!”

“What?”

“Someone could be in trouble!  What if it were me?  Would you just want someone who could have helped me to just walk away and leave me there?!”

“And what if it’s just ‘us’ and someone walked in on us while we’re trying to enjoy ourselves?  Hmm?  Give them some privacy.”

“But, Chris…”

“No!  Stop!”

They both started at the desperate cry that came from the room.  There was no mistaking that; what was going on was definitely not consensual.  But, what were they supposed to do about it?  Karen nudged him again.

“Go help!” she whispered.

“But what if there’s more than one?” he whispered back.  “I don’t want to get beat up.”

She made a face at him.  “You pussy!  Help her!  I’ll have my cell phone ready to call 9-1-1.”

“Oh, gee, thanks.”

“Go on!”

“Uhh~”  Chris edged closer to the door, mostly because Karen was pushing him.  “What am I supposed to do?  Knock?  Peek in and check out the situation?  Just burst in?”

The girl screamed in fear.  It forced him to react.  He stepped forward and threw the door open, scanning the room for the girl.

“What’s going on in—” he started.  Then he saw a large man holding down a small girl.  He had her hands pinned above her head and his free hand was up her skirt.  He raised his head from where he had been sucking on a nipple through her thin shirt to look at the intrusion.  The girl saw him too.

“Please!” she screamed.  “Help me!”

Chris didn’t even think when he heard her voice.  He ran forward and grabbed the guy before he could process that someone was going to interrupt his fun.

“Hey, man, what are you—”

Chris pulled back and punched him hard.  So hard in fact he knocked him out of his grip.  He bent down and picked him up again.  He started hitting him repeatedly, ignoring the pain that was building up in his hand.  The guy wasn’t even fighting back.  By the tenth punch he looked kind of out of it.  And is face was getting bloody.  That just made Chris want to hit him harder.  He could hear a ringing in his ears.  And something trying to break through the noise.  Then he heard Karen’s voice.

“Chris, stop!  You’re going to really hurt him!  And then you’ll get in trouble!”

Chris stopped in the drawback of his next punch.  The guy weakly pulled up an arm to block his face.  Chris clenched his teeth and snarled softly in an attempt to gain control of himself.  He let go of the guy’s shirt and he slumped to the floor.  Chris turned to the girl where she sat huddled on the floor, staring wide-eyed at him.  He bent down and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Sophia, are you okay?”

She was shaking and clearly very upset, but she managed to nod to the affirmative.  He put one knee to the floor so that he could scoop her up into his arms.  She gasped softly and put her arms around his neck as he stood up with her.  She was so light it was kind of ridiculous.  She tightened her grip around his neck and put her face to his shoulder.  She started crying.  He could feel her thin arms clinging to him as tightly as she could, and he could tell that she was so weak.  She never stood a chance against a guy like this.  This guy who could have—would have—

Chris turned to him and stomped on his balls as hard as he could.  The guy cried out and curled into the fetal position.

“Chris!” Karen called out to him.

He turned to walk out of the room.

“I’m taking you home,” Chris said to Sophia.

“But—”

“It’s okay if we leave now, right, Karen?”

“Of course, that’s fine.”

He saw Karen bend over to pick something up and then they started to walk down the hall toward the stairs.  Sophia raised her head.

“But my friends—”

“Are you their ride?” he asked harshly.  He needed to calm down.  He didn’t need to take his anger out on her.

“Well, no…”

“Then they’ll be fine.”

“But they’ll worry!”

“Call them and leave messages on their cell phones.”

“But my phone is in my purse.  I don’t know where—”

“I have it,” Karen said.

Sophia looked at her, but Karen remained facing forward.  They were at the top of the landing.  Chris easily carried her down the stairs without his balance wavering.

“You’re going home.  Now.”

“I’m not a baby,” she said, pulling back from him just a little.

“No.  But you don’t belong here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Yeah, what _does_ that mean?” he heard Karen mutter softly.

“Little girls aren’t supposed to go out to big grown up parties?” Sophia asked, sounding upset and embarrassed.

“Yes!” Chris replied, looking her straight in the eyes as he maneuvered his way across the room to the exit.  Sophia inhaled sharply and looked like she might start crying again.

“Put me down!” she demanded.

“No.”

Her chin quivered as she tried to maintain her composure and dignity.  She hid her face in his neck when she realized she wouldn’t be able to do that.  They had several blocks to walk in the chill night air to get to his car.  He hadn’t wanted to park anywhere near the sketchy part of the city the warehouse was in.  So while his car was a good deal safer than it would have been if it had been closer, they had a long, tense walk in silence.  The only noise was Sophia’s snuffling.  Karen wasn’t making a single noise, which kind of freaked him out a little.

Even after ten minutes of walking his arms were barely starting to feel the strain of Sophia’s weight.  How much did she weigh anyway?  He finally put her down in order to get out his keys and open the car door.  Sophia stood beside him, hugging herself and looking miserably at the ground.

“Get in,” he ordered.

She moved forward and got into the car.  He shut the door and turned to walk around to the driver’s side.  And then he saw Karen.  He’d momentarily forgotten she was with them.  Should he have put Sophia in the back?  Then as he looked at Karen, he couldn’t help but to think that what if some guy tried to do to her what—He stopped that train of thought and stepped forward to pull her into a tight embrace.

“Promise me,” he said.

She combed her fingers through his hair.  “Promise what?”

“You’ll never let some guy do that to you.”

“Let?  It’s not about _letting_ someone do that.  That’s kind of the point.”

“Just…be careful.”

He pulled back and cupped her face.  She was looking at him a little worriedly.  He leaned down and kissed her.  He held her face and deepened the kiss.  She let him cling to her for a moment, and then pushed back on him gently.

“Is Sophia watching us?” she asked softly.

“Nn.”  Chris stopped.  Now he’d gone and forgotten about _her_.  “Sorry about tonight,” he mumbled.

“Why?  I had fun.  And I didn’t really want to do it in such a dingy place.  So, it’s okay.”

He nodded and opened the back door for her.  She got in and Chris was a little surprised at how accepting she was being about the situation.  Especially considering who it involved.  Then again, maybe women had a kind of understanding regarding things like this.

Since it was still early after midnight, the streets weren’t very crowded as they drove from the city back to town.  Nobody had spoken or really even looked at each other during the whole trip.  The first one to speak was Karen.

“Um…where are you going?” she asked from the backseat.

“To your house.”

“Why are you dropping me off first?”

“Because her house is closer to mine.”

“You know where her house is?” she asked in a very familiar tone.

“Uh—”  Chris wasn’t sure how to reply in such a way that wouldn’t get him in trouble.

“She’s traumatized,” Karen said.  “You should take her home first.”

“And then drive all the way back across town to drop you off and then all the way back again?”

Karen leaned forward in her seat to get right behind his head.  “The night doesn’t have to end after you drop her off,” she said quietly and quite meaningfully.

“Oh.  Right.”  He glanced nervously at Sophia.  She was leaning against the passenger side door and staring out the window.  “Um.  Isn’t your curfew, like 1:30?  I don’t want your dad pissed at me.”

“Fine.”  She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms.  “Whatever.”

Chris passed a hand over his face.  Oh yes.  That tone was an old friend too.  This was not good.  He almost decided to turn around and drive to Sophia’s after all, but he was practically in Karen’s neighborhood.  By the time he pulled in front of Karen’s house everyone was in a bad mood.  Karen didn’t say anything as she got out and slammed the door.  Chris quickly turned off the car and jumped out, making sure his door shut all the way.

“Karen, wait.”

She stopped, but didn’t turn to him.  He gently took her by the elbow and made her face him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I wasn’t—I was just thinking practically.”

She crossed her arms and pouted.  “Well why couldn’t you think with your dick for once?”

Chris laughed and pulled her into a hug.

“Or were you?” she asked softly.

He pulled back and saw that she was looking into the car.

“Karen.  No.”  He took her face in his hands and kissed her.  He was glad when she kissed him back.

“Goodnight,” she said.

He waited outside the car until Karen had walked all the way up her driveway and gotten safely inside.  Now that she was gone, he was kind of dreading being alone with Sophia.  What did he say to her?  Should he say anything?  He was a guy after all.  A guy who had pushed himself on her before.  He sighed and got into the car.  She was still staring out the window.  So, he turned on the car and drove her home in silence.  At her house there were no lights on.  He pulled up to the curb and immediately killed the engine.  He hoped that would let her know that he didn’t just intend to kick her out and leave her by herself.  Especially if there really wasn’t anyone in her home.  He couldn’t imagine her feeling comfortable or safe entering a dark house this late at night after what she had been through.

He looked over at her.  She was fidgeting.  He couldn’t really see her face because she was leaning forward out of the streetlight.  He didn’t know what to say or if he should be the first one to speak.  So, he decided to wait a little.  At last, he heard her timid voice come out of the semi-darkness.

“Thank you.  For helping me.”

“Of course.”

They fell silent again.  Then Chris’ curiosity got the better of him.  He just had to ask.

“What happened?  I mean, what were you doing?  Did you _willingly_ go up there with that sketchy guy?”

She didn’t answer right away.  He leaned closer when he thought he heard starting to speak, but then to his horror he realized she was crying.

“Oh, shit.  Don’t cry!”  That wasn’t the most soothing approach he could have taken, but his manners only got worse from there.  “What were you thinking?!”

He finally realized that as enraged as he had been by what the guy had done to her, he was angry with her for putting herself in that position.  She turned to look at him; she looked peeved.

“Uh!  Well _excuse_ me!  I can’t help it!  I still like you.  I don’t know why, but I do.  So when I went to the party and saw you hanging all over your ex-girlfriend I got a _little_ upset.  I drank a little.  I flirted a lot.  I was just trying to forget about you.  And your stupid face.”  Chris raised an eyebrow.  “And then this guy comes up to me.  And he’s paying attention to me.  And smiling at me.  And looking at _me_.  And he said that since the warehouse was on a hill, there was a great view of downtown from upstairs.”

“Oh, God,” Chris moaned.  “You fell for that?”

She gave a very good death glare.  “ _Apparently._ ”

He turned a little in his seat and settled back into it as he looked at her.  What was he doing?  Who treated a girl like this after she’d nearly gotten herself—wait.  Nearly gotten _herself_?  She didn’t do anything.  That guy did.  He looked at her and noticed she’d lost a little of her fight.  She was slumped back into her seat and he could see her face now.  She stared straight ahead as she spoke.

“He didn’t even try to fake it.  As soon as we were in the room he just closed the door and grabbed me.  I was so shocked.  He was groping me all over.  At first, I just couldn’t even believe it was happening.  And then when it started to occur to me that I ought to do something, I didn’t know what to do.  And then he—” her voice started to break a little.  “Then he pushed me down.  And I just kept thinking—this isn’t happening.  It’s a dream.  It’s not real.  I kept waiting for it to just stop.  But he just kept—he kept—his hand…”  She covered her mouth with her hands.  Chris started to reach out to her, but a guy’s hand probably wasn’t what she wanted to feel right now.

“Sophia,” he said as gently as he could, “you’re so stupid.”

“Oh, shut-up!” she cried.  “It’s all your fault anyway!”

“ _My_ fault?”

“Yes.  I thought about what you said.  About how I needed to stop idealizing you.  So I did.  I thought about your flaws and your hang-ups.  And about what a huge dork you are.”

“Thanks.”

“And then.  We would talk briefly in the halls or kiss under the mistletoe.”

Chris felt a stab of guilt about that.  Even though things had been “over” between him and Sophia, he’d made out with her practically every chance he got throughout the month of December.

“And when we did—I realized I wasn’t nervous around you anymore.  I was just…happy.  I realized that I now truly liked you.  For who you are and not who I thought you were.  Which makes it suck even worse when I see you with her.  And now—well now you have to go and save me.  So, yeah, thank you.  For saving me from the worst experience of my life which could have resulted in permanent and horrible physical and psychological scars.  Jerk.”

Chris had to laugh.  “Sorry.  Next time I’ll mind my own business.”

“Please do.”

She looked at him and they smiled at each other.  He could see her thinking something over, so he stayed quiet and let her work it out.

“Chris?”

“Yes?”

“Um.”

He waited a little longer.  She stayed quiet.

“What is it?” he prompted.

“It’s just.  I can.”  She heaved a little sigh.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can still feel him on me.”  She rubbed her arms.  “It feels awful.”

“Is…Um.  Do you need to go somewhere?  Like a hospital?  Did he hurt you?”

“Oh, no.  No, no, no.  Not that.  I can just…feel him.  It makes me feel…Can.”  She shook her head.  “Never mind.”

“No, what is it?”

“No, it’s nothing.  Never mind.”

“Sophia, just tell me.”

Sophia looked distressed, and a little upset with herself.  “I know you’re back with Karen.  And you’ve made it abundantly clear you don’t have any real interest in me.  And I don’t want you to _do_ anything.  I just…I can still _feel_ him.  And I hate it!  Can you…will you touch me?  To wipe away that feeling?”

“Um.  Touch you?”

“I don’t mean like, do _it_.  Or in a sexual way.  Just.  Let me feel your hands instead of his.”  She sat up stiffly and looked appalled at her own request.  “I’m sorry!  Just forget it!”

She turned to open the car door and get out, but he reached across and grabbed her arm.  Then he immediately let her go.

“Oh, sorry.  Did that—was that like what he did?”

She shook her head.  “It’s okay.  You don’t have to.  I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have asked.  It’s unfair to you.”

She started to leave again, but he put a hand to her shoulder and left it there this time.

“Like this?”

He ran his hand lightly down her arm.  She sighed in pained relief.

“Yes.”

Chris leaned forward and gently grasped her other shoulder.  He turned her body so that she was facing him and then ran his hands lightly up and down her arms.  She sat very still with her eyes downcast.  When he reached her wrists for the second time, he moved his hands to her legs just above the knee.  He was careful to make the contact there as platonic as possible and didn’t move more than a few inches above her knees.  Then he used the back of his hand to press against her stomach.  Finally he raised his arms again and cupped the back of her neck.  He ran his thumbs along the underside of her jaw.

“Better?”

She nodded.  “Thank you.”

He dropped his hands.  “No problem.”

“Just…there’s one more place.”

Chris gulped.  He remembered where he’d seen that guy’s hand disappearing to.  Did she mean…?

He was so worried about _that_ place that he didn’t react to her as she leaned forward.  He was curious as to why she was doing it, and then it occurred to him that she was going to kiss him.  He put a hand to her shoulder and she stopped about six inches away.

“Sophia, what are you doing?”

“I told you I’ve been drinking, right?”

She moved forward, easily pushing his hand back, and kissed him.  He moved his lips against hers and found them slightly parted.  He couldn’t help but to kiss her back for a moment.  And the little liar.  He couldn’t taste any alcohol on her at all.  There was just a residual sweet minty flavor, probably from gum.  He put both of his hands on her shoulders with every intention of pushing her away, but somehow he wound up twisting her as he pulled her forward.  She ended up sitting in his lap with her legs draped over the center console into the passenger seat.  She was a little surprised by the position change and stopped kissing him for a moment.  He kissed her once, twice, and then groaned in irritation at himself.

“Damn,” he grumbled, giving her another kiss.  “For some reason I can never stop with you.”

“So, don’t,” she replied, circling his neck with her arms and pulling them closer together.

Chris was the one in control.  He was the one dictating the pace and direction of the kiss.  He was the one teasing her, testing her, to find out what she liked and what she was good at.  He liked the almost helpless noises she was making.  He could tell she was trying to keep up with him, or at least kiss him back, but she was completely at his mercy.  She was so cute and innocent.  It was kind of like kissing a little girl.

Chris almost ruined it for himself.  He couldn’t believe he’d just had that thought.  Was that what he liked?  Little girls?  Was he a sick pervert child molester?  He moved his hand and found her breast.  He gave it a light squeeze and she twitched against him, but did nothing to pull away.  That made him feel much better as he continued to knead her breast.  He liked this and little girls definitely didn’t have these.  He stroked her tongue with his and deliberately put his thumb over her nipple to make her writhe around on his lap.

They both started as something banged on the driver’s side window.  They could see a figure standing outside the car door, but in the cold night they had easily steamed up the windows a little bit.  The figure looked a little small to be an adult, so he grabbed a hold of the handle and opened the car door just enough to see who had interrupted them.  Sophia’s older sister, Natalie, was glaring in at them with her hands on her hips.  She must be freezing in that miniskirt and tube top.  He wondered if Sophia had raided her big sister’s closet for her outfit tonight.  Natalie raised a hand and motioned to Sophia to get out of the car without saying a word.  She had to squirm around in his lap as she turned to get out.  Chris bit his lip and held onto the edges of the car seat.  Once she was outside he looked at Natalie.  She was looking disapprovingly at his groin.  He didn’t see what good it would do him to try to cover it up at this point.  So he just looked back at her, completely unapologetic.  After all, he had nothing to apologize for.  Well…not to her anyway.

“Say good night, Sophia,” Natalie said, still eyeballing Chris.

Sophia stepped closer to the car so she could smile shyly at him.  “Good night, Chris.  And thank you again.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

She half-nodded and half-shrugged.  “Yeah.  I think I’ll be fine.  Especially now.  I feel better.”

“Good.  Good night, then.  Oh, wait,” Chris said and leaned over on the passenger side to grab her purse.  He handed it to her and their fingers touched when she took it from him.

“Bye,” she said softly.

Natalie nodded her head toward the house and Sophia obediently started to walk up the driveway.  She waited for her sister to get a few feet away and then she turned back to the car to glare at Chris.

“Will you leave my sister alone?”

“Hey, she comes on to me.”

“So?  Don’t respond to her.”

Chris cleared his throat and looked away.  “That’s easier said than done.”

Natalie jutted her jaw out to one side and tapped her foot.  “I saw you at the party you know.  With your ex.  You’re back together?  I wonder what she would do if she found out about this?”

Chris laughed humorlessly.  “Probably make your sister’s life a living hell.”

Natalie pursed her lips.  Chris knew she knew her threat had been empty.  Because even if Karen went off the deep end and made Chris regret ever laying eyes on the sophomore, she would also go after Sophia.  And Natalie knew that.

“Just try not to be an asshole, okay?  You’ll hurt _both_ of them.”

Chris sighed.  “I know, I know.  I honestly don’t mean to do it.  I just—”

He cut off.  Why was he explaining himself to her?  He clamped his mouth shut and reached out to shut the car door.  He was going home.  Natalie put her hand on the door and stopped him from getting it closed.

“Hey,” she said, her mood suddenly shifting.  “Are you gonna see Scott before school starts?”

“Uh…probably.”

“Can you give him something for me?”

“Uh…sure.  Wha—”

Natalie leaned into the car and planted a kiss on his lips.  He was overwhelmed by the forcefulness and intensity of it.  Now _this one_ had definitely been drinking.

“Mmm,” Natalie hummed against his lips, sending a tremor through his already sensitized body.  She pulled back.  “Have a nice night,” she smiled.  She shut the door and sauntered up her driveway.

“Feh,” Chris said as he turned the key in the ignition.  “Give a kiss to Scott.  Whatever!  Why do so many girls like him now?”

As he put the car in gear he had to grudgingly admit to himself that it wasn’t just “now.”  Girls had always liked Scott.  Now they were just being more open about it.  He started down the street, again thinking about Natalie’s request to “give Scott a kiss.”

“ _Feh_ ,” he said with even more feeling.  “That goober?  A kiss like that?”

Chris shook his head, smiling.  He was too innocent.  If someone ever did that to him he’d be all surprised and flustered and blushing and moaning.  A sudden heat flooded Chris’ body as he imagined Scott crying out beneath him.  He slammed on the brakes and the tires squealed as the car lurched to a halt, throwing him against his seatbelt.

“Gaaahhhhhhh!  I’m gonna kill Julian!”


	22. Chapter 22

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

 

Scott

 

Scott leaned in close to look at himself in the mirror that hung on his locker door.  Jake hadn’t gotten him too bad on the eye; it had barely bruised and was now mostly faded into his skin.  He tilted his head up to look at the underside of his jaw.  Now this one Jake had gotten a good piece of.  He touched the blue and purple skin gingerly.  It blanched out under his fingertips and his pain receptors told him to stop touching it.  He made a face.  How uncool.  This was going to take weeks to go away.  And it would turn green and yellow and all kinds of weird colors.  Fortunately it wasn’t too prominent, especially if he kept looking down.  He had a feeling he might do that a lot.  He didn’t want to see Jake.  After all, he might decide two punches didn’t make them even after all.

Scott pulled out his physics textbook and then gave his calculus textbook a kick just because it was there.  It had been a miracle they hadn’t been given homework over winter break and he’d actually forgotten the rotten subject existed.  Until now.  He sighed dramatically and shut his locker door.  A whole semester more of calculus.  Psychology majors better not have to take any frickin’ math or he would have to become an English major.  He turned around and started in surprise, putting a hand to his chest and nearly dropping his textbook.

“Gyawd!  Don’t just sneak up on people like that!”

Antoinette smiled and threw her arms around his neck.  “Sorry!” she said, not sounding sorry at all.  She “mm-ed” in his ear as she hugged him tightly.  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up in excitement, but he unsuccessfully attempted to push her way.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.  “People will see us!”

Antoinette pulled back so she could look at him but kept her arms crossed at the wrist at the back of his neck.  She cocked her head at him in confusion and waited for him to stop glancing around nervously.

“Um.  We’re dating now.  We’re allowed to talk and even touch each other in public.”

“Oh, right.  I forgot.”  He raised a hand and played with the curls of her long, blonde hair.  “But.  Won’t us being together kind of come from out of left field?  Like, kind of suspicious like?  I don’t want anyone to think badly of you.”

Antoinette smiled.  “Aww.  You’re so sweet, Scott.”  She leaned forward and gave him a peck on the lips.  “But Jake and I broke up in November.  And anything can happen over school breaks.  Do you remember when Kyle Laffee and Christine Godfrey started going together?  Like.  They were at each other’s throats in March.  Along comes spring break, and then they’re like this total lovey-dovey couple.”

Scott could feel that he was staring blankly at her.  “Um, no.”

Antoinette sighed.  “Do you pay attention to anything outside your little Scott World?”

“Of course!  I know everything that Chris and Will and Julian are doing.  And the girls.  Oh, uh, the girls are—”

“Anna, Liz, Laney, and Riley.  Right?”

“Um, yes.”

“Yes, Scott.  Those people are in your little Scott World.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know about anything outside of them?”

“Um…I guess my siblings are a part of the Scott World?”

“Yes.”

Scott thought really hard.  What did she mean?  Did he know any gossip?  Or did he know what other people around him were interested in and doing with their lives?  Well, it didn’t matter what she meant.  He didn’t know either.  Not unless it affected someone in his Scott World.

“No,” he shook his head.  “I don’t know anything outside of Scott World.”

She looked away, feigning sadness.  “I thought so,” she said wistfully.

“But, hey,” he said, taking her bait, “You’re in Scott World now.”

“I am?”

“Unh-huh.”

“Mm, good.”

She tightened the circle around his neck and brought their lips together.  He would have happily gone on kissing her all day, but she pulled back.

“Come on.  We’ll be late for class.”

He pulled her close again.  “It’s what’s expected of me.”

She put a hand over his mouth.  “Well, it’s not expected of me.  And while Scott World is a cute, fluffy place to visit, I think it’s time I brought you out into the real world.  But, only a little bit.”

“Okay,” he said, releasing her.  They started down the hall together.  “I hear you have these things called ‘rainy days’ in the real world.  What exactly are those?”

“Oh, why they’re these terrible days when the sun disappears.”

“Wha—?  No!”

“Yes!”

They smiled at each other.  Scott shifted his textbook to his right hand.

“Hey, Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you hold my hand?”

Scott stayed facing forward.  He swallowed thickly and turned his left hand out.  “O-okay.”

Antoinette took his hand.  They laced fingers and fell into perfect step together, neither needing to adjust their stride.  Scott tried to be discreet as he looked around the hall.  Some people were looking at them.  Some were looking and whispering.  He looked at Antoinette.  She was staring straight ahead, and he could see just the faintest pink tinge on her cheeks.

“Ha.  So, like, this is your dream come true, huh?  Holding hands with your lifelong crush?”

She turned to him with exaggerated annoyance.  “Oh, what _ever_.  This is _so_ better for you.”

“It is,” he grinned.  “I’m so happy I could puke.”

She made a face and stuck out her tongue.  “Ugh.  So happy you could puke?  Okay, maybe we need to come a little more out into the real world where compliments don’t disgust the person you’re trying to be nice to.”

“What?  I thought that was nice of me to concede that you’re right.”

“Yeah, but…with vomit?”

Scott shrugged.  Antoinette shook her head.

“Well, this is me,” she said, stopping in front of her class.  “Government.  Whoo.  What do you have?”

“Physics.”

Antoinette’s look this time appeared genuinely sad and her grip around his hand tightened a little.  “Am I not smart enough for you?”

Scott blinked.  “What?  When did I ever say that?”

“You haven’t.  But, before it didn’t matter because no one knew and you didn’t have to be embarrassed of me.”

“Ann,” Scott laughed and took a step closer, “I’m not embarrassed to be with you.  I love you.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”

She laughed softly and took a step closer too.  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she mumbled softly.  She looked up at him.  “Have a good morning.  I’ll see you in English.”

“Okay.”

Was he supposed to kiss her?  In front of all these people?  Was that too cheesy?  What were boyfriends supposed to do?!  His only experience was middle school level dating.  She solved the problem for him by leaning forward and giving him a smooch goodbye.

“Oh.  My.  God.  Antoinette.”

They both turned and saw Antoinette’s three friends standing in a row.  Scott expected the middle one to speak first, per tradition.  Maybe he should learn their names?  He did remember Natalie on the right.

“Oh, hi, guys.  Samantha, Bebe, Nat—”

“Are you two going out?!” Natalie cried, stepping forward and breaking form.

“Um…yes.”

“Since _when_?”

Scott wondered why Natalie was so upset.

“For real, Antoinette?” the middle one, he was pretty sure was Samantha, said.  “With _him_?”

“Yeah, like, when you had Jake?” Bebe followed up.

 _Now if that doesn’t make someone feel like a loser_ , Scott thought.

Antoinette’s face hardened.  “Yes, with him.  I’m dating Scott Ramsey because I’m lucky enough that he said yes.”

“ _You_ asked _him_ out?” Samantha asked, looking puzzled.

“Yes, I did.”

“But, what about Jake?” Bebe asked, appalled that life could go on after breaking up with him, apparently.

“We started growing apart a long time before we broke up.  And I guess all the time I spent with Scott while he was tutoring me…I kind of started to like him.  And now I really like him.”

“But!”  Natalie looked a little angry with Antoinette.  “But you knew!”

Antoinette looked a little guilty now.  “I know,” she said.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t plan it.”

Scott wasn’t quite following the conversation, but he knew he’d be happier if he wasn’t around for it.

“That’s pretty messed up, Antoinette,” Samantha said.  “You like, broke all kinds of Girl Rules.”

Antoinette heaved a slightly irritated sigh but did nothing else to defend herself.

“So, like, you and Jake aren’t going to get back together?” Bebe asked.

“No, Bebe,” Antoinette snapped.  “And if you’re so worried about him, why don’t _you_ date him?”

Bebe looked thoughtful.  “You think he would?”

“No,” Samantha and Natalie said together, a little harshly.

All four of the girls looked a touch on the pissy side.  He wondered if they were going to start squabbling.  Probably.  Scott took a step back.

“Okay.  Later.”

He turned tail and ran.  Some might call him a coward, but he just knew that he was no fool.  He’d been around his four girl friends before when they’d started fighting and it was never pretty.  And if any of the boys ever got involved it just got ugly.  And due to his non-involvement policy he made it to class before the bell rang.  His physics teacher looked upset at his timely arrival.  He asked him what was wrong and when Scott said nothing he yelled at him for freaking him out.  He was then sent for a visit to Mr. Hayden’s office.  Mr. Hayden didn’t seem amused or particularly like he bought Scott’s story that he had been sent there because he’d been on time to class.  Not that he cared if had to spend fifty minutes under Mr. Hayden’s glare.  It was certainly better than physics class.

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully, though he was pretty certain a few people were talking about him.  Not a lot; there weren’t a ton of people who truly lived their lives for gossip, but there were enough to make it a little unsettling to walk in the halls.  Especially when he passed by three soccer team members and got some quite unpleasant glares.  It was possible the only thing saving his sorry ass was the fact that he was Will’s and Julian’s friend.

On the way to English class he took the long way through the elementary wing.  He paused by ancient Mrs. Bartholomew’s class.  He couldn’t believe the woman was still alive.  She’d appeared to be on her last leg when he’d had her eight years ago.  He peeked in one of the windows.  He could see the back of Drake’s head as he faithfully completed a worksheet.  Ferris’ desk was set up sideways to the door, so he could see his profile.  Usually multiples were split up in school, but there was only one third grade class this year.  Ferris turned his head and spotted him.  He smiled.  Scott waved back.  Intuitively Drake sensed that his brother was doing something significant.  He looked at him and then turned to see what Ferris was looking at.  He smiled when he saw Scott too and waved vigorously.  Scott saw Mrs. Bartholomew stand up to see what had the twins’ attention.  He quickly moved on.  He didn’t remember having a bad relationship with the woman, but he didn’t feel like finding out if that memory was true or not.

As he approached his English class, the midway point of the day, he saw Antoinette waiting for him outside the classroom.  He smiled when he saw her; it was kind of automatic.  Then he saw Will.  He’d seen him earlier in the day, and he’d acted like his usual self, but he looked sick.  His skin was always pale, but this morning it had truly fit that description of alabaster.  His pallor had not improved as the day went on.  His white skin made his beauty ethereal.  Usually it was easy for Scott to see Will as a human being.  He was pretty, but he was human.  It also helped that he knew Will to be impatient, moody, and selfish with a temper comparable to the Incredible Hulk’s.  These things made him Will; made him real.  Now, he looked like a deathly statue.  He was talking with someone, just like he normally would.  But…he looked unreal.  Scott wondered if he was going insane.

He got closer and reached out a hand to touch that flawless, lifeless face.  The skin was pliable, like a human’s should be, but it wasn’t nearly as warm as he thought it should be.  Will had stopped talking and was now giving Scott a funny look.  Probably because one: he had caressed his cheek in broad daylight in a crowded hall at school and two: he was still touching him.

“Um.  Dude?”

Scott jerked his hand back, pulled out of his trance by Will’s voice.

“Yeah?”

“You’re gonna make your girlfriend jealous.”

“Who?”

Will’s mouth twitched into a smile and he nodded his head a little to the left.  Scott looked in that direction.  Antoinette was watching him.  Her expression was indecipherable.  Whoops.  Had he just ignored his girlfriend for his male friend?

“Will, are you sick?”

Will cocked his head.  “No.  Why do you ask?”

“You just look pale.”

“I always look pale, Scotty.”

“No.  It’s different.”

Will smiled and Scott felt reassured.  “Maybe I just need some sun.”

Scott smiled back at him.  “Yes, you really do.”

“So, thanks for looking out for me buddy, but…” he patted Scott on the shoulder, “you know we’re just good friends, right?  Nothing more.”

Scott shrugged him off and made a face at him.  Will and his friend laughed and headed into the classroom.  Scott glanced over at Antoinette.  She had her lips rolled in and looked like she was either trying not to smile or laugh.  Possibly both.  She walked up to him and said, “Hi, honey.”

“Hey,” he replied sullenly.

“Aw, come on.  There’s no reason for you to feel bad.  I’m sure if he swung that way you’d be his first choice.”

“Wah—?!  That’s not why I’m upset!”

Antoinette laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck.  She kissed his cheek and then whispered in his ear, “You’re cute when you blush.”

Scott was certain if he wasn’t blushing before he was now.  “No, I’m not,” he groused.  It was the best comeback he could manage.

Antoinette chuckled and led him into the classroom.  “You know, I might have to have a chat with Liz Holloway or Karen Green.”

“Why them?” Scott asked with a slight lip curl at the mention of Karen’s name.

“So I know how to handle dating a guy who’s in love with his best friends.”

Scott let out a noise of disgust and marched away from her.  She laughed after him and followed him over the desks where he and his three friends normally sat.  He sat beside Will with Julian and Chris behind him.  Antoinette took the seat on his other side.  He turned to look at her.  He grinned.  She looked slightly alarmed.

“What?” she asked.

“I have a girlfriend.”

She shook her head at him.  “Dork.”

Class began shortly thereafter and they all opened their books to page 117 to pick up where they’d left off on _The Power and the Glory_.  Class progressed as usual (people passing notes and yawning in boredom) until about ten minutes before the bell the teacher asked them to put their books away.

“Okay,” said Mr. Richie, “I have a special announcement.  Although, I don’t know why this has to be done in English,” he muttered.  “It’s really more civics related.  It should be done during government class or something.  But, no, English is always the expendable subject.”  He got out of his mutterings.  “Anyway.  Calverton used to sponsor a Professional Shadow Day.  And no, that doesn’t mean you get to pretend to be spies or something.”  Several of the people who had perked up had now slid back down in their chairs.  “What happens is you are given a day off of school to shadow a professional at their job.  In that way you are able to get a feel for what a typical day in a certain profession is like.  Of course, the obvious intention of this is to shadow someone who may be in a field you are interested in.

“You can shadow your parents, relatives, or friends of your parents.  If you’re unable to find someone Calverton has already reached out to our alumni and have several who have agreed to take on a student for a day.  We used to do this several years ago, but then there was the ‘Winnebago incident.’  Since then the program has been discontinued.  We’ve decided to bring it back this year, so you all are expected to be on your best behavior.

“Of course, this isn’t a free day either.  You’re expected to wear your uniforms—” there was general groaning— “and learn something while you’re there.  You will be required to write a five page paper on your experiences and—” He didn’t get to finish as the class burst into even louder groaning.  “Oh, I know, I know.  Having to do work for school, it’s awful isn’t?  Well, then make sure you pick someone whose career interests you so that you might enjoy writing the paper.  Okay?  Here are the forms you’ll need to fill out and have your parents sign.  Also attached are the requirements for the paper.  Take the last few minutes of class to look it over.”

The class started buzzing as people turned to each other to discuss the assignment.  Scott was actually excited about it.  A whole day off from school?  That was cool.  He didn’t even mind the paper; BS-ing fives pages was easy.  The question was, who would he shadow?  He knew his father’s job was boring as hell.  No way was he gonna do that.  He wanted to shadow a psychologist.  Maybe he could ask Julian if he could ask Dr. Gorman if she’d let him do it.  He turned to Antoinette.

“So, this’ll be fun, huh?”

She gave him a funny look.  “Yeah, real fun.”

“Well, like she said, it all depends on who you pick to shadow.”

“I guess so.  But I hate writing papers.”

“Aw, five pages isn’t so hard.”

“Maybe not for you.”

“Oh!  Hey, your mom’s a shrink!  Do you think I could shadow her?”

“No way, silly!  That would totally violate doctor-patient confidentiality.  Unless you spent the whole day with her secretary.”

“Oh, right.”

“Oh, I know!”

“What?”

“You could shadow my dad!”

Scott actually sat back in his seat hard enough to push his desk back a few centimeters.  “Pardon?”

“Yeah!  It’d be great!  You two could meet and bond!”

“And he could strangle me.”

“He won’t do that.  Come on!  You should do it!  I think you’ll like him!  I want you to like him.”

“But…”  He crumbled under her smiling face.  He sighed.  “Okay.”

“Great!  That’ll also give you a chance to spy on him and his trampy secretary.”

“What?!”  He pushed his seat forward and leaned in close to her.  “You mean that’s true after all?” he asked in a low voice.

“Well of course!”

“But, I thought you said you tried the cheating tactic just because it was a last ditch effort to get me to notice you.”

“I did.  But what gave me the idea was my stupid father.  Did you really think I was faking that breakdown when I told you about it?  Do you really think I’m that good of a liar?”

He shrugged.  She made a face at him.

“Whatever.”

“Okay, so why do you want me to bond with him and like him when you don’t?”

“I do like my father.  Just because you’re mad at someone doesn’t mean you stop loving them.”

“Tell that to my parents,” Scott muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.  Ann, this is a really bad idea.”

“Oh, come on.  You and Daddy will have a good time together.  And you can get me some solid proof to go to him with so that I can force him to stop.”

Scott sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, making a face.

“Feh.”

 

Chris

 

“So, like, my dad knows this guy who sponsors motocross teams…I am totally going to shadow him.”

Chris smiled at Riley as he opened his locker.  “That does sound cool.  Is that what you’d want to do one day?”

“Are you kidding?  I’d love to work something like that.  Or be a roadie for the X-Games.”

“You wouldn’t rather compete in them?”

She shrugged and flopped against the nearby lockers.  “I’m good at sports, but I’m not at that caliber.  You can practice and train all you want, but there’s got to be natural talent too.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“That’s what I told Nick, but he got all upset.”

Chris laughed to himself and finished exchanging his books.  He shut his door and shook his head at Riley.

“What?” she asked, giving a bit of attitude.

“So, you said this to your boyfriend after he what, said he wants to play professional soccer one day?”

“Well, yeah.”

Chris flicked her in the forehead.

“Ow!  What?”

“Do you have any idea how fragile the male ego is?”

“Oh, whatever.  He’ll get over it.”

Chris wondered if that’s why Nick had made out with Samantha Deale under the mistletoe.  Maybe he just wanted a girl who would fawn over him and stroke his ego.  Among other things that he was positive Riley hadn’t even gone near yet.  The knowledge did make him feel a little guilty.  Should he tell Riley about it?  But if it had been a onetime thing, would he just kink up their relationship?  And what if it had just been innocent mistletoe fun?  Okay, so there hadn’t really been anything innocent about it, but if it had been nothing?  He could ruin their relationship over one tiny thing.  It might be better if Riley never found out.  But didn’t Riley deserve the right to decide if it was nothing or not herself?

“Hey, sweetie.”

Chris turned his head and saw Karen reach up to kiss him on the cheek.  She hooked an arm around his and smiled up at him.  “How are you doing?”

“Good.”

Karen looked over and saw who he’d been talking to.  She and Riley sized each other up.  It was kind of funny seeing the two of them in the same clothes.  Karen had curves and filled out the uniform with neatly curled hair and make-up and jewelry.  Riley had no shape whatsoever and no make-up or jewelry.  Her orangey hair was cropped close to her head in a boy cut.  In theory the uniform should have helped to mitigate the differences between them, but in actuality it just enhanced them.

He watched the silent exchange between them: the girly girl and the tomboy.  He was quite certain neither of them had anything nice to say, so they both remained silent for the time being.  Finally Riley looked at him with a little incredulity.

“What—are you two _dating_ again?”

“Um, yeah.  We kind of got back together over Christmas.”

“Unh-hunh.”  Riley looked back and forth between them, and then she shrugged.

“Well, whatever, dude.  They’re your balls.  I guess you can do with them what you like.”

“Riley,” Chris sighed her name softly.

She pushed off the lockers.  “Talk to you later,” she called out.

Chris turned to Karen with an apologetic look.  “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, clearly sounding like it wasn’t, “I wasn’t very nice to your friends.  I can’t expect them to just start liking me.  And I guess I really shouldn’t trust any of them not to rat me out.”

He turned to her completely and checked his watch.  They still had a couple of minutes.  “What do you mean?”

She wrung her hands together.  “Chris, I have something to confess.”

He raised his eyebrows.  “What?”

“After we broke up—I was really angry.”

He nodded.  “I know.”

“And like.  I wanted to get back at you.  And like, hurt you.  So, I like flirted openly with a lot of people.”  She laughed softly.  “Usually in front of your friends so that they would report back to you.  Did they ever?”

Chris shook his head.  She made a face.

“Well.  I guess they figured it wasn’t worth mentioning since they certainly had no expectation that we’d get back together.”

“Karen.  That doesn’t matter.”

“No, I know the flirting doesn’t.  Not really.  But, one thing they can’t know, but I want you to know.  I—I slept with one of my cousin’s friends.  And it was awful.  Well, not that _he_ was awful, but it made me feel sick.  Because I was doing it for the wrong reasons.  And I knew that all I wanted was to be with you again.  And that I would have to tell you about it.”

Chris shifted uncomfortably.  “You really didn’t need to.  I would have happily gone the rest of my life never knowing.”

“But.  I cheated on you.”  She looked up at him with sad, brown eyes.  He briefly wondered if this was just some kind of way of manipulating him.  He shrugged off the feeling.

“You didn’t cheat on me, Karen.  We were broken up.  Besides.  It’s not as if I wasn’t pursuing other interests while we weren’t together.”

He saw her make a slight face.  “But that was different.  You broke up with me.  I’m the one who was supposed to be desperately trying to get back together with you and I went and _slept_ with someone else.”  She got a stricken look on her face.  “Did you ever—with her?”

“No!  No.  No, no, no.  Never.  She was uh…a little bit more innocent than I thought,” he laughed uneasily.

Karen raised a derisive eyebrow.  “Virgin?”

“Worse than that.  I was her first kiss.”

Karen laughed softly.  “Well, I bet you gave her a first kiss she will never forget.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said.”

She shrugged stiffly.  “That’s fine.  Gross.  But fine.  I don’t understand why you went after her in the first place.”

“Julian suggested it.”

“Hmph.  Well.  It’s all in the past and it doesn’t matter.”  She took his hands.  “’Cause we’re fine now, right?”

Chris squeezed her hands and swallowed tightly.  “Um.  I kissed her.”

“I know.”

“On New Year’s.”

Karen let go of his hands.

“After I drove her to her house.  We sat in the car and talked.  She was upset.  She said she could still feel the guy on her and wanted to get rid of that feeling.  So, I touched her, but platonically!  I didn’t want to lead her on.  But, then she kissed me.  And I—I didn’t push her away.”  He didn’t really think there was a need to explain that he hadn’t been exactly passive during the kiss.

Karen crossed her arms and stared at his chest for a moment.  The bell rang and the halls cleared out.  Finally she looked up at his face.

“So, what does that mean?”

Chris knew not to say “I don’t know,” but he didn’t know what to say.

“Do you want to date her?”

He shook his head.  “No.”

“So.  It was just what…your dick wanted it?”

He flushed.  “I g-guess.  I wasn’t thinking—”

“With your head?”

He remained quiet.

“So.  If you had been thinking with your head, would you have done it?”

He shook his head.

“ _Answer_ me, Chris.”

“No.  I wouldn’t have.  For a lot of reasons.  Not the least of which being that I would never want to do anything to hurt you.”

“Okay.  So, you weren’t thinking with your head, but if you had been, you wouldn’t have done it.  Correct?”

“Yes.”

“So, that’s good.  But how am I ever supposed to trust that you’ll think with your head if another opportunity presents itself?”

What could he say?  He knew he had to say something.  “I think—I think it was just the situation.”

“Well, obviously,” she snapped.  “She was obviously manipulating you.”

Chris’ brow furrowed.  “I don’t think so, Karen.  She was really upset.”

“Oh, please.  That guy hadn’t even done anything to her yet.  She was just using it because she saw what kind of effect it had on you.”

“Karen, I don’t believe that.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter.  I think it was the situation.  And probably the fact that you’d been prepped for sex already and hadn’t received any.”

Chris took that comment in.  What was he, a stud horse?

“So, look.  I’m not going to freak out.  I won’t hold it against you.  I will forgive you this one time and trust that you won’t do it again.”

He shook his head.  “I won’t,” he said and meant it.

She strummed her fingers on her crossed arms.  “Look, I know I can’t tell you what to do.  But maybe it might be better if you stayed away from her.  I mean, every time you talk to her I think it gives her the impression that there might be some kind of chance.”

He nodded.  “I understand.”

Karen shook herself.  She reached forward and hugged him.  “It kind of hurts a lot, Chris.  But I love you so much.  I want this to work.  Please tell me you do too.”

“I do too,” he replied automatically without thinking about what he was saying.

She pulled back and kissed him.  He hugged her tightly and tried to apologize again with his kiss.  They pulled back and Chris brushed her curls with his hand.

“I’m really sorry.  I don’t know why or what I was—”

She put a hand to his lips.  “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

He nodded in acquiescence.

“So, let’s talk about this assignment we’ve got.”

“What assignment?”

“Didn’t you hear about the one in English class?  I have a great idea for you.”

Chris felt something die in the pit of his stomach.

“W-what?”

“You can shadow my father!”

Chris pressed himself flat against the lockers.  “Are you insane?”

“A little bit,” she giggled.  “I think it’ll be good for you two to spend some quality time together.”

“Okay.  I see it now.  You really haven’t forgiven me and this is your way of killing me off.”

She laughed and slapped him on the arm.  “It is not!  Besides.  It’s not like you can shadow your mom.  You’ll have a sixteen hour day.”

He grunted.  “I suppose that’s true.  I’d really want to shadow Mr. Richardson.  That would probably be fun.”

“Who’s Mr. Richardson?”

Chris felt his heart stumble into his ribcage.  He’d forgotten: he hadn’t told Karen anything about his father or what had happened.  He kind of didn’t want to.  But he had to tell her something.  He had to explain Mr. Richardson.  Who could he be?  Why would he be fun?  How would he know him?  Chris’ panic was making him start to break out into a cold sweat.  _Say something you idiot!_

“I would love to shadow your dad!”

Karen was startled by his sudden reversal of attitude, but she went with it.  She smiled and said, “Great!  I’ll let him know tonight!  This will be so good.  I’m sure of it.  I just think you two need to spend time together where my breasts aren’t in the way.”  She laughed.  “Well, we’re already really late for class.  I gotta run!  Bye!”

She reached forward and pecked him on the lips and then she ran off down the hall.  Chris tried to swallow, but couldn’t.  His mouth had gone completely dry.  What had he done?  What had he agreed to?  Would he be able to intercept Karen before she left school?  Would she be really upset if he “changed his mind?”  Yes.  What had he done?  He’d agreed to spend a day with a man who planned out his violent death in his eyes every time he saw him.

“Geh.”

 

Will

 

Will felt drained.  It had been so hard to keep up the façade that he was all right all day long.  He’d pretty much hidden in his room after New Year’s and hadn’t talked to anybody.  He thought he could handle going through the motions of school, but it had taken all his energy to do it.  Especially in front of his friends.  He wouldn’t be able to do this tomorrow.  He had to know.  He had to know what had actually happened at the end of their conversation in that coat closet.  He was going to have to find out today.  Was it over?  Or was Ken still willing to let him be his closeted secret?

He was on his way out of the school when Mr. Kilgore, the chemistry teacher, and Ms. Kerensky, the principal, pounced on him.

“Mr. Harder!

“Will!”

The two adults glared at each other as they approached Will.  Then they turned back to him with bright smiles.

“About the shadow assignment,” Mr. Kilgore started.

“We have some excellent alumni in the medical field,” Ms. Kerensky said.

“Yes, but I also know some people in the research field who would love to take you on.”

Will couldn’t do this now.  He physically and mentally couldn’t.

“I don’t think I’d want to do either,” he said.  He continued before they could argue with him.  “You see, I already know I want to do science.  Most likely become a doctor.  So, if I shadow a doctor or a research scientist and hate it, it might make me change my mind.”

“But—”

“I really don’t want to that happen.  I think I’ll just shadow my father or mother.  Thank you for your efforts though.”

He smiled wanly at them and then turned around and left them speechless in the hallway.  He knew they must be wondering why he wasn’t acting like his usual kiss ass self.  Well, it wasn’t like he could explain to them that he’d possibly broken up with his thirty-two year old male lover after forcing him into sex in the coat closet of a very ritzy hotel.  Then he had to wonder if they wouldn’t care.  He was the greatest thing Calverton had ever produced.  One little indiscretion shouldn’t ruin his whole reputation, right?  Or would it?  Was that why Ken was so desperate to keep their relationship a secret?  It made a little sense.  But it wasn’t the being a secret part that bothered him.

The subway ride and walk to Ken’s condo was familiar, but he felt uncomfortable the whole way.  He knew Ken wouldn’t be home yet.  He _knew_ that.  But he couldn’t help feeling a twisting in his gut as he got closer and closer.  He didn’t know if he could open the door and have to face him right then.  He couldn’t just walk in and have to face him.  Knowing what he’d done with that woman.

His hands were shaking as he turned the key in the lock.  He brushed a hand over his eyes and bit his lip as he pushed open the door.  He didn’t want to look inside.  And he didn’t want to be crying when he did.  He got the door open.  The condo was empty and quiet.  There was no movement.  Joyce Greene wasn’t around.  Will had the sudden notion that Ken had up and left.  Moved away so that he would never be able to find him or bother him again.  But that didn’t make sense.  His furniture was still here.  The gentle hum of the fish tank was easily heard in the quiet.  And Ken was more rational than that.  If he knew nothing else about the man to be true, he knew that he had a brutal sense of rationality.

Will walked inside and shut the door behind him.  As he stepped further into the room, dropping off his bag and blazer neatly on one of the dining room chairs, he saw a white ball of fuzz curled up on the bay window.  He crossed over to where Joyce Greene slept, oblivious to the fact that he had come in.  He sat beside her and rubbed behind her ear.  She leaned into his touch and started purring, but she didn’t wake up.  He sighed and continued to pet her a little while longer.

“You had me worried,” he whispered.

His voice sounded out of place in the stillness.  He didn’t feel welcome anymore.  It was even worse than it had been before.  Before he’d realized that he’d fallen in love with Ken.  When he’d just come over to bother the man for no good reason.  Will looked around the room.  It looked the same.  Not a single thing was out of place.

“Was she here?” he asked.  “Did she come in here first?  Did they have a chat, a drink?  Or did they go straight to the bedroom?”  He turned to Joyce Greene.  “Did you scratch her eyes out?”

Her continued purring was her only response.  Will stood up and started for the bedroom.  He couldn’t imagine Ken doing it anywhere else.  They had done it in quite a few places around the condo, but that had been borne out of spontaneity and passion and arousal.  Surely he wouldn’t have felt any of those things with her, right?  He wasn’t really cheating on him.  He was just going through the motions necessary to hide his secret.  That would mean plain vanilla sex in a bed.

He flung open the bedroom door and jumped when the doorknob bumped into the wall.  Hopefully there wouldn’t be a mark.  The room looked the same.  It felt different, but like the rest of the condo, everything was exactly the way Ken liked it.  He wandered into the bathroom.  What was he doing?  Looking for proof?  He came back into the bedroom.  He walked up to the bed and put his fingertips to the edge of the duvet, and then he curled his fingers tightly in the fabric.  He felt tears gathering in his eyes.  Had he changed the sheets afterwards?  Will crawled onto the bed.  He buried his face in the green duvet and started to cry.  It wasn’t a gentle, mourning cry, it was wretched sobbing.  And since he’d already worn himself out at school, it wasn’t long before he’d cried himself to sleep.

 

There were no bunnies.  The bunnies were gone.

Will’s eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t open them.  He just woke up.  He felt something on his cheek.  Something soft, warm, and familiar.  Something he loved.  Ken’s hand.  He heard Kens’ voice now.  He was saying his name gently.  It was the first time he’d heard it, but he was certain it wasn’t the first time Ken had said it.  He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly so that he could see Ken, but not so much that it would make him stop stroking his cheek.

Ken was sitting on the edge of the bed in a dark suit.  His hair was neat and his tie was still on.  The room wasn’t as bright as it had been when Will had come in.  Some time had passed.  Ken looked beautiful in the soft light.  The man said his name again and brushed a thumb over a slightly tacky streak on his cheek.

“Have you been crying?” he asked.

Will tried to hold onto his last shred of dignity.  “No,” he said, his voice wavering on the verge of tears again.  “Did you change the sheets?” he managed to get out.  Why was he so fixated on that?

Ken’s eyes widened at the question, and then he dropped his head.  “I didn’t.”

Will tuned back into the duvet, his chest collapsing in on him.  Why?  Why hadn’t he washed her away?  Because he knew he’d be bringing her back?

“Is she coming back?” he wailed, but it was muffled by the mattress.

“No, no,” Ken said, and rubbed his back.  “I didn’t do _it_.  With her.”

Will stopped his bawling.  He took in a couple heavy breaths since his face was smashed into the covers.  Then he turned over and sat up.  He could feel that he was giving a defiant, demanding face.

“Why not?”

Ken’s breath came out almost in a laugh.  He chewed on his upper lip—in an attempt not to cry—and caressed Will’s face.

“Because I love you.”

Will closed his eyes and sighed in happy relief.  He took a few moments to digest that information.  Ken hadn’t slept with her.  He’d sent her away.  Because he couldn’t sleep with her.  Because he didn’t want to.  Because he loved him.  Will felt an inane desire to thank God.

“I’m so sorry, Will.  I was awful to you that night.”

Will shook his head.  “No.  I was being unreasonable.  I wasn’t even thinking straight.  What if I’d made it upstairs before you found me downstairs?  I’m sure I would have caused a scene in front of everyone in that party.  Your colleagues, your parents.  I almost did something unforgivable.”

“But, Will…it’s not unreasonable for you to feel that way.”

“It is.  I’ve always known what our relationship would be like.  You’d told me countless times before we even started to be together that you were never coming out of the closet.  And that’s fine.  That’s fine.  I mean it.  And I meant every word.  If you want to get married, that’s fine.  Just, let me…don’t stop seeing me.”

Ken slid forward and hugged him tightly.  “Please stop saying that.  You deserve better than that.”

“But I don’t want that.  I want _you_.  Not that you’re not good or anything.”

Ken attempted a laugh.  “I know what you meant.  I just.  I don’t want you to think that I’m doing this because I’m that vain.  Or that…”  He sat back and gripped Will’s hands.  He looked deeply and pleadingly into his eyes.  “Please try to understand.  You grew up in a generation where homosexuals can have parades and have domestic partner rights.  Where gay marriage is a serious political discussion.  Where it has been granted in some places in the world.  Where homosexuals are common on TV and aren’t always portrayed as clichés and stereotypes.  Where being gay can even be trendy or sell you more albums.

“I grew up in a time when AIDS was known as the gay cancer.  The 80’s was a really bad time to be a gay teenager.  I’m _afraid_ to let anyone know.  I was raised to hate them and look down on them.  I made myself sick when I realized what kind of feelings I had.  I wouldn’t say I was ever suicidal because I wasn’t, but every now and then I would just think…wouldn’t it be easier…

“It wasn’t until I got to college and met Rylan that I began to come to terms with who and what I was.  What I am.  It was really hard for me to do.  But, I thought I got to a point where I was okay with myself.  And then when I went to school at Stanford, I met Devon.  We dated for two and a half years.  We lived together for two.  We were happy together.  And we were a couple.  An honest to goodness committed, monogamous couple.  I finally felt strong enough to tell my family.  To introduce them to Devon and show them how happy I was.

“The day of my graduation my parents and sister flew out to California.  We were going to go back to my apartment and I was going to introduce them.  They were doing some touristy stuff, so I went home ahead of them to make sure the apartment was presentable.  I found Devon having a threesome on our $3000 oriental rug.  One of them looked high on crystal meth.  Every stereotype, every cliché, everything I’d hated about what I was came back.  And I knew I could never tell them.  Because even if I did find someone like me who could be truly monogamous, _they_ would never see it that way.  My family would always see me as this…embarrassment.  Like…”

“Your sister doesn’t.”

“I know, but…” Ken sighed heavily.  “I can’t.”  He squeezed his eyes shut.  “I _can’t_ have my father look at me like that.”

“Ken,” Will touched his face.  He raised his head but couldn’t open his eyes.  “Ken.  I don’t care.  I don’t mind being a secret.  No one ever has to know.  Seriously.  I’m not even all that keen on telling anybody.  I just can’t handle you touching anybody else.  I don’t want you to.”

Ken opened his eyes.  “I don’t want to either.  I realized that.  I mean, I knew I loved you, but that part of my life…I feel like it has nothing to do with you.  You aren’t the lie.  I am.  I honestly didn’t think it would affect you.”  He laughed a little harshly.  “I have no idea why.”

“Look.  I know how important it is to keep your secret…but I was dying, Ken.  Do you understand?  Seeing you with her was killing me.”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.”

Will played with Ken’s fingers in his lap.  They were quiet for several minutes.

“It won’t be easy,” Will said, thinking aloud.  “Being together won’t be hard of course, but finding that balance between your cover and my insane possessiveness…”

Ken leaned forward and put his forehead to Will’s shoulder.  “It’s not just you.  I’d probably kill someone if I knew they’d touched you.”

Will put a hand to the back of Ken’s head.  “It will be hard for me not to ever tell my friends.  They might not understand.  I mean, I think I have to tell my parents one day.  Way, _way_ in the future.  But, I’m pretty sure they won’t do more than bat an eyelash.”

Ken sat up.  “Oh, no.  That can’t happen.  Your mother is Marilyn Harder.  She can’t know.  She would own me.”

“My mother would never blackmail…her son’s lover.”  Will was pretty certain she’d blackmailed other people before.  “And besides.  I meant like, when I’m forty and they wonder why I’m not married yet.  By then you old people won’t care.”

“Geh!  I’ll only be 55 then, thank you very much.”

Will smiled at him and he smiled back.  It made Will smile broader.  Things felt right again.  Ken grasped Will’s tie and ran his hand down it.

“You really see us together when you’re forty?”

“I plan on changing your diapers one day.”

Ken released him and sat back.  “You are horrid!”

Will laughed and leapt forward to throw his arms around Ken’s neck.  His lover held him tightly.  Will didn’t want to ask it, but he had to.

“What are you going to do about Angela?”

“I think she suspects I’m already seeing someone.  I mean, I kicked her out pretty much at the last moment.”

“What?!”  Will sat back.  “How far did you get before you realized you ‘couldn’t’ go through with it?”

“Far enough that she suspects a guilty conscience.”

“Hmph.”  Will reached out and mimicked Ken’s earlier motion of caressing his tie.  “Are you going somewhere?”

“Yeah, I have a dinner reservation tonight.  For a business meeting,” he added quickly.

“I see.”  Will repeated the gesture.  “Can we still kiss before you go?  I can’t stand the thought of the last time we were together.”

“God, I know.”  Ken moved forward and kissed him hard.  “I’m so sorry.  That was my fault.”

“No.  I forced you into it.”

“Will,” Ken laughed, kissing him all over his face, “you have never forced me into anything.  Except admitting how I really feel about you.”

They sat up on their knees and held each other’s faces as they kissed.  Will’s head was tilted all the way back.  He felt completely under Ken’s perfect control.  Their resolve wavered as they fell back onto the bed.  Ken began to kiss his way down his jaw to his neck.  His hands started to pull at Will’s tie.  Will knew if they really got started, they wouldn’t stop.

“Mm.  Your meeting.”

“Guess I’ll be late.”

Hell, if Ken was fine with it then so was he.  But wasn’t there something else he wanted to talk with him about?

“Oh, yeah!”  He pushed up on Ken slightly.  “Can I shadow you?”

Ken cocked his head.

“Eh?”

 

Julian

 

Julian scowled to himself.  Just great.  Who was he supposed to shadow?  He slumped down in his desk and watched the rest of his English class, minus Will and Greg “Mime Boy” Taylor, titter away about the assignment.  He didn’t have any parents.  He had no relatives.  Well, no close relatives.  He sighed at his conscience.  No _geographically_ close relatives.  He didn’t really have any ties anymore to his parents’ “adult” friends.  The only adult he knew was Rylan.  And while it would make for a terribly interesting report, he was quite certain Rylan would fire him just for suggesting it.  He was going to wind up having to shadow an alum of Calverton.  And that was going to be super sketchy.

Julian shifted his eyes around the room.  Will was fiddling with his backpack.  He was deliberately avoiding social interaction.  Julian wasn’t sure yet if that was because he was just in one of his moods or if something was wrong, but for now, he’d leave him alone.  Chris was kind of staring at the ceiling and possibly drooling in boredom.  Or fantasy.  It was always hard to tell with him.  Scott was being bullied into something by Antoinette.  But sweetly.  She really was good for him.  Kind of what Dr. Gorman had said he’d needed.  Or wanted.  Someone who would give him bossy love.  Well, the term Dr. Gorman had used was “tough love,” but “bossy” seemed more fitting with those two.  The real question was if that was just her personality or if she was sensitive to Scott’s needs.  There were several ways of testing that.  One of them could be quite fun.  And it was really the most important one.  Did she realize that Scott needed his friends as much if not more than he needed her?  Let’s find out.

“Scott?” he called.

His friend immediately turned to him.  Julian put on a sad face, and Scott’s brows instantly furrowed in empathy.  It was so easy it almost wasn’t fun.  Wait, scratch that, it was a lot of fun.

“What’s the matter?” Scott asked.

“I just have no one to shadow.”

Scott didn’t even question why Julian had made a point of getting his attention before acting like he was “reluctantly” admitting his problem.  He just leaned against the back of his chair to be closer to Julian.  Julian allowed his eyes to slide over to Antoinette briefly.  She was politely not watching them, perhaps waiting patiently for Scott’s attention to return to her.

“Well, you don’t have no one!” Scott objected.  “You know tons of people who’ll take you.”

“Like who?”

“Like any of our parents.  We have enough to spare.  Oh!”  Julian started a little as Scott spasmed in his seat with an idea.  “You can shadow my dad!”

“Uh…” This experiment was taking a dangerous turn.

“Yes, it’ll be great!”

“Great?  If it’s so great why aren’t you shadowing him?”

“‘Cause he’s _my_ dad, duh.  And Antoinette wants me to shadow hers.”

“I don’t know.  Your dad doesn’t seem the type.”

“No, he so is.  And like, I just found out Antoinette’s dad works for the same company as my dad, so like, we can be together.  And make sure we don’t die of boredom.”

“Well…”  Julian considered.  His other options were limited.  And it would be nice to have a friend there to suffer with him.  He shrugged in defeat to Scott’s enthusiasm.  “Sure.  Ask him for me?”

“Will do!”

Scott grinned and Julian smiled back at him.  He was being even more of a puppy than usual.  Either Antoinette really, _really_ made him happy or he was spending too much time with Coco, the newest addition to the Ramsey household.  Probably both.  Asshole.  Why was _he_ getting laid?  As such, he deserved a little torture along with Antoinette getting tested.

Julian reached out a hand and slid his fingers through Scott’s soft hair.  He started to sit back in protest, but Julian closed his hand and stopped him from moving.

“Ah-ah,” Julian chastised him.  “You’re supposed to be making me feel better.”

Scott frowned, but didn’t move away as Julian resumed petting him.

“But we’re, like, in class,” Scott said in a very quiet voice.

“I know.  But people think I’m weird and at least bi anyway.”

“But they don’t think I am.”

“Maybe not.  But you’ve got a super hot girlfriend now.  Don’t be so insecure.”

“I’m not being insecure.”

“Oh, so it just bothers you that you like it so much?”

Scott’s frown deepened, but he didn’t risk pulling away again.  Julian glanced at Antoinette again.  She was watching them now.  Her face was twitching a little bit, like she was trying really hard not to bite the inside of her mouth or say something or make a face.  Julian nudged Chris with his free arm.  Chris shook himself and looked at him.  He noticed he was petting Scott.  He frowned in disapproval and narrowed an eye at Julian.

“What?”

Julian nodded slightly in Antoinette’s direction.  Chris looked.  Then he looked back at Scott and then again at Antoinette.  He smiled.  Antoinette looked at them.  And she was no fool.  She knew what was going on now.

“Scott?” she called to him in a sweet, beautiful voice.

Scott moved away from Julian in order to look at her.  “Yeah?”

“Scott.”

Scott immediately whipped back around as Chris said his name.  “Yeah?  What’s up?”

“Um, Scott?” Antoinette tried again.

Scott sort of turned his body back toward her, but he stayed facing Chris.  If Chris needed something, he needed to find out what it was.  Julian only wished Will were paying attention and would play too.  If Will asked for his attention he’d probably forget Antoinette was in the room.  He and Chris looked at Antoinette.  They grinned at her.  She shook her head at them with narrowed eyes, but she was playing along too.

“Nothing,” Chris said, shaking his head.

Scott raised an eyebrow and looked back and forth between them.  He was no fool either.  Well…

“What are you two doing?”

“Nothing,” they shrugged together.

“Scott?” Antoinette tried again.

He turned to her.  “Yes?” he asked, obviously a little put out by being the ball in their tennis match.

“Nothing,” she shrugged.

He let out a very miffed noise.  “What the hell are you three doing?  What do you want?!”

The three of them exchanged looks.  Scott looked panicked.  They all shrugged and opened their mouths.  Scott stuck out a finger, but couldn’t point it at all three of them at the same time, so he pointed it in the air in the middle.

“Whoever says ‘nothing’ next will face some serious consequences.”

They all laughed, but refrained from speaking.  Scott’s brows creased with worry.  He looked around at all of them.

“You guys are mean!  What did I do to deserve this?!”

“But we’ve done noth—we haven’t done anything,” Chris said.

“There’s something going on here.  I can _sense_ it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Antoinette asked.  “And what could the three of us have conspired?  I don’t even know your friends, Scott.  You should introduce me properly.”

“Geh.”

They were all saved from a proper introduction by the ringing of the bell.  Julian bent over to get his bag.  When he sat back up Will was halfway out the door.  Well, geez.  He gave Chris a nod and the two of them stood up together.  They walked by Scott on opposite sides of his desk and passed their hands over his head.  He jerked around on them and put his arms up in a faux karate pose.  They walked out the door with only one last look to Antoinette.  She’d stuck out her leg to prevent Scott from getting up and he was completely mesmerized by the long, smooth, shapely limb.  He’d completely forgotten he was mad at them.  She smiled prettily at them.  They scowled as they headed out the door.

Round one: to the girlfriend.

 

Julian whistled as he made his way down the sidewalk toward the Blue Boy building.  He was going to discuss his assignment and arrange meeting times with Rylan and the clients.  It was the first assignment he’d gotten since his very first one.  After Thanksgiving, Rylan had never confirmed that he’d been fired.  So, he’d shown up once a week at Blue Boy and asked Rylan if he was needed.  He always received a very curt no.  Last week he was told to stop by after school today.  He wasn’t sure if Rylan was giving him a second chance or if he’d been unable to find a replacement.

Inside the lobby, Adam the Receptionist gave him his usual snooty look.  Even after Julian was officially hired and legitimately invited on grounds, he still didn’t like him.  So, Julian gave him an air kiss as he passed.  Adam just looked offended.

Julian snickered to himself as he made his way toward the elevator.  He had no idea why he found it so much fun to antagonize people.  On the elevator he was supposed to get off on the 15th floor, but he pushed the button for the second floor instead.  He wanted to stop in the main room and get some free coffee.

The main room at Blue Boy—and aside from the initial interviews for membership, the only room the clients were allowed in—was huge.  From the second to the sixth floors the building had more or less been hollowed out.  There were some balconies and catwalks, and the perimeter of what would have been the fifth floor was large enough to house a circle of rooms.  No one had ever told him explicitly what was in those rooms, but Julian assumed it was beds.  Well, hopefully beds and not chains or the like.  Though that was certainly a possibility.  The main room had been decorated in the style of an upscale coffeehouse.  There were little groupings of couches and chairs.  There were some couches and love seats off on their own and clusters of tables.  TVs hung all over the walls and were placed near the larger groupings of furniture.  There was a lot of natural light from the fourth floor windows.  The third floor and below had no windows.  No big surprise there.  The room had a full bar with two full time bartenders, who occasionally worked topless.  (They were men of course).  The baristas at the coffee bar never worked topless; it was probably too dangerous.  And unsanitary.

It was fairly dead on a Wednesday afternoon at 3:00.  The businessmen usually didn’t come in until around 5:30 or so.  There were a couple of elderly men smoking cigars in one corner of the room.  They were talking a little on the loud side and laughing at their own jokes.  Two much younger and very handsome men sat across from them laughing too.  Unh-huh.  Who would ever walk in here and just assume that this was a gentlemen’s club that catered to men who liked to drink brandy and smoke illegal cigars?  Obviously, someone was getting a blowjob later.  Julian didn’t recognize one of the escorts, but the other he’d met briefly on one of his visits.  His name was Ian and he was kind of an ass.  From what he’d heard from Tyler he was one of three escorts of the total thirty-two employed by Blue Boy who hadn’t come from the streets.  He seemed to think that made him better in some way.  Well, that’s what he’d been told.  He’d only talked to him for a couple minutes, but he’d seemed a little snooty.

Julian reached the coffee bar and smiled at Hayden.  Hayden frowned at him.  He came over and leaned on the other side of the counter.  He didn’t ask what Julian would like.

“Can I have—” Julian started.

“No.  You don’t tip.”

“But.  None of the employees tip.”

“You’re not a real employee.  You don’t have to get old guys off.  You want coffee you gotta pay for it.”

“Aw, come on, Hayden.”  Julian smiled sexily at him.

“I am immune to breeders.”

“Well, I’m not,” Calvin said, pushing Hayden out of the way.  “What would you like, Jules?”

“Just a latte.  Small, with a little foam.”

“You got it, hottie.”

Calvin went about making his drink while Hayden continued to frown at him.  They were a funny pair when they worked together.  Hayden was nearly as tall as Rylan, but extremely lanky.  He had a strong, handsome face, dark hair, and the darkest eyes Julian had ever seen on a human.  He loved those eyes and suspected they would be even prettier if their owner ever smiled.  Julian had never seen Hayden smile.  Calvin on the other hand was always smiling.  He barely topped five feet and Hayden could probably circle his waist with just his hands.  Calvin was cute, but in a boyish kind of way.  Rylan said he didn’t like to cater to dirty old perverts who liked little boys, but he suspected Calvin filled that role when someone asked for something close to it.

“Here ya go, muffin,” Calvin grinned at Julian, handing him his drink in a to-go cup.  He pushed his longish blond hair back behind his ears.

“Thanks, Cal.  Are you working this weekend?”

“Yep!”

“Maybe I’ll see you.  That’s usually when first time interviews are scheduled for.”

“Great!”

“Good thing I’m not working this weekend,” Hayden shared.

“Oh, who asked you!” Calvin said as he swatted at his co-worker.

Julian laughed softly as he left them.  He’d actually wondered a couple times if the two of them were dating.  He made his way back to the elevators and ran into Sam just as he was getting off.

“Ooo!  Straight-boy-game-board-partner!  Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Yeah.  I think it’s been a week.”

“Oh, really?  We saw each other?”

“Well, I saw you.  You were preoccupied.”

“Yeah.  That happens here.”  He made a slight face. “I wasn’t sucking somebody off, was I?”

“Not that preoccupied.”

“Good.  That’s always awkward.  Unless someone’s paying to watch.”

“They do that?”

“Yeah.  I’ve got two clients who just like to watch.  They order two escorts and let us do each other.  Kind of weird.  I mean, one of them wants to be serviced afterwards.  That’s fine.  But the other…never touches us.  Never wants to be touched by us.  Weird, right?”

“I guess.”

“I guess it’s all weird to you, huh?”

“No, not weird, just—”

Julian cut off.  Sam smiled at him.

“Just sad?  Yeah, it kind of is.  But you know what?  There are worse things in life.  Trust me.”

He gave him a friendly smile to let him know there were no hard feelings.  Then he patted Julian on the shoulder and left him.  Julian felt bad when he got into conversations with the escorts.  He always felt like he was looking down on them.  He wondered if they all talked about how snooty he was just like they did about Ian.

Julian had already brushed those concerns from his mind as he stepped off the Concord of elevators onto the fifteenth floor.  He was whistling softly to himself as he walked down the plain corridor.  Rylan didn’t like it when he whistled, so he needed to be quiet about it should the man come out into the hallway unexpectedly.  He slowed his gait as well.  He was nearly fifteen minutes early.  Rylan hated people who were too early or too late.  He was a very hard man to please.  As he passed by a door on his right he heard a shout.

“Ow!  You’re hurting me damn it!”

There was a reply, but it was muffled.  There was another shout and what sounded like a struggle.  Julian only thought about it for a moment.  He stepped forward and opened the door.  He was both grateful and unhappy that they were facing him.  If they’d been bent over the desk the other way Julian would have had a clear view of what their lower halves were doing.  But in being spared that he was able to see an older man with a mustachio that should have seen its end with the 70’s holding Tyler down.  Tyler was being pushed down onto his bent arm; the other was pinned to the desk by the man.  The man’s other hand was down below the desk adjusting something.  And it wasn’t so much that that bothered Julian.  It was Tyler’s face.  He looked stunned when he saw him come in, and now he looked sickly mortified.  He didn’t blush red, he flushed stark white.

“Do you need help?” Julian asked.

“Can’t you see we’re busy?” the man practically shouted, agitated from the struggle with Tyler and his arousal.  “Beat it!”

Julian made a point of giving the man a long look.  He wanted him to be very aware that he was ignoring him.  He looked to Tyler.

“Tyler?”

Tyler turned his face away.  “It’s fine.”

Julian wanted to argue.  He wanted to run across the room and push the man away from Tyler and drag him out of there.  Instead he slowly backed up and shut the door.  He left his hand on the knob for a couple of seconds, and then he backed up to the opposite wall.  He leaned against it and waited.  He didn’t hear anymore voices.  Tyler must have stopped fighting.  In fact, it seemed awfully quiet now.  Until the silence was broken by the metal legs of the desk scraping across the floor centimeter by centimeter.  Julian had a much higher threshold for awkwardness concerning sex than most people, but that made him blush.  He made a point not to look at his watch.  He didn’t want to know how long it lasted.  When it stopped, only a few minutes passed before the door opened.  The man came out, running his fingers over his mustachio.  He gave Julian a displeased look.  Julian glared back.  The man must have decided the fight wasn’t worth the effort.  After all, he’d gotten what he wanted.

Tyler appeared in the doorway next.  He didn’t look particularly strange.  He didn’t look like he’d been beaten or abused really.  His clothes and hair weren’t disheveled.  He just held his hands curled into very loose fists at his sides.  And he couldn’t meet Julian’s eyes.  They didn’t speak for a long while.  Finally, Tyler spoke first.

“God,” he said with an embarrassed laugh, “I never wanted you to see anything like that.”

Hundreds of questions coursed through Julian’s mind.  Why had that man been up here in the first place?  Clients weren’t allowed up here, so did that mean he wasn’t a client or he’d snuck up?  Was he a regular of Tyler’s?  Was he some random guy?  Had he hurt him?  Was he back on active duty?  Was it safe for him to be having sex?  What came out was, “Why didn’t you just say no?”

Tyler attempted to look him in the face, but didn’t quite succeed.  “We can’t piss off the clients.  No matter how fancy the building or how many rules there are or how much we cost…we’re still just whores.  We get paid for only one thing.”  He shrugged.

Julian still wanted to talk, but Tyler walked away from him.

“Hey, wait!” Julian called after him.

He reached forward and grabbed Tyler’s hand.  There was a weird sensation as something fused their palms together.  Tyler turned back to him with a little grimace.

“Man, I wish you hadn’t done that,” Tyler bemoaned on Julian’s behalf.

There was a slight resistance as Julian pulled his hand back, followed by a sticky sound as it came free.  He didn’t even want to look at his hand.  He could feel his lunch making a good argument to make an appearance on the tile floor.  Julian stuck out his tongue.

“Bleh.”


	23. Chapter 23

Saturday, January 14, 2006

 

Laney

 

Laney lifted her shirt up and turned sideways to look at herself in the full length mirror.  She circled her hand over her flat abdomen.  Then she ran her palm slowly and gently up and down.  Now she could feel it.  That small bump in her body.  The place where some living thing was growing inside of her and pushing out of her.  It wasn’t nearly as scary as she thought it would be.  She’d been worrying about when she would first start showing and had compulsively rubbed her abdomen every night as she lay awake in bed.  Last night, she’d thought she’d felt something, but had been too scared to get up and check.  She’d tossed and turned all night and finally when the sun rose, got up and looked in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door.  And there it was.  She hadn’t imagined it.  But instead of freaking out, she felt calm.  It was almost a relief.  When she found out she was pregnant, it was so hard to believe.  There had been no signs, no symptoms.  Just a little stick that said so.  Even the ultrasound at the clinic hadn’t been terribly convincing.  Julian had stared at it like he’d seen something other than a squishy picture on a grainy screen, but she hadn’t been able to see anything other than what looked vaguely like a misshaped kidney bean.

But this—she cupped her hand over the tiny bump—this was real.  It would probably still be a while before she was showing enough for people to take notice.  Especially since they had to wear their jackets to school during the winter term.  But, she should probably tell her friends.  It might actually help to have someone other than Julian to talk to about it.  And her mother.  Laney dropped her shirt and started brushing her hair roughly.

That had been a fun conversation.  Her mother had stared at her.  For like, ten minutes.  Laney had actually been forced to ask her mother if she’d heard her.  Then her mother said the worst possible thing to her.  But it wasn’t something she’d been afraid of hearing.  She’d been afraid of anger, disappointment, rejection.  She had thought those would have been the worse things her mother could have done because she’d never even considered the possibility of the reaction her mother actually gave her.  She just sat back in her chair and sighed, “Honestly, I’m not all that surprised.”

Laney yanked her hair into a ponytail with an elastic band.  How bad were you when your own mother thought you were a slut?  When Laney had expressed that feeling, her mother hadn’t really made things better.  It wasn’t because she thought Laney was a slut; she just thought she was stupid.  Which, of course, she was.  But weren’t parents not supposed to say stuff like that?

Despite that horrible first reaction, it had actually made the rest of the conversation easier.  The discussion of Laney’s decision to have it, but give it up for adoption.  The decision to have her mother tell her father about it.  The plans for getting an obstetrician and to go to an official doctor’s appointment.  The plans for getting a lawyer to learn more about the adoption process.  That had all been fine.  Then the last thing had been the father.  It seemed weird to her that neither Julian nor her mother had asked about that first.  Was it really that hard to believe a man would be interested enough in her to have sex?  That such a man didn’t actually exist and she had conceived immaculately?

That talk had been hard.  She couldn’t tell her mother what she’d done.  She was too ashamed.  And her mother would tell her father and her father would probably kill every single one of his poker buddies.  She’d managed to convince her mother that the baby’s father wouldn’t want to know about it and wouldn’t want to be involved in any way.  Her mother seemed to understand that it wasn’t some horny teenager from school or the mall.  So, she’d trusted Laney’s judgment about the father’s involvement.  And that was the only thing.  She’d then put Laney on a strict diet and exercise regimen since she didn’t trust her to take care of herself.

Laney sat down on her lavender sheets and drew her knees up.  She played with her toes and wondered how she was going to tell her friends.  What would they think of her?  Strangely, it was Chris and Riley she was the most worried about.  They might actually stop hanging out with her; they’d think that little of her.  And she wouldn’t blame them.  Laney didn’t think much of herself lately.  In fact, if it hadn’t been for Julian she might have given in to her despair and done something _really_ stupid.  At least Julian had showed her that he was willing to forgive her stupidity.  And so had her mother.  Her father had asked that she stay with her mother while she went through this.  She wasn’t sure if that was borne out of real concern for her and the baby or simple disgust for his whore of a daughter.  But she had two people who didn’t condemn her.  That would be enough even if the rest of the world did.

Laney wiggled her toes and watched the chipped red nail polish on her nails glitter in the morning light.  She needed another pedicure.  She needed to be sure she got one the last month of her pregnancy.  She didn’t want the baby to come out and have the first thing it see after a scary man in a mask be her ugly toes.  She looked at the clock on her nightstand.  It was still way too early to call anyone to meet her.  But she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, so she started to clean her room.  She’d been trying to be a much better daughter lately.  She washed the dishes without complaining and took out the trash without being asked.  She tried to make her shopping be of the window variety only for now.  Her mother would have to spend enough money on new maternity clothes soon enough.

Laney stopped making her bed and looked in the mirror again.  She lifted her shirt and turned to the side.  There it was.  According to her doctor, she was officially 15 weeks pregnant.  Her due date was July 5th.  At least she’d be out of school by then.  How embarrassing would it be for her water to break in the middle of class?  She rubbed her hand over the bump.  It was all she could feel.  The pamphlets had said she _could_ start feeling the baby’s movements by now, but as far as she could tell she hadn’t.  In theory around 18-20 weeks it should be obvious.  Also at 20 weeks she’d also be able to learn the sex then.  She already thought it was a girl.  She trusted Julian’s “sense.”

She sighed.  40 weeks.  That’s how long a full term human pregnancy was.  And she was at 15.  Not even halfway there yet.  She didn’t want to do this.  She didn’t want the looks and the whispering.  She didn’t want the weight gain or the swelling.  She didn’t want the stress and the worry.  She looked down at her stomach.

“I’m not doing this for you.  I’m doing this for my conscience.  As soon as you’re born you’ll be with some nice family and we’ll never see each other again.  I’m just your incubator.  So…don’t get attached, okay?  You hear me, little girl?  Don’t start to love me.”

Laney pressed her hand against her flat abdomen.  She wondered if she was listening.  If she was anything like her mother, probably not.

 

Laney started to tear a third napkin into pieces.  Her mother had gone out to run some errands and she’d invited her friends to come over to hang out.  She’d indicated to Julian that he might want to help convince the boys that this was something they wanted to do.  He’d caught on pretty easily as to what Laney had in mind for the afternoon and had promised to get them all to show up.  He’d hung up before she could tell him that they didn’t _all_ have to come.  In fact none of them did.  Not even the girls.  What had she been thinking?  She should call them all up and tell them there had been a change of plans.  No hanging out.  Not today…not ever.

Laney stood up to get the kitchen phone.  Halfway there the doorbell rang.  She cringed and stood still.  Maybe if she didn’t answer it they would go away.  The doorbell rang again.  She fidgeted.  Why was she so afraid?  Okay.  Stupid question.  She knew why she was afraid, but why was she hesitating like that would change anything?  Like not telling anyone would somehow make it possible to keep it a secret forever.  The doorbell rang six or seven times in a row.  Either Julian had sensed her hesitation and was telling her to get over it and face the music already, or Will was miffed at being ignored.

Laney walked slowly from the kitchen to the large, open foyer.  It was so bright out that the light bouncing off the white walls made it seem like a summer day, but she knew it was an illusion.  Outside it was below freezing.  She better get the door open soon or she was going to have an ear full from all of them regarding being left out in the cold like a bunch of bums.  She put her hand to the doorknob.  The metal was cold.  Her body was shaking.  What was the big deal?  It was just a baby.  Teenagers got pregnant all the time.  Life would go on.  Her hand wouldn’t move.  She didn’t want to look at them.  Then she noticed a hand on the narrow window beside the door.  A kind, gentle hand pressing lightly against the glass, offering her comfort and reassurance.  It must be Julian.  She felt better now.  She felt like she could face them.  Then the owner of the hand slid over and planted his face against the glass.  Laney yelped at Scott’s squished face.

“Laney!  Let us in!” she heard him whine through the glass.

Laney rolled her eyes.  She couldn’t believe she’d actually thought that was Julian.  She was still trying to make him be more involved in this than he really was.  What was she waiting for?  A marriage proposal?  Laney opened the door and her seven closest friends barreled into the house whining and complaining about being frostbitten.  Will walked in after the initial surge, blowing on his fingers and scowling nastily at her.  She gave him a look right back.  His lips twitched up a little, but he refused to give her an actual smile.

“Holy bejeezus, Laney!” Scott cried the loudest.  “Do you know what the temperature is like out there?  You were about to have seven live action snow people on your front step!”

“Oh, like you’re one to talk,” Anna snapped.  “Who were we waiting _ten minutes_ on to finish up his conversation with his whore of a girlfriend?”

“Anna!  Shut-up!  She is not a whore!”

“Oh, yeah?  In what way is she _not_?”

“Well, for one thing, I don’t have to pay for it.  So there.”

“Please.  Modern vernacular has now squarely placed the ‘whore’ into the same category as the slut, the hoe, and the skank.  No money need change hands.”

Scott and Anna continued to bicker about the definition of the word “whore,” probably not even remembering who they were referring to anymore.  The rest just watched them go at it.  It was fairly amusing.  Laney leaned close to Julian and spoke softly.

“I don’t get it.  That dumb twit is having sex and _I’m_ the one with the problem?”

“Well, to be fair, he’s the guy.  No doubt if he was a girl he’d definitely be pregnant by now.”

“Yes-hunh a real dictionary has to be used!  Else it would—hey.  Did someone call me a girl?”

Scott broke off his fight with Anna and scanned the group.  Everyone shrugged at him.  He made a face but decided not to accuse anyone in particular.  Will was the only one who had taken off his coat and gloves.  He tossed them into the recliner chair in the study off the foyer and started to walk toward the kitchen.

“So, what’s the super fun exciting thing supposed to be about?” he asked.  “Oh, can I have some hot chocolate?” he called from the kitchen.

The rest of the group similarly disrobed and followed after him asking the same thing.  Like they weren’t just going to serve themselves anyway.  Laney hung back and Julian did the same.  She crossed her arms as she looked at him.  He had a sheepish look on his face like he already knew what was on her mind.

“Super fun exciting thing?”

Julian shrugged.  “It got them here, didn’t it?”

“Great,” she muttered.

She walked into the kitchen and found her friends pilfering the drawer that held the different flavors of hot chocolate and coffee for the single serving coffee machine.  She walked through the kitchen and into the living room.  She sat in the La-Z-Boy chair that more or less faced the couch and love seat.  The seven of them would be pretty crowded on those two pieces of furniture.  Maybe she should tell them to bring chairs from the kitchen.  It took nearly fifteen minutes for everyone to pick a flavor and get their drink ready.  She could hear them all talking and laughing with each other.  Even Liz’s voice sounded cheerful.

Laney felt sorry for Liz.  She hadn’t been doing well since Will had slept with her and dumped her.  As far as she knew the only people who even knew she’d had sex with Will were Julian and herself.  It made sense that Will would tell Julian, and Liz had told her, but had made her promise not to tell Anna or Riley.  Since then she’d put on a good show, but her mood had been a little unstable.  Her grades had slipped.  She cried a lot more.  Her eyes were puffy about three mornings a week when she saw her at school.  Laney didn’t know how to feel about the situation.  She was Liz’s friend and thus obligated to hate the asshole that had screwed her over.  But then again, Will had made it pretty clear that he wasn’t interested in dating her.  And any idiot who knew him at all would have become suspicious at his sudden renewed interest in her.  In fact, Laney _had_ become suspicious.  She’d warned Liz not to get carried away.  She’d told her that Will was probably using her in some way.  But she refused to believe it.  She loved him so much that it didn’t make any sense to her that he wouldn’t love her back.  Laney didn’t know what she saw in Will.  He was extremely self-absorbed.  He was a little more attentive to Julian, but Will was definitely a “the ends justify the means” kind of person.  Those kind of people scared her.

Her friends tromped into the living room and squabbled about who was going to sit where.  Julian had brought a chair from the kitchen and sat in between Laney and the loveseat.  Riley decided to sit on the fireplace.  So, once the other five were situated, they kind of made a circle.  Scott was snuggled on the couch in between Anna and Chris, where he was always happiest.  Laney didn’t understand the Antoinette connection.  It seemed so obvious he should be with Anna.  Or even Chris before someone like Antoinette Bixby.  That left Liz and Will on the loveseat.  They sat far enough apart that Riley probably could have fit in there comfortably.  Then again, no one would be comfortable between those two.  There was too much crap between them that neither had tried to clear up.  Quite possibly Will wasn’t even aware of it.  Apparently he was dating some mystery slut.  According to Liz anyway.

Then Laney had a thought.  If they all discussed _their_ problems first, hers would seem trivial in nature.  They could start with Riley.  Her boyfriend was cheating on her, and she had no clue, which meant she was abnormally clueless.  Everyone at school knew Nick Tripp was fooling around with Samantha Deale.  And the latest she’d heard was that Bebe McDowell had also expressed an interest in him that had been reciprocated in the girls locker-room after a tennis match.  Then there was Chris and his crazy ass girlfriend and sophomore stalker.  Scott and Anna had some definite problems and they would have a field day with Will and Liz.  And Julian—well, his parents were still dead after all.  How bad could one little baby be?

“Laney?” Julian got the group’s attention by addressing her.  “Do you want to start?”

“No,” she wanted to say.  She wanted to start with Riley.  But, she was the only one who knew what she was getting into today.  She shouldn’t force her friends to deal with their problems if they weren’t ready for it.  Of course, Riley was the only one who wasn’t aware that she had a problem.  Maybe she ought to tell her.  But she’d been so happy lately.  And she’d been paying attention to her hair and wearing earrings.  It would be a shame to reverse all that just because of some stupid, horny boy who wasn’t even worth it.

“Laney?”

Laney shook herself.  “Oh.  Sorry.  I just.  Was thinking about something else.”  She looked at her lap.  “Um.  I guess you guys are wondering why I called you all here.”

“For the super exciting thing, right?” Scott asked.

Laney half-shrugged.  “Well, depending on your definition I suppose it could be.”

“Wait, does the definition have to be from an _official_ dictionary?” Anna asked with a smarmy look for Scott, “or will our own personal definitions be good enough?”

“You know—” Scott started, but Julian cut him off.

“Shut-up, you two.”

Their jaws dropped for a moment, insulted that Julian had told them to shut-up.  But then they got over it and faced Laney again.  She was still staring at her lap.  This wasn’t good.  She couldn’t do it like this.  She couldn’t mumble a confession like some guilt-ridden murderer.  So she’d done something stupid.  At least now she could be brave and own up to it and her decision.  She lifted her chin.  Everyone was looking at her.  Somehow they’d figured out that she was about to tell them something big.  They were quiet.  They didn’t fidget.  They were completely focused on her.  She opened her mouth, and then closed it.  Then she kind of laughed.

“Wow.  It’s such a cliché, but there’s no way to really say this other than to just say it.  There’s no way to ease into it.  There’s no interesting story.  No one thing led to another.  No yada, yada, yada.”  She looked around the room.  She could really only look at one of them while she told them.  So, she picked Will.  He would probably react the least, and that’s what she needed.

“I’m pregnant.”

They were all quiet.  They stared at her like she’d just announced she was joining Scientology.  Even Will had a look of mild surprise on his face.  And of course, it was Scott who made the first dumb comment.

“Like.  With a baby?”

Anna hit him and he yelped as he spilled his coffee on his arm.  She thought that would be the signal to them all to start talking and asking questions.  But they remained silent.  That was worse than them yelling at her or asking awkward questions she didn’t want to answer.  It was kind of eerie.  Then she noticed that all of their eyes were kind of twitching in one direction.  And then their heads started to turn.  They were all looking at Julian.  He noticed their looks and started in alarm.

“Why are you all looking at me?!” he demanded.

“Well, are you responsible for this?” Will asked.

“Oh, seriously, Will,” Julian scoffed at his friend.

“Well,” Chris started, “you’re the only one who doesn’t seem surprised by the news.”

“That’s because I was there when she found out.  That’s all.”

They all continued to stare at him.

“You realize that only proves our point, right?” Anna asked.  “I mean, why else would Laney ask you to be there when she takes a pregnancy test?”

“She didn’t ask me to.  It was an accident.  A coincidence.  I’m not the father, okay?”  Julian narrowed his eyes and gave a shake of his head as he glared at Will.  “Why did you even bring it up?  You of all people.”

Will shrugged but Laney could see a little smile on his face.  She realized he hadn’t believed for a second that Julian was the father.  He had just wanted to stir up trouble.  What was his problem anyway?  Was this situation not interesting enough for him?  Did he need to create even more drama to keep himself entertained?

“Laney.”

Laney was startled out of her ill thoughts toward Will as Liz walked over to her and then squatted beside her.  She took her hand in hers and smiled gently.

“Are you okay, Laney?  I guess you decided to tell us because…well.  Because we would start to notice…?”

She trailed off nicely and Laney realized she was trying not to make any assumptions about her situation.

“Um, yeah.  Yeah.  I’m already 15 weeks.  So, I should probably start to show before too long.  I decided to have the baby, but not keep it.  I’m going to give her up for adoption.”

“You already know it’s a girl?” Scott asked excitedly, scooting forward in his seat.

Laney felt a small smile tugging at her lips as she watched Scott.  His eyes were a brighter blue than she’d seen in a while.  She could just imagine the reaction he would have to the news of his wife’s first pregnancy.  It was such a sweet picture it almost made her wish it would be her telling him the good news one day.  But Scott had that effect on people.  Maybe that’s how he’d tamed Antoinette.

“No, not yet,” she said.  “It just sounds better than calling it…an _it_.  You know?”

“But,” Liz said, looking very worried, “are you okay?”

“Yeah.  I’m fine.  It’s been really easy so far.  I didn’t even notice I was pregnant at first, so I guess I never had any morning sickness.  Which, is kind of a misnomer, you know.  You can get sick at anytime in the day.”

Her friends nodded dumbly on the couch.

“That’s not what I meant, Laney.  I meant how are you with this?  It’s a huge thing to have to go through.  And who’s the father?  Oh my god!  I’m so sorry.  I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay, Liz.  I’m not gonna lie.  It was hard at first.  But Julian was there for me.  And he really helped me out.  And my mom knows.  And she’s taking it pretty well.  My dad knows too.  He’s not taking it as well,” she half-laughed.  “But at least he knows.  And now that you guys know, I feel a lot of pressure taken off me.  It’ll suck when people at school start to notice, but I kind of already made the decision that I have to go through that, you know?  So.  And if people ask you guys about it, you don’t have to lie.  You can tell them.  It might make it easier, you know?  If there are rumors and then you guys act weird.  And Chris can’t lie to save his own ass.”  The group chuckled and Chris didn’t get upset.  It was true after all.  “I think that would be bad.  If you guys just come out and say it.  Then.  That’s that.  And maybe it won’t seem like such a big deal.”  She wondered if she’d distracted them enough from the father topic.  “I mean, I’m sure I’m not the first girl at Calverton ever to get pregnant, you know?”

“You’re not,” Scott said.  “Antoinette said one of her friends got pregnant.”  Everyone looked at him and he shrunk into the couch.  “What?  We do _talk_ you know.”

“Who was it?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know.”

Anna rolled her eyes and snorted.

“I don’t!  Antoinette said her friend had never said she could tell anyone, so she kept her confidence.  She’s not a bad person, Anna.”

Anna crossed her arms and scowled.

“So, how come we never noticed?” Chris asked.  “I mean, we’re in school nine months out of the year.  We should have caught it at some point, right?”

“Some women don’t start to show until their seventh or eighth month,” Laney said, feeling all knowledgeable after reading her pamphlets.  “Especially during their first pregnancy.”

“Well.  Antoinette also said she’d…um…had it aborted.”

“Ah.”

Laney wasn’t sure which one of them had uttered that noise of understanding.  The group was awkwardly silent now.  Was abortion really that bad?  Would they have reacted worse if she’d told them she’d had an abortion instead?  Would she have even told them if she had?  Maybe Liz.  Laney glanced at Riley.  She hadn’t spoken a word yet.  The redhead noticed she was being looked at and slapped her knees as she stood up.

“Well.  Is that all you wanted to tell us?”

“Um.”  Laney looked around the room.  “Yeah, that was it.”

“Okay.  Well, you know I already told you on the phone that I have a date today.  So, I couldn’t stay regardless.  I should probably just get going now.”

Laney felt a little unpleasant swirling in her stomach.  “Yeah, okay.”  This sucked.  Riley obviously wasn’t okay with this news.  She felt like she should be angry with her.  This wasn’t happening _to_ her.  It wasn’t like people would look down on _her_ for having a pregnant friend.  But, Laney just felt sad.  She wished she wasn’t making any of them, including herself, go through this.  One stupid mistake and her life was never, ever going to be the same again.  But that’s what life was, right?  A series of mistakes that sometimes went right?

The others stood up, taking the cue from Riley, but not really sure if they should.  Liz stayed by her side.

“Do you want us to stay?” Liz asked.  “Or just me?  We can talk some more if you like.”

“Oh, no.  It’s okay.  I know I called you all at the last minute.  You must have other plans.  And I don’t really have anything much to talk about.  It’s not like I need to start picking out names or anything.”

“I like Isabella,” Scott said.

“Okay.  We’ll name _your_ first one that, okay?”

“Okay.”

Laney felt like slapping her forehead with a hand.  That boy was so random.  She refrained because it might hurt the dork’s feelings.

“What, are you considering that to continue your future child’s mother’s naming convention?” Liz asked.

Everyone except Annabelle and Scott tried to bite the insides of their cheeks to keep from smiling or laughing.  Anna did not look nearly as amused, and Scott just looked confused.

“I don’t get it,” Scott said.

The group giggled and started to leave the room, with Anna huffing off in the front.  Laney followed them out and heard Riley say softly, “Is he really that dumb?” to Chris.  He responded, “No.  It just doesn’t make sense to him because he thinks Antoinette is going to be the mother of his children.”

“Oh.  Really?”

“Uh.  Yeah.  Where have you been since the start of the new semester?”

Riley shrugged.

They were back in the study now, putting on their coats.  Laney was a little bewildered herself at the quickness of this announcement.  She thought it’d take longer to get out.  That there would be questions.  Or something.  Riley seemed to have preempted all of that.  Or maybe she’d just been able to do what the others couldn’t and gave them an excuse to get away from her.  Maybe they all were really uncomfortable.  Once they were all bundled up again, Riley didn’t even look at her as she said, “See you, Lane.”

There was a blast of icy wind as she opened the front door and stepped outside.  Anna came up to her next and gave her a tight hug.

“Hey.  You wanna talk, call me anytime, okay?  Midnight.  Whatever.  And you if you want, I can ask my mom about eating the right stuff so you won’t gain a lot of weight.  I won’t tell her it’s you though.”

Laney shrugged.  “It’s okay.  You can.  It’s not like I’ll be able to hide it forever.”

Anna pulled back and smiled at her.  “I’m really amazed by you, Lane.  You’re being so mature about this.”

She smiled embarrassedly.  “You should have seen me the night I found out.”

“Tell me about it,” Julian laughed softly.

“No, _you_ tell _me_ about it,” Will said, giving him a displeased look.

Scott shouldered Anna out of the way and hugged Laney.  “I think it’s weird.  Little Laney is going to be someone’s mom!”

Laney laughed and pinched one of his ears.

“Ow,” he complained as he pulled back.

“It’s not weird.  And I’m not going to be someone’s mom.  Just their incubator.”

“Well, she got lucky then,” he said, putting a hand over her stomach.  He moved it around.  “I don’t feel anything.”

“That’s because I haven’t eaten lunch yet.”  She moved his hand lower.  “There.”

He waited a moment.  “I still don’t feel anything.”

“Well, she hasn’t started kicking yet.”

“Let me know when she does, okay?”

“Sure thing, Scott.  You’ll be the first one I call.”

“Great!”  He covered up his smile with a flip of his scarf and nudged Anna as they started out the door.  She shoved him into the frame.  It sounded like the fight continued outside.  Julian rubbed her arm and smiled at her.  He didn’t need to say anything.  She knew he had her back.  Chris smiled and ruffled her hair.  She gave him an annoyed look.

“Don’t treat me like a kid anymore, kay?  You heard Scott.  I’m going to be someone’s mother.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Hey, from now on if you try to steal my cookies at lunch, I’ll let you have one.  Alright?”

“Gee thanks, Chris.”

He smiled and walked out the door.  Liz looked reluctant to leave and gave Will a couple looks to hurry up and go, but he was being rather meticulous about putting his gloves on.  Finally she sighed in annoyance and hugged Laney too.

“Hey, same as Anna, okay?  Call me anytime.  Never think you’re going through this alone.”

“I know.  Thanks, Liz.”

“I can come back.  You know, when everyone’s gone,” she rolled her eyes in Will’s direction.

Laney covered up a laugh.  “That’d be nice.  I’ve actually been up since sunrise, so I’m really tired.  I think I’ll take a nap.  So, I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Liz hung out by the front door, which was still wide open and causing the house to hemorrhage heat.  Will walked up to Laney and gave Liz an indignant look.

“Excuse me.  But I have something private I would like to discuss with Ms. Newberry.”

Liz let out a noise of irritated disgust, but walked outside.  Leaving the door open.  Of course.

“What do you want, Will?”  She’d meant to make her tone playful in nature, but it came out not quite so friendly.  She guessed she was still a little ticked at him.

“I just wanted to let you know that you should make me the godfather.”

She stared at him.  She blinked twice.  “W-what?!”

“I’d make a good one.  I know my family’s not very religious, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been baptized myself, but I’m sure I could do it for her.”

“Okay.  Forget all the other crap that makes this idea ludicrous, like the fact that I’m not keeping her.  Why would I pick _you_?”

“Well, of the four of us, I’m obviously the best choice.  Plus, if she’s my goddaughter, I won’t try to sleep with her when she’s older.”

“Will!  You are a Grade A nut job, you know that?”

She curled her hand into a fist and thunked him hard on the shoulder.  He smiled and stepped closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.  It was strange to suddenly kind of be in his embrace, and stranger still that it made her feel better.  She dropped her forehead on his shoulder.  In comparison to the other three boys, Will definitely seemed like he was on the small side.  But when she stood next to him, he was taller and bigger than she and he had that boy smell.  The good kind.  It was actually really comforting.  She felt his hand at the back of her head.

“We’ve got it covered, Laney.  Jocks, nerds, teacher’s pets, arties, gothies…even the loners.  We’ve got everyone covered except the stoners.  We won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Laney kept her eyes focused on the gritty texture of Will’s black wool jacket.  For some reason, hearing it from him made it seem real.  They really did support her in this and they were going to try their best to protect her from any high school drama bullshit.  She didn’t hug him, but she pressed herself closer to him.

“Thank you, Will.”  She was mortified that her voice was shaking.

He allowed her to stand there for a few moments, until she was ready to discreetly wipe her eyes and pull back on her own.  She smiled up him and he smiled down at her.  She understood a little better now what it was Liz and Julian, hell, _everyone_ saw in him.  Except for those green eyes everyone talked about.  Just like now, his eyes always looked hazel to her.  She admitted she never looked at Will’s eyes much, but whenever she was close enough to him that they made eye contact, his eyes always appeared to be a pretty common hazel.

“Bye, Lane.”  He gave a very gentle nudge to her chin with his index finger.  She kind of got the impression he was telling her all the “stiff upper lip, keep your chin up” crap without having to actually say it.  Laney silently apologized to Liz.  She couldn’t hate Will.  The asshole was too nice.

“Hey jerk!”

Laney looked to the door and saw Will getting hit in the face with an enormous snowball.

“I can’t believe you made her cry!”

That was Scott.  Though the aim had been too good for it to have been him who threw it.

“They were happy tears, you ass!”

Laney sighed at the melting snow on her mother’s hardwood floors.  She ran to the kitchen to get a towel.  When she came back to the foyer she could see that the seven of her friends were in an immense snow fight on what had once been an immaculately beautiful white lawn.  She dropped the towel on the floor and used her foot to wipe up the water so she could watch them go at it.  It was very interesting and quite amusing to herself that she was deep enough to realize how their group fights or dances reflected what was currently going on in their relationships.

Usually, Anna was assaulting Scott and he would “fight her off,” but really let her wiggle around on top of him.  Obviously there were repressed sexual feelings on both sides that Anna was too scared to admit to and Scott was oblivious to.  Riley and Will were usually shoving each other’s faces in the snow.  Riley liked picking on him because not being a girl he could take it, and among the boys, he was the only one completely willing to give back as good as he got to a girl.  Julian usually tormented Liz.  Probably because he was jealous of her physical closeness with Will.  And Liz liked to keep him distracted because when he did attack Will, it was always dirty.  Which usually left her and Chris to mostly sit on the sidelines, neither being much into fights, play or otherwise.

Today, there were some very interesting dynamics going on.  Riley and Liz had Chris pinned in the snow and were sitting on him, pulling on his legs and trying to get him to admit that he was a subservient worm.  Maybe Riley did know she was being cheated on after all.  She and Liz were probably taking out their frustrations on the closest thing they had to a cheater.  Julian had Anna around the waist.  She was squealing and shouting as he tried to stuff snow up her jacket.  Laney had started to wonder about Julian’s feelings toward Anna since the end of last year.  When he hadn’t made a move on her and gone after the Asian chick instead, she assumed she’d been off her game.  But now she was pretty sure that her Crush Radar was intact and Julian was starting to express those feelings toward Anna more openly, even if it was only subconsciously.  Will was on his stomach screaming his head off in the wet, cold snow.  He was stuck face down because Scott was straddling him.  Hopefully that was the one thing that didn’t have any subtext to it.  Anna screamed as Julian slung her over his shoulder.

“Hey!” Scott shouted.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’ve got my woman, I’ve got yours,” he replied with a slap to Anna’s ass.

She yelped and Will let out a string of words in Julian’s direction.  Laney didn’t think it was English.  Scott only laughed.  Chris managed to break free from his two girls and scooted away on his butt, thoroughly soaking his jeans.

“Laney!  Help me!”

Why was he calling out to her for help?  She opened the hall closet and got out her galoshes and waterproof coat.  She made sure the door was unlocked and then pulled it shut after her.  She plunged into the foot deep snow and trudge over to Chris.  He’d grabbed a hold of Anna’s ankle as a means of pulling himself up, but the extra weight tipped Julian off balance and the two of them crashed to the ground.  Liz jumped on top of Chris again and Riley attempted to help Anna extract herself from Julian’s grasp.  Will had turned partway under Scott and they were in a fierce one-handed battle.  Laney wasn’t sure who to help.  She took a step toward Chris and slipped on a hidden icy patch.  She let out a very girly squeal and then plopped onto her butt.  Everyone stopped moving and shouting.

“Laney, are you okay?” several concerned voices asked.

“Uh, yeah—”

“Chris!” Liz hit him.  “You shouldn’t have made her come out here!”

“I’m sorry, Laney,” Chris apologized.

Laney smiled confusedly at them.  “I’m fine.  It was just a little slip.  I didn’t hurt myself.  Why are you guys—”

 _Oh, right.  The baby_ , Laney realized.  Were they all going to be super careful around her from now on?

“Look,” Scott said with a know-it-all tone, “I was eight years old when my mom was pregnant with the twins, so I remember it quite well.  Anna can attest to the same thing.  There ain’t nothin’ delicate or fragile about a pregnant woman.”

“He’s kinda right,” Anna admitted.

Laney did a discreet double take as she looked at Anna.  She and Julian were both sitting on the ground facing the same direction, but she was between his legs.  She wondered if anybody else noticed this.

“Get off of me!” Will shouted.

“I don’t know,” Scott said, wiggling his hips.  “I kind of like it up here.  Nice view.”

“Geh!”

“Awww, Scott!” Anna teased him.  “I’m gonna tell your girlfriend you’re gay.”

Scott shrugged.  “I think she kind of already thinks I sort of am.”

“We all do, Scott,” Chris grinned from the ground.  Riley had moved to sit on Chris next to Liz, so he was defenseless against the pile of snow Scott shoved in his face.

“Well, now I’m _freezing_ ,” Liz stated, hugging herself.  “I know you wanted to take a nap, Laney, but can I come in and dry off before I go home?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Hey,” Will said, finally managing to get Scott to topple off of him, “is your hot tub working?”

“Um…yeah.”

He smiled prettily at her.  Laney took in a breath.  Damn.  Thank goodness she didn’t have a crush on that boy; otherwise he could get her to kill for him.

“You wanna get in it?”

“May I?”

“Why just you?” Scott demanded.

“Well, you can come too, sugar.”

“Uh.”  Scott blushed.  “That’s not what I was implying.”

“That’s not what I was inferring,” he responded with a knowing leer.

Scott blushed even redder.

“All right, I call dibs too,” Julian said.

“What do you mean ‘dibs’” Anna asked, turning to look at him, which put them shoulder to shoulder and their faces very close together.

“Well, it’s not that big, you know.  I mean, all eight of us could fit but it would probably be very…” Julian wrapped his arms around her.  “Cozy.”  He raised his eyebrows at her.  She turned away from him in a huff, but Laney was pretty sure she was blushing.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Chris said, his teeth chattering.  “She’s already offered it up to Will.  So, only the boys get to go in.”

All three of the girls voiced their opinion on that.

“Because!” Chris shouted over them.  “None of us have bathing suits.  We can’t all get in there naked!  Not with eight people.  We’d all be squished together!”

“Yeah.  Someone else would wind up pregnant,” Scott said.

Most of the others groaned his name silently and Will slapped him on the shoulder.  He looked puzzled at first and then looked at Laney.

“Um.  Sorry?”

She shook her head.  “It’s fine.  I’m not offended.  I mean, obviously it wouldn’t be me who would be getting pregnant.  Which one of the three of you is between periods?  Odds are it’s gotta be somebody.”

“Well it can’t be me,” Liz said stubbornly.  “I want to look good in my prom dress.”

Now they all silently groaned her name.

“What?  She has one more year left.  She’ll look good next year.”

“Well, it can’t be me,” Anna said.  “I can’t get pregnant by some white guy.  My baby’s gotta be really mixed.”

“I’m part Greek,” Julian volunteered.

She shrugged.  “Still too white.”

“I’m part Latino,” Chris offered.

“But only half.  That’ll still leave my baby half white.  Not enough of a mix.”

“Well then,” Will said.  “That only leaves…”

They all looked at Riley.  She glowered back at them.

“The question is, who gets her?” Will asked.

“Evens and odds?” Scott asked, holding out his hand.

“Oh shut-up, all of you!” Riley hollered, turning beet red.

Everyone snickered but Liz who was starting to grumble again.

“Can’t we decide this in the house rather than freezing our butts off out here in the snow?”

“Um.  Your butt isn’t actually in the snow,” Chris reminded her.

“Whatever.”

Laney stood up and brushed the wet snow off the bottom of her jacket.  “Okay, guys, let’s just go in.  I might have enough bathing suits to lend to the girls and the boys can wear their underwear.  And please none of you say you aren’t wearing any.”

Nobody said they weren’t, but Laney wasn’t sure that meant they all were.  She started for her front door.

“Though, I’m not sure if I have a suit that can… _contain_ all of Liz.”

The boys giggled as they stood up and tried to help the girls up.

“I’ll wear a T-shirt,” she snapped, shoving Will to the side since he was laughing the hardest.

Laney smiled to herself as she entered her warm home, followed by her goofy friends.  She wasn’t going to let this happy complacency fool her.  She knew the next few months weren’t going to be fun, but she felt like she was strong enough to face it now.


	24. Chapter 24

January 30, 2006

 

Julian

 

Julian stood on his front porch shivering while he watched Cornelius snuff around in the snow.  He was wearing his uniform with the jacket, but it wasn’t doing anything to protect him from the below freezing temperatures.  He could see his breath—white and shaking in the feeble glow from the porch light.  Aside from the streetlamps, it was the only light available to him because the sun wasn’t up yet.  He was sorely tempted to call Cornelius back in so that he could wait inside, but the dog was going to be stuck indoors for longer than usual today.  So, he decided to let the mutt play in the snow.  Cornelius must have had some kind of mountain dog in him because his fur was pretty thick and he loved the snow.

Julian hugged himself tightly and stomped his feet.  He couldn’t believe he was awake this early.  He had to be up earlier than most kids his age in order to get to Calverton on time, but at least the sun was usually up when he started his commute in the mornings.  He wondered why Scott’s dad wanted to get to work so early.  And he also wondered why he’d agreed to shadow the man.  It was so not going to be fun.  He hadn’t the slightest idea what it was that Mr. Ramsey did, but he was 99.995% certain that it wouldn’t interest him a whit.  And to add insult to injury, he’d heard that Kyle Laffee and taken a chance on one of the random Calverton alumni who had volunteered to host a student.  Apparently Kyle was going to spend his day with a casting director auditioning female models for a sunscreen commercial.  That could have been him!  Life was so unfair.

He was momentarily blinded as two headlights turned onto his driveway.  A sleek black Maserati appeared in his vision once it adjusted to the light.  The slick sports car reminded him of other things that weren’t fair—like the fact that Scott had gotten a brand new BMW for Christmas.  Well, his father wouldn’t let him drive it to school, but he still had it.  And he’d taken some of them for a joyride.  Plus, since he was so eager to please he’d let each of them drive it.  Unsurprisingly, Chris had only managed to drive for a mile before pulling over and saying he was too nervous.  Will and Julian had had no problem abusing Scott’s kind offer, but they had at least been reasonably responsible with it.  Anna on the other hand had scared them all shitless.  Almost literally in Chris’ case.  They were lucky the other three girls hadn’t been around.  Julian had only been in a car once when Laney had been driving, but once was enough.  Scott hadn’t seemed too phased by Anna’s wild ride.  He’d explained that she was still a better driver than Antoinette.

Julian called Cornelius to him and the dog came immediately.  He’d been much more obedient and happy around Julian since he’d recovered from his breakdown in November.  Julian now used the dog as a gauge for his mood in the mornings.  Most of the time he would run right up to him, but every now and then he would hang back and only come reluctantly.  That let Julian know that he was having one his bad days.  With that knowledge, he was better able to control his feelings and temper, and as far as he could tell none of his friends had been able to notice that he still had dark days.  The only one he let see him like that was Dr. Corbin.  Dr. Corbin didn’t seem too concerned by it since the days were few and far between, but when Julian brought up such a day, the crazy man turned serious and they had a real session.  He wondered how long he was going to be like this.  Maybe when he started planning his budget for after high school he would need to include ongoing therapy bills.

Julian let Cornelius inside and ignored his hangdog face as he grabbed his bag and locked the door on his way out.  He walked carefully down the slippery driveway to Mr. Ramsey’s car.  He could see Scott waiting for him in the backseat.  Rather than sitting up front, he’d opted for sitting with his friend.  Julian smiled and shook his head.  Spaz.  When he reached the car he started to open the passenger door.  He could hear Scott pitch a fit even while the car was still sealed up.  Julian moved to the backseat and got in.  Scott was frowning unhappily at him and Julian tried really hard to keep the smile off his face.  Why did he enjoy teasing him so much?  He glanced up front and saw Mr. Ramsey looking a little perplexedly at his son and giving a slight shake of his head.  He didn’t blame the man; his son _was_ a little weird.

“Good morning, Julian,” Mr. Ramsey greeted him.

“Morning, Mr. Ramsey.”  He turned to Scott.  “Scott.”

“ _Julian_.”

Scott made a pretty decent effort at staying mad at Julian.  He kept up his pout until they were almost at the end of the street.  Then he switched over to talking about how weird and awkward his day was going to be with Mr. Bixby.  Julian listened to him rant for a good twenty minutes, all the while thinking that he wasn’t going to have any better of a day with Mr. Ramsey.  He didn’t know the man all that well.  Sure, he wasn’t dating Scott, but it might be even more awkward because they had some sort of history together.  He remembered Mr. Ramsey from their childhood a little bit.  Julian had always liked him; he’d been able to talk with them without talking down to them like most adults did.  But once they’d hit puberty, he hadn’t seen much of the man anymore.  That might have also corresponded with when Mr. Ramsey had gotten his super promotion and Scott started having more money to spend on video games.

Mr. Ramsey had remained quiet while the two of them had chatted in the backseat, but now they were sitting in traffic in the city and Scott’s tone was starting to get a little high-pitched.  He interrupted his son mid-freak out.

“So, Scott.  How do you know Jim Bixby again?”

“Uh…I told you.  It’s a friend’s dad.”

“Unh-hunh,” the man replied.

Julian wasn’t surprised Mr. Ramsey was suspicious.  After all, Scott only had seven friends and he knew all of their parents.  Julian decided to help clarify things.

“It’s actually his girlfriend’s father.”

Scott turned a scathing look on him and punched him in the thigh.  Mr. Ramsey was looking at them through the rearview mirror.

“You have a girlfriend?”

“W-well.”  Scott shrugged and waved a dismissive hand.  “I mean.  She’s a girl.  And we hang out.”

Julian wondered why he was so hesitant to tell his father about Antoinette.  They weren’t sneaking around anymore.  They were an official couple and there was already buzz around the school that they could be voted Prom King and Queen.

“Kind of hang out?” Julian questioned.  “You two are inseparable.  Don’t believe a word of this ‘just friends’ crap, Mr. Ramsey.  He’s totally in love.”

“Really?”

Julian fought Scott’s attack off with a hand.

“Oh, yeah.  You should meet her.  She is your future daughter-in-law after all.”

“ _Really_.  That’s interesting.”

“Julian!”

Julian grabbed both of Scott’s wrists and they struggled the rest of the way to Mr. Ramsey’s office building.  It wasn’t a real fight though.  They were laughing and being careful not to actually hurt each other.  By the time they were parked in Mr. Ramsey’s space—only three away from the CEO—they were out of breath and a little sweaty.  Mr. Ramsey gave then stern looks when they crawled out of his backseat.

“Just what I need: to show up at work with two sweaty and panting boys getting out of my backseat.”

Julian laughed and Scott blushed.

“That’s not funny, Dad,” Scott said unhappily.  “You shouldn’t make jokes like that involving your son.”

“It’s not a joke.  Have you seen what you look like right now?”

“Dad!”

Julian and Mr. Ramsey laughed at him.  He yelled at them both for being jerks as they got on the elevator and headed up.  He was still lecturing them when the doors opened up to the bustling lobby.  Julian couldn’t believe how much activity was going on this early in the morning.  And the lobby was huge, so that meant there were a lot of people traipsing around in the chicly decorated space.  It looked more like the lobby to a fashion magazine than an investment firm.  Mr. Ramsey led them over to a corner that contained one of the many collections of furniture.  There were several business men and women crowded around each other, talking excitedly about something.  It looked like the student lounge before classes began at Calverton.  Apparently—high school really didn’t end.

Mr. Ramsey walked up to a man about his and Julian’s height, which made Scott the shortest one there even though he was 5-11 now.  Mr. Ramsey shook hands with the man.

“Good morning, Jim.”

“David.”

“So.  I just learned this this morning, but apparently my son is dating your daughter.”

“Apparently.”

Both men made the same expression on their faces, but it wasn’t exactly a smile.  Scott leaned in toward Julian and said, “Is it just me, or does this seem a little more awkward than it should?”

Julian leaned over too.  “It’s not just you.”

The men turned away from each other and looked at Julian and Scott.  Scott stared dumbly at Mr. Bixby for a moment, so Julian nudged him in the spine.  He jumped forward and stuck out a hand.

“Hello, Mr. Bixby.  I’m Scott Ramsey.  It’s nice to meet you.”

Mr. Bixby shook his hand.  “Likewise.”

“Well,” Mr. Ramsey said.  “We’d better go, Julian.”

“Okay.”

Scott turned around and looked at them with desperate panic in his eyes.  Julian patted his shoulder.

“I guess I’ll see you at lunch.”  He leaned in close and whispered, “You’ll be fine.”  Then he gave his friend a kiss on the cheek and waved goodbye and as he and Mr. Ramsey hightailed it out of there leaving Scott to flap in breeze.

He and Mr. Ramsey managed to just squeeze onto a crowded elevator and had to keep getting off to let people out.  Once they hit the eighth floor, they were alone.  And there was silence.  They both rocked on their heels a bit, but neither could come up with anything to say.  The light on the panel slowly jumped from floor to floor.  They were past 15 now.  Then Mr. Ramsey turned to him.

“When did you get those?”

Julian looked at him blankly.  “Those what?”

Mr. Ramsey raised a hand and ran a finger down the earrings in his left ear.

“Oh.  September.”

“Really?  It hasn’t been that long since I’ve seen you, has it?”

“Um.  Maybe.”

“Hmm.”

The elevator finally dinged and the doors opened.  No wonder it had taken so long—they’d had to go to the 20th floor.  They stepped off and Julian looked around the open, naturally lit space.  It was just as busy up here as it had been down in the lobby.  And just as stylishly decorated and organized.  It didn’t feel like an office at all.  Maybe that made the employees feel better.  And if they felt better, maybe they worked harder.  Julian followed Mr. Ramsey around to the left.

“So, you’re almost there, huh?” he asked.

“Almost where?”

“At the top.  One more floor to go.  But this one is nice.”

Mr. Ramsey laughed.  “I am at the top.  The top floor is the boss’ office.”

“What?  The _whole_ floor?”

“Yep.”

“Well.  That’s a little extravagant.”

Mr. Ramsey didn’t give him a verbal response, but Julian suspected he felt the same.

“So, I’ll show you a few key places for you to know while you’re here.  This is the break room.  It’s where the vending machines are and the coffee machine.  Feel free to help yourself to anything that’s sitting out.  Did you bring your own lunch?  You can put it in the refrigerator.”

“No.  There were so many students from Calverton coming here that the school or the company or somebody is providing us all with a lunch.”

“Hunh.  Are there really that many Calverton students here?”

“I guess parents found out about it through word of mouth around here.  Why did you send Scott there?”

“Well.  His mother wanted to send him to Huntington, but I thought it’d be better if he went to a coed school.  I guess I did hear about Calverton from someone here.”

“Why’d you want to send him to a coed school?”

“Well, the obvious reason.  Though he seems just as happy with affection from boys as he does girls.”  Mr. Ramsey gave him a pointed look.

Julian laughed.  “If it makes you feel better, he’s not really comfortable with it.  He’s just kind of a ditz and doesn’t realize it’s happening sometimes.”

“Is that why he doesn’t even know that he has a girlfriend?”

Julian shook his head.  “I actually have no idea why he was being secretive about Antoinette.”

“Antoinette?  He’s dating someone named _Antoinette_?”

“Well.  She didn’t name herself, you know.”

“I guess so.  Oh, here’s the bathroom.  Now I’ll show you the most direct route to my office so you’ll know how to get here if you’re in a hurry.  Also, I’ll be able to introduce you to some of my minions along the way.”

He chuckled somewhat evilly to himself and Julian smiled.  Mr. Ramsey was actually pretty funny.  He introduced Julian to several of his underlings, and they all hopped to when they saw their supervisor, looking eager to please.  Julian wondered how much of it was fake and how much of it was done out of fear of getting canned.  But then again, maybe they were all just a bunch of eager beavers who enjoyed working for Mr. Ramsey.  Julian wouldn’t rule it out.

They were talking to a couple young interns—one being a cute blonde with whom Julian flirted shamelessly—when a man walked by them in a great rush.  Julian was too busy trying to get the blonde’s e-mail address to notice him, but Mr. Ramsey did.

“Running a little late today, aren’t you, boss?”

His tone had been playful, but Julian still felt maybe it was risky to talk to your boss like that.  He looked away from the blonde to see the boss’ reaction.  He had come back and was frowning sourly.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he groused.

Several things about Mr. Ramsey’s boss surprised Julian.  One being that he hadn’t taken offense to Mr. Ramsey’s comment and just looked miffed with the fact that he was late.  Secondly, the boss was probably ten or more years younger than Mr. Ramsey.  The third and biggest surprise was, of course, that he recognized him.  Ken West didn’t look like he was having a terrific morning.  Mr. Ramsey seemed thoroughly delighted to find his boss’ feathers ruffled.

“Well, since you’re here, I’d like to introduce you to the Calverton student who will be shadowing me today.  His name is Julian March.  Julian, this is my boss, Ken West.”

Julian grinned at him.  “Hiya.”

Ken looked like someone who was trying not to show that he was uncomfortable.  He cleared his throat.  “Hello.  Welcome to K&K Consulting.”

“Thanks.  So.  How was that thing you had to do?”

Ken looked momentarily confused, but when the slightly angry/embarrassed expression passed over his features and then quickly resolved into a neutral, somewhat forced smile, Julian knew he knew he was talking about their encounter on New Year’s.

“I didn’t do it,” Ken said evenly.

“Oh.  Well.  Good for you.”

Mr. Ramsey looked back and forth between them.

“You two know each other?”

“We—”

“He’s friends with my cat-sitter,” Ken cut him off.

What Ken didn’t realize was that that explanation wouldn’t really help to explain why they knew each other because Mr. Ramsey knew all of Julian’s friends.  And it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for any of them to be Ken’s cat sitter.  Wait…cat sitter?

“Cat sitter?” Julian echoed.  “And you’re a weird businessman.”  He pointed a finger at Ken.  “ _You’re_ the weird businessman Will works for?”

In answer came Will’s plaintive voice, “That machine made my hot chocolate taste like coffee!”

He glared at Ken when he reached his side, using a thin straw to stir tiny, melting marshmallows into his hot drink.  Then he noticed Julian and Mr. Ramsey.  His expression changed to something closer to surprised guilt.

“Julian.”

“Will.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m shadowing Scott’s dad,” he said, hooking a thumb in Mr. Ramsey’s direction.

Will smiled at the man.  “Hi, Mr. Ramsey.  I kind of forgot you worked here.”

“ _This_ is the businessman you work for?” Julian asked Will, indicating Ken.

“Uh.  Yeah.”

“How do you know him?”

“I—wait.  Do _you_ know him?”

“Uh…”  He couldn’t say how he knew him.  One he couldn’t tell Will about Blue Boy and two he couldn’t out Ken at work.  What should he say?

“Mr. West?”

They all turned as a petit, super skinny black woman ran up to Ken.  “You have a call from Q*West proper.”

“Oh.  Right.  Um.  Tell him I’ll take it upstairs, so give me a couple of minutes.”

“Right!”  The woman scuttled off, talking into her Bluetooth earpiece.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said to Julian and Mr. Ramsey.  “Mr. March, I hope you enjoy your experience here today.  David, thank you for doing such a great job on that expense report.  Marnie managed to get it to the media center in time to have it ready by 1:00 for the meeting.”

“Great.  I will see you there this afternoon.”

“Fantastic.  Mr. Harder.”

Will looked up from examining his hot chocolate.  “Huh?”

Ken was already striding down the hall for the elevators.  Will gave Julian a smile and waved to him as he hurried after Ken.

“Unbelievable,” Mr. Ramsey murmured.  “That man should be a politician.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you see how he reminded me of today’s meeting?”

Julian quirked any eyebrow.  “That was a reminder?”

“Yep.  Masked as a compliment.”

“He is good.”

“Yes.  And anal retentive.  I can’t believe he’s letting a student shadow him.  I can’t believe he owns a cat.”  He looked at Julian.  “Will is a cat-sitter?”

Julian shrugged.  “I have no idea what’s going on there.”

“Hn.  Come with me.”

Julian started to follow Mr. Ramsey to his office, lost in thought.  Will being Ken’s cat-sitter explained a couple things.  Like the reason his neighbor had always noticed a high school boy hanging around and why Ken had managed to not have a reaction when he explained that his visitor was just his cat sitter.  That was because he really was just a cat sitter.  There was no way anything was going on between Ken and Will.  So, if Ken hadn’t met his high school student through illicit Internet chatting, how had they ever crossed paths?  He supposed it could have been connections through Will’s parents.  That made sense that they may have met at some point in time.  But how would cat sitting ever come up?  Ah.  Stranger things had happened.

Mr. Ramsey’s office was a huge corner office with lots of windows and two doors.  The first door led into a small waiting room with a desk and a secretary.  The secretary wasn’t very attractive.  Mr. Ramsey probably wasn’t sleeping with her.  The next door led into his office space.  He and Mr. Ramsey hung up their jackets on the coat rack and plopped into comfortable chairs behind his large desk.  Mr. Ramsey jiggled his mouse to wake up his computer.

“Okay.  Here’s what I do.”

Julian genuinely tried to pay attention to what Mr. Ramsey was saying, but it was only a couple minutes before his eyes glazed over and he tuned out every word the man said.

“Julian.”

Julian shook himself.  “Yeah?”  His eyes focused on Mr. Ramsey’s face.  He’d noticed before, but Scott really did look like his father.  Though Julian suspected Mr. Ramsey probably wouldn’t look as good as a platinum blond.  He still looked quite handsome for a man his age, however.  Then Julian tried to remember how old he was.  Had he had Scott young?  He was pretty sure he had hit forty already.

“Julian!”

Julian shook his head again.  He’d spaced out—again.  Mr. Ramsey played with his blue tie.

“Did you get all that?”

“Yup,” Julian lied faithfully.

“Unh-hunh.”  He sighed.  “Why don’t you play Solitaire?  I’ve got some packets I need to make up for my meeting.”

“‘Kay.”

They traded seats and Julian played Spider Solitaire while Mr. Ramsey and his secretary spread out piles of paper and carefully coalesced them and put them into folders.  Julian thought it was weird for someone as high up as Mr. Ramsey to be doing his own coalescing, but then again, if this was a big important meeting, he’d probably want to make sure everything was the way it was supposed to be himself.

Julian had switched from Spider Solitaire to Free Cell to Minesweeper and back to Spider Solitaire again before Mr. Ramsey’s secretary pointed out the time to them.

“I believe the Calverton students have their lunch now,” she said, tapping a stack of papers on the desk to get them straight.  Mr. Ramsey didn’t bother to look up from what he was doing.

“Why don’t you head on down, Julian.  I’ll probably have left for my meeting by the time you get back, so you can just do whatever until I get back.”

“Aye, aye captain.”

Julian hopped out of his chair and got swatted on the arm and called a smart ass as he left.  He smiled as he heard the secretary warning Mr. Ramsey that he could get in trouble if he treated his student that way.  Her boss scoffed at the idea.  Julian took the elevator down to the fourth floor and ran across several Calverton students on the way, including the Regurgitator.  He kept walking, his eyes set straight ahead like he hadn’t seen her.  As a social outcast himself he shouldn’t be mean to other rejects, but eating a meal with her was out of the question.  He followed the small horde of grey jackets to an enormous meeting room with several large tables strategically placed throughout the room.  There was a humongous screen on one wall and playing on it was a promotional movie for Q*West Enterprises.  Julian thought the name of this company was K&K Consulting.  He shrugged.  He didn’t really care.  Well, maybe he should find out for sure.  It would be slightly embarrassing to write his report for school and wind up calling the company by the wrong name.

He got in line to collect his box lunch and tucked his can of soda under an arm so that he would have a hand free to scoop up a handful of the large cookies laid out on the dessert table.  He managed to get five comfortably in his hand.  Being big had its advantages.  He scanned the room and saw Will and Chris sitting at one of the two corners in the room that had a small table and four chairs.  They must have gotten there early to claim such a prized location.  Everyone else was having to eat their lunch lined up like a meal at Hogwarts.  Or so he’d gotten that impression from walking in on Scott’s siblings watching one of the Harry Potter movies one time.  He walked over to his friends and plopped down in a chair.

“Hey guys.”

“Hey, Julian,” Will said.  He was all smiles and hyperactive enthusiasm.  Why was he having such a great day?

“Hey,” Chris mumbled.

“I didn’t know you were here too,” Julian said, laying his cookies out on a napkin.

“Yeah.  I had no idea where Karen’s dad worked.  But, I’m lucky it’s here.  You ought to check out the lunch.  Apparently once K&K Consulting got wind of how many kids were going to be here today they decided to make it an official event or something.  So, they had our lunch catered for us.”

“Ooo,” Julian let out as he opened the lid to his lunch.  “These look like those sweet potato fries from Kelly’s.”

“They are,” Will said, shoving a handful into his mouth.

“Gah!”

The three of them started as Scott crashed into the remaining seat.  “Unbelievable.  Just because I’m like, the last one here I get stuck with a vegetarian sandwich.”

Julian and Will laughed at him.

“But, it’s from Kelly’s,” Chris pointed out.

“Oh.  Well.  Then that’s okay.”

“Hey,” Julian said around a large mouthful of turkey sandwich.  “Wha iz da name od dis compnee?”

“You don’t even know where you are?” Scott asked.

Julian pointed to the screen and swallowed.  “That says Q-West.  And you guys are saying K&K Consulting.”

“It’s pronounced ‘quest,’” Will corrected him.  “Q*West Enterprises is the parent company.  K&K Consulting is the name of this investment firm that they started.”

“Oh.”

“How do you know that?” Chris asked.

“I’m shadowing the CEO.  He gave me a whole lecture about the history of the company.”

Scott made a sympathetic face.  Julian wanted to ask him how he knew the CEO, but then he might ask him how _he_ knew him.  So, he kept his mouth shut.  Thankfully, Chris asked for him.

“How do you know the CEO?”

“One of my mom’s connections.  So.  How is everyone’s day going?”

Julian sat back in his chair and munched on a fry.  “God awful.  I’ve done nothing but play computer games all morning.  I have no idea what it is your dad does, Scott, but all I know is that I would shoot myself before I ever did it.”

“I’ll second that motion,” Chris muttered.

“I’m seriously so bored.  I can’t take another four or five hours of this.  I think I’m going to have to engage your dad somehow.”

“Well, don’t kiss him,” Scott said, stealing one of Julian’s cookies.

Julian looked at Scott, biting his lips to keep from laughing.  Then he looked at Chris and Will; they were making similar efforts and looking back and forth between each other and Scott.  Scott finally looked up at them.  They couldn’t hold it back anymore and burst out laughing.  Scott made a face at them.

“What?  It’s what he does!”

They all laughed harder.

“You ought to know that quite well, _Chris_.”

Chris stopped laughing.  Will tried to hide his continuing laughter by taking a sip of his water.  He just wound up spilling on himself.  Scott ignored him and looked at Julian.

“I’m serious, March.  No kissing.”

Julian put his hands in the air.  “I won’t touch him.  Promise.  If…”

Scott rolled his eyes.  “There is no conditional offer here.”

“Aw come on.  Just once.  Let me do it to you.”

“No.”

“Okay.  I guess I get to find out what Kristen finds so hot about your dad.”

“Gah!  Julian!  Fine!  But just once!”

Will and Chris sat up in their chairs.

“You’re going to let him k—” Chris started.

Julian leapt out of his chair and used both his hands to ruffle Scott’s hair.

“Ah!  It feels so good!”

“Okay, okay!”  Scott swatted his hands away.  “That’s enough.”

Will started laughing again and Chris breathed a sigh of relief.  What had he thought Julian was going to do to Scott?  They spent the rest of their lunch talking about the other three’s days.  Will seemed to be the only one enjoying his.  Even so, he lingered behind with them and they were the last four to leave lunch.  They parted ways reluctantly on the elevator.  Chris got off on the sixteenth floor and Scott and Julian got off on the 20th floor, watching enviously as Will continued up to the mysterious 21st floor.  Scott walked with him to his father’s office to say hi.  When they got there, the secretary informed them that he had gone to the super big important meeting.  Julian thought that maybe he and Scott would be able to entertain each other, but Scott had some business to take care of.  So, Julian was left to his own devices.  He stood awkwardly in the small waiting room while the secretary clacked away at her keyboard.  She looked up after a moment.

“You can wait in Mr. Ramsey’s office if you like.”

“Okay.”

That’s not what Julian had been waiting for.  He’d hoped she’d be willing to talk with him.  At least it would give him something to do.  Instead, now he was going to have to find a way to entertain himself.  Maybe he’d go through Mr. Ramsey’s stuff.  That could be interesting _and_ educational.

He started with the desk.  He glanced around the top of the large cherry-colored wood desk.  It was quite orderly.  His monitor and keyboard were at an angle in the right top corner—Julian couldn’t quite figure out where the tower was.  A set of plastic shelves that read “in” and “out” sat beside a tape dispenser, a stapler, and a pencil holder.  They all looked like they had been set against an invisible line.  A fancy looking phone with several lines was sitting to the right of the desk next to the monitor.  Was Mr. Ramsey this neat and organized, or had he cleaned up for Julian’s sake?  A peek in his drawers would answer that.  But first he wanted to look at the four pictures that sat in the left corner of the desk and constituted the only personal touch to practically the whole office.  The walls were pretty bare.

The first picture was of all four Ramsey children taken probably not more than a year ago.  Scott still had his long, stringy hair in it.  The second one was of the twins on their first day of pre-school, dressed in overalls and holding hands.  So cute.  The third was a class photo of Joanna circa second grade.  She was giving the camera the biggest smile he’d ever seen out of the girl and had two missing teeth.  The fourth was of a platinum blond, fuzzy-headed baby with bright blue eyes and fat cheeks.  It looked like he was shrieking gleefully in the picture and reaching out to whoever was taking the picture.  It was Scott.  Julian nearly died from the cuteness overload.  He’d never seen Scott’s baby pictures before.  He was determined now to find them the next time he was over at the Ramsey’s.

So, all the pictures were of his children—none of the former wife with his children.  And none of Kristen.  Maybe she was hidden somewhere in the drawers.  Julian began to root through all his drawers.  He was sorely disappointed to find nothing but files and folders and pens and rubber bands.  How lame.  No secret notes, no dirty pictures, no gun.  Maybe Mr. Ramsey really was just an average American man and not a soap opera star.  Julian sat back in the chair, blowing air bubbles out of his mouth.  He looked around the room.  Where could he search next?  There was a tall wardrobe-like-closet pushed against one wall.  Julian went to investigate.  It looked like storage for old and current files and documents mostly.  Down in the bottom was a black bag.  Julian rubbed his hands together and knelt down to peek inside.  He was rewarded with smelly gym clothes.  There was also what appeared to be a change of fresh, somewhat dressy clothes.  Was that suspicious?  Not really.  Everyone probably knew he’d gotten a divorce, so going out with a woman after work wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.  Plus it was entirely possible people at work had known he was cheating all along.  What did he have to hide?  Nothing.  Julian’s search would be fruitless for anything entertaining.

As such, when Mr. Ramsey came back from his meeting, he didn’t catch Julian snooping, but snoozing in his chair with his feet propped on the desk.  Julian was awoken by having his feet knocked to the floor.  He snorted and smacked his lips as he came to an abrupt waking state.  He yawned and stretched.  Mr. Ramsey was lean-sitting on his desk.

“So,” Julian said, stifling another yawn, “how was the big meeting?”

“Surprisingly productive.  Our boss seemed distracted, so we were able to get a lot done without having him micromanage it death.”

Julian laughed.  He didn’t find that information about Ken surprising.  “Is he really that bad?”

“Well…” Mr. Ramsey looked reluctant to let his boss off the hook, but he said, “he doesn’t micromanage in the sense that he’s always there looking over our shoulders and won’t let us do our jobs.  He just…does it for us.  So, it was nice to have work for once.  And he didn’t offer to take care of this deal himself, so we have even more work to do.”

“But—” Julian was confused.  “Don’t you enjoy getting paid for doing nothing?”

“Hm.  It does seem like it would be nice, but did you have fun doing nothing but playing Solitaire all morning?”

“Ah.  Gotcha.  So…do you need to get here to work?”

Mr. Ramsey shrugged a shoulder.  “Nah.  I got time.”

“Maybe your boss is always doing all the work because otherwise it would never get done on time.”

The man gave him a playful glare and a shake of the head.  “You never were a smart ass when you were younger.  You seem to have absorbed some of your father’s personality after he died.”

Julian sat up straighter.  “My dad was a smart ass?”

“Ah.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s okay.  I mean, I only have my own impression of my parents.  And a little of what my friends tell me.  What were they like when they weren’t around children?  I assume adults are two different people when they’re allowed to pretend they aren’t parents for a few moments.”

Mr. Ramsey laughed.  “You’re half-right.  We never want to pretend we’re not parents.  We always want to know we have you.  But every now and then it is nice not to have to censor ourselves.”

“So…what were my parents like around you?”

Mr. Ramsey looked at his hands where they were laced together in his lap.  It was several long moments before he spoke.

“I think your mother was probably the same around me as she was around anyone.  She was very open and straightforward.  She really was that kooky.”

Julian laughed softly and leaned an arm on the desk to look up at Scott’s father.

“Your father…I know it will seem weird to you, but the two of us actually had a lot in common.  I enjoyed spending time with him.  He had a sharp sense of humor and it was amazing how intuitive he was.  I mean, he could—”  Mr. Ramsey stopped talking.  He rubbed one thumb on top of the other.  “I miss him.”

This was a surprising development to Julian.  He’d known the four of their parents were forced to hang out a lot by association, but he didn’t know they might have actually liked it.  It was doubly surprising that it was Mr. Ramsey who was revealing this to him because he always seemed the most detached out of all of them.

“Why—”  He didn’t know if he should ask his question.  “Why didn’t you go to their funeral?”

Mr. Ramsey shook his head.  “I liked your parents.”

Julian waited.  “But…?”

“But what?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.  You liked my parents, _but_ you didn’t go to their funeral because…?”

“Because I liked them.  I didn’t want to see them buried.”

Julian thought about that.  Scott had been the one to point out to him that funerals were for the living as a way of gaining closure to a death.  Apparently some people didn’t want that.  Mr. Ramsey looked a little uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” Julian said.  “For telling me.  So.”  He sat back in the desk chair.  “I know I won’t be able to stay awake if you try to tell me again what it is you do.  But maybe you can tell me what it’s like to work here.  Is it a good environment?  Are there a lot of intra-office politics?  Do you hate working for your crazy boss?”

Mr. Ramsey cleared his throat like he was clearing away their previous conversation.  “Oh, I don’t hate working for him at all.  I hate that he’s younger than me, but he is the son of the man who owns the parent company.  So.  And if he were incompetent, I would definitely be miserable here.  Probably would have left in fact.  But, he’s a big part of why this company is as successful as it is and I get my nice bonus at the end of the year.”

Julian smiled.

“And he’s…entertaining.”

Julian’s brows creased.  “How so?”

“Well…he’s wound a little tight.  He never snaps and takes it out on his employees, but you can tell that he gets to a point where he will pop if he doesn’t release some of the tension.  How he does that is a mystery, but we’ve never had any visits from the police.”

Julian thought it probably helped to keep the police away from your activities with illegal prostitution when you frequented the same gay escort club as the chief of police.  Julian had seen Chief Kline at Blue Boy a couple of weeks ago.  And he’d gone for Cal.  The pervert.

“And he’s also so OCD,” Mr. Ramsey continued.  “Have you ever seen the show _Monk_?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s kind of like that.  Not _quite_ as bad.  But close.”

“Well, you seem a little that way yourself,” Julian nodded toward the row of office supplies on his desk.

Mr. Ramsey grinned.  “I didn’t do that.  He did.  Every time he comes in here to talk to me, he absently straightens up my desk.  It was pretty bad at first, when I actually used to keep stuff on my desk.  I had to start hiding things so he wouldn’t organize them for me.”

Julian laughed.  “Wow.  That is some kind of special.”

“I know.  If he were a little more spastic he’d seriously remind me of Scott.”

“Scott’s not OCD.”

“He likes to talk.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh, yes.  I swear, for a man who talks so much I know surprisingly little about him.  It almost makes it seem like he’s hiding something.”

“Like what?”

Mr. Ramsey started to respond and then stopped.  “Nothing.  Get up.  I should work.”

“Why?  It’s already like 3:45.  You can go home in a couple hours.”

“Yeah, a couple of hours.  You expect me to chitchat with you for two hours?”

“Why not?”

“Because…”  Mr. Ramsey searched hard for a reason.  Then he shrugged and hopped fully onto his desk.  He turned partially and looked at the closed door behind him.  Then he faced Julian.

“I think my boss is gay.”

Julian tried not to react for Ken’s sake.  Then he remembered he probably should, so he laughed.  “What?  Why?”

“No good reason.  All circumstantial evidence.  Though he does bring a lot of attractive women to the office parties.”

“Never the same one twice?”

“No, that’s just it.  There was one that came for a whole year.  Doesn’t seem like you can fake it for a year.  Or hire someone out for a whole year.”

“Maybe he doesn’t fake it,” Julian said, realizing why Ken had thought he’d needed to sleep with that woman on New Year’s.  “So, what does he do that makes you think he’s gay?”

“Well.  Nothing.”

“Oh.  Good story.  I especially loved the ending.”

Mr. Ramsey gave him another glare, this one not quite as playful.  He gulped and smiled sheepishly.

“I had a suspicion much earlier on that he might be gay,” Mr. Ramsey said, choosing to mostly ignore his smart ass-ness for now.  “It just made it seem more likely to be true when I met him later and he’d never gotten married or had a long term girlfriend.”

“Isn’t a year a long time?”

“That was an anomaly.”

“Unh-huh.  So, like, you thought that when you first met him?  How long has he been your boss?”

“About five years now.”

“But, in CEO workaholic years, that’s nothing.  I’m not surprised he’s not married.”

“I guess.  But I didn’t think he was gay five years ago.  I thought he was—oh, I guess around 15 or so years ago.”

“You’ve known him that long?  Did you go to school together?”

“No.  I started working here when it first branched off from Q*West Enterprises after I’d graduated college.  It was my first job.”

“And your last, apparently.”

“Hey.  I worked my way up.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Go on.”

“Anyway.  Mr. West—the older one—started a consulting firm in order to free up some of his executives and to create another chief executive officer position for a friend or a relative.  Something.  Even though it had a large, successful parent corporation backing it, it was still just a start-up company.  So, we had a skeleton staff to save money and got a lot of free labor by having interns work for us.  One summer, Mr. West had his son intern for us.”

“So.  He was in college?”

“Unh-uh.  High school.”

“Whoa.  You are old.”

Mr. Ramsey tsked at him, but continued his story.  “Anyway.  I never really crossed paths with him much.  There was just this one incident—”

“An incident that made you think he was gay?  My, my.  Mr. Ramsey, what did you do to him?”

“Wha?  I didn’t do anything to him!  Well.  It was an accident.”

Julian clapped his hands in joy and scooted forward in his seat.  “What happened?”

“It’s nothing exciting.  Calm down.  I was looking for some sort of office supply or something and asked him to help.  He was looking in a supply closet when I noticed what I needed on the shelf above his head.  Without thinking, I just reached up and grabbed them.”

“So, you made him feel stupid and he went off with a little gay rant?”

“No, you freak.”

Julian raised an amused eyebrow.  It wasn’t the first time Mr. Ramsey had called him a freak.  And it probably wouldn’t be the last.

“He’s tall, right?  And he was back then too.  So, I had to almost stand on my toes to reach over him, which also meant I was…well.  I guess I kind of rubbed against him.”

“Gasp!  You molested a teenaged intern!  Shameful.”

“I _did_ _not_.  It was an accident.  But, he blushed.”

“So?  I’d be embarrassed too.”

“No, it was like…he blushed because he liked it.”

“Were you projecting?”

“No!  He couldn’t look me in the eyes after that.  And I was curious, so I tested my theory.  Over the next couple weeks I would smile at him when he did something for me, or pat him on the shoulder if he was doing a good job.  Obviously, as a young high school student if he was gay, then having a very attractive older man be nice to him would probably get him a little flustered.  And it did.”

“Oh, please, Mr. Ramsey.  You are handsome, but you’re no Mr. Harder.”

Mr. Ramsey made a face at him.  “And thank God for that.”

Julian raised his eyebrows.  “What do you mean?”

“Well.  People that beautiful usually have personality flaws.  And he’s no exception.  There’s something not right about him.”

“Like what?”  Julian was intrigued; he was learning more about the adults in his world in the last 18 minutes than he had in the first 18 years of his life.

“Honestly—sometimes I feel like he’s a halfway reformed sociopath.”

Julian laughed.  “We sometimes feel that way about Will.”

“No,” Mr. Ramsey said with a shake of his head.  “Fortunately, Will is more or less normal.  Rich…it just feels like he’s holding onto normalcy by a fraying thread.  Everyone thinks its Marilyn who’s the cold hard bitch…I’d put my money on Rich.”

“Mr. Ramsey, even if Mr. Harder is a psychopath, Mrs. Harder _is_ a cold hard bitch.”

“Ha.  She is, isn’t she?  Poor Will.  I’m surprised he’s as sane as he is.”

“So am I sometimes.  And I used to wonder why Scott wasn’t more sane.  Now it makes a little more sense.”

“Because of me?”

“He always thought his family was perfect.  I bet he probably subconsciously knew there were problems.  You hid them very well for a long time.  Why did you stop?”

“Ah.  Well.  I lost my moral compass.”

Julian wondered if he was just talking about his own sense of right and wrong or if he meant an actual external entity.  He was stunned with the thought that maybe he was referring to his father.  Julian shook off the thought.

“So, how has it been having the twins and Joanna back?”

“Good.  I mean great.  It’s fantastic.  I’m glad I have them back and we’re all getting on well.  The twins are happy to be with Scott again.  And as much as they miss their mother, they really don’t like their grandmother that much.  And I don’t blame them.  Joanna has been doing much better too.  Even better than before the whole mess started.”

“Are you sure?” Julian asked skeptically.

“Yes.  Why?”

“Well…I never really saw her much at school anyway, but I don’t see her at all now.  I think she’s cutting.”

“Oh, no.  She’s not.  Part of the agreement we had when she came back was that I would let her go to a public school in town.  She was really unhappy at Calverton.”

“Is that something you noticed or something she told you?”

Mr. Ramsey looked unhappily at him.  “The latter I suppose.”

“And you’re happy to have them back?”

“Of course!  They’re my children, Julian.  I know I must seem a heartless bastard, but I do love my children more than my own life.”

“More than your own life?  Is that why you put your personal life before their happiness?”

Mr. Ramsey’s hands clenched the desk he sat on.  But he didn’t look angry.  Exactly.

“Did you fight to get them back just to make Scott happy?”

“No.  I fought to get them back to have them in my life.”

“So.  Everyone’s happy.”

“Yes.”

“Is Kristin happy?”

“Julian.  I think we’ve gone too far past the line we’ve already crossed.”

“Sorry.  I’m just worried.  About him.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Mr. Ramsey said getting up and pacing to the other side of his office.  “I haven’t seen her since Christmas.  And it really doesn’t matter if she’s happy.  She won’t be their stepmother.  I’m not going to marry her.”

Julian strummed his fingers on the arms of the chair.  Why had he brought up marriage?  “Do you plan on getting married again?”

“I think the twins could use an in-home mother almost as much as Joanna needs one.”

“And…if you get married again…will you still see Kristin?  Or someone else?”

Mr. Ramsey leaned against the door to his office, his hand clutching the doorknob like he could escape if he just waited for the right opportunity.  He didn’t respond.  Julian waited him out.  Finally he dropped his head and said softly, “Maybe.”

“You’re a bad man, Mr. Ramsey.”

He smiled wryly.  “I know.”

“Then do something about it!” Julian cried, leaping from the chair.  Mr. Ramsey looked startled.  Julian walked around the desk and marched up to him.  “You’re their _father_!  Act like it!  Put them first!  Don’t _do_ things that will hurt them!  Don’t take them for granted!  Be their father while you still can!”  Julian felt all emotional control leaking out of his body.  “Be their father,” he cried.

Mr. Ramsey pulled him forward into a tight embrace.  Julian didn’t care where they were or how much he was crying or how hard he was squeezing Mr. Ramsey.  All that mattered was who he was—he was a father.  And he felt like one.  The strong arm across his back, the gentle petting of a hand against the back of his head, the soothing, unintelligible words filling his ears.  Julian wanted his father back, but being denied that he was willing to settle for Mr. Ramsey.

“Shh.  Julian, hush.  Come on, son.  You’re okay.  I’m here.  Such as I am, I’m here.  So stop crying.  You’re a man now, aren’t you?”

Julian sniffed back his tears and mostly stopped crying.  But he wouldn’t let go of Mr. Ramsey.  The father continued to hug him.

“God, it’s been so long since I’ve stood this close to you.  How tall are you now?”

Julian sniffled against Mr. Ramsey’s collar.  “Six feet.”

“No.  You’re taller than that now.  I’m six-one and I can tell you’re at least that tall.”

“I guess…maybe I’ve grown some more.”

“I think so.”

Mr. Ramsey rubbed his back.  Julian let out a miserable breath.  This was so embarrassing.

“I’m sorry about this,” he muttered, but still didn’t let go of the man.

“It’s okay.  I don’t mind at all.  You are my favorite.”

“You’re not supposed to have favorites.  And if you do, you’re not supposed to tell.”

Mr. Ramsey chuckled.  “Déjà vu.”

“Hunh?”

“Nothing.  I didn’t mean you were my favorite of Scott’s friends.  I actually can’t believe how lucky Scott was to find the three of you.  I’ve loved all of you since the day I met you…painting my red Porsche with spray cans you found in the garage.”

Julian had forgotten about that.  Apparently, the destroyed Porsche was the reason Mr. Ramsey had had to start driving a sedan.

“What I meant is that you’re my emotional favorite.”

Julian almost lifted his head to look at him, but left it hanging over his shoulder.  “What does that mean?”

“Well, Chris is my temperamental favorite because he’s so well-behaved.  And so protective of Scott.  Will is my intellectual favorite because you need to always be on your toes around him.  You never know what he’s going to blow up next.”  Julian had to laugh softy.  “And you.  You’re my emotional favorite.  I loved the feeling and energy you always brought with you.”

Julian didn’t know if he was expected to give a response, so he said, “Oh.”

“But…that’s the way you _were_.  You’re different now.  You seem…haunted.  No...”  Mr. Ramsey dropped the hand that was on the back of Julian’s head to hold his shoulders.  “Hollow.  You seem hollow.”

Julian swallowed thickly.  Mr. Ramsey was spot on with that description.  He remained silent.

“I just really want to know that you’re okay.”

Julian figured he had to respond to that.  “Not completely,” he admitted.  “But I’m working on it.  And I have a lot of help.”

Mr. Ramsey sighed heavily.  “I’m so sorry, Julian.”

“What for?”

“For your loss.”

This was the first time someone said that to him that he felt like they really knew what they were talking about.

“I’m sorry for yours too.”

There was a sharp knock at the door.  They pulled apart quickly and Mr. Ramsey’s secretary stepped in to see Julian turning his back on her and using a hand to discreetly wipe his eyes.  She looked back and forth between the two men, clearly suspicious of something.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Ramsey, but Mr. West says he needs to speak with you.  He’s calling from Internal 1.”

Mr. Ramsey looked at his watch.  “Damn.  I could have sworn he was going to call ten minutes ago.  Okay.  Thank you, Leslie.  I’ll take it in here.”

Leslie backed out of the office so she could look at them one last time as she shut the door.  Mr. Ramsey smiled at Julian.

“I knew that distraction wouldn’t last forever.  The Micromanager rears its well-groomed head.”

Julian snickered.  “He does have a nice head of hair.”

“Doesn’t he?”

Mr. Ramsey sat down at his desk and picked up his phone.  He pushed a button and said, “Ken.  What took you so long?”

Mr. Ramsey smiled like he was getting yelled at on the other end.  Julian shook his head and pulled the other chair around to the other side of the desk.  He supposed Mr. Ramsey could get away with it because he was older and Ken seemed to be a slut for authority.  Either that or he remembered Mr. Ramsey and still got flustered around him.  He’d ask him the next time he saw him at Blue Boy.

Julian decided to be good and started writing his paper for school while Mr. Ramsey worked.  He was doing a pretty good job BS-ing his way through it and had four handwritten pages done by the end of the day.  Which meant he probably still had three more typed pages to go.  But that was a good start.  At 5:00 he looked up at Mr. Ramsey.  At 5:05 he started tapping his pen on the desk.  It got Mr. Ramsey’s attention.  He searched around for the time before finally looking at his computer.

“Oh.  I’m sorry, Julian.  It’s quitting time for you, huh?”  He made a pleading face.  “Would you kill me if I asked for another hou—half hour?”

“Stay as long as you like.  I’m meeting the guys in the lobby.  I just wanted to let you know I was gonna head out.”

“Oh, okay.  Well.  I hope you learned _something_ while you were here.”

“I really did.  Thank you, Mr. Ramsey.”

Mr. Ramsey seemed to realize Julian wasn’t talking about anything pertaining to his job.  “Ah, well.  You’re welcome.”

“I’ll see you around.”

“Goodnight, Julian.”

Julian waved to Leslie as he was leaving.

“Um—” she called out and then sat back in her chair.  Julian turned to her.  “Um.  Is he getting ready to leave?  Soon?”

“I think he’s planning on staying another half hour or so.”

Leslie sighed and frowned.  “So, two more hours.  Overtime doesn’t pay enough.”

Julian laughed.  “Hey, if you want, I’ll go in and tell him I’m taking you with me.”

She tried not to smile.  “Thank you, but I must say no.  I have a feeling K&K Consulting would frown on me fraternizing with high school boys.”

“I’m emancipated.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure.”

“No, I am.  My parents are dead.”

“Oh.  Well.  Too much baggage then.”

He shrugged.  “Hey, I was trying to get you out of work.”

“I appreciate it.  But two hours of playing Solitaire and transferring a couple calls will get me a new pair of shoes at the end of the month.”

“See?  Any task is doable when you find the silver lining.”

“So true.  I hope you enjoyed your time here at K&K Consulting.”

“Hey.  What’s the K&K stand for?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Hmm.”

Julian left the secretary and took the elevator down to the lobby.  He found Scott sitting by himself on a couch, staring blankly at the large atrium-like glass structure of the arching ceiling.  He waved a hand in front of his face.

“Hey.”

Scott blinked.  “Oh, hey.  I don’t think the others are down yet.”

Julian sat next to Scott.  He looked up at the glass ceiling too.  The setting sun was shining through the angled glass at the top, refracting into rainbows.  It was beautiful.

“Hey, Scott?” he said, still staring at the lights.

“Yeah?”

“This may sound weird, but you’re lucky to have your dad.”

“I know.”

“Oh.  I don’t—I don’t mean that he’s still alive.  I mean, like.  Who he is.  Even with all his faults.”

Peripherally he saw Scott turn his head to look at him, so he turned to look at him too.  Scott smiled softly.

“I know what you meant.”

“Oh.”  Julian looked back at the ceiling.  “But man.  I have no idea how he hasn’t shot himself yet.”

“I know.  I don’t know how any of them haven’t.”

Julian agreed.  Simply for the sake of his sanity and attention span he felt that working for Blue Boy—all potential legal difficulties notwithstanding—was definitely the safest course of action.

 

Will

 

Rylan was inhumanly strong.  Will struggled against him, but his arms were completely immobilized where Rylan held them pinned at the wrist.  He tried to kick the evil man, but he had one knee pressed between his legs, which kept his torso out of range.  Rylan leaned down close to Will’s face and smiled smugly.

“You like that?” he asked in a voice that matched his expression.

“No!” Will shouted.  “No!  Let me go!”  He struggled again, twisting his body beneath Rylan.  “Don’t.  Stop,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“What was that?  Don’t stop?”

Rylan slid Will’s arms over his head and transferred both his wrists to one hand, freeing his other to run over Will’s chest.

“No!  That’s not what I—ah!”

Will writhed, trying to escape the involuntary pleasure.

“Oh, God.  Rylan.  Please.  Don’t.”

“Oh, yes, Will.”

“No.  No, I don’t want—anh—this.”

“Will.”

“Oh, God!”

“Will!”

Will scrunched his eyes shut.  “No!  Get off!”  He lashed out violently.  His hand connecting solidly with something hard made him wake up.  Once he was aware he was waking up, he tried to locate his limbs and forced his eyes open.

“Unhhhh?”

He looked up and saw Ken sitting next to him on the bed, looking irritated and rubbing his jaw.  Had he hit Ken?  He looked over at his still outstretched arm.  His hand was curled into a fist.  Had he _punched_ him?

“What on earth were you dreaming about?” Ken grumbled, flexing his jaw.

Will scowled as he remembered.  “Rylan.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Ken said rolling his eyes.  He moved off the bed.  “Get up will you?  You’re gonna make me late.”

Will scoffed at the idea and grumbled to himself as he turned over and snuggled back into the warmth of the bed.  He probably should have realized he was dreaming; it would have explained why Rylan had bunny ears.

In a sudden attack the covers were yanked off and Will was exposed to the cold air of the room.  It felt even colder due to the fact that he was butt nekkid.  He reached a hand out and tried to find the covers.  There was nothing nearby.

“Get up, Will.”

From the slight Doppler Effect on Ken’s voice, the man must have been moving pretty fast out of the room.  And if he recalled properly, he was already dressed in his suit.  Maybe he really did need to get up.  He flopped his head around until his eyes found the clock on the nightstand: 5:58.  Will made a face.  Unacceptable.  The man was insane.  He vaguely remembered being told that they needed to be _at_ work at 7:00, but Ken’s office was like five minutes away.  And it didn’t take him that long to get ready in the morning.  Why was he in love with such a freak?  Besides, nobody needed to be at work at 7:00.  That was just stupid.  Will was going back to sleep.

“Will.  You don’t want me to come in there again,” his lover’s voice floated from the kitchen.

Will growled and put on a show of making it an effort to get out of bed even though no one was around to see it.  He was also just mad that his mother and his boyfriend sounded an awful lot alike sometimes.  Will showered mostly in the dark.  Not because the bathroom light wasn’t on, but because he kept his eyes scrunched shut in defiance of the morning.  He took a record shower— _only_ 23 minutes—and then sort of got dressed in his uniform.  The dress shirt was un-tucked from his pants and the red tie hung around his neck.  He did manage to get his socks and shoes on, but could only just manage to drag his blazer behind him by the sleeve.  He trudged into the kitchen and sat at the bar end of the island.  A figure moved at his side and the clink of a plate on the granite top and the smell eggs let him know that Ken had made and served him breakfast.  His blazer fell to the floor as he attempted to pick up his fork.  Ken petted his head and then yanked his hand back with a displeased noise.

“Your head is still sopping wet!”

“Well, I just got out of the shower,” Will grumbled, chomping down on his scrambled eggs.  They’d been flavored with some combination of herbs.  He couldn’t decide whose he liked better, but his father and Ken made them differently.

“The least you could have done was towel it off,” Ken muttered, picking up Will’s blazer and hanging it on the back of his chair.

Will didn’t respond and concentrated on not spilling his milk as he took two gulps.  He didn’t know why he was so tired.  He had technically gotten thirteen minutes extra sleep than he normally did when he had to get up for school at his house.  Was it just because he was at Ken’s condo and he was conditioned to getting an extra hour of sleep?  Or maybe it was the sex.  He’d stayed over at Ken’s on school nights before, and he couldn’t even think of a time they’d shared a bed and not done _something_ before going to sleep.  But when that happened, he got that extra hour of sleep.  Ken always got up at this time.  How on earth did he do it?

Ken encouraged him several times to eat faster and then finally took his plate away from him while he still had two bites left.  In retaliation, Will took ten minutes to brush his teeth.  When he came out of the bathroom, he found that he’d beaten Ken into submission.  The man was sitting on his couch, petting his cat, and scowling.  Will leaned on the back of the couch far enough to put his face level with Ken’s.  He waited for his lover to turn the scowl on him.

“You’re the big cheese, my love.  Who’s going to complain that you’re late?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the idea that one must be as good as he is strict, and do more to follow the rules than those he oversees?”

“Mm,” Will replied with a small smile.  “You mean someone should be ‘as holy as severe’ and ‘more nor less to others paying than by self-offenses weighing.’  Something like that?”

Ken flushed slightly, clearly not expecting Will to know his Shakespeare so well.

“I believe the person who that advice applies to is ‘he who the sword of heaven will bear.’  I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think merging two companies fifteen minutes earlier than it would be done otherwise is quite up to par with that responsibility.”

Ken looked away from him, but Will gently grasped his chin and forced his head back around.

“Take it easy, baby.  I promise you, there’s more to life than being responsible or making money or garnering a good reputation.”

Ken opened his mouth to protest, but Will finished, “There’s more to life than making your father proud.”

Ken’s unhappy and irritated demeanor collapsed.  He leaned into the couch and dropped his head on the back.  His eyes were closed, but the tension around his eyes and mouth had disappeared.

“It’s not just making him proud.  It’s—”

He sighed in quiet frustration.  Then he opened his eyes and looked at Will.  Will leaned over to kiss him from the side.  He started to pull back, but Ken put his hand on the back of his head and held him close.  He wasn’t sure how long they stayed joined, slowly and insatiably enjoying each other, but it was long enough that when Ken finally noted the time he was actually upset about the lateness of the hour and not just being pulled off his schedule.

His mood didn’t improve when Will unbuttoned his pants in the hallway as they waited for the elevator so he could tuck his shirt in.  He kept glancing back up the hallway and had actually put himself in between Will and the old, surly couple’s door.  When they were inside the elevator he grabbed Will’s wrist to prevent him from pushing the lobby button.  He pushed the garage level instead.  Then he forced Will to face him and began to tie his tie for him.

“Why are we going to the garage?” Will asked, secretly enjoying having Ken work on his tie.

“Well, obviously because we’re driving to work.”

“But…don’t you work like, five minutes from here?”

“It’s more like fifteen.  In traffic.”

Will was looking directly at Ken, but he was focused a little too intently on his work with Will’s tie and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Mm-hmm.  And if you didn’t drive, how long would take you to walk or take the metro there?”

Ken cleared his throat.  “Ten.”

“Mm-hmm.  Polluter.”

Ken tightened the knot on Will’s tie a little more than he needed to.  Will let out a small cough and the elevator dinged as the doors opened into the dim, grey garage with a blast of chill air.  He supposed he should be grateful they weren’t walking if it was this cold in the garage.  It was probably at least ten degrees colder outside.  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give Ken a hard time.

“Isn’t Q*West Enterprises, like, one of the greenest companies in the country?”

“How do you know that?”

“I looked it up on Wikipedia.”

“Hmph.  Well.  I never get to drive, okay?” he said as he walked by his row of cars.  “I’m always travelling for work and I’m too busy on weekends to go out.  I just like to take the opportunity in the mornings and evenings to enjoy a ride in my car.  I love my cars.”

“I know.  You freak.”

Ken shot him a dirty look, but didn’t get drawn into a debate regarding his character or personality.  Will trailed a hand along Ken’s cars, watching for the man’s reaction.  He offered none.  He was in one of his moods today—the one where it would really take an effort on Will’s part to get him to react to anything he did.  They stopped at the silver Lexus.  It was pretty much the only car Ken would let Will ride in.  The only times he had been in other cars had been when Ken hadn’t been expecting to drive him somewhere.  He glanced at the car next to the Lexus.  He was pretty certain it wasn’t Ken’s.  He looked back down the row of cars they had passed.

“Where’s your Aston Martin?” Will asked, actually feeling a drop of worry in his stomach.  “You didn’t lend it to someone.  You’re still functioning, so it didn’t get stolen.  Is it in the shop or something?”

Ken unlocked the doors and climbed into the driver’s side.  Will ran to the passenger side and opened the door.  Ken was arranging his coffee in the cup holder.

“Ken!”

“What?” he looked up, and seemed startled that Will was even there.  Was he really that focused on his job?

“Your Aston Martin.  Where is it?”

“Oh.  It’s been gone for a while now.  You haven’t noticed?  I only had it out that first week back in, what?  June?”

“May.”

“Right.  I don’t usually keep it here.  I garage it in a secure location with my oth—”

Ken stopped talking and fussed with the key as he attempted to get it in the ignition.  Will narrowed his eyes suspiciously and hopped inside, pulling the door shut.  He started to put on his seatbelt.

“Other what?” he questioned.

“Nothing,” Ken said and started the car.

“Just how many fancy cars do you have?”

Ken gave himself a reprieve from answering by looking over his shoulder to back the Lexus out of the parking space.

“Ken?” Will drew out his name.

The man concentrated really hard on changing gears in the automatic vehicle and then carefully driving out of the garage.  Will shook his head with a slightly scared laugh.

“Wow.  You’re an even bigger freak than I thought.”

“I am not,” he finally snipped.  “It’s just the one.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, I can’t help that.  There’s only one.”

“You know, I can always ask Rylan for the truth.  And you know he’ll tell me.  Because the only thing he likes more than pissing me off is making you squirm.”

“Ah, yes.  And when would you ask him about the cars?  Before or after he’s got you moaning?”

Ken looked over at him with a teasing smile and Will felt heat up to the tips of his ears.  He couldn’t even respond he was so embarrassed.  He had no control over his dreams; that hadn’t been his fault.  Besides, he’d been fighting the jerkwad off.  Didn’t that count for something?

Will had been so ticked off—not at Ken, simply from remembering the dream—that he’d slouched down in his seat so far he’d practically snuggled himself back to sleep.  He was rudely awakened by being prodded in the shoulder.  Ken could be so unromantic.  Why couldn’t he ever just kiss him or something?  Why did he have to shake him or pull the covers off?  Just because those actions sometimes weren’t even enough to get him to wake up didn’t mean he had to _start_ with them every time.

He yawned as he got out of the car and got his jacket sleeve caught in the door.  Ken wasn’t happy that he had to stop to unlock the door so Will could get it out.  Then he glanced down the mostly empty row of parking spaces beside his car.  He grumbled to himself and walked over to the garage.

“What’s your problem?” Will asked with another yawn.

“One of my employees got here before me.”

“Ooo.  No.  Please, anything but that.”

“Not any employee in general,” Ken said calmly as they stepped onto the lift.  “One employee in particular.”  The doors shut and Ken hit him on the shoulder.

“Ow…ow.  So what?”

“So, he always gives me shit about stuff like this.  Anytime I do something slightly out of my routine he has to point it out.  I mean, I’m _not_ that anal retentive.  He just likes to make it seem like I am.”

“Mm-hmm.  So, he’s mean to you?  Isn’t he your employee?  Fire him.”

“Well.  One, I don’t really have that kind of power.  And two, it’s more like teasing.  He’s not being malicious.”

“Oh.  So, he’s always watching what you’re doing and poking fun at you?”

“I guess so.”

“Maybe he’s flirting with you,” Will grinned.

Ken gave him a sidelong look.  “Doubtful.  I’m positive he’s straight.”

“Hn.  I know a straight guy who likes to flirt with men.”

“I don’t think you count.”

“Not me!  When have you ever seen me flirt with men?”

“Well, never, you’re right.  But then again, I’ve never seen you flirt with girls either.”

“That’s because we never go out in public together.”

Ken hesitated in his reply and Will yawned yet again.

“Why do you keep yawning?  Wake up already.”

“Well!  Whose fault do you think it is that I’m so tired?”

Ken turned partially away from him and fiddled with his tie.  He must be blushing.  The doors opened on the 20th floor, but it wasn’t what Will was expecting.  He was pretty certain they had come to the same office building they’d gone to the night of the accident, but this floor wasn’t a single office.  In fact there was a lot of activity and people moving around low-topped cubicles.

“Oh, lame,” Will hissed at him.

“What?”

“That night.  You didn’t take me to _your_ office.  Is that your Dad’s?”

“No.  That _is_ mine.  You can’t get to it from the garage elevators; we have to go to the other side of the building.  Plus, I thought you could use some coffee.”

“I don’t _like_ coffee.”

Ken smiled at a passing woman as she glanced at Will’s rather loud declaration of distaste for the morning staple.  Ken placed a hand on his shoulder and began to guide him around a corner, leaning close to talk in his hear.

“I know, my pet, that’s why we’re stopping here so you can get some hot chocolate.  I only have coffee in my office.  Now.  Go around the corner and the break room is the third door on the right.  I’m going to go talk to someone and I will meet you at the elevators over there.  See them?”

“Yes,” Will eked out, his shoulder cramping under the pressure of Ken’s hand.

Ken released him and walked away.  Will made a face and rubbed his shoulder as he rotated it around to get some feeling back into it.  He should have known his lover was going to be even more of a control freak at work.  Plus there was also the fact that Ken was probably feeling paranoid about having Will with him.  No doubt he was going to take every look and every comment as some sort of indication that everyone knew he was screwing a high schooler.  He wondered what would make Ken feel more embarrassed: if people thought he was sleeping with a high school girl or a man his own age.  He’d probably prefer the illegal embarrassment rather than admit to being gay.  And that was a little sad.

Will found the single serving coffee machine and wondered why his parents hadn’t bought one yet.  It was the kind of kitchen gadget his father would love to have.  He poked around in a drawer until he found a Swiss Miss packet and waited for the machine to spew out some hot water for him.

“Good God!”

Will started and turned to his left.  A man stood beside him, clutching his chest as he looked at him.  Will stared back.  He certainly wasn’t someone who felt awkward being stared at it.  He was quite used to it.

“Are you another student?  You’re the sixth one I’ve seen today!  What are you all doing here?”

“A school assignment.”

Will stirred his hot chocolate into the water and watched the marshmallows start to dissolve.  He looked back at the man and stared at him.  Then he pulled the straw out and ran his tongue along it, keeping his eyes trained intensely on the man.

“Is there anything else you want to know?”

The man was fixated on his lips; Will could see that.

“You got a name?” the man asked.

“Will,” he replied.  “I’m shadowing Mr. West today.  He’s your boss, right?”

The man cleared his throat and looked away from Will.  “Yep.”  Then he walked away.

Will smiled as he watched him go.  Apparently Ken’s father didn’t mind _employing_ homosexuals.  He probably wouldn’t mind one as a son.  He should tell Ken.  He forgot what he was going to tell him as soon as he took a sip of his drink.  He stuck his tongue out in disgust.  Stupid coffee flavor.  He saw Ken’s back.

“That machine made my hot chocolate taste like coffee,” he complained.  He glared at Ken and then he realized he probably shouldn’t be overly familiar with him.  Well, maybe people could just think he had a bad personality.  Then he noticed who Ken had been talking to.  He was very aware that he couldn’t keep the shock off his face.  He also couldn’t stop his stupid mouth from dumbly saying, “Julian.”

“Will,” his friend mimicked him.

“What are you doing here?”  He needed to stop sounding so surprised.

“I’m shadowing Scott’s dad,” he said, indicating Mr. Ramsey.

Will hoped he was giving Scott’s father a normal smile.  “Hi, Mr. Ramsey.”  He tried not to sound sheepish as he said, “I kind of forgot you worked here.”  Which was dumb because he knew that.  He _knew_ that.

“ _This_ is the businessman you work for?” Julian asked him, pointing at Ken.

Well, no sense lying about it.  At least he had previously mentioned that he worked for a businessman so that this didn’t seem out of the blue.  “Uh.  Yeah.”

“How do you know him?” Julian asked.

“I—” Will started to think of an answer, but then Julian’s tone triggered something in his brain.  “Wait.  Do _you_ know him?”

“Uh…”

Will noticed Julian’s eyes flick to the left.  He was about to lie.  But why?  His friend was saved from having to explain himself (lie to him) by one of Ken’s assistants.  He looked down at his hot chocolate and stirred it again, trying his best not to seem interested in the fact that Julian seemed to know who Ken was.  His brain was whirring, trying to come up with reasonable explanations.  Then he tried to come up with any explanation.  Why would they know each other?  Had Ken had an accidental “date” with Julian too?  He’d kill him.  Though Will wasn’t sure which “him” he was planning on killing.

“Mr. Harder.”

Will looked up as Ken said his name sharply.  “Huh?”

Ken was already halfway down the hallway.   It spurred Will into action and he was able to give Julian a smile and a wave like he normally would as he hurried after Ken.  He caught up to him where he was waiting by the second set of elevators, flipping through a file he had gotten from someone.

“Do you know him?” he asked without preamble and complete disregard for their surroundings.  In his head though, there could be nothing secretive about Ken and Julian’s relationship, so he should have no problem talking about it at work.

“Not exactly,” Ken said, turning a page in the file.  Then he looked at him straight on.  “We met under funny circumstances.”

Will watched his eyes.  They were dark, but clear.  He was being honest, and he didn’t seem to be anxious talking about it.

“What was it?”

The elevator dinged and they both got on.  Ken pulled out a key and inserted it into the control panel.  “Autumn Rose was making a scene.”  He turned the key and gave Will a smile.  “He was sympathizing with me.”

Will smiled back.  Stupid Autumn Rose.  He hadn’t seen her around much after the Poor People Brigade.  Maybe it had been a bad date.  Ken had never given him any details.

“So, where was this?” he asked as they took the short ride to the 21st floor.

“In the hall at my building.”

Will was momentarily distracted as the elevator doors opened.  The first time he’d seen the office it had been nearly pitch dark.  He’d been in his soccer uniform, sock-footed, and walking beside a man he barely knew.  Seeing the large windows again reminded him of the storm and the static and the electricity.  He knew now what that feeling had been.  Even back then, he’d already been in love with Ken.  Or so he liked to think.

Ken nudged him and he remembered their conversation.  And that he needed to get off the elevator.  He stepped off after Ken and picked up where they’d left off.

“Why was Julian there?”

“I believe his therapist lives on my hall.”

Will grabbed Ken by the sleeve.  “The secret therapist?”

“Um.  I don’t know if it’s a secret or not.  I’m not sure what her first name is, but it’s Dr. Garner or something like that.”

Ken was heading for his desk, so Will followed after him, not sure if he should be making a face out of confusion or revulsion.

“Dr. Gorman?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Ken took his jacket off and hung it neatly by a coat rack hidden behind a tall floor plant.

“Geh,” Will stated.  “Why would he visit her at home?”  He shook his head sadly.  “I think he might have a crush on her.”

Ken smiled wryly as he sat down in his executive-y looking desk chair.  “He might.”

He started to pick up his phone but Will put a hand on it.  “Why do you think so?”

“I was just agreeing with you.  Now let go.  I have to speak with my boss.”

He pulled the phone out from under Will’s hand and pushed a flashing button.  He started talking to who Will assumed was his father about boring stuff, so he wandered away from him.  He took the opportunity to really look around the office.  It was kind of ridiculous—it really was the entire top floor of the building, which meant it had to be around 4000 square feet.  That was twice the size of most single family homes.  Of course, it wasn’t like he had a water slide set up at one end.  There was what appeared to be a conference table with a large screen nearby for presentations or videoconferences.  There was also a more informal meeting area made up of couches, easy chairs, and coffee tables.  At one end there was a kitchenette and what was probably a bathroom.  And somewhere in the middle of the room, back against the windows, all alone, was Ken’s desk.  How lonely must it be to work in a big, empty room?  Not even his secretary was on the same floor.  Had Ken intentionally picked this design?  He wasn’t that asocial.  Not really.  In theory having an entire floor for an office sounded swanky and powerful, but in reality it was just kind of sad.

The dreariness of the situation was helped by the fact that it was very well-decorated and everything was sleek and modern.  There were also several paintings hanging throughout the large room.  They were all by the same artist and they were all originals.  Most of them were impressionistic landscapes and seascapes with a few abstract ideas here and there.  Will looked closely at the signature, but he couldn’t make out a name.

“Hey, Ken?  Who did all these paintings?”

He received no answer and looked up.  He was about 50 yards away from the man.  No wonder he couldn’t hear him.  He walked back over to his desk.

“Ken?”  Ken was still on the phone, but he looked up.  “Who did all the art?”

“Hold on, it’s the student that’s shadowing me.  My sister painted those.”

“Really?  They’re very good.”

“I’ll let her know you liked them.  So, David said he would have the packets ready in time.  But I think—”

“What does she do?” Will asked.

Ken cut off his discussion with his father and gave Will a look.  Will just leaned on the desk and waited for an answer.

“She runs an art gallery downtown.  I can tell you more later, but right now—”

“Does she display her own art?”

“Y-yes, I know that, Dad.  But—”  Will knocked on the desk.  “No.  I mean.  Yes.  She displays some of her own work, but mostly she showcases unknown local talent.”

“Does she make money?”

“Surprisingly, yes.  No, Dad.  I can talk now…”  Ken made a face.  “Of course I trust David to do his job.”  Ken let out an offended noise and pulled the phone back to look at it.  Then he slammed it down in the cradle.

“You hung up on your boss?”

“He hung up on me!”

Will laughed, but Ken quelled it with a look.  Will tried to look contrite, but he couldn’t pull it off this morning.  It also didn’t help that Ken was trying not to laugh too.  Will walked slowly around the side of the desk, trailing his fingertips across the top.  He watched Ken watch him.  When he reached Ken’s chair he leaned back against the desk.

“So.  Alone at last,” Will murmured.

Ken shook his head.  “I do have work to do today.”

“You have work to do every day.”

“And more of it when I sacrifice doing it to entertain you.  But,” he said holding up a finger to ward off Will’s lewd suggestion, “Not at work.  And…” he glanced around his desk.  “What did you do with your coffee mug?”

“It had hot chocolate in it.”

Ken only gave him a visual response to that.

“Well, it’s not a coffee mug when it has hot chocolate in it.  And I think I left it some—in the kitchen sink.”

Ken narrowed an eye at him.

“Yep.  I know how clean you are, sugar plum, and I know I should respect your holy grounds—so I put it in the kitchen sink.  I didn’t rinse it out though.  Sorry.”

“Mm-hmm.  Know how much I believe that story?”

“How much?” Will asked with a sweet smile.

“As much as you believe I really only have one fancy car.”

Will laughed and started to reach out to Ken.  The man turned away from him in his chair and said, “Go get that mug and move it.”

Will frowned and watched Ken log on to his computer.  He hopped up onto the desk and let his legs swing, bumping his foot into Ken’s chair every so often.  The man ignored it and pulled up five different spreadsheets.  Will watched him click back and forth between them for about five minutes.  Then he leaned toward Will, pushed his leg out of the way and retrieved a file from the folder-sized drawer.  He flipped it open and began to check figures in the file with those on the spreadsheets.  It suddenly and horrifically dawned on him that Ken really did intend to work today.  Will was not going to stand for that.

“So,” Will made his first attempt, “you’re supposed to be teaching me stuff for my assignment.”

“Learn through observation.”

“But,” Will made his second attempt, “if that’s all you’re going to do I’m gonna write up a bad report about you.”

“It won’t be going to my supervisors, so I don’t really care.”

Will had been prepared for this.  He knew Ken could take a lot of shit before he finally snapped, so that meant he needed to find a pressure point.  He readied his third attempt.  “How many times have you fantasized about doing me on this desk?”

Ken slapped his hand on the keyboard and said, “I have _never_ —”

He cut off as he turned his irritated expression on Will.  He was leaning back on his hands, his legs slightly spread apart.  He knew Ken liked the blazer of his uniform, so he left it on though it was pushed off one shoulder.  He’d also loosened his tie.  He saw Ken swallow as he tried to remember what he was supposed to be upset about.  Perverts were so easy to manipulate.  Ken let out a small noise akin to a resigned sigh.

“Hundreds,” he confessed and moved out of his chair.

Even though Will was ready for it, he was still overwhelmed by the intense passion of Ken’s kiss.  He tried to keep the pleasure-filled noises he was making to a minimum.  He didn’t want to give too much of the power back to Ken.  Ken had his blazer off and Will started working on the buttons of his lover’s shirt.  Ken started pulling on his tie and once Will reached where Ken’s shirt met his pants, he abandoned the buttons to start working on his belt.  They never broke the kiss as Ken got most of Will’s shirt unbuttoned and pushed off his shoulders.  They fell back onto the desk with that momentum and Will let one of his hands flail to the side as their bodies crashed together.  He was lucky Ken’s mouth was covering his or he might have actually shouted out in his pleasure.

“Yes, Mr. West?”

They froze as the voice spoke out of thin air.  They turned their heads and saw that Will’s outstretched arm was on the call button of the intercom on Ken’s desk.  Will snatched his arm back and mouthed, “Sorry,” to Ken.  The man swallowed and took a quick breath before answering his secretary.

“Um.  Can you have a copy of the statement Ted Feynman released added to the meeting packet?”

“Right away, sir.”

“Thank you, Marnie.”

The intercom clicked off.  Ken let out a nerve-filled groan and dropped his head.  Will couldn’t help it.  He laughed.  Ken raised his head and gave him an unhappy look.

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry!”  Will kept laughing.  He could see that Ken was losing the struggle with himself, and finally he smiled too.

“God.  I didn’t know stuff like that happened in real life.”

“That’s because you never do anything risky.”

“And I feel it’s paid off so far.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Will wrapped his arms around Ken’s neck and pulled him close.  “Sometimes the risk is worth it,” he murmured against his lips.

Ken kissed him.  “I’m starting to agree with you.”

 

Will rode down the elevator and tried to stretch out his back.  As hot as it had been, being the bottom partner while having sex on a desk wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world.  Of course, _during_ the act he hadn’t noticed a damn thing.  But now he was sore in several places and he was pretty certain he was going to have a bruise on one hip.  But that was probably from Ken’s hand.

The elevator stopped on six floors on the way down and other Calverton students joined him.  He’d had no idea how inbred their school was.  But, he supposed that made sense.  And apparently someone in HR had figured that out as well because they’d catered the students’ lunch for them.  Even Ken hadn’t known about it; he’d simply passed on the message he’d received in an e-mail, all while being quite impressed with his own company.  Will could also tell he was thrilled about being able to send him away for an hour so he could prepare for his meeting in peace.  He hadn’t gotten a single thing done the entire morning.  Well, he had run on a couple of errands to his employees’ offices in between bouts, but he certainly hadn’t gotten anything done when he’d been in his own office.  Will didn’t really feel guilty.  Ken had probably already been completely prepared for the meeting two weeks ago.

Will was with the first wave of students to arrive at the conference-turned-lunch room, but Chris was already sitting at a small table with four chairs.  Mr. Green worked here too?  And he knew Julian was here, and he was pretty certain Scott had mentioned the two of them being able to ride together because Antoinette’s father worked at the same company.  How on earth had he not realized that he was bringing all of his friends to his secret boyfriend’s office?  Well, in a way it would be nice for all of them to meet him—just as long as they didn’t find out what their real relationship was.  And when they were all together he figured the best way to do that was to let his friends focus on how crappy their day was.  Apparently Ken’s employees’ jobs weren’t any more interesting than his.  Eventually though, they wanted to commiserate with him.  He decided he shouldn’t lie; he could just tell the truth a little slant.

“So, Will?” Scott asked, pushing all the cut veggies back into his sandwich, “I bet you have few choice descriptions regarding your time here at K&K Consulting.”  He said the company name with a faux grandiose voice.

Will laughed and shrugged.  “I’m having a great day.”

All three of them looked at him.

“Say what?” asked Chris.

“I told you.  I’m shadowing the CEO.  So, there are a lot of perks that go with it.”  _Like having sex all morning._

“Lucky,” Scott got out around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Again, how do you know the CEO?” Chris asked, though Will could tell Julian wanted to ask that.  “Is he a Calverton alum or something?”

“No.  It’s one of my mom’s connections.  We met at some party Q*West Enterprises was hosting because she wanted me to meet some guy’s niece.”

“The CEO?” Scott asked, spitting out some sandwich.

Will made a face at the spraying pieces of red pepper.  “No.  Someone else.  But he was there and we were forced to make small talk and what have I told you about small talk?”

“It’s dangerous?”

“Yes.  Almost as much as idle chatter.”

Scott looked away as he took another bite of sandwich, clearly remembering some time that idle chatter had gotten him into trouble.  Knowing him, that “some time” could have been at some point this morning.

“Anyway.  I mentioned the school library sucks and that it’s always noisy.  He mentioned he has free wireless at his apartment and is always getting home late, so if I would go feed his cat for him I could use his condo as a quiet study place.”  Will shrugged.  “It sounded like a good deal to me.  I mean, I almost never see the guy and the cat’s pretty cute.”

“You’re a cat sitter?” Scott laughed, and then choked on his sandwich.

Julian slapped him hard on the back and he coughed, dislodging the food from his air passage.

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

“That sounds a little sketchy, Will,” Chris said, munching on the last of his sweet potato fries.

“No, it’s not.  It’s a business arrangement.  And he simply agreed to do me a favor since I didn’t want to shadow a doctor or a scientist.  And my dad is out of town and my mom said she’d be too busy to take me with her.”

He looked around at his friends.  Chris and Julian were sitting back in their chairs and watching him.  Scott was stealing another one of Julian’s cookies, completely believing every word Will had said.  Of course, Will hadn’t really lied about anything.  All of his statements were mostly true.

Chris shrugged.  “Only you, Will.”

“Do you know anything about him?” Julian asked.

“Probably not more than you,” Will replied.

He waited for Julian’s reaction.  He just smiled.

“That’s probably true.”

Will tapped a finger on his water bottle lid and narrowed his eyes at Julian.  He narrowed his right back.  Then they both laughed and Julian tossed a balled up napkin at him.  Will swatted it out of the air with his hand and it bounced off Scott’s forehead.

“Oh come _on_!  For real?  Why me?  Why is it always _me_?”

The other three laughed so loud the long conference table of students actually stopped eating and looked over at them.  They tried to quiet down, but it took being told that their lunch hour was over for them to finally sober up.  They waited until the entire room was almost empty and they were getting stern looks from the HR coordinator.  Will wondered why he had to “go back to work” too.  The big meeting was going to take place in Ken’s office and he was probably going to make him hang out with Marnie until it was over.  But, if he made it back before it started, he might get to meet some of the attendees—including Ken’s father.  Will dug out the elevator key Ken had foolishly given him.  If he didn’t want him to come back before the meeting he shouldn’t have given it to him.  Ha!  Will said goodbye to Julian and Scott and inserted the key.  Then he wondered as he turned it that maybe Ken didn’t care if he came back.  And why would he?  Everyone knew he was having a student shadow him today.  And if he felt it would be inappropriate for Will to be there he probably would have told him before lunch.

Why was he trying to make a thing out of this?  He wasn’t bored.  Maybe he was still a little bitter about Angela.  He wanted Ken’s father to meet him and know who he was.  But, he knew better than that.  As much as finally having the truth out might release Ken from his self-made prison, he’d probably never forgive him.  Will would rather live with Ken forever in secrecy than to have Ken hate him.  He would die if Ken rejected him.  The thought alone made him sad.

Ken was waiting for him when the doors opened.  He was smiling, but when he saw Will, the smile disappeared and was replaced with concern.

“Will, what’s wrong?”

He reached out and pulled him into his arms.  Apparently the other people for the meeting weren’t there yet.

Will hugged him back and laughed at himself.  He wondered how much longer he was going to have these pubescent mood swings.  He was curious to know if men’s hormones cycled like women’s did; only they didn’t have a nice clear indicator that something was going on.  Will stepped back and looked at Ken.

“Nothing’s wrong.  I was just.  I don’t know.  You know?”

Ken shook his head with a slightly confused face.  “Not really.”

Will shrugged.

“Okay then,” Ken said, brushing Will’s weirdness aside.  “Remember I told you about the meeting I have today?”

Will was starting to get an inkling of what it must be like to work for him.  Ken had told him at least fifteen times.  How had someone not gone postal at this company and strangled their boss yet?

“I remember.”

“Okay, well, my employees have gone down to meet the representatives from the merging companies and they should be here soon.  The head honchos of Q*West will be here too.  We’ll be over in the casual meeting area, so if you sit at my desk that will probably be far enough away that no one will mind you.”

“You’re going to let me stay?”

“Yeah.  Why not?”

“Well, big secret deals and stuff.”

“Most of the logistics have been worked out.  This is just finalizations and document signings.  But, we have to make sure everybody feels comfortable with signing the documents.  If they do, we go public with the deal tomorrow so they can’t back out.”

“Ah.  Cutthroat and ruthless.  I knew it was lurking somewhere in there.”

“Mm.”

Ken bent down and kissed him.  Will stood surprised for a moment.  While Ken had been a willing participant all morning, he’d never once instigated the activities.

“Mr. West?”

They pulled apart and glared over at the intercom.

“Yes, Marnie?”

“We’re on our way up.”

“Excellent.  Thank you.”

Ken and Will stepped away from each other.  Will put his hands in his pockets.  Ken smiled at him and did the same.  They managed to wipe the grins off their faces when the elevator dinged.  Will noticed Ken’s face drained of color just a little as the doors opened.  What was the problem?  Was he nervous about the deal or that his father and boyfriend would be in the same room?

Will turned to look at the elevator and was surprised to find how packed it was.  Several men and a couple women came pouring out.  They were all talking and took turns shaking hands with Ken.  Will recognized one particularly loud blowhard as Mr. James—the jerk that had pawed on his mother at the Christmas party.  Will knew his mother was technically in charge of handling the legal affairs of Mr. James’ company, but he also knew that his mother wouldn’t be here today.  That meant that his mother had decided Mr. James wasn’t that important and had moved on to bigger and better things.  That made Will a little happy.  Also the fact that Mr. James didn’t seem to recognize him was good.  He’d never gotten around to calling his niece.

At last Ken managed to get the blustery man’s attention long enough to ask him and the others to follow Marnie further into the room.  Most had never been in the large office before because they were commenting on the immenseness of the space.  One of the women noticed the art.  The rest of the occupants of the elevator now had room to get off once the first crowd finally moved out of the way of the doors.  One of the older looking men didn’t greet Ken but mimed choking one of the people whose back was now to them.  Ken bit back a smile and nodded for the man to head in that direction.

Then Will spotted Mr. West.  Even if he hadn’t seen him briefly a couple of times before, he would have known it was him.  He was obviously the most powerful person in the room.  And that came from the way he carried himself—with a sureness and calmness that one had when even the worst possible outcome to a situation wouldn’t really affect him.  It was also in his air.  Will had met several men and one woman like this before, and he’d never felt intimidated by any of them.  Ken’s father awed the crap out of him.  But was that because he was really so badass, or was Will just nervous because he was sneaking around with his son?  That made Will feel peeved.  Ken was the dirty pervert.  Why should _he_ feel guilty?

Mr. West was the only one in a navy blue suit.  He had on a light blue shirt underneath and a dark blue tie.  Will didn’t think he’d dressed himself.  Either he had a personal stylist or his wife was really the one with all the power.  He didn’t look much like Ken—he had the same face shape as Kennedy.  Ken must resemble his mother more.  He was a good-looking man, but a little on the nondescript side.  Will liked that he’d left his salt and pepper hair alone, unlike some of the other men in the room who were obviously older than him and had dyed their hair.  Mr. West smiled at Will as he approached him and Will saw at least one trait Ken had gotten from his father.  Even though they were a different shade of blue, they were the same eyes.  Will instantly liked him.

“Will,” Ken said, “this is the founder and CEO of Q*West Enterprises, Ken West.”

Will turned partially to look up at Ken.

“Kenneth,” he said softly.  Then he turned back to his father.  “This is Will Harder.  He’s a student at Calverton Preparatory Academy.”

“It’s nice to meet you, son,” Mr. West said in a voice that was deeper than Will was expecting.

As they were shaking hands Ken said with a noticeable effort to keep from smiling, “He’s Marilyn Harder’s son.”

Will felt Mr. West’s hand tense up for a moment, and then he smiled tightly as he pulled his hand back.  “Oh, really?”

Will smiled angelically at him.  Then he saw a large black man walking behind Mr. West.  The man did a double take as he looked at him.  Will thought he vaguely recognized him too.  He waved at the man and he tried to decide if it was worth moving all the folders in his hands to wave back.  He chose not to and walked on.  Mr. West gave his son a raised eyebrow.

“Well.  I’ll go get things ready.”

“Okay,” Ken said, the smile finally winning out.  His father gave him a look as he walked away.  Will had always pictured their relationship to be a little more distant and strained based on the way Ken described his family.  But they had the same interaction Julian and his father had had.  Ken was an idiot.  Mr. West would never disown or hate him if he found out he was gay.  Will could tell that from knowing the man for ten seconds.  Why didn’t Ken understand that after thirty plus years with him?

“Will!”

Will turned to the last two remaining men.

“Hi, Mr. Ra-aah!”

Will screeched as Mr. Ramsey gave him a two-handed hair ruffle and then to his dismay pulled him into a hug.  Will struggled against him and Mr. Ramsey just laughed.  The man had always liked to pick him up when he’d been little—why was he now reviving that tradition?

“David!  What are you doing?” the other man said in alarm.  “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Be-because!”  He looked at Ken and then at the struggling high schooler.

“Do you think I don’t know him?” Mr. Ramsey asked.  “I don’t go around hugging random high school boys.”

“Something we can all be thankful for,” Ken said with an amused look as he watched Will try to fight off his employee.  Will scowled at him for not helping him.

“Anyway,” Mr. Ramsey said as he turned Will to face the other man.  “You better get to know him too.  If your daughter is going to date my son she might as well be dating this one and two of his other friends also.”

“Ha,” Will laughed.  Then he looked at the other man.  He was a little irked that he was shorter than all three of them by at least four inches.  “So, you’re Mr. Bixby?” Will asked.

Mr. Bixby looked at him.  “Yes.  You know Antoinette?”

Will smiled.  “Everybody knows Antoinette Bixby.”

“Just like everyone knows Will Harder,” Mr. Ramsey said.

“Will Harder?” Mr. Bixby questioned.  “I know that name.”

“See?”

“Wait, wait,” Ken interrupted.  “That blond kid that’s shadowing you, Jim.  That’s your son, David?”

“Yep.”

Ken bit hard on his lower lip and exchanged looks with Mr. Bixby.  Will and Mr. Ramsey exchanged looks in response.  Then Mr. Ramsey sighed.

“Good lord.  What did he do?”

“Nothing,” Ken said with a laugh.  He opened his mouth to say something else, but realized he wouldn’t be able to get it out without laughing, so he just turned partially away.

Will shook his head.  “Poor, Scott.”

Ken looked at him.  “His name is Scott?”

“Yeah,” Mr. Ramsey replied.  He let go of Will.  “Whatever he did—he didn’t mean it.  Well.  I’m going to help pass out the packets.  Make sure they’re perfect.”  He gave Ken a snarky smile and patted him on the shoulder.  Ken shifted a little uncomfortably and ducked his head as Mr. Ramsey walked by him.  Will’s brow quirked.  That was a strange reaction.  Kind of like the way a young kid reacts to being touched or praised by someone they admire.  Or like.  Then Ken was himself again as he looked at Mr. Bixby.

“Can you try to keep him from breaking the ice with a joke that will get us sued?”

“I’ll try.”

Mr. Bixby left and Ken turned to Will so that he stood in between Will and the rest of the people on the floor with his back to them.

“So, just how many of my employees do you know?”

Will shrugged.

“And David Ramsey’s son, Scott.  The one shadowing Jim Bixby.  Is that your Scott?  The one you’re always talking about with Julian and Chris?”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

“Yeah.  Chris is here too.”

“Even better.  I can’t believe it.  So many connections with my employees and your parents.  So many ways for our paths to have crossed.  And _that’s_ how we met.”

Will shrugged.  “Kismet, I guess.”

Ken made a face to show what he thought about that.

“So what happened with Scott?”

Ken started to smile and then stopped himself.  “Nothing really.  I think I just understand a little better now when you describe him as a bit of a spaz.”

Will made a sympathetic face.  “Poor, Scott.  Well, it must not have been too traumatic.  He didn’t seem upset at lunch.”

“Maybe he blocked it from his memory.”

Will’s expression fell into worried disbelief.  “Oh, God.  What happened?”

“Nothing, nothing.  But he’s—he’s—”  Ken glanced behind him to make sure they were still relatively alone.  “He’s really cute.”

Will scowled at him.  “You thought I was cute too.  That just your type?  You want him too?”

“Now, now.  Calm down.  He’s a whole different kind of cute from you and you know it.  Besides.  He’s more like Rylan’s type.”

Will’s hand lashed out and he grabbed Ken by the tie, yanking him down close.  “They can _never_ meet,” he ground out darkly.

Ken grabbed his wrist and forced him to release him.  He stood up straight and glanced behind him again to make sure no one had seen that.

“Don’t worry,” Ken said, straightening his tie, “I’m quite certain _they_ will never cross paths.”

“I’m not even joking, Ken.”

“I know, baby.  Now, be a good boy and go play Solitaire while I run the big important meeting.”

Will forced himself to calm down.  “Okay.  Go get ‘em tiger.  Is this the part where I slap your butt in encouragement?”

“Do and I’ll defenestrate you.”

“If I only I weren’t a genius and knew what that word meant.  It could have sounded kinky.”

“Go sit.”

Ken turned and walked over to the group of tittering people.  Will could tell who belonged with whom.  Two women and one man sat on a couch excitedly pointing to things in their packets while four men—one of them being Mr. James—were sitting on adjacent loveseats and were kind of grumbling to themselves.  Those were the representatives from the two merging companies.  Mr. West and the one other man who hadn’t shown Ken deference in rank were sitting in chairs across from each other, each next to one of the groups.  Well, Mr. Ramsey also hadn’t shown any dereference to Ken, but he was sitting with the rest of the K&K Consulting crowd on the remaining couch.  Will was pretty impressed with the diversity.  There was an Asian woman and two black men.  One guy looked Indian and the other woman had just bit of color and kink to her hair that she looked multi-racial.  Of course, most of them were white men, but it wasn’t completely unbalanced.

As Ken approached them, everyone quieted down and looked up at him.  Will was impressed.  Ken could command a crowd’s attention.  But Will didn’t find that surprising.  He himself found the man captivating.  And he did love him and didn’t want to be a bad boyfriend, so he did as he was told and sat at the desk and opened up a game of Solitaire.  Then he got out the lollipop he’d been saving as a backup if more conventional methods for seducing Ken hadn’t worked.  The meeting was taking place several yards away, so most people probably wouldn’t even be able to tell he was doing anything—unless they suspected he might be.  And someone perverted definitely would.

Ken stayed on his feet for most of the meeting, circling the group and moving to be closer to whomever he was talking to.  Of course, as he walked, his eyes kept flicking over in Will’s direction.  Will worked the lollipop as good as any porn star.  At one point, Ken excused himself and walked over to his desk.  He pretended to look something up on his computer and muttered to Will that he needed to lose the lollipop.  Will complied by crunching down on it and chewing on the candy while staring Ken in the eyes.  Ken took in a breath and straightened up.

“Later,” he said, and then left.

Will smiled and continued to chew on the stick.  From that point on Mr. Ramsey pretty much ran the meeting as Ken sat on the edge of a loveseat with his hands in his lap and a pinched look on his face.  He never looked back at Will.  Eventually the meeting went on long enough and Ken was stubborn enough to keep himself from looking at him that Will got bored.  He actually started to play Solitaire.  Finally, after two and a half hours of squabbling over particulars, the documents were signed.  There were handshakes and smiles all around.  Except for the four men who must have represented the company that was being more absorbed than merged.  They didn’t look upset, but they certainly weren’t jumping out of their seats either.  It was twenty minutes more of unrelated chitchat and brown nosing before they all started to migrate toward the elevator.  Everyone got on at once except Mr. West and Ken.  They had a conversation while they waited for the lift to return.  Will was desperate to know if they were just talking business or if they used times like these to do their father-son bonding.  The elevator returned and Mr. West turned to him.

“It was good meeting you, Will.  I hope you weren’t too bored.”

Will shrugged.  “It’s better than school.”

Mr. West laughed and stepped onto the elevator.  As the doors started to slide closed he said, “Say hi to your mom for me.”

Will definitely intended to.  He needed to see his mother’s reaction in order to understand the context with which Mr. West had made his request.  He was so busy thinking about how he would go about telling his mother what Mr. West had said that he didn’t notice Ken advancing on him until he was practically beside him.  Will started in a little surprise and then really became alarmed when Ken kicked the chair he was sitting in back and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.  He hauled him up so he could kiss him, but he didn’t lean over to do it.  Will’s toes were left scraping the ground and he was forced to grab onto Ken’s biceps to keep from dangling like a rag doll.  Will was so stunned all he could do was accept Ken’s forceful kiss.  There was movement and then Will felt his back slam against the windows.  It made it a little easier to hold his weight off the floor, but no less shocking that it was happening.  He’d had a taste of this aggressiveness before, so he wasn’t frightened by it, but this was the first time Will felt that Ken was really letting himself go.

Ken pulled back just a little and looked at him.  They panted into each other’s mouths and Will leaned forward to kiss his lower lip.  Ken bent a leg between Will’s legs and let his weight settle onto his knee.  His hands were now free to undo Will’s pants.  Will let his head fall back against the glass.

“What’s this all about?” he hummed in pleasure.

“Don’t act like you weren’t asking for it.”

Will’s laugh was little more than a heated gasp.  “I guess I was.”

In one fluid and almost impossibly fast movement, Ken turned him around and took him up against the windows.  Will grunted and pushed his hands flat against the cold pane, his breath fogging up a small space on the glass.  He opened his eyes and looked down.  He could see the whole city moving below him.  If the height wasn’t dizzying enough, the ecstasy coursing through his body made his mind and body swoon to a near trancelike state.  What kept him semi-lucid was the thought that anybody in the building across the street could look out a window and see them.  Will’s shirt was probably covering enough that nothing was actually exposed on either of them, but there would be no mistaking exactly what it was they were doing.

Later, Will lay on Ken’s desk, his legs dangling off the side.  After the insanity that took place against the windows, they’d also made love slowly and passionately in Ken’s chair.  Now he’d just barely managed to get most of his clothes back on, his blazer, tie, and shoes being the only articles missing.  Strangely, his socks hadn’t come off once all day.  In fact, whenever he was with Ken, unless they were already off or he took them off himself, Ken never bothered with his socks.

The realization made him smile a little.  He turned his head just enough to follow the line of his leg down to where his socked foot rested in Ken’s lap.  His lover was doing work, of course, but he was also affectionately rubbing Will’s thigh.  Will sighed in quiet contentment.  He wasn’t certain he’d be able to walk home this evening, but every moment of his life that he could spend with his lover was the greatest joy he had ever known.  He’d never denied the existence of such a love, but he’d also never believed that he would be able to feel it.  Ken gave him that ability.  Ken had saved him from a life of apathy.  As Julian had predicted—Ken had fixed him.

“Hey, baby?”

Will lolled his head toward Ken.  “Yeah?”

“Can you hand me that file under you?”

“Um.  Maybe.”  Will moved an arm and tried to feel around under his right side since that’s the only place Ken would have been able to see a file.  His fingers brushed over the object he was looking for.  He tried to pull it out.  After two tries he gave up.  “Nope.  Sorry.”

Ken made a noise and leaned forward, straining to reach around Will’s leg and yanked the file out.

“I don’t understand why _you’re_ so tired.  It’s usually the pitcher that gets tired during the game.”

“Shut-up!”

Ken’s intercom buzzed.

“Yes, Marnie?”

“Mr. Treviño is on line one, sir.”

“Thank you.  Patch him through.”

Ken reached out to pick up the phone, but Will was close enough that he could sprawl a hand out and hit the speaker button.  He gave Ken a pointed look.  Ken just shrugged and sat back in his chair.

“Hello?”

“Looks like you two were having fun,” Rylan’s deep, irritating voice came over the line.

Will bolted up and could feel himself blushing.  Ken was crying out in silent pain and trying to dig Will’s foot out of his groin.

“Did you put that show on for me?”

“No, Rylan,” Ken managed to get out.  “And you had better have a real reason for calling.”

Will looked at Ken.  Had he done it on purpose?  How could Rylan even see anything?  Were there cameras?

“How can he see?” Will hissed.

“He can’t,” Ken said, and scooted forward in his chair to grab the headset of the phone.  “Not really.”

Will slapped a hand on his wrist and prevented him from making the call private.

“What do you mean, ‘not really?’”

“Look in the top drawer on the right,” Rylan said over the phone.  Will made a face at it.  He didn’t want that jerk telling him what to do.  But he leaned over and opened the drawer.  There were just some sticky pads and pens and other office supplies.

“I don’t see—”

“Your other right.”

Will muttered a few choice words to himself and leaned over to the other side.  He opened the drawer and found a pair of binoculars.  He pulled them out and looked at Ken.

“What are these for?”

Ken was chewing on a nail.  He _never_ did that.  “Um.  Our offices…are kind of.  Lined up.”

Will felt his insides twist around.  “What do you mean?”

Ken stood up and grabbed a hold of Will.  He slid him off the desk and then sat back down with him in his lap.  Will wasn’t in the mood to be treated like a baby.  Or a pet.  But he put up with it to listen to what Ken was telling him.

“Do you see that building way down Fenton Street?  You can only see about half of it.  The rest is behind the Marriott.  See it?”

“Yes,” Will said sharply.

“Use the binoculars and look on the top floor, all the way to the left.  Almost to where the building disappears behind the other one.”

Will did what he was told, but made himself feel better by thinking he was doing it under protest.  He focused the binoculars and scanned the top floor of the building.  It was much like Ken’s office—it looked like one big open room.  It was sparsely furnished, but seemed to be completely empty of people.  Then when he’d almost run out of building to look at, he saw a desk.  Sitting at the desk and looking out the windows was Rylan.  He was in dark dress pants and a white dress shirt and he was smiling smugly as he held the phone to his ear.  Will went stiff.

“Can he see me yet?” Rylan asked.

“I think so,” Ken said carefully.

Rylan waved at him.  Will slammed the binoculars down in his lap and tried to get up.  Ken circled his stomach and held him back.

“Now, now.  Calm down, baby.”

“What the hell do you two do with these?  Do you look at each other everyday?  Do you watch each other masturbate or something?!”

Rylan laughed.  His laugh was even more irritating over the phone than in person.  No, it would definitely be more irritating in person because then he would actually be there.  But this was bad enough.

“Of course not, Will,” Ken said.  “It’s a joke.  The day I moved in he claimed he could see me.  I didn’t believe him, so I bought a pair of binoculars, and he was right.”

“As usual,” Rylan said.

“As usual,” Ken sighed.

“But if you knew he could see…God!”  Will tried to twist out of his grasp, but Ken held onto him.  “That’s why you wanted to do it against the windows!  You’re sick!”

“Will!  I didn’t—”

“You did it against the windows?” Rylan queried, sounding genuinely interested.  “I wonder if I can see any…smudges left behind.”

“Rylan!  Shut-up.  You’re making things worse,” Ken grunted as Will’s struggling landed a blow to his ribs.  Will stopped his struggling and turned to his lover.

“Oh, sorry.  Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Ken frowned at him.  “Why’d you even have to say anything?” Ken asked the disembodied voice.

“I thought _you_ picked up.  I didn’t know he was listening.  Anyway, are we still on for tonight?”

“Is that why you called?”

“That.  And your little toy there was looking so worn out I knew you did something dirty with him so I had no choice but to call and tease you about it.  It’s not my fault he’s got such a short temper and no sense of humor.”

“Oh, God, no,” Ken said, struck with a sudden realization.  “Why do I—you two really are alike.”

“We are not!” Rylan and Will shouted.

“Oh, yeah,” Ken agreed sardonically.  “Nothing alike.”

“Are we on?” Rylan demanded impatiently.

“Yes, Rylan, yes.  I will see you at eight o’clock.”

“Good.  Because I mean it.  You blow me off one more time for that twit and I’m going to send one of my employees to your father’s house.”

“I got it.”

“Ooo.  There they are.”

“There what are?”

“The smudge marks.”

Will felt his face catch on fire again.

“You don’t see anything.”

“Yes, I do.  You took him from behind.”

Both Will and Ken were astonished by Rylan’s correct assessment.

“Don’t forget what it is I do for a living, pet.”

Will managed to break free from Ken and quickly picked up the handset and slammed in down, hanging up on Rylan.  He turned to the window and flicked off the city skyline.  Someone had to have seen it and that was good enough.  He looked back at Ken.  He was leaning in his chair from an angle and examining the windows.

“I don’t see anything at all.  He’s making it up.  He just made a guess and we confirmed it.”

“I hate him,” Will said forcefully.  Ken looked up at him and once he had eye contact he repeated, “I _hate_ him.”

Ken took one of his hands and patted it patronizingly.  “I know you do, baby.  I promise I’ll talk to him about it.  But…he’s feeling a little peeved because I spend so much time with you.  He’s jealous.”

Will snatched his hand back.  “You spend so much time with me?  We’re never together!”

“Well.  Think about how Rylan must feel.  I spend even less time with him because often I cancel plans with him when you tell me you’re available.”

“Oh, boo hoo.  Who means more to you?”

Ken finally gave him a look like he was taking the conversation more seriously.  “Don’t take this conversation in that direction, Will, or it’s going to turn into an argument.”

Will allowed the fight to play out in his head for a moment.  It really wasn’t worth it.  Rylan bothered him so much simply because he was always embarrassing him or picking on him.  But he’d never truly done anything vicious—unless that time on the kitchen counter counted.  Which Will would say that it did.  But…he’d never done anything to hurt Ken as far as he was aware.  He was just…

Will stepped forward and fell to his knees in front of Ken.  “He’s just so _annoying_!” Will whined, flopping his face in Ken’s lap.

Ken laughed and petted the back of his head.  “He is that,” Ken agreed.  “But he’s a loyal friend.  If not always a good one.”

“Hmph.”

They stayed like that for a few moments—Will grinding his teeth and Ken petting his head.  It wasn’t long before the soothing sensation won out over his anger and Will calmed down.  He almost fell asleep too.

“Oh, it’s after five.  Time to go.”

Will sat back on his heels and rubbed his eyes.  “Are you coming?”

“Are you kidding?  I got absolutely nothing done today.”

“You merged two companies.  That’s a lot.”

“Yes, well.  There’s a lot of work that goes into it even once the easy part is over.”

Will looked at his lover and remembered the insanity from the last two months.  Hell, Ken had started panicking about this deal way back in September.  “That was the easy part?”

“See?  I need to stay a little late tonight.”

“Okay.”

Will stood up and found his blazer and tie.  He left his shirt untucked and stuck his tie down in his pants pocket.  He had to crawl under the desk to find one shoe, but finally he was dressed enough to go downstairs and meet his friends.  He hoped they didn’t have plans to go out.

“So.  You have plans tonight?” Will asked, as civilly as he could.

“Yes.  Just dinner though.  Are you going to spend the night?”

“Nm.  I don’t know.  I think my mom is home, but I could just tell her I’m staying at Julian’s.  I think I’ll do that.  So don’t bring Rylan home, okay?”

Ken smiled, but didn’t say he wouldn’t.

“Ugh,” Will complained and sat on Ken’s desk.  “I don’t know why they planned this for a Monday.  It should have been on Friday so we could recover from the boredom.”

“You were bored today?”

“No, not me.  But all my friends were.”  Will laughed softly.  “Man.  I’m going to have the most interesting report out of everybody.”

Ken chuckled.  “I bet.”  Then he sobered and pointed a finger at Will.  “No jokes or double meanings.  Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They sat quietly for a moment.  Ken reached out a hand and Will took it.  Ken gently massaged the back of his hand with his thumb.  They stayed together, enjoying each other’s company for several minutes.  Then Ken shook himself.

“Okay, go on.  I need to work and your friends are waiting for you.”

“Okay.”  Will hopped off the desk and leaned over to give Ken a smooch.  “I love you.”

Ken kissed him back.  “I love you too.”

Will straightened to put on his blazer.

“Are you going to go out with your friends before going back?”

Will shook his head.  “Joyce Greene needs to be fed.  And I’m tired.  I just want to go to our place and take a nap.  And a shower.”

He buttoned one button on the blazer.

“What did you say?” Ken asked suddenly.

Will looked up.  “Um.  I said I was going to go straight back to your place.  Is that okay?  Oh, it’s the shower, right?  Fine, fine.  I promise I’ll take a short one.  No more than an hour.”

Ken smiled amusedly at him.  “Okay.  I’ll see you later.”

Will gave him a look and then turned to leave.  Ken was a weird guy.  The elevator ride down was faster than he thought it was going to be.  It only stopped on one floor to pick up one person.  Either everyone at K&K Consulting worked really late hours or they were taking the elevators attached to the garage.  Once he got to the lobby he found his three friends sitting on a couch and staring at the ceiling.  He sat down next to Julian and leaned his head back to see what they were looking at.  The rainbows on the walls were quite beautiful.  Julian turned his head to him suddenly.

“Oh.  When did you get here?”

“Just now.”

“Oh.”

All four of them got up and started to head out of the lobby.

“So, we’re doing something, right?” Chris asked.  “Just to make sure we still have pulses?”

“Totally,” Scott said.  “And I am _so_ starving.”

“Ooo.  Let’s get a gyro at that place near the place that makes the good pizza.”

“Yes!” Scott agreed whole-heartedly.

“Is that okay with you, Will?” Julian asked.

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass, guys.”  He smiled to himself.  “I’m completely worn out.”

 

Chris

 

Chris was trying really hard to sit still, but he couldn’t stop fidgeting.  The silence was making him nervous.  Neither he nor Mr. Green had said a single word since he’d picked Chris up at the corner of the street that led into his neighborhood.  At first it hadn’t been so bad.  Well, there was the awkwardness that neither gave a morning salutation, but then Chris took the next ten minutes to warm up his body again.  He’d spent twenty minutes in the freezing cold waiting on Mr. Green.  For fear of pissing the man off by making him wait, Chris had gone outside fifteen minutes early.  And then Mr. Green had been five minutes late.  As his fingers tingled painfully when blood flow returned to them, he allowed himself a little bitterness about the fact that they had arranged to meet at the corner rather than have Mr. Green drive the thirty yards down the street to his doorstep.

However, even fifteen minutes after Chris stopped blowing into his hands, and he was therefore available for conversation, none had been had.  Mr. Green had stared straight ahead the whole time, using only his mirror to change lanes.  It actually made Chris paranoid enough to wonder if the man wasn’t not looking at him simply because he didn’t like him, but because he had a booger hanging out or something.  He rubbed a hand under his nose and then ran his tongue over his teeth to see if he felt anything stuck in them.  Nothing.  Mr. Green must just really hate him.  And they had at least another twenty minutes to go.  Chris supposed he should just be happy that Karen was shadowing her aunt who worked almost outside of the city, so she couldn’t catch a ride with them.  That might have been really awkward.

Chris held back his sigh and slouched a little further down in his seat.  This God awful, tense silence was probably a preview for the day.  Why on Earth had he agreed to do this?  Oh, yeah.  Because he was a coward.  The real question was why had Mr. Green agreed to it?  Chris glanced sidelong at the stony man.  Had he merely given in to his only daughter’s pleas and batting eyelashes?  Or had he hatched some evil plot?  Maybe he was going to torment him all day.  Well, that was a given, the question was how?  Maybe he would try to frame him for doing something bad at the company, or maybe he’d go for instant satisfaction and push him down some stairs.  All were very real possibilities in Chris’ mind.

Over the course of the next twenty-five minutes, his brain managed to come up with quite a few more scenarios so that by the time they arrived at Mr. Green’s office building he was feeling extremely paranoid.  They parked in an underground garage, several floors down and toward the back.  Chris shivered in the frigid concrete structure as he followed Mr. Green’s back toward the elevators.  They got on and started up.  Still in total silence.  The burst of activity and noise from the lobby was most welcome to Chris’ senses.  They stepped off onto a marble floor and Chris gazed up at the vaulted glass ceiling.  He couldn’t take a long look because there were too many people running around that he had to look out for.  He almost lost Mr. Green since he had walked at a swift pace toward another set of elevators, not checking if Chris was with him.  Chris jogged after him and caught up just in time to get on the elevator with Mr. Green, several other office workers, and another Calverton student.  Chris definitely didn’t recognize him, and he looked young, so he obviously wasn’t in his grade.  He hadn’t known the entire school had the assignment.  Or maybe just grades 9-12?

The silence was back on the elevator ride, but it was filled with the sounds of people shuffling and the occasional clearing of a body passage.  Chris felt it was safe to talk to Mr. Green with the safety of numbers.

“So, Mr. Green.”

He had been sure to speak quietly, but it came out sounding loud.  Mr. Green turned partially to him, but still didn’t look at him.

“What does your company do?”

“It’s an investment firm.”

“Ah.”  Silence.  “And what do you do?”

“I’m in the legal department.”

“Ah.”  Silence.  Chris let the silence stand.  He had enough information to write his paper now.  He could probably BS the rest.

They got off on the 16th floor and Mr. Green walked ahead of him, not stopping to show him anything or introduce him to anyone.  There were mostly cubicles on the 16th floor, but Mr. Green managed to have one of the tiny rooms with a door.  He had no secretary, but Chris suspected he must be high up if he got to have a door.  And he was pretty certain the elevator had only shown 20 floors, so 16 was pretty high up.  Wasn’t that how it worked?  The higher up in the building you were the higher up in the company?

Mr. Green took his jacket off and hung it on the back of his chair.  Then he smoothed his tie down as he sat and booted up his computer.  Chris stood awkwardly by the door.  Mr. Green stared intently at his monitor for a moment or two, and then he said, “What I do would bore you to tears.  So, why don’t you just play a video game or something?”

Chris scratched the side of his head.  Was that it?  His torture was simply to be ignored all day?  That was fine with him.  He’d actually brought his PSP with him.  He walked over to the lone chair pushed into a corner and pulled it out just enough so that his head wouldn’t be crammed against the wall.  Then he got comfortable and started to play with Brittany.  He was very proud of his PSP, Brittany.  He’d bought it broken on eBay for ten bucks and managed to get it working again on his own with only twenty dollars in new parts.  The games were still expensive as hell, even used ones, but that’s what birthdays, Christmases, and rich friends were for.

At first he glanced up at Mr. Green every now and then.  Sometimes he would look out the window of the office at the building next door.  Sometimes he would look out the window that showed the interior of the building.  He just didn’t want to look like all he was doing was playing video games.  But, since Mr. Green never once glanced in his direction and no one ever came into his office looking for him, it became very easy to get drawn into the game and forget that he was supposed to be learning stuff from the bitter, unhappy, _large_ black man.

Chris lifted his elbow from his lap to the armrest.  The motion made him aware that his arm—and entire body—was completely stiff.  He tried to stretch out discreetly and held back his sigh of relief as he bent his legs for the first time in—Chris glanced at his watch—three hours?!  No wonder he felt so stiff.  He looked at Mr. Green.  He was still working on his computer.  Chris dug around in his bag until he found his wallet.  He put Brittany back in her protective case and then walked out of the office.  As expected, Mr. Green didn’t say a word.

Chris wandered around the 16th floor, looking for vending machines or a bathroom.  Either would do.  He found the bathrooms first and then was able to really look around as he wandered.  The floor was calmer than it had been when they’d arrived that morning, but there was still a sense of hustle-bustle about it.  He wondered if something important was happening today or if it was like this every day.  Most of the employees on this floor were men in their 20’s and 30’s.  Inside the other offices appeared to be men in their 40’s and 50’s.  Apparently corporate law wasn’t very appealing to women.

Finally he found what appeared to be a break room and he actually heard the chorus of angels sing as he spotted the vending machine in the corner.  His joy was short lived as he looked at its contents: nuts, trail mix, and granola bars.  What the hell?  Then he saw the lone Snickers bar hiding at the bottom.  It was the last one.  The entire bottom row was empty.  He bet that was the only place they put the candy.  He paid his 85¢ and watched excitedly as the chocolaty, peanut-y goodness came to him.

“Hey, Chris!”

Chris started guiltily at the sound of the deep voice as he reached for his Snickers bar.  Why was he always on a guilt trip?  There was nothing wrong with taking the last Snickers bar!  Even so, he slid it into his pocket as he turned around to see who had addressed him.  A tall, lanky kid with brown hair, brown eyes, and a brown face was smiling at him and digging in his pockets for some change in front of the soda machine.  Somehow Nick Tripp managed to look like he’d been out in the sun all summer long even in the dead of winter.  Maybe he wasn’t really white.

“Hey, Nick.”

“So, what’s going on?”

Chris and Nick were not friends.  They knew who the other was due to a small class size, mutual friends, and now he was the guy who was dating Riley.  In most social circumstances they wouldn’t even acknowledge each other let alone say hi.  Apparently Nick was as bored and desperate for some kind of mental stimulation as he was.

“Absolutely nothing,” Chris lamented.  “And you?”

Nick laughed as he punched the Mountain Dew button on the machine.  “Absolutely nothing.”  He reached down and picked up his can of soda.  “Desperate times,” he said, showing the can to Chris.  “I’m about to fall asleep standing up.  I mean, this is _so_ lame.  I am never going to be able to get five pages out of this.”

It was almost funny listening to him talk.  Chris had never noticed before how deep his voice was.  Is that why Riley liked him?  He was so manly he was definitely manlier than her?

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Chris agreed.  “I mean, unless they won’t mind five pages describing the different methods for beating Final Fantasy VII.”

“Ha.”  Nick sat down at the badly abused table in the middle of the room.  “So, who are you here with?  I got saddled with my uncle.  Man.  Didn’t the guy screw me over enough by telling my parents about Calverton?”

Chris laughed and moved to stand next to the table, but didn’t sit down.  He wanted to be able to escape quickly from any awkward silences that might suddenly crop up.

“Not a fan of Calverton?”

Nick shrugged.  “Maybe I’m just not a fan of school.  But simply for convenience’s sake I’d like to go to a public school close to home, you know?”

“Yeah.  But then you probably wouldn’t know the same people.  Is there anyone you’d still wish you’d know?”

“Not everyone actually has hetero-life-mates like you, Chris,” Nick said with a laugh.  Chris bristled out of embarrassment.  Sometimes he wondered what life would be like to have normal relationships with his friends.  “But, you know,” Nick said thoughtfully, “I guess I would miss Kyle.  And Jake.  And Ryan.  And Will.  He cracks me up.  And life wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if I’d never met Julian March.  And Ginger Fugger.  Even though she’s gone, I’m glad I got to know her for the short time she was here.”

“Yeah.”

Nick and Chris gazed wistfully into the distance, lost in their own personal memories of the glorious beauty that had been Ginger.  They shook themselves.  And since Nick had brought up a girl, that made Chris curious.

“Anyone else?” he asked.

“Well.  Mr. Lasser was a pretty cool teacher.  And I’d miss the lesbians.  And even Jaymz.  If you have to go to high school with a gay guy, it might as well be one who’s a good sport about it.”

Chris felt the outline of the Snickers in his pocket.  He was hungry and Nick was boring him.  Maybe playing video games was better after all.

“Anyone else?” Chris asked.

Nick gave him a funny look.  “Um.  I’d miss you?”

Chris gave him a look.  “I was thinking of someone a little more female and redheaded.”

“Oh.  Right!”  Nick looked a touch embarrassed.  “Yeah.  Well, of course.  Riley’s a given.”

“Unh-hunh.”  Chris considered asking him if he’d miss Samantha Deale too.  But he didn’t want to know the particulars.  Riley would probably just get pissed if he got involved in her business, even if he was doing it for her benefit.

“Anyway,” Nick said, seeming like he really wanted to change the subject, “you never said who you were here with.”

Chris tried not to make a face.  “Karen’s father.”

“Whoa!”  Nick looked very amused.  “You’re here with your girlfriend’s _dad_?  That’s some serious shit right there.  When’s the wedding?”

“Oh, it’s not like that,” Chris scoffed.  “Karen and I won’t get married.”

And suddenly, upon hearing the words from his own lips, he knew that that was true.  He and Karen were not going to get married one day.  They weren’t going to be a forever couple.  No matter how much he cared about her and enjoyed being with her or how close he felt to her when they were physically together—it was going to end permanently one day.  So why should they even bother to continue dating?  Chris mentally shrugged.  They were only in high school after all.  It wouldn’t hurt to enjoy each other while they still could.

“Yeah, I know, right?” Nick said.  “It’s just like with Riley and me.  All the guys keep making such a big deal out of it, but like, we’re just having fun.  You know?”

Chris nodded vaguely.  “Does Riley know that?”

Nick finally looked seriously at him.  “Does Karen?”

“Touché,” Chris muttered.  “Well.  Try not to die of boredom, okay?”

“You too.  I guess I’ll see you at lunch.  I heard it’s getting catered from Kelly’s.”

“What seriously?”  Chris perked right up.  “I love that place.”

“Who doesn’t love that place?  Now, I _would_ marry Kelly.”

Chris smiled at Nick on his way out the door.  “Kelly’s a dude, Nick.”

“What?!”

Chris laughed at the sheer shock in Nick’s voice as he walked away.  He pulled his Snicker’s bar out of his pocket and peeled off the top of the wrapper.  He bit down into it.  His eyes fluttered in ecstasy.  Then he looked at the intersection he’d come to.  To the left would lead him back to Mr. Green’s office.  Straight ahead would take him to the elevators and his freedom.  He went right.  He could allow himself to be bad enough not to return to his shadowing project, but he couldn’t just walk out the door and leave.  He didn’t think even Will would have the balls to do that.

In this wing of the floor there were a lot less people around and not nearly as much noise.  He peeked in a couple rooms and realized why: they were all empty.  It looked like a bunch of meeting rooms.  At the end of the hall he started to turn back, but decided to look in the last room.  It was much larger than the others and had a huge retractable screen at one end and a lot of computer and telecommunications equipment.  He couldn’t help himself.  He wanted to see what they were using.  He looked back down the hall, saw no one around, and slipped inside the room.  He closed it behind him and started to poke around the equipment.  It was only a couple years old and some of it was much higher tech than Chris thought an investment firm would need.  Either they were into some serious data transfer or the company just liked to have the best of everything.

He also noticed that this company’s IT guy was pretty smart.  He’d outlined instructions on how to set up and use the equipment and posted it nearby.  There were also a couple troubleshooting tips included.  That way he would only get called in when something was really wrong.  Chris had a thought as he read through the conference call instructions.  There were some pertaining specifically how to make a long distance phone call.  A company this big probably wouldn’t even notice the cost of a five minute long distance call or even care who had called and why.  His mother on the other hand went through their telephone and wireless bills with a hawk’s eye to make sure they were never erroneously charged for anything.  That also meant she’d notice any outgoing calls with a 312 area code.  Those three numbers screamed “Chicago!” at both of them now.  But here…no one would even notice, right?

Chris sat down and pulled out his cell phone to look up Mr. Richardson’s number.  He could feel his stomach knotting up.  A little voice told him that this was wrong.  In a way, it was stealing.  Then another voice told him that this was Mr. Green’s company.  He didn’t feel quite so guilty anymore.  He followed the instructions on the phone and put the handset to his ear, glancing at the door to make sure he had closed it all the way.  The outgoing call tone buzzed in his ear a couple times, and then someone picked up.

“This is Dean Richardson.”

Chris was thrown off a little by the voice.  He felt that he was now used to Mr. Richardson’s voice, but while this had sounded a little like him, it was a much more serious and no-nonsense version of it.  Plus, it was a strange greeting.  Mr. Richardson almost always greeted him by name—unless he was correcting his grammar.  But then Chris realized he was calling from a phone number Mr. Richardson wouldn’t recognize.

“Hello?” the man asked, a little impatiently.

“Um.  H-hi, Mr. Richardson.  It’s me.  Chris.  Pelletier.”

“Oh, hello, Chris,” he said, his voice now what Chris was familiar with.  “I didn’t realize it was you.  I don’t recognize the number.”

“Oh, yeah.  I’m calling…from a different phone.”

“I see.  So, what’s up?”

“Umm…”

Chris felt a little stupid.  He should have planned this call out better, but he couldn’t think of how to start.  He was saved from having to come up with something as Mr. Richardson said, “Oh, yes.  I’m glad you called actually.  I kept thinking about how you had expressed an interest in Northwestern University.  They don’t really have an open house, but you can set up appointments to have meeting sessions and a tour of the campus.  You should really come out and see the school in person before you decide where you would like to go.  You could stay with me of course and I could show you around a bit.  Give you a more realistic view of the place, you know?”

Mr. Richardson let out an amused sound.  As usual, he wasn’t really laughing.  Chris wasn’t sure how to respond.  This conversation was not what he thought it would be.

“Oh,” Mr. Richardson cut into his stunned silence, “You did apply, right?  If you didn’t it would be way too late now.”

“Oh, uh, no.  I’m mean yes.  Yes, I did apply.  Really just to see if I could get in, but I don’t think I could go there.  It’s way too expensive.  Plus I’m not sure I will get in.  I only got 1290 on my SATs.”

“Oh, you’ll get in,” Mr. Richardson said dismissing Chris’ concerns outright.  That’s a good SAT score and I know you get good grades.  And you participate in activities, right?”

“Well.  If you count the Computer Club.”

“They do.  Plus, you have a recommendation from an alum,” he said with a smile in his voice.

Chris was surprised by this piece of information.  “You wrote a letter for me?”

“Of course.  Plus, I graduated cum laude, I went to their law school, and I donate a decent amount of money to the school annually.  They know me.  They’ll definitely want to keep me happy.”

“Well,” Chris said, scratching at the surface of the conference table with his nail, “doesn’t it cheapen it a little if I get in on just connections?”

“Absolutely not.  That’s how anyone gets anything these days.  Besides, I’m certain your admittance wouldn’t be solely because of my letter.  Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Y-yeah, I know.  But still.  It’s so expensive.”

“I know.  But you really ought to come see the school.  You’ll see that it’s worth the cost.  The academics are incredible and campus life is great because the main undergraduate campus is actually in Evanston.  So, you don’t have to actually live right in Chicago, but you’re close enough for day trips.”

Chris deliberated on this.  But not quickly enough for Mr. Richardson.

“Oh, come on.  I’m not asking you to decide you’ll go to Northwestern now.  Just come see the school.”

Chris laughed.  He sounded like he might be personally offended if Chris turned down his alma mater.  “Look, Mr. Richardson, I’m not opposed to seeing the school, but it’s really expensive to fly out there.  They don’t give student loans for visiting schools.”

“Oh, I’ll pay,” Mr. Richardson said like Chris should have known that from the start.

Chris tapped a finger on the table.  “Why would you do all this for me?  It’s kind of sketchy, you know?  Is Victoria right?  Are you trying to sleep with me?”

Mr. Richardson let out a noise that wasn’t quite amused or offended.  “I promise you, Chris, I am _not_ trying to sleep with you.  It’s just that if I bragged about you so much to get you in and then you go and reject them…well, that’d be a little embarrassing.  Come on.  Help me out, Chris.  Keep the egg off my face.”

“Well…could I pick when I could come?  It would have to be during my spring break, which is in April.”

“That would be fine.  You can let me know what exact dates you’d be able to come out and I can schedule a tour for us.  I suppose you can also let me know if your mother agrees to this,” he added with a half-laugh.

“Yeah,” Chris rolled his eyes.

They were both silent for a moment.  Then Mr. Richardson asked, “So why did you call?”

Chris went tense.  He’d forgotten that he’d been the one who had called, but obviously Mr. Richardson hadn’t.  But, he was being so nice to him, and that for some reason made him feel strange about asking him about the reason he’d called.

“Um.  No reason, really.”

“Chris, I’m certain you had a reason.  Unless _you’re_ trying to sleep with _me_.”

“Heh.  No.  Um…”  Chris shook his head and let out a breath.  “Um.  At Christmas…my father called.  He said he was out.”

Chris paused.  When he didn’t continue, Mr. Richardson said, “He is.”

“Well.  The thing is…I haven’t heard from him since then.  And he didn’t give me any contact information.  I just thought that maybe you…I mean I know you’re not his parole officer or anything.  But.  I thought you might know…something?”

“Uh.  Well, I must admit, after his release I haven’t been keeping track of him.  But…I could probably find something out for you.”

“Would you?” Chris asked a little excitedly.

Mr. Richardson hesitated before answering.  “Sure.  I can do that.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Chris said, feeling happy and relieved.

“No problem.  I can call you with the information when I find out.  Or, I can just e-mail it to you.  Can I have your address?”

“Yeah, sure.”  Chris gave him his main address plus two alternative ones.  You could never be too careful.

“Thank you again so much, Mr. Richardson.”

“Not at all.  I’m happy to do it for you.  Let me know what you decide about visiting.”

“Will do.  Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

Chris hung up the phone.  E-mail.  Why hadn’t he ever thought of that before?  His mother would never be able to trace his conversations that way.  So, that was good.  But Chris liked being able to actually _talk_ with Mr. Richardson.  He couldn’t exactly define the feeling, but he was guiltily afraid that it was kind of like having a responsible male mentor.  Not a father figure of course, but…something.

Chris left the conference room and walked slowly back to Mr. Green’s office.  Even the memory of his Snickers bar was fading and he was regretting only bringing one PSP game with him.  How much longer until lunch?  He needed an hour away from this ridiculousness.  Julian should be at lunch.  Mr. Green had never told him the company’s name, but he’d seen it emblazoned on the wall in the lobby.  He was pretty certain that was the name of the company Scott’s father worked for.  At least at lunch he’d see a friendly face.  Even if it was only Nick’s.

When Chris reached the office the door was open and Mr. Green was standing up and had an intently focused look, i.e. a kiss-ass face, as he listened to the man visiting him.  He was as tall as Mr. Green, but his build was completely different.  While Mr. Green had a bunch of football type muscle (and a little soft pudge in a few places) the other man was in top physical condition.  The difference between them was evident by the cut of their suits and how they fit their bodies.  Chris didn’t think this man was married or had any children.  Though Mr. Ramsey kind of had that bachelor build to him…but not like this guy.  This probably was the difference between a married man who worked out occasionally and a man who could devote all his time to his own needs.  Again…how was that different from Mr. Ramsey?  _Be nice_ , he told himself.  If nothing else Mr. Ramsey did put Scott first.

Chris had stood outside the door, not really meaning to, but he’d been drawn to the stranger and curious about Mr. Green’s reaction to him.  He seemed important.  Once he realized he was standing around and eavesdropping (though not paying attention to what they were saying) he backed up to walk away.  They both noticed the movement and turned to him.  Chris felt a little heat on his cheeks.

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s no problem,” the stranger said with a smile.  Chris was struck by how handsome he was.  No.  Not handsome.  Familiar.  That’s what he meant.  “I assume you’re one of the Calverton students visiting us today?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Green spoke up.  “He’s shadowing me.  His name is Chris Pelletier.”

“Nice to meet you Chris,” he said, taking a step forward and extending his hand.  “I’m Ken West.”

Chris accepted the man’s hand and had a little trouble meeting his eyes.  He felt like he was meeting somebody important.  And he hated that feeling.  It put a lot of pressure on him not to be a goober.

“You know,” Mr. West said with a somewhat uneasy laugh, “I had no idea so many of my employees’ children went to Calverton.”

Chris wondered if he thought that was a bad thing because he thought it wasn’t a good school, or because his company had suddenly become infested with teenagers.

“W-well.  My mom doesn’t work for you,” he said.  Would that make him feel better?  Why was he trying to suck up to him?  Probably because he’d said “my” employees.  Mr. West was _definitely_ somebody important.

“I see.  Are you shadowing a friend’s parent?”

Chris glanced at Mr. Green.  Should he say it’s his girlfriend?  Would that make Karen’s dad mad or happy that he’d acknowledged the relationship?  Then he suddenly realized why Mr. West seemed familiar to him and forgot to answer the question entirely.

“Oh!”

Mr. West and Mr. Green started slightly at his outburst.

“I’ve seen you on TV!”

“What?” Mr. West laughed.  “Me?”

“Yes!  You were like, the number one bachelor in the city or something.”

Mr. West went a little pink in the face.  “Oh.  Oh, gosh.  That’s so embarrassing.  I hate that they don’t need permission to air that crap.”

“Well, you at least looked like you deserved to be number one.”

“Thanks,” Mr. West smiled wryly at him.  Then he turned to Mr. Green.  “And thank you, Derek, for getting the contracts finalized in time for the meeting today.  In fact, I’d like it if you would join us this afternoon at one o’clock.  Are you free?”

“Yes, of course.  I’ll be there.”

“Excellent.  I’m having the rest of the merger team meet the clients down in the lobby at 12:45.  Would you be able to join them then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.  Boy, I can’t wait for this whole thing to be over and done with.”

Mr. Green nodded vaguely.  Mr. West turned back to Chris.

“Well, it was very nice meeting you, Mr. Pelletier.  I hope you enjoy your visit here and learn something from us.”

“Um.”  Chris had no idea what to say.  Unless he just lied outright.

Mr. West gave him a sly smile that Mr. Green couldn’t see as he turned to leave the office.  He patted Chris on the shoulder as he passed him.

“At least you’ll enjoy your lunch.”

Chris smiled and tried to keep it from becoming a grin since Mr. Green could still see his face.  He cleared his throat and dropped the smile.  The man had an eye narrowed, but Chris suspected it was more for his boss than for him.  Then he did turn it on Chris.

“You can go to lunch now.  I’ll probably be in that meeting by the time you get back, so take two hours.”  Mr. Green turned away and started mumbling to himself.  “’Cause it’s not like I have anything else to do today.  I can drop everything to help you out, _boss_.”

Chris wondered why he was so pissy.  Wasn’t it a good thing to be singled out by the boss and asked to participate in a big important meeting?  Mr. Green was still grumbling to himself as he sat down in his office chair.  It kind of sounded like he was more upset that his _white_ boss had asked him to do something.  Chris shrugged.  He’d been freed for lunch, so he was taking it.  He didn’t even say anything to Mr. Green as he turned and left.  Hopefully someone would be able to direct him where to go for the catered lunch. He had more than enough time to find it; Mr. Green had sent him away twenty minutes early.  Eventually he was accosted by a perky, slightly panicked woman in a fuchsia skirt suit.  She seemed concerned that he was wandering the halls before the actual lunchtime and directed him to a large conference room on the fourth floor where some other poor lowly assistants were being forced to set up the lunch.  He wondered why the building had so many meeting rooms.  Then again, the company was called K &K Consulting…apparently they did a lot of actually sitting down and consulting with people.

After Chris got his box lunch, he realized that all the students were probably expected to sit at the long table in the center of the room, but he spotted a tiny table in a corner with four much more comfortable looking chairs around it.  He decided to go for that.  If Julian was there he’d be able to whine to him in private.  And it was a good thing he chose that spot because there had to be close to forty kids eating lunch in the room.  All babbling away like kids in any cafeteria.  At least the food was substantially better.  And the company was excellent.  Somehow all four of them had wound up together again.  Chris was definitely a non-believer in fate and destiny, but it did make him wonder sometimes how things always worked out for the four of them to be together in some way.  Of course, college was definitely going to end that streak.  Or maybe it wouldn’t.  Maybe that would be the proof he needed that despite being apart, they still all managed to be together when it really mattered.  And Chris did define this day as one of those times because it had to be one of the worst of his life.  He’d never felt like such a worm before.  And he let all three of them know it.

“This day is just torture!” Chris declared while the other three ate.  He had started first and was mostly finished.  “I mean, it’s one thing to be bored and feel superfluous or in the way.  But Mr. Green won’t talk to me.  He won’t even _look_ at me.  The only time he acknowledged me all morning was when he had to introduce me to his boss.”

“What did you think of him?” Will asked.

Chris had to hold back the next part of his tirade.  He was thrown off by the randomness of Will’s question.

“I thought he was just doing it because his boss was there.”

“No.”  Will made a face at him.  “What did you think of his boss?  Or wait, was it his supervisor, or like a big boss?”

“Um.  I think it was a really big boss.  He certainly felt that way.”

Scott snickered.  “You felt him up?”

“Don’t be a turd.  You know what I mean.  Anyway.  Mr. Green is being completely unreasonable.  As much as he hates me I don’t think I really deserve to be treated like a piece of toilet paper he accidentally tracked into the office.”

“I don’t get it,” Scott said, munching on a sweet potato fry.  “Why doesn’t he like you?”

“Oh, gee, I wonder why?” Chris said, going as easy as he could on the sarcasm.  “Maybe because I’m nailing his daughter?”

Scott shook his head and focused on piecing his sandwich back together.  “Even so.  I mean, I just don’t understand why _anyone_ wouldn’t like you.”

Chris’ heart gave a little involuntary thump of pleased embarrassment.  Why did compliments from Scott mean so much?  He glanced at Will.  He was gnawing on his lower lip to keep from laughing and was staring at Scott.  He looked at Julian.  He was slumped back in his chair with a smile on his face and a hand over his eyes.  He turned back to Scott.  Scott stopped picking around his lunch and looked up.  He seemed startled as he looked at the three of them.  Chris could only imagine what his own face must look like.

“What?” Scott asked, looking nervous.

“You’re so cute,” Julian sighed.

“What?  Why?”

Will was now leaning an elbow on the arm rest and covering his mouth with a hand.  He looked like he was about to lose it.  Finally, Julian did.  He launched himself out of his chair and attacked Scott.  Scott squawked in surprise but couldn’t get away.

“Oh, Scotty, promise me you’ll never change!” Julian shouted as he hugged the rapidly blushing blond.

Several people at the nearby conference table turned to look at who was making the commotion.  Once they saw it was the four of them, they nodded in understanding and returned to their lunches.  Chris shook his head.  Why was it not abnormal to witness the four of them being goofily affectionate with each other?  Because they always were.  Chris sighed.  He would like to have normal relationships with his friends—but not if it meant giving them up.  He could have normal friends in college.  For now he would have to deal with being “heterosexually in love” with his three best friends.

He knew that any embarrassment that may result from being their friends was completely and totally worth it because he actually enjoyed himself at lunch.  He forgot he’d ever been feeling bad and just had fun talking with them.  He felt so happy in fact, he even managed to get off on the 16th floor without his good mood dissipating.  So he had four more hours of playing Final Fantasy VII.  At least only three of them would have to be spent _with_ Mr. Green.

It turned out that it would only be one and a half hours, but that short time might be pretty bad if Mr. Green’s mood was any indication when he came back from his meeting.  He was scowling and looking even sourer than he had all morning.  Had the meeting not gone well?  Should he ask?  Should he stay still and quiet and hope that he didn’t notice him in the corner?  Mr. Green slammed a file down on his desk.  Chris assumed the latter would be smarter.

“Derek.” A gravelly voice rumbled out of the large, balding man walking through Mr. Green’s office door.  “You could have told me you were going to be gone all day.”

“I wasn’t, Peter,” Mr. Green answered confronting the man.  He was probably half a foot taller than the slightly oily man who was trying to abuse his power a little.    “And I did.  I told you Mr. West asked me to sit in on the merger meeting.  I can’t help that it ran so long.”

“Well, don’t expect to use that as any excuse to not finish your project.  Your deadline was today and it needs to be done today.”

“I understand.  I’ll be sure that it gets done.”

The man sort of huffed and then glanced over at Chris.  He seemed a little surprised, like he hadn’t seen him sitting there.  He looked back at Mr. Green.

“Don’t think you can leave early just because you have a student.  I want the details of that settlement completed and sent out by the end of the day.  And you might as well start the non-competition agreement since that will be next.”

“I understand, Peter,” Mr. Green said, taking a step forward and to the side to put a hand to the knob of his office door.  “I’ll start working on it immediately.”

The man looked like he wanted to say more, but wisely decided to shut-up and leave.  Mr. Green shut the door after him and turned away with an angry look on his face.

“I’ll be sure to get right on that as soon I’m finished deseeding the cotton,” he muttered.

Chris raised his eyebrows.  Sure the guy had been a jerk, but he hadn’t been particularly racist about it.  At least, Chris didn’t think so.  Then again, Mr. West had seemed awfully nice, but Mr. Green had grumbled about him too.  It was possible both of them, or even only the fat man had insulted Mr. Green that way in the past—but better money was on Mr. Green being the one who was racist.  Chris watched the man flop into his chair and violently jiggle his mouse to wake up the computer.  Chris put his game up.  Seeing Mr. Green getting bossed around by such a weaselly little man somehow made him less scary.  Chris got up and walked over to Mr. Green’s desk.  He stood close to his chair and then leaned back on the desk with his fingers laced in his lap.  Mr. Green looked up and seemed a little surprised to see him there.

“You really don’t like me just because I’m white, don’t you?” he asked bravely.  Or stupidly.  Either one.

Mr. Green’s eyes were trained on his face pretty intently.  After a tense moment of silence the man’s lip curled up in displeasure on one side.

“Chris.  I don’t like you because you’re screwing my daughter.”

 _Fair enough_ , Chris thought.  He also noticed how Mr. Green hadn’t denied in the least that he didn’t like him.

“But,” Chris wouldn’t let it go, “you didn’t like me long before Karen and I started sleeping together.  You almost literally chased me out of the house the day you met me.”

Mr. Green half-smiled as he fondly recalled the memory.  Then he frowned at Chris again.  “It didn’t matter.  You were a _boy_.  Never mind your race.  And as it turns out, I was right to be suspicious of you.”

Chris tried not to smile.  “But it wasn’t just that.  It seems to me that you kind of feel the same way about white people that the rest of your family does.  Minus Karen and on odd Tuesdays, your wife.”

Mr. Green snorted as he sat back in his chair.  Chris suspected it was a cover for a laugh.

“Okay,” the man said, “so maybe I have a chip on my shoulder.  Maybe my whole family does and you didn’t deserve that kind of scrutiny at dinner.  Though you did.  But we get that way for a reason.  When you’re always looked down on.  When nothing much is ever expected of you.  When you get passed over for promotions.  When you get paid less.  When white women cross the street to walk on the other sidewalk when they see you coming toward them.  Even when you’re wearing a suit and walking a damn Bichon.”  Mr. Green made deliberate, hard eye contact.  “I know what prejudice is, son.  Better than you ever will or could understand.  So, yeah, I guess I am a little prejudiced myself.  But I’m not sorry about it.”

Chris ran his tongue around his mouth as he took in Mr. Green’s words.  It was true.  He’d never really be able to understand what it was like to be denied things because he was white.  Not as long as he lived in America.  But that didn’t mean it was right to take the low road and hate right back.

“Well,” Chris said, “you don’t have to be sorry for it.  And you don’t even have to stop.  But, you better learn to hide it better.”

Mr. Green looked amused by him.  “And why exactly is that, Christopher?”

Chris smiled a tish viciously at him.  “You do realize that even if it’s not me, you _will_ have a white son-in-law one day.”

Anger flashed over Mr. Green’s face.  And then it sort of crumbled into despair.  He dropped his head.  “I know,” he moaned.

Chris patted his shoulder.  “There, there.”

After their brief moment of semi-bonding, Mr. Green went back to work and Chris went back to his game.  He didn’t notice the time until ten after five.  He stood up and packed his bag.  Mr. Green paid him no heed as he walked toward the door.  Chris turned back before he turned the knob.  Mr. Green looked like he was really busy; he didn’t want to bother him.

“What is it?” Mr. Green asked without looking at him.

“What are you going to tell Karen today was like?”

“I’m going to tell her that she was right and you’re not so bad after all.”

Chris laughed softly.  “You’re a good father for lying to your daughter.”

“I won’t lie to her.”

Chris blinked.  Well.  How about that.

“Thanks for letting me come, Mr. Green.  I really learned something today.”

Mr. Green finally looked at him.  “What on earth did you learn here today?”

“That I do _not_ want to be a corporate lawyer when I grow up.”

Mr. Green let out a small scoff.  Again, probably a cover for a laugh.  “I assume you have a way home?”

“Yeah.  I’m meeting my friends and then we’re probably going to get some dinner.  We’ll just take the metro home.  Like usual.”

Mr. Green didn’t respond and started working again.  Chris supposed that was his goodbye.  He left the office and headed for the elevators.  Hopefully this would be the last time he was ever in K&K Consulting.  No offense to the company.  He was sure it was successful and probably managed very well…but God was its business boring.

The lobby was much tamer in the evening than it had been in the morning.  He spotted Julian and Scott sitting on a couch underneath the vaulted glass ceiling.  They weren’t talking, but had their heads laying on the back of the couch.  Chris sat beside Scott and looked up.  The sun was refracting off the angular cuts of the glass windows and scattering rainbows all across the ceiling.  It was quite pretty.

“What up?” Scott asked, not looking away from the ceiling.

“Nothing.  I just realized today that I’m never going to marry Karen, so why did I bother to go through all this crap with her dad?”

Scott snorted.  “And people call me a masochist.”

Chris flopped out an arm to hit him.  “Shut-up.”

“Anything else happen?”

“Well.  If I can afford it—I think I’m going to seriously consider going to Northwestern University.”

“But that’s so far away.”

“Yeah.”

“Hmph.  Any other epiphanies?”

“Well.  Apparently it’s impossible for anybody to hate me.”

Now it was Scott’s turn to flop out an arm in disgust.  “Shut-up.”

Chris smiled.  He didn’t force Scott to move his hand off his leg.  Had he finally given in to their demands for physical affection?  Nah.  He was just tired.  That was all.

 

Scott

 

The already massive amount of dread and worry in his stomach was increasing exponentially as Scott watched his traitorous father and friend run away from him.  He stayed focused on them as they made their way through the crowded lobby until they were hidden by the closing elevator doors.  He turned slowly back toward Mr. Bixby.  As he did so, he felt a drying sensation on his cheek from where Julian had kissed him.  Which reminded him—made him realize—that Julian had kissed him on the cheek.  Had Mr. Bixby seen that?  Possibly more problematic, had his father?

Scott stood as straight as he could with his arms at his sides, trying to appear perfectly at ease.  He raised his eyes to look at Mr. Bixby and gave a little smile.  The man was looking him over, so Scott took the opportunity to do the same.  He was about the same height as his father, but with a much more “dad- like” build.  He wasn’t overweight anywhere nor did he have a pooch of love handles or a beer belly.  He seemed quite fit—but in a way that indicated he was doing it for his own health and not for the benefit of any younger women that might be sleeping with him.  Scott wasn’t sure why he felt he could see that distinction—maybe he was just hoping to see it.  He had an attractive face with strong features.  Scott didn’t see much of Antoinette in him.  Except he had blue eyes similar to hers and blond hair about two shades darker.  Scott started taking note of the man as a whole again when he noticed that Mr. Bixby was looking at him with a confused expression.

Scott started curling his fingers a little bit, but otherwise tried to remain fidget-less.  “W-what?” he asked, too nervous to worry about being polite.

The man sighed in consternation.  “You look like you should be worse than Jake.  But for some reason I have this compulsion to ruffle your hair and give you a cookie.”

Scott glanced away for a second and then back again.  “Please refrain.”

“Don’t worry.  I will.”

The man’s expression didn’t change.  In fact, it seemed he was becoming even more puzzled by the second.

“W-what?” Scott asked again.  Did he look weird today or something?

“It’s just—okay.  Antoinette dated Jake for two and a half years and never wanted me anywhere near him.  She’s been dating you for two and a half _weeks_ and she wants us to bond?”

Scott let out a laugh.  Or some noise that sounded vaguely like a laugh.  “I’m as mystified as you are.”

“Really?” the man asked skeptically.

“Uh.  Yeah.”

Mr. Bixby finally cracked a smile.  “You know, I believe you are.”  He reached out a hand and ruffled Scott’s hair, and then suddenly jerked it back.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean to do that.”

Scott shrugged.  “Honestly, worse things have been done to me.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Mr. Bixby looked him over a moment and then gave himself a little shake.  “Okay.  Let’s go to work.”

“I thought we were at work,” Scott said, genuinely confused.  Did he work in a different building?

“No, I just meant—”  Mr. Bixby shook his head and started walking toward the elevators.  “This way.”

Scott followed after his girlfriend’s father—wow.  _His girlfriend’s father_.  He wondered who was having the worse experience: him or Chris.  Definitely Chris.  They squeezed onto the elevator and Scott looked around, feeling a little excited.  All these people were in business suits and looking like they had important things to do.  And they were getting paid to do it rather than given some stupid letter on a report card.  On the 20 th floor, everyone remaining on the elevator got off and Scott followed.  He was impressed by the size and architecture and style of the building.  It wasn’t just some monotonous, monochrome monstrosity meant to break its occupants’ wills.  People might actually be happy to work here.  He followed someone around a corner and felt a hand tug on his wrist.  He looked over his shoulder and saw Mr. Bixby pointing in the opposite direction.

“This way,” he said.

Scott turned around and followed.  There were interesting people to see here as well.  Everyone looked super busy and excited.  Were they just happy to be at work or was something going on today?  They passed by a row of offices, and he saw his father’s name on one of the doors.  He didn’t see him or Julian inside the little waiting room.  Had they already gone in the main office?  He saw his father’s secretary sitting at her desk.  He’d never met her in person before, but he’d talked to her on the phone a couple times when she’d been trying to reach his dad for something work related.  At least, he’d always assumed it had been work related.  It could have been a booty call.  Though he doubted that.  Scott didn’t want to be mean, but the woman didn’t look pretty enough to tempt his father.  Not if he was capable of getting women like Kristen.

“This way,” Mr. Bixby called out to him as he walked past the man’s office.

Scott backtracked and followed Mr. Bixby into his own personal waiting area where he had a personal secretary as well.  Scott blinked.  A smokin’ hot redheaded secretary.  Man.  No wonder he was cheating.  This chick was _fine_ , and he could only see her top half.  Mr. Bixby stopped to introduce them.

“Deirdre, this is Scott Ramsey.  He’ll be shadowing me today.”

“Hello, Scott,” she said in a voice as sweet and sultry as a fallen angel’s.

“Scott, this is Deirdre, my assistant.”

“Hi,” Scott said, smiling.  “It’s funny.  I didn’t know there were real-life people named that.”

Deirdre smiled back, clearly amused by him.  Mr. Bixby tugged on his collar.

“This way,” he said, not sounding quite as amused.

Scott followed him into the main office and was impressed at its size.  It wasn’t a corner, but it had windows and a lot of natural light from the indirect sunlight bouncing off the building across the street.  There was a tall plant in the corner.  It looked real.  He wondered who kept it alive, Mr. Bixby or the secretary.  Possibly the night janitors.  Scott watched Mr. Bixby take off his suit jacket and was vaguely aware that he was talking, but he looked out the little window to the side of the door that revealed Deirdre at her desk.  She stood up and walked to a filing cabinet.  Her legs were almost as nice as Julian’s psychotic shrink’s.  Which meant she was really hot.  Really, _really_ hot.  But even still…how could Mr. Bixby cheat on his wife and _six_ children?  Didn’t they mean anything to him?  Well, it hadn’t meant a whole lot to his father, but that was a bad example.  His father was a little messed up.  Mr. Bixby seemed completely nice and normal—and a little vanilla.  Deirdre definitely had an exotic, slightly kinky air about her.  It would be a weird match.  So…maybe it wasn’t really happening.  Antoinette could be wrong.  That’s why she’d sent him here: to find hard proof, which meant she didn’t have any herself.  So, if he couldn’t find any solid proof, maybe that would be proof that he _wasn’t_ cheating.

“Scott?”

Scott looked at Mr. Bixby.  He was sitting at his desk with his arms on it and his fingers laced together.  He had an expression on his face like he already knew the answer to his next question.

“Have you heard a single word that I’ve said?”

“Yes?”

“Is that a question?”

“Yes?”

Mr. Bixby blinked a couple times.  And then he stood up.  “I’m going to go get some coffee.  Would you like something?”

“Oh, no thank you.  I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Bixby started to leave the office.

“Are you going yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that your secretary’s job?”

Mr. Bixby smiled at him.  “She’s not that kind of secretary.”

 _What did_ that _mean?_ Scott thought as the man left him alone.  Then Scott realized now was a good chance to do some snooping.  Where should he start?  He looked at the computer.  E-mail!  Scott hurried behind the desk and sat down.  Outlook Explorer was already open and minimized in the taskbar.  Scott pulled it up.  This would be a perfect place to start.  His wife and children would never be able to trace conversations in his work e-mail.  Scott’s jaw dropped as he scrolled through Mr. Bixby’s inbox.  There were literally hundreds of messages, about a quarter of which were from Deirdre.  He clicked on and glanced at a couple.  It seemed to be mostly reminders about meetings and appointments or information regarding data of some kind.  He’d never be able to look through them all.  Maybe there was a code?  He scrolled through the subjects.  Was there anything that stood out or was repeated several times?  No, not really.  Not unless “reminder” was a suspicious word.

“What are you doing?”

Scott started and looked up.  Mr. Bixby had returned with a cup of coffee in one hand and a file in the other.  He minimized the window again.  “Just checking e-mail,” he said, completely proud of the fact that he’d been so clever he hadn’t even had to lie.

“Oh.  That’s fine.  But.  I do have a lot of confidential financial information in there.  I probably shouldn’t let you use it without supervision.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.  And I didn’t mean like, supervision for a child.  Just.  So that I can make sure you don’t accidentally see something you shouldn’t.”

Scott laughed.  “Like what?  Your por—”  He cut off abruptly, appalled at himself.  What had he almost asked his girlfriend’s father?

“Hmm?” the man asked, looking up from the file in his hand.

Scott smiled and shook his head.  Mr. Bixby walked around the desk and Scott popped out of his chair.  Mr. Bixby pointed to a chair in a corner.

“Bring that over here and I’ll show you a little bit of what I do.”

“Okay.”  Scott obediently brought the chair over and put the chair next to Mr. Bixby’s.  Then he pulled it away some.  Then he worried if he would take that personally.  He scooted it back.  But now was it too close?  Would he be crowding him?  Scott pulled the chair back a little.  Mr. Bixby put a hand on the chair and looked at Scott.

“Have a seat, son.”

Scott smiled uneasily and sat down.  This man was going to hate him by the end of the day.  Either that or after he got home that evening he was going to demand that Antoinette break up with the mentally unstable nutjob.  Mr. Bixby started pulling up some Excel spreadsheets.

“So, I’m a financial analyst.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Which really just means that I provide analysis and guidance to businesses regarding making investment decisions.  For example, whether or not a company should absorb some of its smaller competitors or if it should be more conservative in its spending during a certain quarter.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“There are two types of investors: those on the ‘buy side’ and those on the ‘sell side.’  I’m one of the ‘buy side’ advisors.  So, I work with companies that have a lot of money to invest.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So…how did you and Antoinette meet?”

“Mm-hmm—what?”

Scott looked away from the computer.  Mr. Bixby technically hadn’t been showing him anything on the screen, but that had felt safer than staring at the man.  He now had to look at his girlfriend’s father.  And he realized that he was trapped in a small room with the man with the only witness looking like she was terribly busy talking to someone on the phone and not looking in their direction at all.

“I’m sorry.  You said you’re on the ‘buy side?’  Right?”

“That’s right.  I buy things.  So.  You and Antoinette…?”

“Um.  We met at school.”

Mr. Bixby tried to keep his eyes from rolling.  “I know that, son.  But, it’s not your first year at Calverton, is it?”

“Oh, no.  I’ve been there since second grade.”  That question was easy.  He wanted more like that one.

“And Antoinette started there in ninth grade.  So, when and how did you two meet?”

“Um.  Well.  Do you know who Will Harder is?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the name.”

Scott smiled.  “It seems like everyone has.  Anyway.  He plays soccer.  So, I’ve been to some of his games.  And I’ve seen Antoinette at them.  And I mean, I see her in the halls.  I mean.”  Scott swallowed a little nervously.  “Everyone knows who Antoinette Bixby is, you know?  She’s…really popular.”

“I see.  So.  How does she know _you_?”

Scott couldn’t keep the smile off his face.  “Apparently she’s had a crush on me since ninth grade.”

“Oh, really?”  Scott stopped smiling at the arch in Mr. Bixby’s eyebrow.  “Then why did she date Jake for two years?”

“Well…” Scott scratched behind one ear.  “Apparently…I never noticed her.”

“How could you not?” Mr. Bixby asked with a little irritation.  “Every other horndog in the world has,” he said grumpily.

Scott brought a hand to his mouth to cover his smile.  Protective fathers were so cute.  Or was it just Mr. Bixby?  Scott didn’t ever recall finding Mr. Norwood particularly cute.  Mr. Bixby was still focused on him.  He must want an actual explanation.

“Well.  I’ve been told that I have this Scott World.”  Scott illustrated by putting his hands up to his face like blinders.  “And that I don’t really notice anything outside of it.  She was outside of it.”

“Unh-hunh.  So.  How did she get in it?”

“Uh…”  How was he supposed to answer this?  He didn’t want to lie.  But the way they met wasn’t the most endearing story for either him or Antoinette.  But, Mr. Bixby seemed more focused on when they started dating.  So, if he went by that…  “I guess she finally decided to act on her feelings.  She dumped Jake and asked me out.”

“And you said yes?”

“Yep.”

“To someone, who according to you, was virtually a stranger?”

“Well.”  Scott shrugged apologetically.  “I guess I’m just a horndog too.”

Mr. Bixby leaned closer to Scott.  “Are you sleeping with my daughter?”

Scott swallowed.  “Are you sure you really want to know the answer?”

Mr. Bixby dropped his head and groaned.  “You’re not supposed to be that honest.”

“Sorry.”

Mr. Bixby raised his head and looked at him.  He was looking perplexed again.  “Geez.  I still don’t hate you.”

Scott smiled brightly.  “Well, that’s good.  I totally don’t hate you either.”

Mr. Bixby stood up.  “I need drugs.”

“Drugs?”

“Aspirin or something.  I’ll be right back.”

Scott watched the man trudge out of his office.  Had he been wrong?  He thought things had been going well.  Well, as long as he was gone again, he could do some more snooping.  He opened some of the drawers on the desk.  He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was sure he’d know once he found it.  After a little rifling around, he realized he wasn’t going to find anything even remotely incriminating.  There were no notes, no pictures, no feminine gifts.  No card indicating that he was a member of the Cheating Husbands Guild.  What exactly was Antoinette expecting him to find?

“What are you doing?”

Scott slammed a drawer shut and got the tip of a finger caught in it.  He pulled his hand out and kept his pitiful whimper to himself as he shook the finger, trying to make the pain go away.

“I was, uh, just looking for some pictures of your family.”

Mr. Bixby walked closer.  “Like the ones _on_ my desk?” he asked, placing a hand on a gold frame next to his phone.

“Uh.  Yeah.”

Scott leaned forward and looked at it.  It was a fairly recent picture of the whole Bixby family.  Antoinette stood beside her father.  He smiled when he saw her happy face.  He’d never really seen the rest of her family before.  Her mother was a pretty blonde, very similar to Antoinette in facial features and body type.  Her younger siblings were a gaggle of blonde, blue-eyed troublemakers.  That much was evident from the picture.  There were no shy introverts in this family.  He looked at the picture sharing the double frame.  It was of just the children.  This one was a few years older.  And there was Antoinette with braces and glasses, looking a little chubby.  She still looked cute in Scott’s opinion.  Though he couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone like this at Calverton.  Had he really not noticed her at all?  He’d frickin’ talked to her in the lunch line before.  But then again, he’d also apparently talked to Will while he’d been making out with someone and never noticed her either.  He should probably get tested for… _something_.  There was one more picture on the desk.  It was a very young Mr. and Mrs. Bixby.  They held an adorable, pudgy three year old girl in their laps.  He immediately recognized that it was Antoinette.  She was the cutest baby he’d ever seen aside from his brothers.

“Oh, my gosh,” Scott murmured.  “Antoinette and I would have such cute kids.  Aah!”

Scott screamed as something grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.  He was now looking up at a very irate Mr. Bixby.

“What was that?” the man ground out.

“Ah.”  It was hard to talk because his throat was stretched back so far.  “It was a statement of fact, not intent.”

Scott was almost certain the man growled at him, but he released his hair.  The man eyed him as he circled the desk and sat in his chair.  Scott rubbed his head to soothe his aching roots.

“I have a big meeting to prepare for,” Mr. Bixby said.  “So, for now…just sit there.  And don’t touch anything.”

Scott sat.  For what he felt was a good long while before he started to fidget.  He tried to keep it to a minimum.  Or do it in a covert way.  But before long he was certain he was being a little twitchy.  And then his leg started bouncing.  He did it unconsciously.  When he became aware of it, he tried to stop it, but it would start up again on its own.  He kept trying not to be a pain, but the harder he tried, the tenser he felt.  The more his face itched for some reason.  The more his leg just couldn’t stay still.  Finally Mr. Bixby turned to him.

“Do you need to get up?” he asked.

“May I?”

Mr. Bixby waved a permissive hand and returned to his work.  Scott popped out of the chair.  Peripherally he could see the motion caught Mr. Bixby’s attention, but he was going to pretend like he didn’t notice.  He didn’t need to see Mr. Bixby giving him another funny look.  Scott started with the corner that had the tall floor plant.  He hadn’t the slightest idea what kind it might be.  He glanced discreetly over his shoulder.  Mr. Bixby wasn’t looking at him.  Scott reached out a hand and rubbed a leaf.  Well, it was real.  He followed the wall around and walked by a freestanding closet.  Then he looked at the diploma hanging on the wall.  Stanford University School of Business.  Not bad at all.  Scott didn’t see an undergraduate degree.  Maybe that one was at home.  Next to the diploma were several awards.  Most looked to be internal company awards, but there was one that was citywide and one that was statewide.  Maybe he’d get the nationwide next year.  Scott continued around to the next wall.  There was a framed picture of a poorly drawn pony.  The words “by Charlotte” were scrawled under it.  Charlotte.  Why did he not know the names of any of Antoinette’s siblings?  Did she know his?  Probably.  He whined and complained about the divorce enough that he was sure he’d mentioned them.  It was time he started really learning everything there was to know about her.  She was important to him; he ought to know what was important to her.

Next to the picture of the horse was the window that showed the outer office.  Scott stopped his tour and stared out the window.  It wasn’t the supermodel-esque secretary that caught his attention, but a tall, supermodel-esque man in a suit.  He was a good looking guy.  And he had a build that was different from both his father’s and Mr. Bixby’s.  His was the build of a bachelor playboy.  He looked rich too.  Bastard.  He probably had an awesome life.  Scott’s ill-feelings dissipated as quickly as they came.  Well, good for him.  Statistically speaking some people had to have great lives.

Scott was about to move on again when he noticed a change in Deirdre’s demeanor.  He recognized that smile and body language—she was flirting!  Maybe _she_ was the troublemaker.  Maybe _she_ was the one who kept hitting on poor innocent Mr. Bixby and Antoinette had merely interpreted what she’d seen incorrectly!  Scott needed to find out.  This might be proof of his innocence.  But he knew that if he kept standing in front of the window they’d notice him eventually.  The door to the office was cracked.  If he put his ear near it, he’d probably be able to hear what they were talking about.  But the opening was near the window.  Scott looked at Mr. Bixby.  He seemed engrossed with his work.  Scott dropped quickly to the floor and looked through the crack.  All he could see was the couch against the wall across from Deirdre’s desk.  He turned his head to put his ear near the opening.

There was a soft, seductive laugh.  It made Scott raise an eyebrow.

“Now, Mr. West, you _know_ I’m doing this for your own good.  If you go in there and ask Mr. Bixby one more time if he’s ready for today’s meeting…I’m afraid for your personal well-being.  Wouldn’t want you to come to any… _bodily_ harm.”

“I see.  And I suppose that by keeping me away from him and out here with you…there’s no ulterior motive there?”

Scott nodded, impressed.  He had a good sexy, flirty voice too.

“None whatsoever.  Why, I’m appalled, Mr. West.  Simply appalled.”

Scott heard the swish of pantyhose as she crossed her legs.  She must be sitting on the desk and showing off her best assets to “Mr. West.”  The little saucy wench.  Doing such things in front of Mr. Bixby!  He could look up and out the window at any moment.  Was she not worried about getting caught?  Did she want to get caught to make Mr. Bixby jealous enough to stay with her?  Did she not care if he saw her because there was nothing between them?  That made the most sense.  Yes.  Another point in Mr. Bixby’s favor.

“Son?”

Scott looked up.  Mr. Bixby was standing about three feet away with his hands on his waist.  There was that confused look on his face again.

“What are you doing?”

“Um.”  Scott sat back on his heels.  “I lost a contact?”

“Again, is that a question?”

“Yes?”

There was a little knock at the door and it opened as someone stepped in saying, “Pardon the intrusion, Jim, but I—”

Scott turned at the movement and the voice.  He bumped into the person coming in the door.  He pulled back a little and took in his view.  He’d just face-planted into some guy’s crotch.  All the blood rushed to his head.  He bolted to his feet, causing the sudden rush of blood to drop in the opposite direction.  His vision swam.  Before he realized he needed to try to catch himself because he was falling, someone else did it for him.  He still felt dizzy, and could only be thankful when someone picked him up under the knees so that his head went to a position more in synch with gravity.  His head continued to clear as he was placed on the couch in the waiting room.  This sudden clarity along with someone’s comment of, “You’re lighter than you look,” made him acutely aware that he’d just been princess carried across the room.  His embarrassment came back twice as hard and he started to sit up.  A hand slapped onto his forehead and made him stay down.

“Why don’t you stay lying down for a minute, okay?”

Scott closed his eyes and nodded.  He opened them again and looked up at “Mr. West.”  The man’s hand was still on his forehead, as if to make sure he’d really stay down.  Then his eyes softened and he slid his hand back through Scott’s hair.  Scott normally hated to be petted by anyone other than Antoinette, but this wasn’t so bad.  Then the man suddenly jerked his hand away and stepped back a couple of paces.  He looked at his hand like it was a wild creature.

“Ah-ha!” Mr. Bixby jumped forward.  “So it’s not just me!  He has this—thing about him.  It makes you want to coddle him.”

Mr. West smiled.  “Like a kitten.”

Mr. West and Mr. Bixby looked down at him.  Deirdre appeared on Mr. West’s other side and looked down at him too.

“No,” she said.  “More like a puppy.”

“That’s it, that’s it,” the two men agreed.

Scott closed his eyes.  “Oh, God,” he moaned softly.  He turned his back to them and kept rolling until he got onto his stomach.  He mashed his face into the cushions and covered the back of his head with his hands.  It got a little darker because his arms were now enclosing his face.  That was close enough to hiding.

“So, based on the Calverton uniform, this must be one of our shadowers.”

“Yes,” Mr. Bixby said dryly.  “It’s my daughter’s boyfriend.”

“Really?” Deirdre asked.  “That’s so sweet.”

“Yeah.  Real sweet.”

“You know,” Mr. West said, “it could be a lot worse.”

“I know,” the man grumped.

“Well, anyway.  I’m here because I was doing a last minute check on some of the figures and—”

“It’s all set, Ken,” Mr. Bixby cut him off.

“But—”

“Ken.  Everything is taken care of.  I promise.  We can discuss it with everyone else at the meeting.”

“Oh.  Okay.  Thank you, Jim.”

“Sure thing.  Now go on.”

“I told you,” Deirdre admonished Mr. West playfully.

The man cleared his throat.  Then based on the swift exit of feet, he seemed to think he’d dug himself into enough of a hole and decided to leave while he still had some dignity left.  Unlike Scott.  Who had none.

“Hey, Scott?” Mr. Bixby asked gently.  “A-are you ready to continue learning about what it is I do?”

Scott shook his head.

“You want to stay there for a while?”

Scott nodded.

“Okay.”

Scott lost track of time, but he didn’t fall asleep.  And it didn’t pass quickly.  He was aware of every second that he stared at the dark cushion of the couch.  He just wasn’t sure how many seconds that was before Mr. Bixby came back out to the waiting area.

“Um, Scott?  You can go to lunch now.  It’s on the fourth floor in the big conference room.”

Scott slid off the couch and started to leave.

“Oh, I’ll probably be in a meeting when you get back, but feel free to come back into my office.  Okay?”

Scott turned around and looked at Mr. Bixby.  He looked perfectly normal.  Then Scott noticed just the slightest twitch on one cheek.  He was probably biting the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling or laughing.  Scott internalized his sigh.  Well, he supposed it was better for his girlfriend’s father to think he was funny than to just flat out hate his guts.  He smiled at Mr. Bixby.

“Thanks.  I guess I’ll see you later.”

As he turned back toward the door he saw Deirdre.  She wasn’t trying to hide her smile.  She tapped her pen against her lips and waggled her fingers at him as he left.  Fantastic.  He was chronically spastic.  And maybe he ought to see a doctor about his fainting spells.  Though describing either set of circumstances to anyone would be way too embarrassing.

When Scott got down to the conference room he realized Mr. Bixby had been a little late in giving him the message.  He was the last one there and got stuck with a vegetarian sandwich.  But, it was from Kelly’s and they had this “secret recipe” sauce that they used that could make even vegetarian sandwiches taste awesome.  It did make the thing slippery as heck though and he was forced to eat his lunch slower than usual.  But that was fine; had had plenty of conversation to listen to since Chris and Julian were determined to bring down the happy mood of them all being together simply because they were bored.  Or scared witless in Chris’ case.  At least Julian hadn’t done anything to his father to relieve his boredom…yet.  He shook his head in amusement.  Man.  If they wanted to hear about a bad day…

“Okay, you guys, seriously.  My day has _so_ been worse.”

“How so?”

Scott looked up from his sandwich and saw all three of his friends focused intently on him.  Whoops.  He didn’t want to have to explain why his day was so bad.  That was way too embarrassing even for _them_ to know.  Though even before the crotch-ing, fainting, and carrying, his day hadn’t been all that great.

“Well.  I really want Antoinette’s dad to like me.  But she asked me to spy on him and his secretary.  And I keep getting busted.  Plus,” he said, waving a sweet potato fry around, “I practically told him I was sleeping with his daughter.”

“You what?!” his three friends shouted.

The other Calverton students barely even glanced at them.  After Julian had molested his head, nothing further could be too surprising.

“Good lord,” Will murmured, shaking his head.

“I know, right?” Scott agreed.  “I don’t know what to do.  I actually like Mr. Bixby.  He’s been surprisingly nice.  And patient.  _I_ don’t want to know if he’s cheating.  But, I feel like Antoinette should know the truth.”

“Why?” Will asked.  “It’s not really her business.”

“Sorry, Will, but I’m kind of in a position to know that it kind of is her business.”

“Oh, right.  Sorry.”

Scott shrugged.  “Eh.”

“So, talk to the secretary,” Julian said.

“What?”

“See if you can’t get anything out of her.  She might not mind confessing to something.”

“No,” Chris said firmly.  “Just stay out of it.  You’re too much of a goober to attempt something like that.”

“So?  He needs to find out for Antoinette.  Besides, he won’t be snooping.  Just talking.  What harm is there in that?”

“Dude, you _know_ he would mess it up somehow.  He’ll only make it worse.  It may be Antoinette’s business, but it’s _her_ business.  Not his.  He needs to stay out of it.”

“You’re such a wuss,” Julian scoffed at Chris.

“I am not!  But we’re here at someone else’s _job_.  This is not the place.”

“Oh, my God,” Julian rolled his eyes.

“Hey, hey!” Scott shouted to get their attention.  They shook their heads at each other and made faces, but didn’t say anything else.  “You guys are so not helping.  Will?  Do you have an opinion?”

Will played with the cap to his water bottle.  “Is she hot?”

“Who?”

“The secretary.”

“Uh, yeah, actually.”

“Then I would talk to her.”  Will grinned.

“Ugh.  You’re even more useless than those two.”

Will just kept smiling and the other two sniggered.  Bunch of punks.

Lunch ended all too soon and they were all dragging their feet back to their respective disasters. Well, Will didn’t seem too put off about going back, but chilling with the CEO probably was cool.  They were probably smoking cigars and getting lap dances from strippers.  Or something equally sordid.  After dropping Chris off, Scott decided to follow Julian to pay a visit to his father.  He’d never officially been in his office before.  Joanna had gotten to come once on a “take your daughter to work” day, but he’d only heard tales of the place.

By the time they arrived his dad had already left for the meeting.  That was a little sad.  He’d psyched himself up to see his dad and he wasn’t there.

“So, I guess Mr. Bixby will be gone too,” Scott said.

“Then now’s your chance,” Julian said, putting a hand on his shoulder.  “With him gone, you can talk to the secretary all you want.  And he’ll never even know.  And if he does come back while you’re talking to her, you’ll be able to see him coming.  So, he won’t know _what_ you’re talking about.  It would make sense for you to talk to her while he’s gone.  I mean, you’re gonna be bored, right?  I’m gonna try to engage your dad’s secretary.  Either that or go find that hot blonde,” he said, looking around the floor.

“But, what if Chris is right and I do something stupid?”

“I’m sure you will, but you’re endearing enough that she won’t think anything of it.  I mean, unless you insult her somehow I doubt she’ll even mention it to Mr. Bixby.  Come on, Scott.  You snuck around with Antoinette for, like, six months.  Didn’t you learn anything about being sly?”

Scott shrugged.  “Not really.”

Julian sighed.  “Well.  It’s your decision to make.  But if you do decide to give it a shot…just try not to outright accuse her of anything, you know?  That probably won’t sit too well.”

Scott nodded.  “Got it.  No accusations.  No problem.”

“Atta boy.  Now go get her.”

Julian ruffled his hair.  Scott let him.  It was just way too much of an effort to defy him.  Julian smiled at him.

“You’re giving in way too soon, Scotty.”

“Am I?”

“Yep.  I might start taking other liberties.”

“Like what?”

Julian opened his mouth and started to lean forward, but then he stopped.

“It’s just too easy,” he sighed.  “There’s no sport in it.”

“Well.  Sor- _ry_.”

Julian looked him over with a little smile.  “Sport or no, it’s still fun.”

Julian grabbed his face and leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.  Scott wasn’t as clueless as he let the others believe.  Sometimes.  So, he was able to turn just enough to get it on the cheek.

Julian was pouting as he pulled back.  “Don’t be like that.”

“No.  Don’t _you_ be like _that_.”

“Okay, okay.  Some other time.”

He went for the hair again, but Scott ducked out of his way.

“You just lost privileges for that little infraction.”

“Aww!  Come onnn!”

“Nope!”

Scott walked away from him.  What was his deal with suddenly molesting boys?  Boys other than Will anyway.  Had Julian finally given in to all the rumors and speculation and just turned bi?  Scott wouldn’t put it past Julian to try it just out of curiosity.

When he arrived at Mr. Bixby’s office, he was gone and Deirdre was doing some online shopping.  Now would be a good time to question—no, _talk_ with her.  But, he had to be slick about it.  So, he waved hello and went into Mr. Bixby’s office.  He figured he’d wait a good long while to make it seem like he was desperately bored and wanted to talk to anybody.  After half an hour, he realized he had no idea how long the meeting was going to last and Mr. Bixby, in theory, could be back at any moment.  Then he spent several minutes debating whether he should abort the plan because what if Mr. Bixby did come back?  Well, so what?  He’d be talking to Deirdre.  No big deal.  Quite possibly if he came back in two minutes, they would still be on innocent subjects anyway.  Scott steeled his nerves.  He could do this.  All he had to do was summon Chris’ calmness, Julian’s boldness, and Will’s playboy skills.  He took in a deep breath, feeling braver now that he had his friends with him.  He stepped outside the office.

“Hey there, Scott.”

Scott started and shrank back.  The secretary was talking to him.

“Oh, sorry,” she said.  I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, it’s okay.  It’s me.  I’m a bit of a spaz.”

“Well.  I think that’s cute.  So, are you bored?”

“Totally.”

“Come have a seat out here and talk with me then.”

Scott walked over to the couch feeling pretty pleased with himself.  He had totally nailed getting the secretary to talk him without any suspicions.  He sat down and put his hands on his knees.  He looked at Deirdre where she sat behind her desk.  She wore a grey pinstripe skirt suit and had her straight red hair pulled back into an intricately knotted bun.  Her eyes were emphasized by smoky eye shadow and long, dark lashes.  Her lips were a shade of red close to her hair color.  She looked magnificently flawless.  He wondered that if he wasn’t dating Antoinette if he’d be having more interesting thoughts about her.  Well, more interesting than they already were.  He wasn’t entirely sure if he could blame Mr. Bixby for this if it was true.  Deirdre looked fun.  She was also watching him silently with an amused smile while she gently drummed her red fingernails on the desktop.  Was she waiting for him to do the talking?  Well, he could do that, right?  If nothing else, he did know how to talk.

“So,” he started.  “If you don’t get coffee for your boss, what is it that you do?”

She smiled, showing straight, white teeth.  “I maintain Mr. Bixby’s schedule and make his appointments.  And I make sure that he keeps to his schedule and makes all his appointments.  I help keep him organized.”

Scott nodded.  “I see.  And…do you like it?”

Deirdre laughed softly.  “Well.  Yeah, I do.  It’s not bad.  Usually the hours are reasonable.  And when they’re not I get paid overtime.  And the pay is decent.  Plus we have great benefits.  So, I’m happy.”

“Unh-hunh.”  _Benefits, eh?  What_ kind _of benefits?_ “Is Mr. Bixby hard to keep organized?”

Scott tried to keep the subject on Mr. Bixby, but somehow it wandered.  And before long they weren’t even talking about work anymore.  Scott got lost in the conversation.  He genuinely found people interesting.  He would make a good shrink.  A lot of time when people were big talkers they tended not to want to do any listening.  But Scott loved to listen almost as much as he liked to talk.  And Deirdre had all kinds of interesting stories to tell about her high school and college experiences.  And sorority parties.  He had no idea how much time had passed since they’d started yakking.  But a mention of her cheating jerk ex-boyfriend reminded him what his purpose in this was.  And now made him wonder if there really was anything going on at all.  If Deirdre had been cheated on, would she ever want to do that to somebody else?  Well, women were strange.  Finally, there was a slight lull in the conversation, and he made his move.

“So, I know you told me what it’s like to have your job.  But, what’s it like to work for Mr. Bixby specifically?  Is he a bad boss?  Does he forget secretary appreciation day?”

Deirdre laughed.  “Oh, no, no.  He’s a wonderful boss.  In fact, he gave me a hundred dollar gift certificate to Chez André for secretary appreciation day.”

“Really?  That’s a lot.”

Deirdre shrugged.  “Probably not to him.  I think he makes a lot of money.”

“Ah.  So, he gives you special treatment?”

“Well.  Not really.  Well.  Maybe.  He does have other interns and employees, but I’m the one who works with him the most.  So, maybe he does appreciate me more.”

“Hmm.”  Scott decided to go out on a limb.  He made certain his tone was playful as he asked, “Any sexual harassment?”

“What?” Deirdre laughed again.  “No way!  Of course not!”

“Oh, come on.  You’re gorgeous.  How could he not even do it by accident?”

Deirdre smiled saucily at him.  “You think I’m gorgeous?”

“You know, I hate it when gorgeous women ask that like they don’t already know.”

Deirdre pursed her lips together impertinently, but her eyes were shining with laughter.  She stood and walked around her desk.  Scott watched as the older, attractive woman made her way to the couch and sat beside him.  She crossed her legs toward him and leaned an arm on the back of the couch so that they were pretty close together.  She used a finger to twirl a tendril of hair at her temple.

“So.  If _you_ were my boss.  How would you sexually harass me?”

Ah-ha.  Now he could get somewhere.  Maybe he could draw out of her what was already happening with her current boss.

“What would you want me to do?”

“Well…I think I’d want more than just compliments.  I’d want jewelry.”

Scott looked her over.  The only jewelry she wore was a thin gold watch and diamond earrings.  So, there didn’t appear to be any special jewelry from Mr. Bixby.  Unless the earrings were from him.  Then again, the earrings could be fake for all he knew.

“Jewelry, eh?  So, you want more of a sugar daddy than an over attentive boss.”

She laughed and slapped his shoulder lightly.  “Not at all!”

“Mm-hmm.  So, say I buy you a ruby necklace, to match your hair.  Then what kind of attention would you want?”

Deirdre shook her head at him.  Then her features turned a little seductive.  She used the arm on the back of the couch to reach out and run a finger over the shell of his ear.

“I cannot believe you’re in high school.”

“Deirdre.”

They both started and turned toward the door.  Mr. Bixby had returned and he didn’t look particularly happy.  Deirdre leapt to her feet.

“Yes, sir?”

Mr. Bixby kept his eyes on Scott as he held out a notebook to his secretary.  “I need these files pulled ASAP.”

“Right away, Mr. Bixby,” Deirdre said and took the notebook.  She scurried away to hide behind her desk.

Mr. Bixby strode across the room to his office.  “Scott?  A word?”

“Um.  Sure.”

Scott got off the couch and followed Mr. Bixby into his office.  The man had waited with his hand on the doorknob and once Scott was inside he shut the door firmly.

“What were you doing?!” the man demanded harshly.

Scott felt his stomach drop.  He knew.  He knew he’d been investigating him.  What should he say?  Could he deny it?

“How dare you flirt with my secretary when you’re dating my daughter?!  I ought to disembowel you!”

Scott took a step back in alarm.  Mr. Bixby looked like he meant it.

“Wha?!  No!  I wasn’t flirting with her!”

“You know, I may be out of practice, but I know what flirting is when I see it.”

“Out of practice?” Scott scoffed.  “You are so _in_ practice!”

“What does that mean?!”

“ _You’re_ the one flirting with her!”

“That’s preposterous!”

“Antoinette knows!” Scott blurted out.

“What?” Mr. Bixby asked, seeming very confused.

Scott heaved a sigh.  It was halfway out now anyway.  Maybe the direct approach was best.  “Antoinette knows you’re cheating on your wife.”

Mr. Bixby stared at him in shocked silence for several long seconds.  Then he took a step forward with dark anger on his face.

“I am _not_ cheating on my wife.”

Scott crossed his arms and wasn’t impressed with that answer.  The fact that he got so angry about it made him seem a little overly defensive.  Mr. Bixby sensed his lack of belief.

“She is my high school sweetheart.  I’ve never even been with another woman in my entire life.”

Scott relaxed his stance somewhat.  That sounded pretty serious.  Did he mean it?  Mr. Bixby’s anger was looking a little more like it was directed at Scott personally and not due to the fact that he was getting caught in the act.

“I cannot believe you put those ideas into Antoinette’s head.  Just because _your_ father—”

Mr. Bixby cut off abruptly, a look of mild horror on his face at what he’d said—almost said.  Scott didn’t know why he was surprised.  He shouldn’t be.  After his mother moved out of the house, his father hadn’t been secretive regarding Kristen at all.  In fact, he’d flaunted her—taken her to the office Christmas party.  And then Scott had to acknowledge that quite possibly the people his father worked with knew about the affair before he and his family did.

“Scott,” Mr. Bixby said softly.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean—”

“Antoinette told me she thought that,” Scott said, changing the subject.

“What?”

“Antoinette is the one who told me that she thought you were having an affair.  That she’d started kind of…investigating you, I guess.  She said that you smelled like different soap when you came home from work.”

“I—I go to the gym after work a lot of nights.  I shower at the gym using whatever that stuff is they have hanging on the shower wall.”

“Oh.  Well.  She also said that your secretary is always calling you.  She didn’t believe it was all work related.”

“Ah, well.”  Mr. Bixby ran a hand through his hair.  “I guess I don’t really realize how much she does call me.  But, she does keep track of all my appointments.”  He smiled a little sheepishly.  “Even my dentist and hair appointments.  If I have one on Monday, she will call on Sunday to remind me.  It just never really occurred to me that that was off work hours for her.  I guess I do take advantage of her willingness to baby me.  But…it’s always about my schedule if not work.”

“But she saw you.  That time you and your secretary went to a hotel together.”

“When was this?  Last January?  A year ago?”

“I don’t know.  She didn’t say when.”

“Well.  There was a conference at the Hilton downtown.  Deirdre went with me to take notes.  I even have a tote bag from the conference.  We were there all day talking to other businessmen and financial analysts.  My boss went with us.  Your father and _his_ secretary went with us.”

“Oh.”

Scott looked at his toes.  He was feeling a little like a dung beetle.  Or maybe more like what the dung beetle’s diet consisted of.  Mr. Bixby no longer seemed angry with him.  Just confused, and a little hurt.

“Why did she even start spying on me in the first place?”

Scott didn’t know if that was rhetorical or not, but he felt the need to answer.

“I’m not sure what sparked her suspicions, but she definitely misunderstood a few things.  Maybe you should sit down and talk with her about it.  Her belief that you’re…doing this has her really upset.”

“I guess so.  Wow.  I mean.  This would explain some of her behavior lately.”

Scott gnawed on his lower lip.  He was glad Mr. Bixby didn’t seem directly angry at him anymore, but he didn’t want the man to hate him.  He wanted him to be happy that he was with Antoinette, and he didn’t want to have to give her up.  But he would never make her choose between him and her family.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Scott said.  “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t trying to—” he sighed.  “I was just trying to help her.”

Mr. Bixby gave him a small smile and leaned against his desk.  “Do what you were told you mean.”

Scott shrugged.

Mr. Bixby’s amused smile stayed in place.  “Don’t worry.  I completely understand.  Her mother’s the same way.”

“Really?” Scott brightened.  He and Mr. Bixby really were bonding.  Then something occurred to him.  “And hey!  You and your wife have been together since high school.”

Mr. Bixby bobbed his head in avowal.  Then he suddenly went rigid.  “Dear, God,” the man said as he stared dreadfully at Scott.  “I’m going to be related to David Ramsey.”


	25. Chapter 25

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Chris

 

Chris shut the locker door and spun the dial on the lock.  Then he glanced at his watch as he leaned back against the door.  There was about fifteen minutes until class started.  Hopefully tardiness wouldn’t ruin his big plans.  Well.  Medium-sized plans.

“Hello, Chris!”

Chris looked to his left and saw a short-ish boy with black framed glasses and a bad haircut walking toward him.  His name was Joe Hanley and he was in the Computer Club.  Chris was surprised he recognized him.  It had been a while since he’d been to club.  Which was why Chris suspected the slightly reclusive freshman was bothering to talk to him.

“Hey, Joe.”

Joe stopped a good three feet away from Chris to have their conversation.  He didn’t much like to touch or be touched.

“Um,” he started.  And then stopped.  Chris waited.  Was he supposed to help him in some way?  Chris watched the mental struggle Joe was putting himself through.  He wasn’t sure if he was trying to plan the conversation out first in his head or if he was debating if what he had to talk to Chris about was really important enough to force social interaction.  Chris glanced at his watch again.  He didn’t really want to be distracted by Joe when Karen arrived.

“Is it about Computer Club, Joe?”

“Yes.”  The kid looked up and forced eye contact, his eyes flashing behind his glasses.  He gave the frames a shove up his nose.  “You haven’t been in quite a while.”

Now Chris was feeling guilty.  How on earth was Joe Hanley pulling off being an authority figure to him?

“Um.  I know, I know.  But, I’m a senior.  And I’ve got a lot of stuff on my plate.  And besides.  Attendance isn’t mandatory.”

“But.”  Joe pushed at his glasses again though they didn’t go anywhere.  “You’re the president.”

“Under protest, let me remind you.”

“You’re the only senior this year!  The charter clearly states that a senior must be president.”

“Okay.  So, next meeting amend the charter.”

“Will you just come?  To like, one, once a month?  There’s only like four more months to go.”

“All right, all right.”  Chris scratched his nose guiltily.  “What days do we meet?”

Joe gave him a little glare.  “Tuesdays.”

“Right, see.  I have work on Tuesdays.”

“Mr. President,” Joe said dryly, “we changed meeting day from Wednesdays to Tuesdays this year because you said that was the only day you were available.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Hunh.”

Joe crossed his arms and seemed to be waiting for Chris to come up with a better response than that.  The silence was disrupted by a trio of girls twittering to each other as they walked by them.

“Omigod.  I will die if he didn’t get me one.  I’d be so embarrassed.  I’d be the only girl in class who doesn’t get one.”

“Um, hello?  What about me?  I’m not even expecting one, so I’m not gonna get one.  That sucks.”

“Not anymore than expecting one and not getting it.”

“Oh, gee thanks for that.”

Chris stopped listening as he tried to figure out how old they were.  They had on make-up and were talking about boys, but he could have sworn they were only seventh graders.  He would have thought sixth, but the primary school started an hour after the secondary school.  He shook his head and turned back to Joe.  He looked like a new word was needed to describe him because “annoyed” just wasn’t good enough.

“They are so stupid,” Joe uncharacteristically burst out.  “ _Everyone_ is so stupid.  Like, your entire social status hangs on how many Valentine’s Day roses you get.  What’s the point?  The school shouldn’t even let whoever it is do it.  I mean, people just get their feelings hurt.  And the petals fall off all over the floors and they make people’s allergies act up.  And why do people even care if they get a rose from some guy they have a crush on but barely actually even know?  Why?!”

“Um,” Chris said, trying not to look as amused as he felt, “I think it’s a fundraiser for prom.”

“Oh.”  Joe straightened his glasses. “I guess that’s not so bad.  People who have people to give flowers to will probably be going to prom with each other.  So, I guess it’s okay if they spend _their_ money on it.”

“Well, why don’t you take advantage of it?  They don’t just sell red roses.  You could give a pink rose to someone as a secret admirer.”

“What’s the point of that?” Joe demanded, starting to look really riled up.  “Why waste money on a girl if she doesn’t even know it’s you?  That’s stupid.  It’s a waste.  Sure she’ll be happy someone gave it to her, but she’ll be imagining it’s from someone totally not you.”

“Then just be an admirer.  Put your name on it.”

“Chris,” Joe said, giving him a look like he was trying to explain things to a small child.  “When a good-looking guy gives a girl flowers it’s romantic.  When a nerdy looking guy does, it’s creepy.”

Chris laughed.  “Oh, come on—”

“Besides.  I don’t want to waste _my_ money supporting prom.  I’m not going.”

Chris chuckled to himself.  “Okay, okay.  You know, now I’m starting to think that you’re being way too unhappy about all this because secretly, deep down, you want a rose.”

“I do not.”

“I think I should have sent you a yellow friendship rose.”

“No thank you,” Joe snipped.  “I’m not one of your ‘non-gay’ boyfriends.”

“Wha??”  Chris half-groaned.  “Does _everyone_ think that?  I mean.  Do we _really_ come off as gay?”

“Well…” Joe rubbed his chin in thought.  “It’s not so much that you guys seem gay as it is that American males aren’t that close with each other unless they are gay.”

“In public, you mean.”

“Um, no.  I’m not _that_ close with any of my friends.”

Chris crossed his arms over his chest in a huff.  “Well, that’s because you’re a computer geek.  You have no social skills.”

“Well, thank you for that.  You better be at club today, Mr. President.”

“But—”  Chris was all set to protest that it was Valentine’s Day and he had a girlfriend and therefore couldn’t attend.  Then he remembered that Karen had prom committee after school today and he was going to have to wait on her anyway.  He might as well kill time by going to Computer Club.  “Okay.  I’ll be there.”

“Really?”  Joe looked shocked.

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

“Well, yeah,” Joe said, suddenly looking tough.  “That’s right.”  He started to walk off a little cockily.

“Hey, Joe?”

Joe turned back.  “Yeah?”

“Are we friends?”

Joe looked to the side, and then back at Chris.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, would you think of me as a friend?”

“Um.  I guess.  Well.  Kind of more like an acquaintance.  A close acquaintance,” he amended.  “Why?” he asked with a suspicious eyebrow raise.

“Oh, it’s nothing.  Just a while back the four of us were talking about whether or not we actually had any friends outside of each other.  Julian and Will said their soccer friends counted even though they don’t hang out with them outside of soccer events.  So, I was wondering if that made me friends with you and the other guys in club.”

Joe laughed.  “You guys talk about the weirdest things.  And you know, only having three friends, really isn’t that uncommon.  In fact, I’d say the fact that you have three friends that you’re so close with is _uncommon_.  Like, in a good way.  Most people are lucky if they ever meet one person they feel they can be that open with.”

Chris pursed his lips together.  “See.  This is what bothers me.  You really don’t know any of us that well, yet even you can tell what we are to each other.”

Joe shrugged.  “Well, it’s not like you guys try to hide it.”

“I thought I did,” Chris grumbled.

“No, you don’t hide it.  You just look embarrassed by it.”

“Oh.”  Chris felt a little embarrassed now.  He needed to be done talking with Joe.  “Well.  Sorry for asking you such a random question.”

“Hey.  What are acquaintances for, right?”

They both smiled.  Then Chris’s heart leapt to his throat as two arms circled him from behind.  Considering how tall the person was and how big and grown-up he felt, it could only be Julian.  He was one of only two people in school who no longer looked like a high school student, and of course, the only one who would hug him from behind and nuzzle his cheek.

“Julian!”

Chris tried to get him off, but his hands were wrapped right around the middle of his waist where he couldn’t get any leverage to push him off.

“Don’t let him fool you with his chummy buddy-buddy routine,” Julian said to Joe.  “He’s trying to lure you into joining the Slightly Gay for Our Friends Straight Boys Club.”

Julian snuggled against him.

“Julian!  Quit it.”

“Oh, you know you like it.”

Chris was shocked and offended that that had come from Joe.  Julian laughed, kissed him on the cheek, and then slapped his thigh as he ran off.  Chris clenched his hands into fists.  The booger hadn’t even had anything to talk to him about.  He’d gone out of his way just to embarrass him.  Jerk.

“Hey, Chris?”

Chris cut his eyes over to Joe.  He wasn’t happy with that one either.

“Is it okay if we just stay acquaintances?”

“Get lost, twerp!”

Joe walked away.  Laughing.  How pathetic was it when the computer geeks were laughing at you?  Chris looked at his watch again.  Less than ten minutes until class started.  Where the hell was Karen?  It was time to get this craptastic day started.  He should have known Valentine’s Day was doomed to forever be just a horribly socially-debilitating day.  Even though he’d had a girlfriend last year too, that had turned out disastrous.  Did he really have better expectations for today?

“Hi, Chris.”

Chris turned around.  Of course.  As expected.  This day was rapidly deteriorating.  Because who he had run into at Karen’s locker was not Karen.  But Sophia.  And she looked cute with her hair pulled part way back and split into two mini pigtails held up by red fuzzy things.  Why did the sexy little girl thing turn him on?  It was so wrong!

“Hi, Sophia,” he tried to let his voice show he wasn’t interested in any “harmless flirting” (her words) today, but it was hard to be stern with something that looked so cute.

“Here.  This is for you.  Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Had it been an actual card, he might have refused to take it.  But it was one of those tiny, cheap things that everyone used to give out when they were in second grade with Ninja Turtles on them or something.  Chris flipped open the pink card.  A blue My Little Pony was prancing across a rainbow and saying, “Here’s A Valentine Rainbow…Just For You!”  Chris rolled his lips in to hide his smile.  He looked back at Sophia.

“Thank you.”

She shrugged.  “I had three extra.”

“So, who got the other two?”

“Ms. Kerensky and Mr. Hayden.”

“Oh, so I fall into the same category as irritating authority figures?”

She shrugged again.  “Kind of.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly.  He waved the card.  “Well, thanks again for this.  It’s cute.  And completely innocent it.  I get it.”

She averted her eyes and looked a tish on the guilty side.

“Isn’t it?” he asked.  He looked over the card again.  The smiling pony looked completely innocuous.

“Well.  I also sent you three roses.”

Chris laughed.  “Well.  Won’t all the girls in my homeroom class be jealous?”

He smiled at her and she looked relieved that he wasn’t upset.  She smiled back.

“And you know.  If Karen asks about them, you can completely blame it on me.  Your psycho-stalker girl.”

They laughed together, and then Chris pointed the card at her.

“You’re laughing too, but I am seriously scared enough of her that I will rat you out.”

Sophia gave him a challenging smile.  “Go ahead.  Karen Green doesn’t scare me.”

“She doesn’t?”  Chris pretended to shiver.  “She scares me.”

Sophia giggled.  “Okay.  Well.  I guess I’ll see you around.”  She turned to leave and one of the books in her hands fell to the floor.  “Oh, whoops.”  She started to lean over but Chris stopped her.

“I got it,” he said.  He bent down and picked up the book.  On the way back up he was stopped by Sophia’s arm over his shoulders.  She leaned forward and kissed him.  Not a quick peck either.  Chris had to be the one to pull back and stand up straight.  He licked his lips and gave her a disapproving look as he handed the book back to her.

“What?” she asked innocently.  “You’re too tall to just grab.”

“Trouble, trouble, trouble,” Chris murmured.  “Go away.”

“Come again some other day?” she asked playfully.

Chris didn’t say yes.  But he didn’t say no either as he watched her walk away.  His eyes were glued to the spot where her short skirt swayed against the back of her very pretty legs.  God, why did he want her?  Just because she wanted him?  Possibly.  And that meant he didn’t really have any interest.  He was just flattered and letting his ego run amok.  In real life, he had better things to be interested in.

Chris turned around and screamed like a little girl.  He cleared his throat and tried to look manly again.

“Hi, sugar.  H-how are you today?”

Karen crossed her arms under her breasts.  “I saw that.”

“Did you?” Chris asked weakly.  Stupid frickin’ Valentine’s Day.  _Play it off_ , he told himself.  _Play it off_.  “Well.  You definitely have changed from the old Karen then.  I mean, Sophia’s scalp is still attached to her head.”

Karen leaned to the side to glare around him at the girl.  “For now,” she muttered.

Chris leaned over to kiss her.  He surprised her enough that she straightened.  So, he was able to really distract her from Sophia.  She made a soft noise and pushed lightly on his chest.

“Easy does it, tiger.  We _are_ in school.”

“That didn’t stop you in December,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around his her waist and trying to kiss her again.  She smooshed a hand in his face and pushed him away.

“In December I didn’t have the expectation of presents.”

“Presents?” Chris straightened.  “What do you mean?”

“Well.  I’m not expecting a _present_ present.  But.”  She clapped her hands together and jumped from foot to foot.  “How many Valentine’s roses did you get me?  Will I beat those stupid lesbians this year?”

Chris smiled.  “You mean will you beat Will?”

Karen frowned.  “Whatever.  So?  How many?”

“Well, I didn’t get you any.”

Her jaw dropped.  “Crazy white boyfriend who just got caught kissing another girl say what?”

“Well.”  Chris used his hands to signal her to calm down.  “Simmer down.  I was going to get you none because we agreed not to have to spend any money for this year…but then I thought that if you were the only girl in class that didn’t get at least one…well, that would be sad.  So, I did get you one.”

Karen rolled her eyes.  “One?  They cost like, two dollars.  I don’t know why I’m surprised,” she muttered to herself as she turned to her locker.  “You never were romantic.  Just pragmatic.  ‘Why waste money on something that’s just going to—’Oh!”

Karen gasped when she got her locker open.  Chris had bought her only one of the school’s roses, but he’d put a whole dozen in her locker.

“Omigosh,” she covered her mouth with her hands.  And then she looked over at him.  He could tell she was feeling a little ashamed of herself.  She stepped forward and hugged him, flinging her arms around his neck.  “Thank you, Chris.  I’m so sorry!  I’m such an idiot.  You’re so sweet.  You always think of me!”

“That’s all right,” he said, using her guilt as an opportunity to pat her butt without getting yelled at.  “If you had changed _completely_ I wouldn’t want you anymore.”

“Hmph.”  She tightened her hold around his neck.  “Those were expensive though, right?”

Chris shrugged.  “Eh.”

They hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared, but it was still a lot of money.  And he was willing to shell it out because he was feeling a little guilty knowing he was going to break up with her once they graduated.  Well.  Was most likely going to break up with her then.  He didn’t know.  It was still four months away.  He could actually fall in love with her by then.  Stranger things had happened.  Will Harder had fallen in love.

“Mm, you’re so sweet, baby.  I love you.”

She took his face and kissed him, for which he was very grateful.  He didn’t know if he could say that back to her.  She pulled back and kept her hands clasped at the base of his neck.

“Do you have to work tonight?”

He shook his head.  “Nope.  Got it off.”

She smiled.  “Good.  Because even though we agreed not to get each other anything, I bought myself something.  But…it’s technically for you.  If you know what I mean.”

They grinned at each other.

“I do know what you mean.”

“So…you can come over to my house tonight and we can…use it together.  We’ll have the house all night.”

“Oh, no.  No way.”

Chris tried to get away, but Karen held onto him.

“My parents will be gone all night.  It’ll be fine.”

“No way.  It’s too risky.”

“Chris.”  Karen took his face in her hands and forced him to look right at her.  “Trust me.  Okay?”

Chris let his eyes search her face.  He didn’t believe she would try to set him up or anything.  That wasn’t the issue.  But he had a feeling if Mr. Green caught them in bed one more time that he was going to lose something vital to his well-being and happiness.  But Karen was asking him to trust that she wasn’t going to let that happen.  Wasn’t trust the first step to really caring for someone?

He nodded.  “Okay.”

As he gave her a smooch, the bell rang.  They both cursed, waved goodbye, and then ran for class.

By the end of the day, Chris was firmly on Joe Hanley’s side regarding the rose fundraiser.  He’d slipped on petals at least three times and his nose had been running since lunch.  He thought roses were supposed to be one of the flowers that didn’t aggravate allergies.  Of course maybe that was only if you were exposed to them in normal concentrations.  As it was he was forced to plead to be released early from Computer Club so that he could get outside and away from the toxic halls.  That and to escape the boredom of the club.  It sure was different from when he’d joined as a freshman.  Back then the members had all contributed money to buy old parts and they spent the year building a computer from scratch.  That had been fun _and_ educational.  All the current members did was talk about Unix versus Linux and World of Warcraft.  How on earth could that entertain people for an hour and a half?  Or even longer since they were all still back there discussing away.  It made him remember why he’d stop going in the first place.

He decided he’d wait for Karen by his car in the relative safety of the cold February air.  Winter had not eased its grip in the least and the meteorologists were predicting the cold and snow to last through at least March.  Chris didn’t particularly feel one way or the other about winter; it had its up sides and as well as its downs.  But he didn’t like driving in the stuff.  He wondered how bad the winters got in Chicago.  Did he want to go to a place where he would freeze his hiney off trying to get to class?  And speaking of freezing hineys, he’d better turn his car on so it could start warming up before Karen got there.  She’d complain the whole way home how cold she was if he didn’t get it moderately above freezing in the car’s interior.  She’d also complain about his shady clunker if she heard him try to start it and fail three times before it finally coughed and fought its way to life.  If this thing would just last him until the end of the summer—that’s all he needed.  He’d been nothing but kind to the car.  It should return the favor and last a few more months for his sake.

Once the old Corolla was clunking and sputtering away, he sat inside for fifteen minutes or so, trying to warm up.  He didn’t know why he was so stubborn that he wouldn’t wear a coat other than his blazer.  Once he was warm again, it seemed like a smart thing to do to get back out in the freezing cold and wipe the rest of the snow off his hood and roof.  It had snowed about half an inch the night before, and the drive to school had knocked most of it off, but Chris figured the less weight on the car the better his chances were that it would be able to take him and Karen home today.

“Hey, Pelletier, you snot bucket.”

Chris blinked at the insult.  He stood up from digging some snow out from under his windshield wipers and turned around.  Riley stood a few paces away with her hands on her hips.  The unpleasant expression on her face let Chris know she wasn’t happy, but her appearance ruined some of the effect.  She was bundled up in a Red Sox Starters jacket, so she couldn’t quite get her hands on her hips.  Her black tights were bunched up around the ankles and pieces of orangey hair peeked out from under her Red Sox beanie hat.  Her nose was already turning bright red.

Chris chewed on his smile to keep Riley from seeing it.  He leaned on the hood of his car and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t wet and was slightly warm.  He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at Riley.

“Have I offended you in some way, Ms. Mayfield?”

Riley stepped forward and waved a red-gloved hand in his face.  “Oh.  I don’t.  I just.  It’s not.  I will!”

Chris grinned.  “What?  Are you still mad about Johnny Damon defecting?”  Chris shrugged.  “He saw the light.  Just like the rest of the sane world.”

“This goes beyond that traitor!” Riley growled, grabbing Chris by the lapels.  She gave him a little shake.  “How long did you know?”

Chris didn’t try to get her to let go.  With her gloved hands she hadn’t gotten a good hold of him.

“How long have I known what?”

“About that other traitor!”

“Who?”

“Nick!”

Chris’ face fell.  “Oh.”

Riley let go of him and backed up a couple steps.  “So, you did know.”

Chris was stunned.  He’d never seen Riley look like this before.  His chest started to hurt as he looked at her.  He reached out a hand to comfort her, but she grabbed his wrist and spun him around, shoving his arm into his back.  He grunted as she slammed him onto the hood of his car.

“Chris!  You are such a boy!  I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me!”

“Hey!  I didn’t know anything!  All I saw was him kissing her under the mistletoe in December.  A lot of guys did that with girls who weren’t their girlfriends.  Was I supposed to tell them all?”

“No!  Just me!”

“Well!  How did I know it wasn’t innocent?  I didn’t want to ruin your relationship because _she_ grabbed him or something!”

Riley leaned onto his back and Chris whimpered as his arm cracked at the elbow.  “R-Riley.”

“You didn’t know about anything else?”

“N-not really.  Ow.  I mean.  I heard stuff.  But.  You would have heard it too!  I’m not the hub all the gossip goes through.”

“Hmph.”

“Riley!  Please!  You’re killing my arm!  I didn’t do anything!”

Riley was quiet for a moment.  And then she said, “No.  I suppose you didn’t.  Exactly.  But I’m still mad at boys.  All boys.  Especially today.  So.  I’m going to make you suffer.”

Chris’ eyes went wide.  “W-what are you going to do to me?”

Riley released his arm and flipped him over to his back.  Damn was she strong.  He started to sit up, but Riley kept him pinned to the hood.  She bent over him, her hands pressed to his chest.  She brought her face close to his.

“You owe me some pain, Chris.”

Chris swallowed.  “How do you mean exactly?”

“The kind that I don’t have to inflict upon you.  Just be the cause of.”

Chris’ brow furrowed.  “I’m confused.”

“Because you’re stupid.  Because you’re a boy.”

Then an event as likely as the Red Sox winning another pennant happened.  Riley leaned forward and kissed him.  And not a lips smashed together kind of thing like sealing her threat with a kiss, but a soft, gentle kiss.  She moved her gloved hands to his face and held him still as she kissed him again.  Then his car shifted as she climbed on top of him.  This was not happening.  Riley was…on top of him?  He’d never once had this fantasy.  Or dream.  Or nightmare.  And it was weird kissing her.  He felt nothing but awkwardness.  It was like kissing one of his male friends.  Then he made a face and groaned inwardly.  More than likely he’d enjoy kissing one of them better.  And how sad was that?  He could blame his mother for everything.  Growing up with her had warped him into both of the classic single-mom, only-son clichés.  He liked relationships with strong, demanding women, and he was gay.  Perfect.  Hadn’t he had this realization before?

Riley pulled back a little.  “Open your mouth, Chris.”

“What?!  How on earth is this at all payback for what I _didn’t_ do to yo—oo.”

Talking had been a bad idea.  They were now openmouthed kissing.  And for some reason, that made it a little less awkward, and more like kissing a girl.  Chris tried to turn his head, but Riley held him still.  He couldn’t do anything to push her off because he had no strength and no leverage from leaning back onto the hood of the car.  His feet were barely flat on the ground.

“Come on, Chris,” Riley breathed against his lips.  “Make it look good.”

“Look good?” he asked, confused.  But then he closed his eyes as Riley slid her tongue into his mouth.  This was not happening.  He raised a hand to her shoulder, but the other one stopped somewhere around her waist.  Or at least where he assumed her waist was; it was hard to tell because of the jacket.  He tried to squirm away, but that made him acutely aware that Riley was actually straddling him.  And unsexy tomboy that she was—she was still a girl.  Chris could feel himself blushing.  And he still couldn’t understand how this was going to make him and Riley even for him not telling her he’d seen her boyfriend making out with someone else!

Finally, she sat up.  She was sitting fully on top of him, her hands running down his blazer.  He stared up at her.  No, he hadn’t gone insane.  _Riley_ was sitting on him.  _Riley_ had kissed him.  And while he hadn’t gotten turned on, he’d gone a little tingly.  But that might be because he was losing feeling in his legs due to restricted blood flow.  Riley gave him the lopsided smile she reserved for people she’d just struck out on the softball field.

“Well.  Surprise, surprise.  Who would have thought a Yankees fan could be such a good kisser?”

Chris propped himself up on his elbows so he could give her a reproving look.  “No surprise here that a Red Sox fan sucks at it.”

Her face scrunched up.  “Chris!”  She grabbed him by the ears and pulled.

“Ow!  Ow ow ow!  My ears!”

“Don’t be a jerk.  You know you liked it!”

She released his ears and he held onto them to make sure they didn’t fall off.  He glared up at his friend.

“What was that all about?” he groused.

“Say you liked it,” she said.

Chris huffed.  “Well.  I’ve had worse.”

“Hmph.”  She slid off him.  “Well.  Have fun with that.”

“Have fun with what?” he asked as she patted him on the chest and walked away.  Chris looked straight ahead and saw Karen standing about three feet away with her arms crossed under her breasts.  She didn’t look happy at all.  Chris sighed.

“Let me guess.  You saw that.”

She nodded her head.  Chris turned around and screamed, “ _Riley_!”

She turned around and kept walking backwards so that she could stick her tongue out at him.  “Suck it, Pelletier!”

“You try that again and I _will_ , missy!”

It was hard to tell because it was cold out and she turned away quickly, but he was pretty sure her face turned red.  He turned back to Karen.  She hadn’t moved an inch.  Her expression hadn’t change a bit.

“Karen.  She was mad about Nick.  I guess they broke up and she blames me for not telling her—oh hell.  I don’t even know why she’s mad at me or why she thought that that would be the perfect revenge.  Girls—even boy-girls—are impossible to understand!”

Karen dropped her arms and lessened her scowl somewhat.  “Whatever.  Let’s just go before someone else kisses you.”

“Oh, we can’t ignore that one,” Chris heard Julian say.

He looked up and saw his three friends (plus Antoinette) walking by him.  Julian diverted his path and grabbed him around the waist.  He gave him a smooch on the cheek and then nuzzled his nose against him.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.”

Julian continued on to the metro around the other side of his car, creating the trail that the rest of his friends followed.  Will grabbed him under the chin and kissed him on the lips—but barely.  He almost couldn’t feel it, but there it was.  He and Will had kissed.  Scott gave him a hug around the neck.

“I know the joke is a kiss, but I can’t do that to you.  Poor thing.”

He followed after Will, laughing.

“Well, I can,” Antoinette said.  She gave him a kiss on the other cheek.

He felt a slight blush as she winked at him.  He couldn’t help it.  Antoinette was a beautiful girl.

“Hey!” Scott shouted.  “None of that!”

“Well, it’s the least you deserve after today!”

“I _said_ I was sorry!”

Chris kept his eyes glued to the pavement.  How embarrassing.  How _publically_ embarrassing.  Ah well.  It happened.  And more and more often it happened to him.  He looked up at Karen.  She had a hand over her face.

“I can’t believe I’m jealous of three guys.”

“And three girls if you’re counting all of today,” Chris said.

She dropped the hand and glared at him.  He smiled at her.  She looked away, but only because she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.  She turned back to him and stepped closer.  She slid her fingers along his lapel.

“Okay.  So, they kissed you.  Now let me show you what _I_ can do.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

They stepped away from each other and walked to their side of the car.  It was best if they didn’t let things get started on the way home.  It had only happened once, but they’d been stupid enough to fool around while he’d been driving.  But that had been on a deserted country road outside of town.  Trying it on the crowded city streets would be a _very_ stupid idea.  Regardless of his desire to be a responsible adult, they made it to Karen’s house in record time.  And as soon as he saw the large, white house looming in front of him, he was suddenly nervous again.  Karen had said her parents would be out—but what if they came back and she didn’t know about it?  He and Mr. Green had reached some sort of truce—or at least grudging understanding of each other—when he’d shadowed him.  He didn’t want all that to go to waste by having the man find him molesting his daughter _again_ under his own roof.  Again.

Karen let them inside and started immediately up the stairs.  Chris followed her, wondering if he should leave his bag downstairs as a warning to her parents.  Maybe if they knew he was here they would be less inclined to just walk in on them.  He was totally locking the door.

“Are you hungry or anything?” Karen asked.

“No.”

“Good.  ‘Cause I’m not waiting.  I want you naked and I want it soon.”

Chris blushed.  “Geez, Karen.”

“What?”

Then Chris remembered that there was a fourth person who lived here.  He took Karen by the hand and she stopped at the landing to look at him.

“What about Nana?” he whispered.

“Oh.”  Karen started to unbutton her coat.  “She had a stroke.  She’s in a nursing home now.”

“Oh.  I’m so sorry, Karen.”

She shrugged out of her coat and hung it over the banister.

“When did it happen?”

“In November.”  She took his bag from him and dropped it off next to the stairs.  “There wasn’t really a good time to bring it up, you know?  And she’s actually doing okay.  She’s just in a nursing home so that she can have round the clock monitoring.  My mom’s really good about it.  She sees her almost everyday.”

Chris rubbed her shoulder.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

“We were broken up when it happened, Chris.  And it’s okay.”

“But—”

“Seriously, Chris.  It’s nothing to feel guilty about.  Besides.  Let’s not think about it.  Not _today_ anyway.  Okay?”

He nodded.  She smiled at him and led him by the hand toward her room.

“Wait here for a minute.”

She went inside her room and shut the door.  Chris leaned against the nearby wall.  He heard a noise down the hall and immediately stiffened.

“K-Karen?  Are you sure we’re alone?”

“Yes!”  He could barely hear her.  She must be inside her walk-in closet.

“I heard a noise.  And it wasn’t you.”

“It was probably the cat.”  This time her voice was louder.

Chris made a face.  He doubted the existence of that cat.  He’d never seen it or any fur from it.  There wasn’t even a single picture of it anywhere.  The noise had made his nerves itch.  He was feeling so nervous about getting caught he wondered if he’d even be of any use to Karen today.  He wasn’t feeling at all tingly in the right way.  Maybe he should try to get out of it so he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself by not being able to perform.

“Karen—I know you said your parents are gone.  But…stuff happens.  What if they come back?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice slightly strained like she was struggling with something.  “They’re going out to dinner in the city tonight and then they’re going to spend the night in a hotel.  It’s way gross.  Stop making me think about it.”

Chris laughed softly.  He supposed one good thing about his parents being divorced was that he didn’t have to think about them having sex.  He shuddered just at that thought.  Gross.

“And they’re not coming home before going to work tomorrow.  So, you can spend the night.  Plus.  My mom said she would call if their plans changed.”

“Ah.”  Chris bounced against the wall.  And then he started.  “What?!  Your mom _knows_?!”

“Well, yeah.  I told her I was inviting my boyfriend over for Valentine’s Day.  I think she figured out the rest on her own.”

“Oohh,” Chris half-moaned, half-whimpered.  That was just so—

“You need to call your mom too.”

“What?  Why?”

“So she knows you’re going to spend the night here.”

“I am not telling her that!”

“She already knows we’re sleeping together.”

“So?”

“So.  Then it won’t be a big deal if you tell her you’re not coming home and you won’t even have to lie and say you’re at a friend’s house.”

“She won’t let me stay out on a school night.”

“Chris!”  Karen flung open the door.  “Grow some balls, would ya?”

Chris turned to look at her and then forgot what he was going to say.  He licked his lips.  And just stared.  Karen smiled and stepped closer to him.  He backed into the doorjamb when her hand covered his groin.

“Looks like you’ve grown more than just some balls.”

He blushed furiously at that comment.  Why was every time like it was the first time?  She pressed herself fully against him and took his warm cheeks in her hands.

“You are so cute.”

Chris didn’t have a retort.  Or a comment.  Or an anything.  He still couldn’t really talk.  He didn’t know why seeing her in sexy lingerie could still get him to react like a little kid seeing something naughty for the first time.  She wore lingerie for him all the time.  He’d seen her completely naked.  But today was a new color—it was a vibrant red and the color itself had just as much affect on him as the color of her chocolaty skin did because so much of it was showing.  Maybe it was the corset and the garters.  Those were kind of new.

“Chris?”  She purred his name into his ear just before she started to nibble on it.

“Aiee?” he replied, his knees going weak.  They stumbled into her room.  He was lucky her bed was near the door.  Of course, he was so far gone he forgot not only to lock the door, but to shut it.  He didn’t notice.  Karen kept him plenty distracted.  In fact, for the first round, he couldn’t even get his pants all the way off.  As means of punishment for rushing their “romantic” Valentine’s Day sex, Karen made him slowly and meticulously follow her every instruction to satisfy her—and drive him up the wall.  He couldn’t understand it.  She made him feel so incredible.  It couldn’t just be physical, could it?  He did care about her, right?  He held her in his arms for the third time that day and couldn’t imagine feeling this way with anybody else.  He had his face buried in her neck; he could feel her knees bumping into his elbows with each thrust.  She was whimpering softly and scratching his back with her nails.  Every sensation rode from his groin to his heart and through his mind.  She was the only one who could make him feel this way.

 _But_ , a little voice spoke uninvited, _that doesn’t mean someone else can’t make you feel something else just as good._

Chris ignored the voice.  He was too busy.  And he was almost there…

Chris bit his lip and braced himself above Karen.  He felt her tense up beneath him.  He clutched the pillow under his hand tightly and then allowed himself to settle partially onto her.  He was breathing hard and could hear her doing the same, though she seemed like she was trying to get something out.

“What?” she gasped.

“Hmm?” he asked, still enjoying the ebbing waves of pleasure.

“ _What_?” she shouted and grabbed him by the hair.  Unfortunately it had grown long enough now that she could get quite a good grip on it.  She yanked his head back by the roots.  He cried out in pain.

“Ow, ow!  Karen!”  He tried to pry her hand off his hair, but she had a death grip on him.  “What’s wrong?”

“How could you?!” she wailed, giving his head a shake.

“Ow!”  Chris moved to the side so he wasn’t on her, but she hadn’t let go of him at all.  “What?  What?  What did I do wrong?  I thought you enjoyed it!”

“Oh!  You!  You!”

“I _what_?  Damn it!  Let go!”

She let him go and Chris sat up, rubbing his head.  He looked at his insane girlfriend.  She looked hurt upset, not angry upset.  Her jaw was trembling she was trying so hard not to cry.

“You said _her_ name!”

“What?  Whose?”

“I’m not gonna say it!”

“Then how am I supposed to know what the hell you’re talking about?!”

Karen scrunched her face up and pulled the covers over her chest.  “You called me Sophia!”

Chris blinked, not quite comprehending what she was saying.  Then it occurred to him that she was upset because she thought he’d called out another woman’s name in bed.

“No way!”  It wasn’t the lamest response he could have come up with, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

“Yes!  You did!”

“I did not!”

“You did!  I was right here!  I heard it!”

“Yeah?  Well I was right here too.  And I was the one talking.  And I was just—moaning.  That’s all.  I didn’t say _anything_.  Trust me.  _I_ would know.”

“But—”  Karen started to seem unsure of herself.  “But, I heard it.”

“No, you didn’t.  You’re just being paranoid.”

“I’m not paranoid,” she mumbled, looking like she was doubting herself now.

“You are, sugar.”  Chris shifted a little closer to her, carefully watching her reaction.  She didn’t get more upset, so he reached out a hand and brushed her hair behind one ear.  “I promise you, honey.  It’s in your head.  I didn’t say it.  I was just, you know, grunting and groaning like some pervert because you make me feel so good.”

Karen cracked a small smile at his description of himself.  Then she tried frowning again.  “It sounded an awful lot like it though.”

Chris shook his head.  “No way.”  He circled her shoulders with his arms and kissed her cheek.  “There’s no one but you on my mind.  I promise.”

He moved a hand to run a finger along her jaw, turning her head a little.  “Hey,” he said, getting her attention.  She raised her eyes.  “Just you,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss her.  He was happy she was willing to kiss him back.  That must mean she really wasn’t sure she’d heard what she’d thought she’d heard.  Which made Chris feel better about his 99% surety that he hadn’t said someone else’s name.  Karen pulled back and looked contrite as she gently rubbed his tender head.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “Does your head hurt?”

“A little,” he said, giving her sad puppy eyes.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, giving him a hug.  The sheets dropped down and she pressed her chest to his.  Chris took in a breath.  The stamina of a high school boy really was impressive.  If only scientists could figure out a way to bottle it, the world’s energy problems would be solved.

“Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat and easing her back a little.  “I think you should make it up to me.”

She gave him a playful, reproachful look.  “And what exactly would you like me to do?”

“Well…I’ve been working awfully hard today.  I could use a shoulder massage.”

“Oh, really.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And I suppose this little ‘massage’ is supposed to have a happy ending?”

“Well, of course.”

He grinned at her.  She shook her head and smiled.  Then she pushed him onto his stomach.

“All right, you perv.  Though you hardly deserve it with all the non-me kissing you did today.”  She swung her leg over his body and settled herself on his back.  It was kind of a weird feeling since they were both naked, but she’d already started massaging his shoulders, so he didn’t give it much thought.

“So, who was best?”

“Hmm?”  Chris was halfway asleep he was so comfortable.

“Out of the six people you kissed today, who was the best?  I’ve of course taken myself out of the running because then the answer would be obvious.”

“Yeah.  It was you.”

“Of course me.  Who came in second?”

“I’m not gonna answer that.”

“I’m not letting you not answer.”

“But no one even came close to you, sugar.  Ooh, yeah.  There.”

“Okay.  So, who was the distant second?”

“Are you trying to start a fight?”

“No.  Why is this making you upset?  It’s just a joke.”

“I’m not upset, but you will be no matter what I say.  So.  You tell me which answer will get you the least mad at me.”

“Well, choosing one of the boys would help.”

“True enough.  But, Scott didn’t actually kiss me.  Julian only got me on the cheek.  And I barely even felt it when Will did.”

“So, you’re saying that Riley or Sophia was the best.”

Chris groaned.  He knew this was going to happen.  “Will.  Okay?  It was Will.  It made my heart go pit-a-pat.”

She was silent for a moment as she continued to knead his shoulders.  “Are you joking?” she asked.

“Yes!  Of course!  What the hell?!”

He felt her shrug.  “Well…”

“Oh, shut-up.”

She obliged him and just gave him the massage.  He was on his way to falling asleep again, and perhaps that’s why he let his judgment slip and decided to give her a little poke.

“Ooh, this feels really good.  You’re so good at this…Sophia.”

Karen stopped moving.  Chris glanced over his shoulder and smiled at her.  Her face pinched up into annoyed fury.  She reached out and grabbed the nearest pillow.

“You are _so_ not funny, Chris Pelletier!”

Whap!

 

Julian

 

Julian picked at his school lunch.  If it wasn’t depressing enough that he was eating school food, which he’d never done once before in his life before his parents died, he was forced to try to keep the stuff down while surrounded by nauseating lovey-dovey-ness.  Plus three very bitter females.  Anna, Liz, and Riley were sitting with him, but they had glowered at his male presence before finally grumbling that he could join them.

It was so sad: he had no one to be with.  He had no girlfriend.  It was over with Dr. Gorman.  Well, he was pretty certain that if he just showed up at her doorstep he’d have a pretty good chance at being able to seduce her.  But, Barry might be there.  And while he was open to the idea of a threesome one day, he didn’t want it to be with Barry.

He glanced up as he saw a particularly happy couple walking by him.  It was Eun-hee and some loser from the basketball team.  She didn’t even notice him as she walked by with her new man.  Well, he had definitely blown that one.

He returned his eyes to the table.  Liz was stabbing her rectangular pizza.  Riley was pulling the crust off her ham sandwich.  Anna was sipping on a grape juice box through a very thin straw.  She’d straightened her hair.  He didn’t know if she’d done it because it was Valentine’s Day and she wanted to look good even if she was single, or if she had just felt like it.  Her off-brown hair fell down several inches below her shoulders.  It really was amazing how much shorter it looked when she let it puff up.  She didn’t look sad today, a little miffed perhaps, but not sad.  So, maybe she wasn’t still completely hung up on Scott anymore.  Maybe today would be the time to finally sort through his muddled feelings for her.

“Greh!”

Everyone at the table started as Anna squeezed her juice box and slammed it down on the table.  Purple chemical water sprinkled over the laminated wood.  She definitely looked a little more than miffed now.

“Seeing Scott and Antoinette together today has made me absolutely sick!  I can’t even eat my lunch I want to puke so much.  I mean!  The way he _fawns_ over her.  She’s just using him.  Why can’t he see that?”

Julian didn’t believe Antoinette was using Scott at all.  In fact, if anything, based on what he’d seen of the two of them together, she had it worse than Scott.  But Julian liked his balls where they were too much to say that out loud.

“Valentine’s Day sucks ass,” she finished with a snarl.

Maybe Anna wasn’t in the mood today for a very insecure, maybe-love confession.  Julian was pretty certain his feelings could wait until she was in a better mood.

“Oh, yeah?” Riley griped.  “At least you were never actually going out with the jerkwad.  I mean, Nick has been playing me and Samantha all along.”

“Oh, so Chris told you?” Julian asked.

“What?” Riley snapped.

“What?” Julian repeated, trying to appear clueless.  She glared at him for a moment before continuing her thought while Julian breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t just narked on Chris.

“Well, he’s been playing _me_ anyway.  I’m sure that bitch knew all along what she was doing.  The slut.”

“Well, she friends with Antoinette,” Anna said snidely.  “I’m not surprised.”

“Yeah, I’m not either.”  Some of Riley’s ire left and she looked a little hurt.  “I just can’t believe _Nick_ is such a jerk.”

“Is he male?” Liz asked blandly, leaning on one hand.

“Um.  Yeah.”

“Then while are you surprised he’s a jerk?  Just like Will.”  Liz stabbed her forked into the pizza so hard it stayed standing up.  “He’s such an asshole.  He won’t man up and admit that he’s seeing someone.  If he really wants to get rid of me so badly, that’s _all_ he has to do.”

The three girls all shook their heads.  Then Liz muttered, “Fucking men.”  The other two nodded.  Then all three of them turned their eyes to him.  He chewed the rest of his spaghetti and swallowed carefully.

“You got anything to say?” Liz asked.  It was a challenge.

Julian shrugged.  “Not really.  I agree with all three of you.  Scott and Antoinette can be a little nauseating at times.  Nick is a jerk and I will beat him up for you if you want, Riley.  And Will _is_ an asshole.  But, that’s not really news, is it?”

They stared at him.

“You know, if anyone here truly knows how insensitive and moronic men can be, it’s me.  I mean, I’ve done some pretty—”

Julian cut off.  They didn’t really look like they were accepting his attempt at bonding.

“Exactly,” Liz said.  “You’re one of _them_.”

“Get lost!”

Julian wasn’t sure which one(s) of them yelled that, but he already had his tray picked up and was in search of a new lunch table.  But of all the nerve.  It wasn’t like _he_ had done anything to them.  Had he?  Well.  He and Liz were kind of embroiled in an intense (and pointless) battle over Will.  He’d been quite the asshole himself to Anna on Thanksgiving.  But Riley should be on his side.  He’d never done anything to her.  Unless she picked up on the fact that the whole Nick cheating thing wasn’t news to him.  Well, in his defense it hadn’t really been news to anyone but Riley.

Julian frowned as he sat down at the empty end of a table.  The students at the far end glanced at him a little suspiciously, but didn’t ask him to move or get up themselves.  Julian poked around at his half-eaten spaghetti.  Today was so bad he didn’t even have girls as _friends_.  Well, there was definitely one girl who be happy to see him and would probably even like to be all lovey-dovey with him, but he wasn’t so desperate that he was going to hit on a pregnant chick.  As far as he knew no one else in school really knew Laney was pregnant yet.  She wasn’t showing at all.  She kept saying she could see and feel it, but no one else could.  At least not with her uniform on.  Julian hadn’t seen her in anything less lately.

Julian sighed.  Why was he so down?  He’d never had a girlfriend before, and he’d also never found Valentine’s Day lonely before.  Was he just feeling this way now because he wanted sex?  No, that wasn’t it.  What he wanted was what the ideal of Valentine’s Day was.  A close, intimate relationship with someone else.  He might be feeling this way because he was missing his parents, which was a little messed up, but it was understandable.  He was ready to feel that deep, emotional connection with someone again.  His three friends provided that to some extent, but he wanted more.  He wanted to be in love.  He groaned inwardly.  With someone other than Will.

Julian managed to avoid Will most of the day, though he didn’t know why he was trying to.  Even though he had a girlfriend, she didn’t go to Calverton.  So, this year would be the safest year of all.  In all previous years he’d had some girl (or two or three) to hang all over and be kissy with.  But this year, he’d probably be acting like a normal person.  It was that rationalization that made him brave enough to wait for Will by his locker at the end of the day.  He smiled when he saw the pretty boy come around the corner with a large shopping bag in his hand.  He’d been bringing one to school on Valentine’s Day every year since eighth grade.  When Will reached him he set the bag on the ground and started to spin the combination to his locker.

“See if there’s anything you want,” Will said.

Well, maybe bravery wasn’t the only thing that had gotten him to see Will at the end of the day.  He squatted down and began to root through the bag of cards, candy, and chocolate.

“Oh, nice.  Cookies.  Are these homemade?”

Will shrugged.  “That’s what she said, but they could be Pillsbury.”

“Ooo.  I’ll take this Whitman’s Sampler.”

Julian stood up and started to stuff the large yellow box in his messenger bag.  Will sighed as he pulled out the dozens of roses he’d received during homeroom and dropped them on top of the pile of hopeless valentines in the bag.

“What are you sighing for?” Julian said as he flicked him on the shoulder.  “You love the attention.”

“I know.  That’s not it.  I just got less than last year.”

Julian rolled his eyes.  “Good grief.”

“Tell me, Julian,” Will said as he closed his locker.  “And be honest with me.  Have I lost my sex appeal?”

Julian worked his tongue in his mouth as he gave Will a deadpan look.  His friend gave him a small, impish smile.

“Are you asking for it, Will Harder?” Julian murmured, both hoping and dreading that Will was in a playful mood.

Then Will seemed to get distracted from the game they were playing.

“Oh, yeah.  Speaking of my name.  Do you know about any nicknames I have?”

Julian straightened and picked up the shopping bag.  “You have a lot,” he said, falling into step with Will as they started to leave.  “Is there anything in particular you’re thinking of?”

“I’m asking _you_ if there’s any particular nickname that—” Will frowned.  “Never mind.”

Julian shrugged.  “Okay.”

He started to head down the vocational hall toward the back exit when Will grabbed his tie and yanked him to the left.  He stumbled after his shorter friend and was grateful he hadn’t been pulling against his throat.  He’d pulled pretty damn hard.

“What?”

“Soccer,” Will stated sternly.

“Oh.  We have practice today?”

“Yep.  And tomorrow.”

“Right.”

Julian had forgotten there were Tuesday practices because he never went due to his sessions with Dr. Corbin.  He’d been canceled on today because Dr. Corbin had claimed he had some very hot and sexy Valentine’s Day plans.  It had disturbed Julian that he’d managed to hear _that_ much about the man’s plans.  For a professional shrink he sure didn’t seem to mind grossing out his patients with his personal life.

The funk of the boys’ locker room wasn’t much lower down on the grossing out scale though.  Julian wasn’t sure if it was just from 40 plus years of boys sweating and not showering after gym class or if the dank, dark room had once been a morgue or something.  He took a fresh towel from the shelf by the door and followed Will into the changing room.  The rest of the soccer team was already there in various states of undress and Julian spotted Jake bending over to tie his cleats.  It was too much to resist.  He twirled the towel around in one hand and then gave his team captain a good swat on the ass.  Jake jumped up with a yelp and the rest of the team sniggered.  He turned around holding his butt, looking irritated—though amused—until he saw his attacker was Julian.  His face suddenly hardened.  But not in anger.  Something else.

“What?” he shouted.  “I didn’t do anything to him!  So back off!”

Julian stood frozen in uncertainty.  He wasn’t particularly friendly with anyone other than the noted exceptions, but he thought he and Jake had a better relationship than that.  Will was at his side in less than a heartbeat.

“What the hell is your problem?” Will demanded, his eyes leaching some of their green color.

“I didn’t do anything to him!” Jake repeated.

“Yes, you did!” Will shouted back.  “You’re freaking out over nothing!  Julian’s the one who didn’t do anything.”

Jake suddenly looked like he was realizing something.  He looked back and forth at them carefully.  Then he kind of nodded his head.

“Right, right.  Sorry, Julian.  I was…thinking about something else.”

“Oh, well that’s—” Julian started.

“Thinking about what?” Will cut in.  “You know, you look awfully guilty about something.”

“Guilty?” Jake laughed, looking guiltier than OJ.  “No.  I was just.  I mean, I thought you were after me, Will.”

Will balked.  “What?!”

“Well…after you kissed me in December…”

He didn’t even have to finish the thought.  The rest of the team burst out laughing and started catcalling at Will.  Julian wasn’t completely surprised Jake was willing to bring up the incident.  After all, it had been well publicized the day after it had happened.  But, it probably wasn’t his fondest memory of high school.  It had, however, succeeded in getting everyone, including Will, to forget about what they had been discussing before.  But not Julian.  Will was right.  That look he hadn’t been able to recognize when Jake first saw him had been guilt.  Why would Jake feel guilty seeing him?  And it seemed to have gotten worse when Will joined in.  Had Jake done something to feel guilty about?  It was a conundrum.  But not one he could stay focused on for long.  In an attempt to get the other guys to shut up Will started hurrying them all to finish getting dressed and threatening them with wind sprints.  Julian got dressed in record time.  He hated wind sprints.  Fortunately the coach was actually in a mood to run practice that day, so it was a pretty light workout.  Even so, after practice he took a shower.  Most of the other guys had decided to head on home, so Will was waiting for him alone in the locker room.

Julian leaned in the doorway and smiled as he watched his friend.  He had the shopping bag-o-goodies at his feet and was attempting to ignore his curiosity and not peek in.  He’d finger one of the handles, and then lean forward slightly, angling his head to get a different view of the inside of the bag.  Then he’d lean back against the lockers and squish the bag with his feet.  Julian turned his head into the door and gave it a little shake.  He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t get rid of the image of his friend.  Friend.  He hated that word.  Will was so much more than a friend to him, but he would never _be_ more.

Julian balled up the towel in his hand and tossed it into the laundry basket.

“Three points,” Will said softly.

Julian looked up.  Will was watching him.  Had he seen him being all angsty?  Probably.  Julian swallowed his pride.

“I love you, Will.”

Will didn’t smile or roll his eyes or give him a leer.  He looked seriously at him.

“Today’s a day I can’t say that back.”

Julian nodded.  And then shrugged.  “Yeah, well.  Say it tomorrow then.”

He walked over to Will and shouldered his book bag.

“Okay,” Will said, standing up.

They left the locker room together and Julian told Will about his grandparents’ attempts to convince him to go to BYU-Idaho.  Will was laughing at his imitation of their Midwestern accent.  It was surprisingly easy to do.  Could accents be genetic?

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” they heard Scott’s voice coming from the branching hall in front of them.

Just as they reached the T-section, Scott and Antoinette joined them.

“Nope.  I’m not,” Antoinette said with a toss of her golden hair.  “I will lord this over you forever.”

“All right.  Whatever.”

Julian wrapped an arm around Scott’s shoulders as they walked, but he looked at Antoinette.

“What’d he do?” Julian asked in a knowing voice.

Antoinette gave her boyfriend a pointed look.  “ _Nothing_ ,” she said.

Scott shrugged.  Julian looked back and forth between them.  Why would she be upset if he’d done nothing?  Oh well.  Girls were weird.  He gave Scott’s hair a little ruffle as he returned his arm to his side.  The blond didn’t even react to it.

“Hey, is Chris working today?” Julian asked as they stepped outside of the school.  And then they all immediately huddled in on themselves against the cold.  Well, Antoinette huddled in on Scott.  No fair.  He wanted a girlfriend to huddle with.

“I don’t know,” Will said.

“I think he has today off,” Scott said.

“Maybe we can get him to give us a ride home.”

 “Oh, um,” Scott started.  “Actually.  I have an errand I have to run in the city.  It would be easier to take the metro.  Is that okay, Antoinette?  Will you stop with me somewhere before we go home?”

She sighed dramatically.  “I suppose.”

Julian smiled as he watched the girl hug Scott’s arm.  She might be talking like she was disgusted with him, but he had a feeling a wild boar wouldn’t be able to detach her from her honey.  He turned away.  Now was that sweet or nauseating?

“Will?  You want to look for him with me?”

“I’m staying in the city a while,” Will said.  “But we don’t have to look for him.  I believe that’s him on the hood of his car making out with Riley while Karen’s watching.”

“What?!” the other three shouted.

They quickened their pace a little bit because Riley now seemed to be done with Chris and they wanted to be able to hear the confrontation between him and Karen.  The usually jealous and snappy girl was taking it all pretty well.  And she gave them all the most awesome opening in the world.   Julian thought he’d be the only one to take it, but not only did Will and Scott join in on the fun, so did Antoinette.  Despite her monopolization of his precious, little Scott, he was starting to like her more and more.

They all enjoyed a laugh at Chris’ expense on their way to the metro.  Julian kept wondering when that boy would figure out that he’d be much happier if he just swore off women for a few months and got his head together.  He’d tried when he’d dumped Karen, but then he’d been a little involved with that sophomore.  Which he supposed was his fault; he had pointed her out to him.  But how was he supposed to know she’d turn into a pseudo-stalker?  Or that Chris had a thing for the “innocent school girl” routine?

Julian’s momentary joy at no longer being alone on Valentine’s Day was short-lived as his friends abandoned him at the metro.  They had people to be with tonight.  Even Chris did though he’d been busted by his girlfriend on two separate occasions for kissing another a girl.  What was he supposed to do?  Go home and let Cornelius lick the chocolate off his face?  Yeah.  That was as good a plan as any.  But before he went home he might as well stop by Blue Boy and get his schedule for the weekend.  He couldn’t believe how much business had picked up in the last few weeks.  He had at least three interviews every weekend.  Did Blue Boy really have that many clients?  Were any of them ever rejected?  Aside from creepy, grabby Mr. Jarvis, of course.  He wondered if 32 boy whores really were enough to accommodate all the traffic they saw.  A lot of the new clients were even coming from out of state.  How did one advertise that kind of business?

Julian was pondering whether if it was just by word of mouth or if there was some sort of secret code that closeted gay men used to get the message out when he pulled on one of the large, heavy doors to the Blue Boy building.  He was planning on making this trip as short as possible.  He really didn’t want to see anymore lovey-dovey-ness (even if it was fake and paid for) today.  And he had a feeling the joint would be jumping tonight.  Though apparently not in the lobby.  The cavernous room was empty and his shoes echoed dully on the marble floor.  Even Adam was missing from the receptionist’s desk.  Julian wondered what was going on.  Rylan always made sure someone was at the front desk.  Julian had even had to take over for ten minutes once while Adam had desperately run to the bathroom.  He’d thought the snobby receptionist would be nicer to him from then on since he’d done him a favor, but nope.  He was still as snooty as ever.  Julian wondered if he had a crush on him or something.

Julian got on the elevator and hit the button for the 15th floor.  That was where accounting had their offices.  The people who made the schedules were housed with them.  Then he suddenly changed his mind and hit two before the lightening fast elevator went past the floor.  He got off and decided to just peek in on the main room.  He was kind of curious how bad it would be.  He’d heard stories of how bawdy the Halloween party was every year.  Surely Valentine’s Day would be even worse.  It didn’t sound worse so far.  All he heard was a newscaster reporting on a water main break that was wreaking havoc on the evening commute.  Julian rounded the corner and blinked.

The place was dead.  There wasn’t a single client present as far as he could see.  Just a couple dozen escorts sitting around watching the news or playing cards.  Two of them sat on the floor at a coffee table and were putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  Nobody was behind the café counter and the bartender was sitting on top of the bar reading a book.  Julian looked at his watch to check the date, as if the day he’d had hadn’t already proved he knew what it was.  He looked back at the quiet room.  Well.  This was unexpected.

Julian spotted Tyler leaning back into a loveseat, his feet propped up on a table, a soda can balanced on his forehead.  Julian smiled and crossed the room, very amused at seeing the very bored escorts.  They were all so bored no one even seemed to notice him come in.  Not that they usually got all excited when he did.  Only Cal and Tyler ever seemed happy to see him.  Julian plopped down next to Tyler, letting his bag hit the floor.  Tyler started in surprise and had to quickly grab the can of soda to keep from spilling it and making a complete mess.  As it was some of the clear soda splashed onto his face and shirt.  Julian hadn’t realized it was full.  Tyler slung out a hand to get some of the soda off his fingers and then turned to glare at him.  Even upon seeing it was Julian, he didn’t soften his expression.  But, just like Will, his face was too pretty for it to be very menacing.  Will’s face could only be menacing if you knew him well enough to recognize when he’d just snapped and was about to take a limb as payment for annoying him.  Julian knew _that_ expression quite well.

“Hey,” Julian smiled and dug out the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket—something his father had always told him to have on him.  Tyler, still frowning, took the handkerchief from him and wiped off his face as he set the soda can on the table.

“So, what’s with the stuck at camp on a rainy day vibe?  I thought Valentine’s Day would be one of your busiest nights.”

“Unfortunately, not,” a skinny Filipino named Alfie groused.  He picked himself up off the floor where he had been lying down (Julian had thought he was asleep) and plopped onto the table in front of him and Tyler.  “They’re all with their wives,” he finished sullenly.

“Oh, right,” Julian said.   “Like Thanksgiving.  So, it’ll pick up later, right?”

“Nope.”  EJ squeezed himself onto the loveseat next to Julian.  “They have to actually go through with it tonight.”

Several escorts nearby wrinkled their noses at the thought.  Jonas, a raven-haired beauty who was Tyler’s only competition for prettiest escort, moved to sit next to Alfie.  Jonas made Julian nervous.  Not because he was a bad person, but because he was probably the only one of them who could ever possibly tempt him.  All it would take would be a little alcohol, a poorly-lit room, and a willingness on Jonas’ part to let Julian call him “Will” and he might go through with it.

“We usually have a slump in business after Valentine’s Day to boot,” Jonas said.  “Some of the men actually manage to convince themselves that they really love their wives.  Or that she deserves better.  Like he should attempt to be loyal to her instead of to himself.  Anyway.  It usually takes a month or two for them to come to their senses again.”

“Hm.”  Julian nodded thoughtfully.  That did explain things.  Except for one thing.  “So, why are you all here then?  I mean, it looks like almost everyone is here.  Why don’t you guys take the night off and go out?  You know.  With your SOs.”

“Aw, did you hear that?” EJ asked.  “He said ‘SO.’  What a high schooler with all his text-talk.”

“OMG, EJ,” Cal called out from working on the jigsaw puzzle.  “You’re just O-L-D.”

The room chuckled and EJ frowned.  Julian patted his knee comfortingly.  Then someone leaned over the back of the loveseat and hugged Julian around the shoulders.

“None of us have boyfriends, Julian.  It’s so sad.  You wanna be mine?”

Julian turned his head so he could see who had him.  It was DaNeil.

“I thought you had a boyfriend.”

“Oh, God, don’t get him started,” Tyler muttered.

“That’s right,” DaNeil sniffed.  “I _had_ a boyfriend.  He just couldn’t handle my job.”

“Well, can you blame him?” Jonas asked.

Julian felt DaNeil make a face at the other escort and then he let go of him and moved to sit on the arm of the loveseat next to EJ.  Julian noticed the escorts were slowly gravitating toward the conversation.  It was the only thing happening after all.  Only the bartender stayed with his book, and Cal and a very dark-skinned Indian named Sunesh stayed with their puzzle.

“Yes, I can blame him,” DaNeil griped.  “I mean, Walker is out tonight with his girlfriend and she knows what he does for a living.”

“I guess she doesn’t view men as competition.”

“Well, she _should_ ,” DaNeil declared.  “I mean, I know he says he’s straight and _only_ ever tops…but have you ever seen him when he’s nailing a guy?  He totally does get off on it.”

“Maybe he uses it as an outlet since he can’t be that rough with his girlfriend.”

“Why do you always stick up for him?”

Jonas put his hands out in question with a slightly offended look on his face.  “I don’t.  Why are you so pissy?”

“‘Cause he’s horny,” Howie said, sitting next to Jonas on the very edge of the table.  “He hasn’t had a request in a while.”

“Shut-up, Howie.”

Before Howie could respond, Tyler put out his hand and said, “Hey, hey now.  Easy.  We don’t want to scare off the baby.”

Everyone harrumphed.  Including Julian who objected to being called a baby.

“Okay,” he griped, trying to get back at Tyler, “so you don’t have boyfriend.  You’re a loser.  Got it.  But, why are you _here_?  Why don’t you just go home?”

“Because,” Tyler said evenly, digging his fingers into Julian’s thigh, “Rylan gives us a bonus to stay here and be available in case one of the clients has a meltdown.  Usually if that happens, they want their favorite.  And since you never know which one might come crying here, he likes to give us all an incentive to be here to increase the odds that the head case’s favorite will be here.  Rylan really does serve the client.”

Julian finally managed to push Tyler’s hand away.  He rubbed the sore spot on his leg.  “Okay.  But not all of the clients have wives, right?  So where are they?”

Howie shrugged.  “Maybe they think it’s too pathetic to pay for a date on Valentine’s Day.”

“I don’t know,” Julian sighed.  “I would pay just not to be alone.”

“Really?” Tyler asked, resting his arm on the back of the loveseat and turning in toward Julian.  “So…why is it you’re here tonight and not out with some cute high school girl?”

Julian shrugged.  “I got no one.”

“Are you lonely?” Tyler asked, a little patronizingly.

Julian didn’t respond.  His eyes flicked over Jonas.  Then he forced himself to look away.  He was pretty, but he didn’t look like Will.  Not really.

“You got any money?” Tyler asked.

Julian was about to reply with a sarcastic comment, and then he considered if he had any cash on him.  He pushed his hips up and dug into his back pocket.  He produced a wrinkled green wad.  He unfolded the bills and counted.

“I got two dolla.”

Tyler snatched the bills from his fingers.  “Sold!”  He tucked the money away in his leather pants and smiled at him.  “Now, Julian, I am going to give you a highly coveted Blue Boy date.”

Julian looked around.  They had an audience.  Everyone was now paying attention.

“Okay,” he said.  “So, how does it start?”

“Well, first you arrive and I offer you a comfortable seat on the couch and a snifter of brandy.  Leo!” he called out to the bartender, “Bring Mr. March a drink please.”

Leo tapped his book on the bar.  “Look, I think eighteen is old enough to figure out if and how much you want to drink, but Rylan would kill me if I served a minor on his property.”

“So get him apple juice.  Whatever.”

Leo shook his head.  Then he half-sighed and hopped off the bar.  “On the rocks, Mr. March?”

Julian laughed softly.  “Sure.”

“Mr. March,” Tyler returned his attention to him, “while Leo gets your drink, is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

“No, I’m fine.  So.  Do I get to pick my escort now?”

Several of the men in question snickered.  Tyler hit him on the shoulder and looked offended.

“You’ve already paid for _me_!”

“Oh.  Sorry.  That’s fine.  You’re good.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Your drink, sir,” Leo said, handing Julian a snifter filled with a maroon liquid.  It was probably cranberry juice.  He flashed a sexy smile.

Julian smiled back.  “Nice.  Why don’t you add a drink for yourself to my tab?”  Julian gave him a slap on the butt as the bartender returned to his place.  Everyone laughed because Julian had imitated Mr. Rawlings perfectly.  Julian had only ever seen Mr. Rawlings once by random chance, but the man had more quirks than Jimmy Stewart.

Tyler, sitting mostly sideways, crossed his legs so that his foot just grazed Julian’s ankle.  When Julian turned to look at him, he realized they were quite close together, but not so close that it seemed like Tyler was sitting in his lap.  Julian had a feeling that this kind of proximity to a pretty escort tended to have an effect on most men who came to Blue Boy for its intended purpose.  He wasn’t feeling anything.  Yet.

“So, how was your day, Mr. March?”

“Please, call me, Julian,” he leered, patting Tyler’s knee.  His audience chuckled again.  Tyler didn’t seem bothered by his attempts to make the date seem like a show.

“Julian, then.”

Julian couldn’t pinpoint what happened, but Tyler kind of smiled when he slightly emphasized his name.  But it made Julian feel…happy?

“Well, my day,” Julian said, brushing off the peculiar feeling.  “It was terrible.  Let me tell you.  You know when you take calculus in high school and you hate it mostly because you wonder when you’re ever going to have to use it in your life?”

Tyler tilted his head slightly, his longish hair caressing one cheek.  “Mm-hmm.”

Julian doubted it.  Tyler hadn’t finished high school.

“Well.  Today I had to use it.”

Tyler laughed and Julian thought he actually found his joke funny.  He was impressed; Tyler was good at his job.

“What is it you do, Julian?”

“I’m an engineer.”

Tyler shifted almost imperceptivity closer, giving him a playfully sexy smile.  “So you get to blow the whistle and wear the cute hat?”

Julian tried not to laugh.  “Not that kind of engineer.  I build bridges.”

“Oh, wow,” Tyler replied, looking genuinely impressed.  “That’s amazing.”

Julian thought the word “amazing” was a little too strong, and yet, it totally worked because Tyler was looking awe-struck and making him lose a little focus by lightly touching the shell of his ear with a fingertip.  Julian arched his neck to get away from the touch.  It was making him tingly.

“Wow.  _That’s_ amazing, Tyler.  I mean, you know this is total BS and yet I totally believe that you’re interested in me and what I do.”

“But, I _am_ interested,” Tyler insisted, not breaking character.  His fingers just brushed Julian’s hair and Julian saw Tyler’s line of sight fall to his lips.  “Your life is so different from mine.”  Tyler licked his lips and Julian was forced to watch the motion.  Then Tyler raised his eyes and leaned in just a fraction closer, his other hand falling delicately to Julian’s thigh.  “You’re such a different person from what I’m used to.  You draw me in,” he said, his voice changing in timbre in such a way that it made Julian unintentionally lean a little closer to hear him better.  “Everything…your eyes.  Your voice.”

His last word was a breathy whisper and he closed his eyes as a small tremor ran through his body.  Julian could feel it—and it excited him.  Tyler’s eyes opened, and the blue of his irises was darker than Julian remembered.

“They do things to me,” Tyler whispered.

Julian stared at the escort.  Then he swallowed like he was desperately thirsty.  He sat back in a panic, sloshing the drink he’d forgotten he’d been holding.  EJ took it from him before he made a bigger mess.

“Holy crap!” he burst out.  “No wonder you guys make so much money!”

“Ha!” Cal laughed from where he was now squatting on the table behind Alfie, Jonas, and Howie.  “Awesome, Tyler.  You broke him in, like, ten minutes!  You rarely can do actual clients that fast.”

Julian could feel a little heat in his cheeks and he frowned because he hated being embarrassed.  And having so many witnesses to it.

“What do you mean?” he groused.  “Don’t the clients come here for sex anyway?”

“Yeah,” Tyler said, leaning back and giving Julian a little space.  “But it’s the _kind_ of sex that pays differently.”

“Some of them really do just come in for a drink and some conversation,” DaNeil complained.  “You have to get them to _want_ to have sex.  Otherwise…no tip.”

“And then there are the ones that are just horny,” Jonas said with a roll of his eyes.  “All they want is to nail ya and toss a few bills at ya.  In those cases you don’t usually get a big tip.”

“That’s why we try to talk to them for as long as possible,” Tyler said.  “Or as long as it takes to make them believe, however temporarily, that it won’t be _just_ sex.  It’ll be more.  The illusion is shattered, of course, when after we’re done they’re expected to tip us.  But because of the connection, they want to tip bigger.  Usually.”

Julian was floored.  “Wow.  I’m sorry, guys.  I wasn’t giving you all enough credit.  You’re pretty savvy.”

A sense of pleasure at the recognition rippled through the crowd.  A couple didn’t seem to care, but at least most of them actually did take pride in their work.  And as long as he still had an audience…

“So,” Julian said.  “I’m broken.  What now?”

“Well,” Tyler stated plainly, “we have sex.”  He jumped up and straddled Julian with his feet on the couch.  Then he pantomimed moving his hips back and forth.  “First there’s a little, Ooo, ooo!”  Everyone, including Julian, burst out laughing.  Tyler turned around and starting dropping it like it was hot into Julian’s lap.  “Then there’s some Ahh, ahh!”  Everyone laughed harder.  Tyler dropped himself completely in Julian’s lap and began to move against him.  “And then there’s Oh, yeah!  Oh yeah!”  Julian wasn’t feeling the slightest bit turned on despite having his crotch being rubbed.  It was too funny.  “And then, Oh!  Oh!  Oh!”  The escorts howled as Tyler jerked rhythmically and reached his faux climax.  “Oh, yes!  Mr. March!”  Then Tyler slumped down into Julian’s lap, leaning back against him.  “Oh, yeah.  That’s how it goes.”

Everyone was covering their face or holding their sides because they were laughing so hard.  Howie had fallen off the table in his hysterics.  They were all trying to calm down, but then someone would snicker and they’d all start laughing again.  What finally got them all to shut up was a deep, displeased voice booming, “What the hell is going on here?”

Everyone faced the voice in surprise and weren’t quite sure how to answer Rylan.  He was in a suit, but he wore no tie and a couple of the buttons on his shirt were undone.  He was frowning, which was par for the course with him, but he also had an irritated eyebrow raised.  And he was mostly focusing that look on Julian.  Or Tyler.  It was hard to tell which one specifically due to their position.

“What are you doing?” Rylan demanded.

Julian assumed he was angry with him.  He usually was.  So, he answered.

“Hey,” he said with mock offense.  “I’m a paying customer here.”

Rylan let out a gruff noise that let him know what he thought about _that_.

“Why are you here?” Julian asked, a false sweetness in his voice.  “Are you alone on Valentine’s Day?”

“I have work to do,” the man replied without batting an eyelash.

“Are you lonely?”

“I have work to do,” he repeated in a deadpan voice, nowhere near rising to the bait.

“No,” Cal said, sitting by Rylan’s feet, “I think you’re lonely.”  Julian watched as the blond ran a hand up Rylan’s leg, his eyes looking like he was in a trance.  “Just like poor Julian.”  He looked up at Rylan’s face, appearing deceptively innocent.  “We’ll help.”

He started to pull on Rylan’s hand and Julian noticed Alfie had slid closer to him, inching his fingers up Rylan’s other leg.  It seemed like the crowd was getting closer.  Rylan attempted to shake off Cal’s hand.

“Now, Cal.  I don’t have time for—ah!”

Rylan yelped as several hands forced him to the floor.  It was like watching a pack of wolves swarm onto a fresh kill.  Even EJ and DaNeil moved off the couch to help.  Only Tyler stayed put in Julian’s lap, watching.  One other figure wasn’t involved in the pawing.  Hayden walked around the pile and ignored Rylan’s somewhat worried protests and requests to be let go.  The tall escort plopped down next to Julian and scowled as he watched the spectacle in front of him.  Suddenly Rylan’s jacket went flying across the room.

“Hey!” the man shouted.  “I will fire you!”

“You can’t fire all of us,” one of them said.

“I can—ah.”

Julian couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but whatever it was caused Rylan to momentarily shut-up.

“B-boys—” their boss tried, “calm down, okay?”

Tyler continued to watch and Hayden muttered, “Disgraceful.”

“You don’t want him?” Julian asked, trying to see around Tyler better.  He’d never seen Rylan not in control before.  It was interesting.  And his shoes were off now, showing that his toes were curling.

“He’s not my type,” Hayden grumbled.

“You a top?” Julian asked with a smile.

Hayden huffed in annoyance.  “Yes.”

“So, you are interested…you just don’t want to get spread.”

“Shut-up, breeder!”

Julian finally managed to look away from what could only be described as a multi-tiered molestation dangerously approaching a gang bang.  He looked at Hayden’s dark, almost black eyes.

“Why does it bother you so much that I like girls?” he asked.

They were both distracted from Hayden’s response as Rylan managed to partially break free.  He pulled himself out of the crowd and grabbed onto the loveseat.  His dress shirt was pushed off his shoulders and his pants were mostly undone.

“Tyler!  Help me!” he cried.  Well.  Coming from Rylan, it was more like a demand.  Like he couldn’t muster enough desperation to plea for help.  He could only demand it.

Tyler leaned forward and took Rylan’s face in his hands.  Then he kissed him.  Julian noted that Rylan closed his eyes, though he wasn’t sure if that meant anything.  Then Tyler pulled back.  The two men stared at each other for a moment.  Then Jonas pulled himself up next to Rylan.

“We can have lips?” he asked, sounding a little lost in his lust.  He pulled Rylan’s face to his and kissed him deeply.  It was apparently shocking enough for Rylan that he lost his grip on the loveseat and was easily pulled back down to the floor.

“Ah, wait, wait!”  Rylan must have broken free from Jonas.  “Hands!  Mm!”

Julian shook his head.  He couldn’t help but feel that Rylan deserved this just a little bit.  He returned his focus on Hayden.

“Hey.”

Hayden blinked at the scene, and then turned to Julian.  “What?”

“Why does it bother you so much that I like girls?”

“Because you don’t understand,” Hayden snapped.  “You don’t belong here.  You’re not like Walker.  You just come in and flirt with some old guys and then go about your life, shaking your head at the poor little escorts.  We’re not ashamed of what we do, but sometimes you make us feel like we should be.  Which in a way is worse!  Why do you keep staring at me?!”

Hayden looked a little unnerved and Julian finally got himself to blink.  He hadn’t heard much of Hayden’s rant; he’d been mesmerized by the glittering depths of his eyes.

“Your eyes are gorgeous,” Julian admitted.

Hayden looked startled.  And then embarrassed.  “Shut-up!”

He turned away from him and Tyler laughed softly.  Julian jumped as a distressed hand clamped down around his ankle and drew his attention back to the struggle going on at his feet. 

“Um…should we help him?” Julian asked Tyler quietly.  He didn’t want the pack to hear him and turn on him.

“Nah.  He’s fine.  It happens every year.  You know, he doesn’t let any of us service him.  And if anyone ever tries to show any kind of affection or interest, he turns them down flat.  Even going so far as to punish us with less duty hours if it irritates him enough.  So, on Valentine’s Day, he lets us get away with a few indiscretions.  That’s what the bonus is.  If we stay here, he drops in and lets us play a little bit.”

“Oh.”  Julian felt disappointed.  This was all an act.  “So, he’s asking for it then.”

“Sort of.  Though this year things seem to be going a leee-tle bit further than usual.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yep.  He usually sees us one or two at a time.  I’ve never seen everyone just attack him like this before.  I’m starting to become a little concerned that the mob mentality might put Rylan in some well deserved peril.”

Julian snickered at Tyler’s slight vindictiveness.

“Why does everyone want him?” Julian asked.  “I mean.  He’s attractive.  And powerful.  Which can be very seductive.  But.  Seriously.  You all want him?”

“He’s not just a good looking guy,” Hayden said.  “He’s the one that saved them.  They’re all a little bit in love with him.”

“And you’re not?”

“He didn’t save me.  I’m not from the streets.”

“Oh.  So why are you here?  If the bonus doesn’t apply to you?”

He shrugged.  “Bored.  And he _is_ a good kisser.”

Julian laughed and watched amusedly as Rylan crawled out from a gap in the pile, in nothing but his skivvies.  He almost made it to his feet when a hand grabbed his ankle and yanked him back.

“Not so fast, boss!”

Julian grinned as Rylan gave them all a very mean look.  He could see all the ways in which Rylan was planning to punish his employees running through his mind.  Hands down this was the most interesting Valentine’s Day he’d ever had.

 

Scott

 

Scott leaned against his locker and watched his girlfriend talk and laugh with her friends.  Whatever tiff they’d had back in January they had clearly gotten over.  He didn’t see Natalie around them as much as he used to, but she was there today.  Antoinette smiled and nodded as she listened to Bebe tell some story.  She gathered her honey-colored curls in one hand and pulled them over one shoulder.  They shone and bounced for a moment before falling over her back as she and her friends burst out laughing.  Scott smiled.  He loved watching her.  Not only because she was beautiful, but because she was his.  And when she smiled and laughed like that, it reminded him how sweet and kind she really was.  Unless, of course, she was mad.  Then she could be a little scary.  Like when she’d come to see him late at night the day he’d shadowed her father.

 

Scott mouthed along to the lyrics to the All-American Rejects song blasting in his ears.  He turned the page in his book and considered sitting up since holding the book over his face while he lay on his back was starting to make his arms hurt.  The book was ripped away from his hands and Scott started in pure fear as someone jumped on top of him.  Then the earphones were jerked out of his ears, leaving a slight ringing sound in the song’s wake.  Maybe he’d had the volume up too loud.  He finally got his wits about himself and looked at the person straddling him.  He swallowed uneasily.  He had definitely had the music turned up too loud if he hadn’t heard Antoinette storm into the room and begin to accost him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” she shouted.  “You are, like, the _worst_ spy.  Ever.”

Scott knew he shouldn’t, but he had to smile a little at his girlfriend.  She had her arms crossed over her chest and looked quite upset at his lack of stealthy-ness.  He shrugged.

“Sorry, honey.  But are you really surprised?”

“No,” she groused, slumping down a little.

Scott rubbed one of her arms comfortingly.  “Did you talk with your dad?”

“Yes!  And it was one of the weirdest and most awkward conversations of my life.”

“Did it help?”

She dropped her arms and put her hands on his chest.  “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly.  “But it was kind of horrible.  I totally cried.  And we like, had this conversation that parents and kids should never have.  And it was all my fault.  Because I’m so messed up and stupid.”

Scott used all his stomach muscles in order to sit up and make her settle into his lap.  “You’re not stupid, Antoinette.”  He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.  “You might be a little messed up, but I think you’re getting better.”

She half-laughed at that and played with the hem of his T-shirt.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Hey, all I did was make an ass of myself.  But, if that’s made things better between you and your dad, I’d gladly do it all over again.”

Antoinette looked him in the eyes.  “Things _have_ changed.  But, they’re weird, you know?  Like there’s this new territory we entered and we don’t know what to do about it.  I don’t know if things will get better or just stay weird.”

“They’ll get better,” Scott said assuredly.

“How do you know?”

“I just do.  You deserve to be happy, so you will be.”

Antoinette made a face like she doubted his statement, but she smiled at him.  “Thanks, Scott.  You’re sweet.”

She leaned forward and they kissed.  Scott smiled at her when they pulled back.

“So, not that I’m complaining about having a beautiful woman throw herself at me on my bed, but how did you get in?”

Her smile sent chills running down his back.

“Your father let me in.”

“Yeah?”  Scott was still trying to interpret that smile.  “Did anything…weird happen?”

“Well…let’s just say I’ve been here for forty-five minutes.”

Scott blinked.  “What?”

“Your dad and I had a _great_ conversation.”

 

Even fourteen days later Scott was still pondering what exactly she had meant by that.  And what exactly she and his father and talked about for three quarters of an hour.  He’d tried to subtly bring it up with his father, but the man was no fool and had figured out what he trying to do.  And because of that, he’d simply teased his son about it.  For five days.  He really did have a vicious streak in him.  Why hadn’t he been able to inherit at least a little bit of that?  Knowing that he was a sweet, dopey puppy didn’t make it any better to be one.

A person squealing down the hallway drew Antoinette and her friend’s attention momentarily.  The rest of the girls went back to their conversation, but the distraction had let Antoinette see him.  She smiled instantly.  He smiled back.  She started to leave her circle of friends, and then remembered she needed to turn back and excuse herself.  Then she kind of skipped across the hall and flung her arms around his neck.

“Hi, sweetie!”

Scott laughed and hugged her back.  He noticed over her shoulder that her friends were rolling their eyes.  And Natalie just looked disgusted.  He recognized the look on her face and thought he was correct in assuming that it was due to the fact that she had a crush on him.  Either on him or Antoinette.  But based on what Chris had told him red-faced and indignantly after New Year’s, he was pretty certain the crush was for him.  Upon realizing that, his brain had had a little joy conniption and he’d voiced his impulsive thought that he should marry Natalie and Chris should marry Sophia so that they could be brothers.  He’d gotten smacked on the head for that.  And then he’d realized that he couldn’t marry Natalie even if Chris married Sophia.  He was with Antoinette.  And she was all he wanted.

He squeezed her a little tighter and rubbed her back.  “Well, you seem awful chipper today.  Is your car out of the shop?”

She groaned in his ear and it made him tingle.  “Yeah, it’s out.  But my dad won’t let me drive it until…”

“Until…?”

She remained stubbornly quiet.

“Until you learn how to drive?”

“Yes,” she griped.  “I can’t believe I have to take public transportation!  What’s the point of having a boyfriend with a cool BMW if he can’t even drive you around in it?”

In answer he kissed the side of his neck.  She hummed and started to sway with him.

“Oh, yeah,” she giggled.  “So!”  She suddenly pulled back and began to dig something out of her bag.  “Ta-da!  This is for you!”

She handed Scott a little red box and a card.  She was smiling very brightly.  She did seem awfully excited about something.  Scott pulled the lid off the box.  It was a black and red protective case for an iPod Nano.

“I saw that you got one for Christmas.  And I’ve already seen you drop it like ten times.  So, I thought you might appreciate this.”

He laughed.  “I do!  Thanks!”  He started to open the card.  “But why did you get it for me?”  He saw the cartoon dog on the card cover blushing as a cartoon cat gave him a flower.  “I mean, did you just think it wouldn’t survive for much longer?”  He opened the card and read what the cat was saying to the dog, “Happy Valentine’s Day!”  His face fell.  “Oh.”

He considered what face he should give her to minimize damage.  He went with a “whoops” expression as he looked up.  Antoinette wasn’t smiling anymore.  He knew he should have gone with puppy-dog asking for forgiveness.

“Oh, great,” she sighed.  “Don’t tell me.  You forgot.”

Scott shrugged helplessly.

“Great,” she muttered.  She gave him a pouty face.  “Jerk.”

“Sorry!  I’ve just never had to remember it before!”

“Oh, no,” Antoinette bemoaned.  “I can see this as the omen it is.  You’ll forget birthdays, anniversaries…”

“Probably,” Scott agreed.  “But only the first few times.”

“You turd.”

She whapped him on the shoulder.  He winced a little and now gave her the puppy-dog asking for forgiveness face.  She frowned at him.  And then combed her fingers through the hair on the side of his head.

“But I still like you.”

“Yeah?” he asked, a little smugly.

She tried to keep the frown going, but failed miserably as she started to lean forward.  “Yeah,” she whispered and kissed him.  He kissed her back, circling his arms around her waist and drawing her closer.  He enjoying kissing her no matter the circumstances—or position—but he liked doing it best with her body pressed close to his.  It felt good to feel her warm, solid presence.  He liked having something to literally hold on to.  Scott had realized long ago he was happiest when things were literal.

But no matter how good she felt, he was proud of himself for remembering they were in school.  He kept his hands at her waist and tried not to use his tongue.  For the most part.  She had her arms circled around his neck so far she was holding onto his shoulders.  Dagnabbit.  Why did they have to be in school right now?  Well…a crowded hallway.  Being in school had never really deterred them before.

“Oh gross,” someone gagged nearby.  “ _Excuse me_ ,” a very familiar voice did its best to interrupt them.  And it was only because he knew who was disturbing them that he bothered to turn his head to look at Anna.  He didn’t let go of Antoinette, however.

“Yes, Anna?” he asked, trying desperately to ignore his girlfriend as she continued to kiss his ear.

“Yeah, hi,” she said, clearly irritated.  “Excuse me, but can you stop tongue probing him long enough for me to ask him a question?”

Antoinette finally turned her head to look at Anna.  Scott couldn’t see her expression, but he was certain it wasn’t friendly.

“Um…” she pretended to mull over the question.  “No.”

She grabbed Scott’s face and forced their lips together.  This time she ignored their unspoken no tongues at school rule and made sure Anna got a good show.  It almost made Scott laugh.  He pushed back on Antoinette and turned to Anna again.  He noticed that she’d straightened her hair.  She didn’t do that often.  Only for special occasions.  Did she have a date today?  He didn’t like her going out with someone if he didn’t know who it was.  If she was going to date someone he needed to make sure it wasn’t someone sketchy.

“Yes, Anna?” Scott tried again.

She worked her jaw in annoyance, and then he saw that she made herself calm down a little bit.

“Do you remember that our presentation for our government project is due today?  We haven’t really talked about it you know.  You’ve been… _preoccupied_.”

“Yes, I’m aware our presentation is due today.  In fact, as I recall, I asked you to come over last night, but you were busy with an important appointment.”

He gave her a look to let her know he now knew that “important appointment” was with her hair dresser.  She crossed her arms loosely and kind of rocked on one jutted out foot, trying not to acknowledge that this was also partly her fault.

“Anyway,” Scott said.  “I wrote it up last night.  Both the part to turn in and a little script for us to use.  I’ve got a copy for you so you can look it over before class.”

Anna looked just a touch ashamed.  “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Awesome.  Thanks, Scott.”

“Hey.  Don’t I always take care of you?”

Anna smiled.  A real, natural smile.  “Yeah.”

Scott felt Antoinette go a little rigid.  Well, there was nothing he could do about that.  Antoinette had promised him she’d try to deal with his friendship with Anna.  He hoped she would keep to her word.

“So, can I have it?” Anna asked.

“Sure.  It’s in my bag.”

Anna waited.  Scott didn’t move.

“Um.  Can you get it out for me?”

Scott smiled and shook his head.  “My hands are busy.”

Anna dropped her eyes to where Scott’s hands still circled Antoinette’s waist.  Then her eyes rolled back up to his face.  He kept smiling.  She wasn’t amused in the least.  But she had interrupted them in not the politest manner; if she could dish it out, she could take a little bit of it too.  Her eyelids fluttered as she made a decent attempt not to roll her eyes.  Then she started yanking on his bag as she dug roughly through it.  It mostly amused Scott because it made him rub up against Antoinette.

“What made you decide to get a new bag?” Anna grumbled as she pulled out the yellow folder marked “Government.”   “It obviously wasn’t because you thought you needed a new one.  Otherwise you would have gotten one two years ago.”

Scott laughed softly.  “Yeah.  It was a Christmas present from Julian.”

“Oh, I see.”  Anna pulled out her copy of the script.  “That explains the new khakis too.  Thank God for Chris.”

Scott made a face at her.  She returned the expression as she stuck the folder back in his bag.

“So.  What was the third serious gift?”

Scott grinned.  “My awesome iPod Nano.”

“What?!  That wasn’t from your father?  _Will_ gave you that?”

“Yup.”

Anna shook her head.  “Man.  He talks all big, but he spoils you worse than the other two.”

Scott kept smiling.  “I know, right?”

“Hey, Scott?” Antoinette got his attention by rubbing her finger on his neck.  He turned to face her.  “What do you mean by serious gifts?”

“Oh, you don’t know?” Anna feigned surprised.  “Every year the four of them exchange two presents with each other.  One for real gift and one joke present.  It’s a tradition that started back in, what, the seventh grade?”  She looked at Scott.  He nodded confirmation.  “It’s like this whole big thing,” Anna said with a pointed look for her rival.  “Don’t you know your own boyfriend at all?”

Antoinette narrowed her eyes.  And then she smiled cruelly.  “Oh.  I _know_ him quite well.  Better than you ever will.”

Anna sighed dramatically.  “Trust the slut to use sex as an example of intimacy.”

“What did you say, bitch?!”

Scott moved one hand to scold Anna (and Antoinette) gently, but in moving his arm, he freed Antoinette from his embrace.  She leapt forward and grabbed Anna by the lapel of her blazer.  Anna didn’t act surprised in the least.  She fought back by grabbing Antoinette’s hair.  Both girls screamed and everyone in the hallway turned to look at them.  Scott knew he didn’t want to jump in the middle of it.  He’d learned his lesson last time and still had a small white scar on the side of his jaw from someone’s nail.  The only thing he could think of that might make them stop being mad at each other (or at least temporarily forget it) would be to make them irritated with him.

“Ladies, ladies, _please_ ,” he said in as derisory a voice as possible.  He spread his arms out like he was “modestly” accepting the acknowledgement of how great he was.  “Stop fighting over me.  It’s embarrassing.”

They both stopped what they were doing and looked over at him.  He kept up his smarmy expression even though he wanted to burst out laughing.  They were looking a little rough with their hair all mussed up and their uniforms askew.  They let each other go by violently flinging their hands down.  Then they both turned to face him.  Well, mission accomplished: they looked very irritated.

“We’re not fighting over _you_ ,” Anna informed him haughtily.

“This has _nothing_ to do with you,” Antoinette snipped.

“Oh, please,” Scott said, turning his head and slightly shrugging.  “Of course it’s about me.”  He faced them with his hands on his waist.  “You two never had any kind of contact with each other until I came into the picture.  It’s all about me.”

“Maybe at first,” Anna admitted.

“But now it’s the principal of the thing,” Antoinette agreed.

They turned to glare at each other.  Oh, no.  Were they going to start fighting again?

“Yeah right,” Scott said.  “You two are just a couple of alley cats fighting over your hot stud.”

They both turned their glares on him.  Had he taken it too far?  Antoinette was kind enough to merely slap his shoulder.  Anna balled her hand into a fist and punched the other one.

“Ow!”

They both turned on their heels and stomped off.  He hugged himself so he could rub both of his throbbing shoulders.  He was lucky he’d been wearing his jacket for the extra padding.  But, he was willing to take the hits.  As long as they weren’t yelling at and hitting each other, he could take a little abuse.

“Oh, yeah.”  Scott shouldered his bag and jogged after Antoinette.  “Hey, Ann, wait up.”

She whipped around to face him and he had to put on the brakes.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.  “My name is Antoinette.”

“Okay.  Antoinette.  You have prom committee after school today, right?”

She crossed her arms and looked even more upset.  “Why is _that_ what you remember about today?”

“Um…I’m right, right?”

“Yes.”

“What time will you be done?  I’ll wait for you.”

“I have no clue.  You’ll just have to hang around until I’m done.”

He smiled.  “Okay.”

Antoinette’s anger crumbled into bewilderment.  Then she reached out her hands and ruffled his hair wildly.

“Gah!”

Then she turned and stalked away.  Scott scratched the side of his head.  What had that been all about?  Scott shrugged and turned around to head to class.  He checked his watch.  He might just make it on time today.  He gasped in shock as someone body checked him into the nearby lockers.  The hallway had mostly cleared out since the bell was about to ring, so there were no witnesses to the angry group of soccer team members that were now crowding around him.  Scott had managed not to hit his head against the lockers because he’d been shoved from the side, but his shoulder was really hurting him.  He looked at the ring of five faces.  He knew Nick Tripp and Carl von Schiltzer, but the other three he only vaguely recognized as his classmates.  He would have sworn Kyle Lafee would be among them, but he wasn’t around.  And neither was…

Jake Patterson stepped through the gap two of the boys had made in the ring for him.  Scott hadn’t really been anxious even with all five of them around him.  They weren’t bigger than him and he didn’t think any of them had any real grudges against him.  But Jake was nearly as tall as Julian and just as solidly built.  And he definitely had a grudge.  Jake leaned his arm on the lockers above Scott’s head and bent down to put their faces close together.

“She’s a pain, isn’t she?  Doesn’t get what she wants so she throws a tantrum.  I really ought to thank you for taking her off my hands.”

Scott didn’t reply, but turned so that his back was flat against the lockers.  He straightened his knees which brought his and Jake’s faces closer together.  The soccer team captain didn’t back away from the increased proximity.

“But, you know, Ramsey?  Thanking you just isn’t on the agenda.  Now, I know I told you that hitting you that one time wouldn’t make us even, but I would be willing to settle for it.  But that was back when I thought this little game of hers was going to blow up in her face after a couple weeks.  But now it’s been a month and a half of watching you two flaunt it in my face.”

Scott knew better than to protest, so he stayed quiet.

“Now, it’s dumb.  I know that.  Antoinette dumped me.  She doesn’t want me.  How can I blame the guy that gets her next?  Even if that douche bag was banging her behind my back while we were still going out…that was her choice.  So, why should I be angry with you?”

Jake stopped talking.  Scott wondered if he really wanted an answer.  He decided he’d stay quiet as long as he could.  Jake leaned closer, putting them nose to nose.  Scott’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus on Jake’s raging brown eyes.

“Because I can’t hit a girl, Ramsey.  But I bet it will still feel just as good to pound on you.”

The bell rang.  And then the sound echoed in the empty hallway.  Jake stepped back.  Scott flinched as Jake raised his arm, but all he did was pat him on the shoulder.

“You’re such a pussy, Ramsey.  I can’t believe Antoinette dumped me for you.  I’m sure she’ll come to her senses eventually.”

He and the rest of his posse walked away from him.  Scott waited until they were out of sight around a corner before breathing a sigh of relief and allowing his heart to restart.  Geez.  Why had Jake suddenly decided nearly dislocating his jaw wasn’t enough payback?  Maybe he and Antoinette did hang on each other too much in the halls, but it wasn’t to intentionally throw it in Jake’s face.  Neither of them had really given him so much as a second thought since the bruise had finally faded away.  Why was Jake still so hung up on it?  Had he liked her that much?  Or was this more of a pride thing?  He wondered if Will and Julian would be willing to intervene on his behalf.  They would, he was certain.  But then that might cause a fight among the whole soccer team.  He didn’t want to be responsible for that.

Well, if Jake wanted to be bitter and hold a grudge, there was nothing he could do about it.  Except maybe try to avoid being alone in the hallways from now on.  He wasn’t going to let it worry or bother him.  Not even Jake’s comments regarding his surety that Antoinette would get bored with him eventually.  Jake obviously didn’t know everything the two of them had gone through to get to this point.  Though he did seem to know that their relationship had been physical even before Antoinette had dumped him.  Which once again made him squirm to think about how much he and Anna had seen and heard on New Year’s.

“Ramsey!”

Scott yelped and took off running.  Had Jake decided to pound on him now?

“Scott Ramsey!  Stop running!”

Scott flew around the corner and sprinted for his homeroom.  He crashed into the door and slid inside as it swung open.  The class and the teacher turned in surprise to watch him slam the door shut and peek out through the window.  Mr. Hayden came puffing up to the window.  Scott blanched.  Whoops.  He backed away from the door and slunk toward his desk.  He kept expecting to hear the door explode open and Mr. Hayden’s deep voice demanding that he come to him immediately for his scolding.  He could just picture what he would look like: crouched low to the floor, ears back, tail tucked between his legs, sad, pitiful face.  No wait.  That was what Coco looked like when his father scolded her for piddling off her papers.  He hated it when his father got gruff with her.  But then again, she seemed to obey her training better around him than Scott.

He made it through homeroom.  Mr. Hayden never came after him.  But for the rest of the day, Scott slunk through the hallways, looking for and avoiding both Mr. Hayden and Jake.  He made it safely through the day, realizing that he’d also _been_ avoided.  He hadn’t seen much of Anna or Antoinette after that morning.  Now he was sitting outside of Mrs. Randall’s classroom, waiting for the prom committee meeting to end.  He’d only actually been waiting for forty-five minutes, but he was surprised the meeting had lasted until 4:45.  If they had started right after school, it had lasted for a full two hours.  What on earth could they be planning that it would take that long?  And they’d been having these weekly meetings since November.

He’d been halfway asleep on the floor in the hallway when the door opened and excited voices woke him up.  He saw Karen walk by him without so much as a second glance.  None of the other girls paid him much attention either.  Including his own girlfriend who walked right by him laughing with one of her friends.  Scott struggled to his feet and grabbed his bag as he chased after her.

“Hey, Ann!”

Antoinette turned around.

“Toinette,” he added quickly.  He smiled in what he hoped was an endearing manner.  Antoinette stared at him blankly for a moment, and then smiled liked she was happily surprised as she took a step forward.

“Scott.  You’re here.”

“Well, yeah.  I said I’d wait.”

“I know, but…I mean.  Jake always said he’d wait but he never did.”

Scott smiled and petted the top of her head.  “I suspect that’s one of many differences between him and me.”

Antoinette’s brow creased and her eyes watered.  Scott started.  What had he done wrong?  Was she about to cry?

“Antoinette?” one of her friends called out.  “Should we go on without you?”

“Forget it,” Samantha said.  “She’s gone.”

The girls left the hallway and Antoinette moved forward to bury her face in his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry I yelled at you,” she sniffled.

Scott laughed and rubbed her back.  “You didn’t yell at me.”

“I mean this morning.”

“That wasn’t yelling.  Come on.  Why are you upset?”

“I’m not.”

She stood up straight and smiled at him.  Her eyes were clear.  He was thankful she hadn’t cried.  He hated for her to be sad.  He took her hand and started to lead her through the hallways.  And that was a strange reversal of their normal positions.  It boded well for later.

“So, do I win back some brownie points for forgetting about today?”

“A couple.  But seriously.  You forgot Valentine’s Day.  That’s like, a Class A felony in Relationship World.”

“Well.  In Scott World—”

“Unfortunately Relationship World trumps Scott World.”

“Dang it.”

“So.  There had better be some groveling.”

“You’re not going to let this go are you?”

“Nope.  I’m not.”   Antoinette gave a little indignant toss of her blonde curls.  “I will lord this over you forever.”

“All right.  Whatever.”

That’s when they came across Will and Julian.  Julian was trying to be cute, as usual.  He refused to encourage his bad behavior and didn’t react to his teasing or hair ruffling.  He did notice that Will had quite a collection of Valentines again this year.  He’d get to go through it this weekend and pick out what he wanted.  It was awesome that Valentine’s Day came right at the start of competitive soccer season.  Will refused to eat anything with refined sugar and most dairy products during that time.  Valentine’s Day left him with a lot of unwanted chocolate and sweets to give away.  It also left him a little cranky.  Which is maybe why he pointed out Chris’ distressing situation with Riley, but didn’t seem terribly inclined to help him at all.  Of course, none of them actually tried to help him.  They merely teased him and had a good laugh at his expense.  Scott had thought about actually kissing him, but after Julian and Will did, he felt a little sorry for him.  Chris was a little bit of a touch-me-not.  Plus, his scary girlfriend was watching and he didn’t want her to get mad at him.  Though Antoinette didn’t seem to mind making her or him angry.  Not that he got angry that she played along in their game.  But what if she figured out Chris was by far a better person than he was and switched to him?  Surely that couldn’t happen from one little kiss on the cheek, could it?

While Scott pondered this they made their way to the metro.  Scott did notice that Julian looked a little despondent that they were all abandoning him, but he just couldn’t stay with him today.  Of course, if it hadn’t been _today_ , Julian probably wouldn’t have looked so down at being left alone.  But, it wasn’t like Julian had ever had a girlfriend before.  So, being alone on Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be anything new to him.  He was quite certain he’d never spent the day with his parents.  Those two had probably kicked him out of the house so they could do it on every flat surface.  And some not so flat.  Scott shuddered to remember his own traumatic experience involving the Marches’ sexual exploits.

“Scott, is this us?”

“Hunh?”

Antoinette pointed out the open door of the metro car.  The sign on the wall indicated that this was their stop.

“Oh, yeah!  Here!”

He jumped off the seat and pulled Antoinette with him.  They pushed through the crowd of commuters and barely made it off the train before the doors slammed shut on them.  The platform was bustling and noisy because this station was one of the main downtown hubs.  He pulled Antoinette close to his side and guided her toward the escalators.

“It’s a good thing I asked where we were getting off at,” she complained.  “What were you thinking about?”

“Something really gross.”

“Well, I’m glad I inspire such thoughts in you.”

“It wasn’t you.  Of course.  Now, come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

They came up topside and cringed at the blast of frigid air.  Scott put his head down and stepped into the wind.  He found a patch of ice and slipped just like a cartoon character on a banana peel.  He took Antoinette down with him.  A couple people nearby looked at them sympathetically and one even looked like he might try to stop to help them up.  But a chill blast of wind sent everyone scurrying.  Antoinette sat up and flipped her long jacket and skirt back down over her legs.  She glared at Scott.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded.  “You?”

“I’m fine,” she sighed.  “So, what’s your errand?  I hope it’s not far.”

“It’s not.  Come on.”  Scott stood up and helped Antoinette to her feet.  They linked arms and walked carefully down the sidewalk, keeping a watchful eye out for ice.  They were giggling by the time they made it the three blocks to the Four Seasons Hotel entrance.  He wasn’t even sure why they were laughing.  The doorman gave them a raised eyebrow as he held the door open for them.  Antoinette stamped her feet once they were inside the warm lobby.  Scott felt sorry for her and all the other girls at Calverton.  His thin dress slacks didn’t really do much to ward off the cold, but he was sure they did a better job than the black tights the girls wore.

“So,” she said, her teeth chattering a little, “Are we stopping here to warm up before we continue on?”

She blew warm air onto her fingers and Scott took her hands in his, rubbing them vigorously to warm them up.

“Nope.  This is it.”

“Oh.  What do you have to do here?”

“Come on.”

Scott took her hand and led her through the fancy and slightly gaudy lobby to the elevators.

“You know what’s so great about technology?  They have these automated check-in kiosks now.  So, as long as you insert the credit card the reservation was made under, you don’t have to have any ID or be the person who made the reservation.”

They waited for an elderly couple to get off the lift, and then they stepped on.  Antoinette looked a little confused.

“Did you steal someone’s credit card?” she laughed.

Scott pushed the button for the sixth floor.

“No, of course not.  My dad made the reservation.”

“Oh.”  She looked away and then back at him.  “Are we going to see your dad?”

“God I hope not,” Scott laughed as the doors opened.  He held an arm in front of them so she could get off.  He stepped off after her and led her down the hallway to the right.

“Scott, what is going on?”

At the third door on the right Scott inserted the room key.  The light flashed green and he held open the door so Antoinette could go inside.  She went in tentatively and then he heard her gasp.  He smiled and closed the door behind them, pushing her gently to step out of the entranceway and into the room.  He’d only left a couple of lamps on, and he’d muted those with pink cloths.  The only other light came from the flickering “candlelight” provided by the fake candles he’d bought.  A bouquet of red roses sat on the small table by the window and a combination of pink, red, and white rose petals covered the mostly black bedspread of the king sized bed.

Antoinette still had her hands over her mouth as she looked around the room.  Scott walked over to the desk where the phone sat.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.  “We can order room service.  A full dinner or chocolate covered strawberries or something.”  He bit his lip in a little worry.  Antoinette still hadn’t said anything or moved since her initial reaction.  “Um.  I know it doesn’t look that great.  I was kind of rushing.  I was worried your meeting would end before I got back and you would leave.  Though, after I waited so long, I was thankful I went with the fake candles instead of real ones.”  He attempted a nervous laugh.  “I might have burned the whole hotel down.”  He swallowed uneasily.  “Antoinette?”

She turned to look at him.  And this time not only were her eyes watery, but tears were falling steadily from her eyes and running down her hands to her wrists.  Scott felt his stomach drop and his chest seized up on him.  He took a step forward.

“Oh, God, Antoinette!  What?  What’d I do?  What’d I do wrong?!  Please, _please_ don’t cry!”

He took her shoulders in his hands.  She wiped her cheeks with her hands and then looked at him with an exasperated smile.

“I’m not upset, you moron.  These are happy tears!”

“Well why do people cry when they’re happy?  It’s so confusing!”

Antoinette laughed softly and leaned forward.  She kissed him sweetly and then pulled back.

“Is that confusing?”

He shook his head.  “No.”

She kissed him again, this time wrapping her arms around him.  He took her in his arms and kissed her back.  He had made her happy.  That’s all he’d wanted when he’d planned this.  She pulled back slightly and put their foreheads together.

“You didn’t forget,” she said softly.

“Of course not,” he replied.  “It’s our first Valentine’s Day.”

“But, Scott…”  She turned her head and looked around the room.  “This is…this is…”

“Romantic?” he helped supply an adjective.  “Ingenious?” he congratulated himself.

“Extravagant.”

Scott took that word in.  It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“Well, yes,” he said.  “I mean.  I just thought you would like it.  And it would be a great surprise.”

“Oh, I do!” she said, turning to him and putting a little distance between them so that they could look at each other as they talked.  She left her hands on his shoulders.  “And it is a great surprise.  It’s just that.  Well.  This isn’t something high school boys do.”

Scott gnawed on the inside of his cheek and strummed his fingers on her waist.  “I don’t follow.”

“Well.  This has got to be expensive.  And takes a lot of planning.  And mostly just a lot of effort to even bother to do it at all.  It’s something men do for…their wives or something.  Or women they hope will soon be their wives.”

Scott sort of nodded.  “Yeah, it is.”

Antoinette blinked at him.  And then she put on a face like he was joking about something and half-laughed as she asked, “Is that a proposal?”

Scott shrugged.  “Kind of.”

Antoinette stared at him, looking completely stunned.

“But, don’t get a big head or anything.  It’s not an _official_ one.  Not yet.”

“Oh, Scott.”  Her voice trembled as she said his name.  She pulled herself close and kissed him.  Scott felt his feet leave the floor.  He was going to take that as an acceptance.  He moved one hand to cup her smooth, wet cheek and the other he buried in her thick hair.  She ran her fingers through his hair up from the nape of his neck to the crown of his head.  The sensation tingled all the way down his body and raised gooseflesh on his arms.

“I love you,” she said against his lips.  “I love, I love you.”  She took a step forward and he allowed himself to be guided toward the bed.  “I love you, Scott.”

They started to lean back onto the bed of rose petals, but Scott put out a hand and prevented them from lying all the way back.

“Um, Antoinette?”

“Yes?”

She had implied she was going to listen to his question, but she hadn’t stopped kissing him.  He cupped her face in his hands and pulled their lips apart by a fraction of an inch.

“Um.  This is your day.  And I want everything to be just like you want it.  But, um.  There was just one thing I wanted.  If you don’t mind.”

“Anything you want,” she said, trying to press their lips together again.

“Can I be on top?”

She pulled back and smiled at him.  And then she laughed.  “Of course, Scott.  You can be on top.”  She bit her lower lip with a sexy smile.  “I want that too.”

“Oh, good.”

Scott turned them over and pushed her further onto the bed.  He sat over her while he unbuttoned the large buttons on her houndstooth wool jacket.  He pushed it off her shoulders and while she sat up partially to remove it and her blazer he did the same to his own coat and uniform jacket.  When they finally had less than four inches of clothing between them, Scott leaned back down and kissed her.  She wrapped her arms around his neck and he settled his weight on top of her.  She let out a small noise.  Scott jumped up, spreading all four limbs out wide so that none of his weight was on her.

“I’m sorry!  Are you okay?!”

Antoinette shook her head at him.  “I’m fine, you dork.  Come back here.”  She pulled him back down on top of her.  “Now don’t you dare move away.”

Later, Scott lay on his back with Antoinette draped partway over him.  They’d easily forgotten the cold from outside and needed no covers as they rested, but Scott couldn’t just let them lie completely exposed like that.  So he’d pulled up the thin sheet to chest level.  Antoinette had her head on his shoulder, her hair sprawling over her shoulder and spilling onto his chest.  He had one hand behind his head and the other he used to hold her close to him.  He closed his eyes.  Was it dangerous to be this happy?

“So,” Antoinette said.  He opened his eyes.  “How was it being on top?”

He smiled.  “Awesome view.”

She giggled.  “Now you know why I like it.”

“Shut up.  Oh.  I have a gift for you.”

She sat up on one elbow to look at him.  “Another one?  Well, I must warn you.  After the room only diamonds will be acceptable.”

Scott panicked.  He didn’t have any diamonds.  His worry must have shown on his face because she gave him a knowing smile and patted his chest.

“I’m just joking, sweetie.”

“Oh.  Well still.  I’m too nervous to give it to you now.  I mean.  Because it’s not like it’s a real gift or anything.”

“Ah, I see.  So, the hotel room is my serious gift.  And now I get my joke gift?”

“Um.  Yeah, sure.  If you’re okay with that.”

“I am.  It _almost_ puts me on the same level with your friends.”

Scott sat up.  “Oh, you are so on a different level.  A higher level, I mean.  I would never do this with them.”

“Never say never,” she murmured as he leaned over her to reach into the drawer of the nightstand.

“I’m pretty certain I’m safe saying never concerning that.”

“Really?  I don’t think you’re so safe.”

“Geh.”  Scott gave her a nasty look as he sat back with a slim red case in his hands.

Antoinette just put a hand to her mouth to hide her smile.  He held the box out to her, still frowning.  She sat up and let the sheet fall to her lap as she took the case from him.  He blushed when he saw her breasts.  Where exactly was he in his sexual maturity?  Clearly not mature enough to be having sex.  Antoinette opened the box.  Her jaw dropped.

“Oh my God!  Scott!”  She pulled out the red fur-lined handcuffs.  “Where did you get these?”  She laughed.  “You’re obviously too much of a wuss to buy these in person.  You got them off the Internet, didn’t you?”

“No, actually, they were a present.  To me.”

“From who?” Antoinette demanded with wide eyes.

Scott grinned.  “Julian.”

“Really,” she said, giving him a knowing look.  Hadn’t she just told him that he wasn’t safe from _that_ with his friends?

“But I think he gave them to me with you in mind.”

“ _Really_.  Well.  Let’s try them out.  Here.”

She offered him both the handcuffs and one her wrists.  Scott balked.

“What?!  No way!  Not on you!  On _me_!”

“Oh, thank God,” Antoinette groaned relief.  Then she smiled and snapped a cuff into place around his wrist.  Scott blinked.  It didn’t seem like this was the first time she’d dealt with handcuffs before.  She leaned closer and petted him under the chin.  “You want it tighter?”

Scott swallowed excitedly.  “Yes, please.”

An hour and a half later Antoinette was rooting around through the wrinkled mess of sheets trying to find the key.  She finally leaned over the bed and checked the floor.

“Ah-ha!”

She sat up and released Scott from the headboard.  Scott lowered his arms for the first time in ninety minutes.  He thought he heard his shoulders creak.  Antoinette flopped beside him.  She sighed happily.

“Remind me to thank Julian later.”

Scott chuckled and looked at his wrists as he rubbed them.  “Okay.”  The fur had prevented the metal from cutting his skin, but he could see some bruises forming.  It was a good thing his uniform would cover those.  Antoinette suddenly turned to him.

“Is it really okay?” she asked, her eyes filled with anxiety.

Scott didn’t know if he should laugh or console her.  “Um.  I thought you were joking, but if you really want to thank him I think he’ll get a kick out of it.”

“No, I mean.”  She sat up and leaned over him.  “What we did.  Was it okay?”

Scott smiled and tucked some hair behind her ear.  “Antoinette.  It was awesome.”

“But.”  She didn’t seem reassured at all.  “I mean, was it enough?”

“Honey, I know you are freakishly strong and that must translate into more stamina, but I’m going to need at least…twenty minutes.”

She slapped his chest lightly.  “That’s not what I’m talking about!”

“Then what is it?”

He rubbed her arm and then drew her hand to his mouth to kiss it.  He kept a hold of her hand and looked up at her, waiting for her to get to her point.

“I just mean.  I wasn’t very…you know.”

He shook his head.

She looked momentarily irritated and then took in a calming breath.  “What we did was…well, it was kinky.  But not…I didn’t really _hurt_ you.”

Scott shrugged. “That’s okay.”

“Is it?  Do you still need it?  At first, I did it because I could tell you wanted pain.  You wanted to feel physical pain to make the emotional pain seem not as bad.  And…I wanted to do it because I was angry.  And feeling helpless.  But now…I don’t _want_ to hurt you.  I’m in such a better place.  Not just because things are better with my dad, but because of you.  I’m…”  She shrugged and smiled almost like she was having an epiphany.  “I’m happy.  I’m just happy now.  I feel like a better person.  And…well…I thought that you were feeling better too.  That you don’t need to be hurt anymore just so you can feel.”

Scott continued to hold her hand and waited for her to look away from the spot she’d blankly focused on.  She looked over at him nervously.  He smiled at her.

“You’re right,” he said.  “I don’t need to hurt to feel now.  I’m feeling everything now.  But, it’s a good thing.  I don’t need to mask those feelings.  I just want to feel them.”

Antoinette let out the breath she’d been holding.  She leaned down and kissed him.  “Good.”  She kissed him again and then lay down beside him, snuggling against his side and settling her head on his shoulder.  They lay happily together in silence for a few moments.  And then Scott spoke.

“Um.  But.  You know.  Um.  Just because we’re better now…that doesn’t mean we need to like.  You know.  Well.  I mean.  Vanilla is a great flavor, but—ow!”

Scott rubbed his smarting nipple.  He looked down at his girlfriend and she smiled naughtily back at him.

“Don’t worry, honey.  I know what you like.”

Scott could feel himself blush.  Maybe it was too dim for her to notice.

“Besides,” she said, “I don’t think we could have taken things as far as we did if we both didn’t have a penchant for that sort of thing anyway.”

“Yeah…”

“Man, I’m starving.  What time is it?”

Scott tilted his head back to look at the clock on the nightstand.

“Eight o’clock.”

“Omigod, are you serious?”

“Uh.  Yeah.  I think they have 24 hour room service here, so we can still get something if you’re that hungry.”

Antoinette made a face at him.  “Not that!  I never called my parents.  They’re going to kill me.”

Scott reached out and grabbed her wrist.  He tried to make it seem like he had just decided to touch her and not like he was desperately holding onto her.

“Why don’t you call them and tell them you’re staying at a friend’s house tonight?”

“Um, because, they have a strict no doing anything past 8:00 on school nights rule.  Why don’t _you_ call your dad and tell him you’re just suddenly going to stay out all night.”

“Well…my dad made the reservation for me.  I think he figured out what I had planned.”

“Oh, right.  Wow.  That’s kind of embarrassing.  How did you manage to ask him?”

“Well, all I did was ask him for some ideas to do something romantic for you on Valentine’s Day, and the next thing I knew he was talking about booking a suite and making a dinner reservation in New York City.  He was actually online getting ready to book us flights when I reminded him we were only seventeen and in high school.  I think he really likes you.  Your conversation with him must have really been something.”

Antoinette laughed.  “You’re kind of like your dad, aren’t you?  A mellower version of course.  But, the foundation is the same.”

Scott shrugged.  “Yeah.  I had always thought I got my neurosis from my mother, but during the divorce I realized it was all my dad.”

Antoinette smiled and moved the hand he’d wrapped around her wrist to her hand.

“I’m eighteen by the way.”

“What?  No way!  When was your birthday?”

“December.”

“Oh.  That was a bad month.”

“Yes, it was.”

“What day is it?”

“The 13th.  So, every few years it falls on a Friday and my friends make a big deal of it.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway.”  Antoinette pulled away from him and started to get out of the bed.  Scott leapt forward and grabbed her.

“Don’t leave!”

“Wha—?  Scott.  I’m—”

Scott hugged her around her middle, pressing his arms and face to her very soft skin.

“Not tonight,” he said.

Antoinette started to pet his head.  Then she used light pressure to force him to sit up and look at her.

“Not any night,” she said with a soft smile.  “I’m just going to call my parents to let them know I’m okay.”

“Oh, okay.”

Scott tried to watch her as she hopped out of bed and searched for her cell phone in the mess they’d made on the floor.  But, he was blushing too hotly.  He had to drop his eyes.  He wondered if he’d ever get used to seeing her naked.  She returned to the bed with her phone and sat down next to him.  He pulled the sheet up around her.  She gave him a funny look as she dialed home.  She had come back to the bed to make the phone call, so he assumed she didn’t want any privacy.  But maybe he should go to the bathroom anyway.  Before he could make up his mind, her mother answered.

“Yes, Mom, it’s me.  I’m so sorry I forgot to call.  I had prom committee after school and then I went out afterwards with a friend and completely lost track of time.”  Antoinette nodded and did a great deal of listening.  And then, “I know, I’m _really_ sorry.  Um.  But about when I’ll be home.  Um.  Well, I was wondering if I could spend the night—”  Antoinette got cut off.  “Yes, I know the rule.  But I’m just at Samantha’s house—”  Antoinette stopped.  But Scott didn’t think it was because her mother had interrupted her.  “Um.  No.  I’m not at Samantha’s house.  I’m with my boyfriend.”

Antoinette pulled the phone back from her ear and Scott could hear her mother’s voice over the line.  He wondered why she’d ‘fessed up.  Antoinette put the phone back to her ear.

“Mom.  It’s Valentine’s Day.  Is it really surprising I went out with my boyfriend?  Yes, I—”  Antoinette did a lot more listening.  She looked at her nails as she did, a small frown on her face.  Finally, she managed to worm her way back into the conversation.  “Relax, Mom.  I’m going to go to school tomorrow.  Even if I didn’t want to, my boyfriend’s such a goody-two shoes he’d leave me and go himself.  So, since I’d have nothing else to do, I’d go too.”

She looked over at him.  He smiled and kissed her shoulder.  She pulled the phone away from her ear and kissed his lips.  Scott could hear the garbled rampaging of her mother over the line, but it really wasn’t scary enough to make them stop what they were doing to pass the time.  Then Antoinette’s mother repeated her name loudly.  Antoinette pulled away from him and put the phone back to her ear.

“Yes, Mom?”  Antoinette sighed and then decided she’d heard enough and cut off her mother.  “Mom, Mom, Mom!  Okay, I get it.  It’s just, look.  I know you don’t _really_ want to know _exactly_ what your teenaged daughter is doing with her boyfriend, but I wasn’t going to make up some lie about where I was or who I was with.  I’m not going to lie when it concerns him.  He’s too important.  And I’m very sorry that I missed curfew.  It really was an accident.  But…it happened.  I know I’m wrong.  And I’ll accept any punishment.  I just called so that you would know that I’m safe.”

There was silence on their end of the line, so Scott couldn’t tell if her mother was yelling again or shocked silent.  Then Antoinette’s eyes went wide.

“No, Mom, don’t—I—oh.  Hi, Daddy.  Um.  Oh.  Okay.”

Antoinette put the phone down and turned to Scott.  Then she held it out to him.

“My dad wants to talk to you.”

He recoiled and waved his arms.

“No way,” he hissed.  “Just—tell him I’m in the shower.  No!  That’s awful.  Tell him I fainted!  He’ll believe that.”

Antoinette gave him a look and kept holding the phone out to him.  Scott groaned softly and took the phone from her.

“Hello?”  No sound had actually come out of his throat.  He swallowed and licked his lips and then tried again.  “Hello?”

“Scott.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you with my daughter somewhere where you shouldn’t be?”

“Yes?”

“Is that a question?”

“Yes?”

“I just don’t get it,” the man half-sighed/half-groaned.  “Antoinette snuck around for years with Jake.  And now all of a sudden she has to be honest about all the crap she’s doing with you!  Why is that?”

“Um…before I answer, is that a bad thing or a good thing?”

“I don’t know!  But you listen here, _Romeo_.  This whole romantic-flight-to-wherever stunt better not be a recurring theme.”

“You know…I never understood why people always used Romeo as the reference for a playboy or someone who’s all romantic and stuff.  The obvious unhappy ending aside, it’s quite possible he was a little fickle.  Because we only know him for, like, four days and he switches from being in love with Rosaline to Juliet pretty quickly.  Though he was willing to marry her and die for her.  But, still.  I think maybe Lothario would be better.  I don’t think anyone dies in that—”

“Scott.”

“Yes?”

Mr. Bixby was silent for a couple of seconds and then he sighed.  “I picked Romeo because if you hurt her, you _will_ die.”

“Ah.  Well, then.  That is more appropriate.”

“Look.  Be a gentlemen and drive her home, would you?  There’s no sense in her staying at your house tonight.”

“Umm…I would, sir.  But we’re not at my house.”

“Augh!  You took her to some sleazy motel?!”

“It’s not sleazy.  It’s the Four Seasons.”

He could actually hear Mr. Bixby’s disbelief over the phone.  “What?  How on earth did you manage that?  You have to have a credit card and you’re not even eighteen.”

“My dad has one.”

“You stole your father’s credit card?!”

“No.  He made the reservation for me.”

Now Scott could hear Mr. Bixby go “pop.”

“He’s dead,” Mr. Bixby muttered.  “I’m gonna kill him.  First I’ll get him fired.  And then I’ll kill him.”

Mr. Bixby’s voice faded away as the phone transferred hands.

“Antoinette?” Scott heard a woman’s voice ask.  That must be her mother.

“Oh, no.  Hold on.”

He quickly shoved the phone back at his girlfriend.  She was staring at him with a little disbelief.  Okay.  So maybe they both had weird relationships with each other’s father.  Antoinette put the phone to her ear.

“Mom?  Un-hunh.  Un-hunh.  Yes.  I got it.  I understand.  Okay.  I’ll see you tomorrow.  Good night.  I love you too.”

Antoinette hung up and put the phone in her lap.  She turned to Scott with a miserable expression.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m totally grounded.”

 

Will

 

Will smiled patiently and waited for the semi-cute, blonde freshman to stammer out her confession to him.  It wasn’t like he had anything else to do during lunchtime at school, so he was willing to wait, but he was kind of thirsty and had been wanting a sip of his flavored water for the last several minutes.  At last the girl gave up and thrust out a package to him with both hands.  He took it from her and thanked her sincerely, but put just a touch of cold indifference in his smile.  She picked up on it, smiled at him, and then fled to the far side of the cafeteria.  He was always grateful when the girls could figure out that he had no interest in them without him having to explicitly spell it out for them.  He often felt he was too mean when he had to actually say no—and yet, he had no problem doing it.  Well, there was only so much falling in love could fix in a person.

Will turned to stick the package in his halfway full shopping bag without even checking to see what was in it.  He wasn’t doing that out of coldness, but for his own good.  He didn’t want to know what kind of yummy treats he had during soccer season.  It was better to let his friends raid his goodies and take what they wanted without him ever knowing what he was missing.

“So…what number is that?”

Will looked over.  Antoinette was sitting beside him.  He’d kind of forgotten she was there during the girl’s long attempt to tell him how great she thought he was.  In fact, she had been the third one to come up to him during lunch, preventing him from talking with Scott’s girlfriend at all.  Whether that was good or bad was still very much up in the air.  He had a feeling that as long as he was friends with Scott that Antoinette would be in his life as well.  And since he planned on being friends with Scott until one or both of them died, it correlated that Antoinette would always be there too.  And perhaps she had realized this as well which was why she had decided to sit with him at lunch rather than with her acquaintances.  Just like him.  He’d avoided his acquaintances today too.  Usually if he couldn’t sit with his friends at lunch, he could always find somebody to be social with.  But today it would be weird.  Couples weren’t being particularly lovey-dovey as far as he could tell.  Then again, he was in a relationship so maybe he didn’t notice it as much as someone who wasn’t.  But he didn’t want to be sitting with some guy and his girlfriend and trying to ignore that the girlfriend kept eyeing him.  He rather imagined Antoinette had the same problem.

He’d never really noticed Antoinette too much before, despite how popular she was, but now that she was dating Scott he noticed more and more just how beautiful and sexy she was.  Probably because he was still shocked that Scott had landed her.  As bumpy as that landing had been, the third hottest girl in school was all over him.  The guy who had had maybe three dates and two make out sessions in his life was now strutting around with a future supermodel on his arm.  A year ago Will never would have believed it.  Of course, a year ago, he never would have believed that he’d be in a passionate relationship with a thirty-two year old business _man_.

Will scratched the side of his head as he thought about Antoinette’s question.  He knew exactly what number that last confession had been, but did he want to come off as that arrogant and vain to her?

“Ah, I’m not really sure.  I lost count.”

“Liar,” Antoinette smiled to herself as she peeled her orange.

Will scowled at her.  “And how about you?  How many guys have tried to convince you to dump your airhead boyfriend today?”

“About seven.  Not as many as last year.  The soccer team is keeping their distance.”

“Ah.  Well.  I don’t have as many as last year either.  Only nineteen so far.”

“Wha?” Antoinette turned to him, totally shocked.  She’d obviously never suspected he was _that_ popular.  He wondered why not.  Everyone knew he was.  He grinned at her.

“The soccer team stayed away from me this year too.”

“Whatever, loser.  You are _so_ not that hot.”

“Yes, I am.”

Antoinette rolled her eyes, but didn’t deny it.  She yanked on her orange and some juice squirted in his direction.  He managed to avoid a direct hit to the eye, but wound up with a piece of pulp on his nose.  He removed it and sliced his eyes in Antoinette’s direction.

“So, have any of those seven offers been tempting?”

Instead of the instantaneous and outraged denial he’d been expecting, Antoinette picked at the white crap on her orange.  She frowned as she peeled some off.

“Not really,” she said.  “Though they were more tempting than they should have been.”  She dropped her orange and suddenly turned completely toward him.  Will froze mid-crunch in a carrot stick.  “I mean!  Really.  Valentine’s Day?  Who forgets that?”

“Scott forgot Valentine’s Day?”

“Yes!  Can you believe it?!

“Well.  Yes.  And no.  I mean.  It seems like Valentine’s Day is something he’d go completely all out on.  And yet, he is enough of a ditz to completely forget about it.”

Antoinette sighed.  “Is that what it’s always like with him?  One extreme or the other?”

Will shook his head.  “Nope.  He can be quite temperate when he wants to be.  The problem is getting him to be temperate when it comes to things he really cares about.  I’m afraid that you’ve joined the echelons of Scott’s ‘Most Important Things.’  And that means always being prepared for the worst and hoping you’re also prepared for the best.”

Antoinette smiled.  “Gosh.  That is him exactly.”  She frowned at him again.  “I’m so jealous of you.  No matter how close I am to him in the future you’ll have had him for longer than me.”

Will shrugged.  “You should just be grateful I’m not calling out finders-keepers on him.  Or charging a finder’s fee.”

“Hmph.  Ooh.  Can I have your conversation hearts?” she asked, digging into his bag.  Will didn’t bother to respond; she was obviously going to take them anyway.  She pulled the pink ribbon off the bag and began to root around for the orange and white hearts.  She held one up and read it.  “‘Text me.’  Well.  At least they’ve updated from ‘fax me.’”

Will pulled out a green heart.  “Yeah, so how come they haven’t updated the ‘kiss me’ ones?”

“With what?”

“I don’t know.  ‘Blow me,’ or something.”

“Will Harder!  Don’t be dirty!  These are nice, innocent treats!  Don’t ruin them.”

“Yeah, whatever, I—ahh!”

Will tried to back away from her attack, but she grabbed the back of his head to prevent him from moving away as she pressed a heart into his forehead.  She was really pressing it in too.

“Ow!  Damn it, woman!  Don’t think that just because you’re my friend’s girlfriend that I’m gonna hold back!”

“Do your worst, Will Harder!”

It would have been easier to simply push her arms away or tickle her.  But she had asked for the worst.  So, he grabbed her breasts.  They were right there after all.  She screeched and immediately stopped her attack.  She sat back on her stool and gaped at him as she covered her chest.  Will reached a hand up and actually had to pluck off the candy heart from his forehead.  He glared at Antoinette.  She still couldn’t get over her astonishment.

“You—you—!”

“Call me a fiend,” Will said.  “It will make you feel better.”

“You fiend!”

She cocked her head at the expression.  And then laughed.  Then she gave him a hard look.

“Don’t think you can get away with this just because—”

Will stood up and leaned a hand on the table as he put his face close to hers.  “Yes, I can,” Will murmured softly.  “I always do.  It’s a natural law.  And not even Scott would be on your side.”

Antoinette changed her expression.  She was over her shock and was now just peeved enough that she fell back on her sex kitten routine.  They had a lot in common after all.  She grabbed his jaw and held him still.

“Like I said: do your worst, Will Harder.  I bet a threesome would be fun.”

Will smiled.  “We could totally get him to do it too,” he laughed softly.

Antoinette sighed melodramatically.  “It would be so easy it wouldn’t even be fun.”

“It’d be fun.  It’s always fun with me.”

The bell rang.  Antoinette let him go.  “Get lost, player.  I’m choking on your bravado.”

“That’s not the only—”

“Don’t!”  Antoinette shoved a hand in his face.  “Finish that sentence.”

Will grinned.  “Later, Antoinette.”

“Goodbye, Will.”

Will chuckled to himself as he tossed away his trash on the way out of the cafeteria.  Antoinette was fun.  He was glad he finally had someone who could keep up with his flirting.  Someone other than the lesbians.  Riley and Anna didn’t give him an inch when he played.  Laney tried too hard and it didn’t really work.  Liz took everything too seriously.  And the boys—well, it just wasn’t as fun as flirting with girls.

The halls were extra crowded as all grades were set loose during this period.  Being forced to walk slowly and stiffly allowed him to feel the itchy spot on his forehead.  He put a hand up and could feel a small dent.  His jaw dropped in dismay.  How dare she leave a mark on him?  He ducked into a bathroom and examined himself in the mirror.  He put his hands on the counter and leaned in very close to the mirror.  Faintly, he could see the imprint of a heart in the middle of his forehead and the words “#1 FAN.”  Will vigorously rubbed his skin until the imprint was gone.  Feh.  Served the silly blonde right to get tit tweaked.  The bell rang.  Will rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.  Perfect.  He had Ms. Neddle next and she was the one teacher who didn’t like him.  Well, as long as he was late, he might as well take his time.

Will left the bathroom and entered the emptying halls.  Maybe he should just skip class altogether.  He found learning about the US government to be depressing.  So, he took the hallway to his left, which was the long way to class.

“Hey, Will.”

Will turned partially at the familiar sing-song tone.  He didn’t have to turn all the way around.  Liz was by his side in a matter of seconds.  He smiled at her heart-shaped hairclips.

“Hey, Liz.”

“Soooo.  Have you got plans for tonight?”

“Just soccer practice.”

“After that.”

“Oh.  No, not really.”

“Oh.  So, no one special to see?”

Will gave a shake of his head.  “Nope.”

“Soooo.  Then you could go out.”

“Um…”

“Oh, I don’t mean with me.  Exactly.  A bunch of us—all singles—are going to go out and celebrate singledom.  You wanna come?”

“Well…I’m not sure that I can.”

“I thought you didn’t have a date.”

“I don’t.”

“So, then why can’t you come?”

Will searched for an excuse.  Why the hell couldn’t he have parents who wanted him home at a reasonable hour?  They ruined all his good excuses.

“What?  What is it?”

Liz was giving him a pointed, knowing look.  Ah.  So she had been setting him up all along.  Well then.  There was definitely an easy way out of this.

“I don’t want to,” Will said bluntly.

Liz was a little surprised by his answer.  “What?”

“I was just trying to be polite.  I just don’t want to go out with a bunch of people who are going to whine about being single on Valentine’s Day.  I mean, I’m single today by choice.”

Liz stopped walking and rolled her eyes with a disgusted scoff.  Will turned to face her.

“Hot stud Will ‘fuck me’ Harder is too cool for Valentine’s Day.  I’d tell you to get over yourself, but I’m not sure that you can.”

Liz turned and started to walk away from him.  He went after her.

“Liz, wait.”

She kept walking.

“Please.”

She stopped and turned slowly to partially face him.  She crossed her arms over her chest and kept her eyes focused on the floor.

“Liz.  I’m sorry.  Really.  I never wanted things to be like this between us.”  Will rubbed his fingertips together at his sides.  Liz wasn’t budging.  He’d really gone too far.  “I’m really, truly sorry for what I did to you.”

She whipped her eyes up to meet his, looking angry and upset.  “Then why’d you do it?” she demanded.  “I mean, we broke up.  Okay.  We were friends.  I wanted more, but you didn’t.  I could deal with that.  I didn’t like it, but I could deal.  And then all of a sudden out of nowhere you start showing interest in me again.  You were actively seeking _me_ out, Will.”  Will dropped his eyes, ashamed of himself.  “And we’re all like, together again.  We hang together.  We make out.  We—”  She cut off and stepped closer to him, lowering her voice.  “We make love.  And then you run away and act like nothing happened.  I’m sorry if you have problems with that because you’re a guy.  But _something_ happened.”

Will nodded.  “I know.  I know something happened.  I just think…part of the problem…is that you feel like we made love that night.  And I.  Well.  I just feel like…we had sex.”

Will waited in the silence that followed.  Then he finally built up enough nerve to look up at her.  She was staring at his chest, her jaw clenching and unclenching.  He could tell she was trying not to move her eyes so that it wouldn’t be apparent they were becoming wet.

“Okay,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong.  “So that hurts.  But I can’t blame you for that.  You can’t feel any other way than what you feel.  Just like that stupid song, ‘I can’t make you love me if you don’t.’”  She laughed bitterly.  “God, I always hated that song.  Now I think I’m going to go home and download it and listen to it over and over again.”  She looked up to meet his eyes with a smile.  He had to smile back.  Then her expression crumbled just a little.  “Can I—I mean, is it really pathetic if I ask why?  Is it you?  Is it someone else?  Is it me?  Is there something wrong with me?”

“No, of course not, Liz.”

“Then _what_ _is_ it?” she asked, her frustration winning out over her pain.

“Nothing.  Nothing.  You’re just not…”

How on earth did he finish that sentence?  _You’re not what I want.  Not what I need._   He knew the real answer.  _You’re not_ him _._   Should he tell her?  Would that make all this easier?  It would be one thing to say he was dating someone else, but if he was cryptic about it, that might make her even more upset.  Should he just tell her that he was…“gay?”  Would that make it easier for her?  It really wasn’t her.  He was just…“not into girls.”  Then again, that could make things worse.  He had obviously been into girls before her.  He’d started acting strangely after they’d slept together.  What if she thought that she turned him gay?  She hadn’t.  Ken had.  That dirty old man had turned him queer.  Will sighed.  He was getting off topic in his own head and Liz was still waiting for an answer.  He had to tell her something.

“I guess…I’m just looking for something else.”

She frowned at him.  “That’s a crap answer.”

“I know.  I’m sorry.”

She shook her head with an unhappy smile.  “Why can’t you just tell me you’re—”  She stopped and shook her head again.

“Tell you what?”

“Nothing.”  Liz looked him over with disappointment.  “Well.  I did get an apology out of you.  I wasn’t even expecting that much.”

Will managed to feel a little bad, but he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was completely at fault here.  He had no control over the way she felt.  And it wasn’t exactly like he’d had to coerce her into bed.

“Well,” she said.  “I’ve got lunch.  You better get to class before Ms. Neddle tries to flunk you on tardiness.”

“Yeah, I know, right?”

Liz started to leave, but Will called out to her.  She turned back.

“Um.  That whole Will ‘fuck me’ Harder thing…is that something you just came up with?”

“Nope,” a voice said from a different hall.  Layla rounded the corner, looking stunning with smoky eyes and glossy lips.  “Everyone knows it,” she continued as she walked right up to him, completely ignoring Liz.  “It’s usually in the context of ‘Oh, Will, fuck me harder,” she moaned.  “Or, ‘he _will_ fuck me harder.’”  Will couldn’t believe it, but he blushed.  Layla smiled playfully meanly at him.  “Jaymz likes to think of it as that’s what _you’re_ asking for.”

Will stiffened.  “What?!”

“He’s a top you know.”

“No way!”

“Way.”

“Any _way_ ,” Liz cut in.  “I’m gonna go now.  You girls have fun.”

She turned on her heel and left.  Will didn’t know if he should go after her again.  They had sort of hashed out what was between them, but he wasn’t sure if he could say anything had been resolved.  He heaved a sigh as he watched her go.

“Exes, huh?” Layla commiserated with him as she watched Liz leave.

“Yeah,” Will groused.  He glanced at Layla.  She was twirling a long, dark lock of hair around her finger.  “So,” he said dryly.  “I take it you have one as well?”

“Yes!  Omigod.  I can’t even stand it.  She broke up with me.  _Today_.  Because I won’t go on a date with her downtown.  I mean, I have no problem flaunting it at school.  But, I just feel uncomfortable doing it in public is all.  Does that really make me so bad?”

Will opened his mouth, and then closed it.  What could he possibly say?  Nothing.  He didn’t know anything about it.  Well…that wasn’t entirely true, was it?  While he understood why it was important for Ken to keep his secret, he didn’t understand why that meant they couldn’t go out in public together.  Every time he asked him to go see a movie or something, Ken would smile patronizingly at him and shake his head.  It’s not like he was asking the man to hold his hand in public.  But would it really hurt for them to be seen together?  He couldn’t really answer Layla’s question.  He was kind of on Caitlyn’s side.  So, he just shrugged.

“Anyway,” Layla shook off her irritation.  She smiled prettily at him and laced her fingers with his as she sidled closer.  “So.  Are you free tonight?  I wouldn’t mind flaunting _you_ in public.”

“Sorry,” he said, gently pulling his hand from hers.  “I’m not free.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she pouted.  “You’ve got someone you’re _in love_ with.”

“How do you know?”

“Uh…”  Layla looked a little guilty.  Will became a little worried.  _How_ did she know and what _exactly_ did she know?  “Um.  Oh.  How is Julian doing?  I mean.  About the accident and stuff.  It’s been, like, a year, right?”

Layla’s sudden switch and interest in Julian of all people was enough to make him completely forget that she knew he was seeing somebody.

“It’s been about ten months.”

“Oh.  So.  He’s…okay?”

“He’s getting better.”  Will crossed his arms and eyed her.  In all the years he’d known her she’d never once asked about his friends.  Or any male they had common knowledge of.  “Why do you ask?” he queried.

Layla put out a hand and Will could tell she was thinking really hard for an answer.

“There you are, you slut!”

Both Will and Layla turned in response to the word.  Caitlyn was stomping up to them.  She stopped in front of Layla, her hazel eyes livid with her outrage.

“It’s been, like, _ten minutes_.  And you’re already sniffing around a penis?!”

“So?!  You break up with me every _thirty minutes_!  I have to act fast!”

“Well, forget it,” Caitlyn snapped, grabbing Will’s arm.  “I’m taking Will this time.”

Layla grabbed his other arm.  “I got here first!”

“Hey!  Whoa, whoa!”  Will pulled out of their grasps.  “Settle down, ladies.”  Will took a moment to reflect on what was happening.  Two gorgeous women were fighting over him and he’d just pulled away from them.  Damn that old pervert.  “Look, Layla, you’re right.  I do have someone I’m seeing now.  So, you two are just going to have to find someone else to use and abuse while you’re broken up from now on.  Okay?”  Layla huffed in annoyance and Caitlyn rolled her eyes.  Will kept a close eye on Layla as he finished with, “Julian’s free though.”

He didn’t even have to be looking at her closely.  She blushed.  Well.  That was interesting.  He left the lesbians to fight or make-up however they saw fit.  He rubbed his chin in contemplation.  Should he tell Julian about Layla’s bizarre-from-out-of-left-field-possible interest in him?  Nah.  Julian and Layla was just too weird.

By the end of the day, Will was having a strange feeling because the day had been so…normal.  Sure there had been more girls than usual coming up to him and giving him presents and he’d gotten nearly three dozen roses during homeroom...But he’d gone to class as usual.  Interacted with people as usual.  Gone to soccer practice.  It was a very average day.  He was used to his Valentine’s Days being a little more...well, physical at the very least.  But he didn’t have anyone at school he really wanted to be physical with even in joking.

Things had changed since December.  His relationship with Ken had taken a very serious turn.  Since the beginning he’d always been madly in love with him and completely faithful…but now he no longer felt any real desire to play with other people.  Of course he still liked to flirt and tease.  He didn’t think he’d ever get over that.  But, he didn’t much want to touch anyone who didn’t mean anything to him.  He didn’t think it had anything to do with their horrible New Year’s.  He felt it was brought on by Ken saying that he felt like he’d want to kill anyone who touched him.  It was a throwaway line, said in response to Will’s own statement about not wanting anyone to touch Ken.  But it had affected him deeply.  It made him realize that maybe he had played too much.  Maybe that was why Ken had still been so insecure about the future of their relationship.

Will ran his fingers over the keypad to the door to Ken’s building.  Their relationship was much better now.  They were being more open with each other.  But Will couldn’t help but to wonder if Ken really felt convinced of the permanence of their relationship.  Will punched in the code to the building.  All he could do was love the man and hope that day by day he’d be able to get over his insecurities.  Will knew he had a lot to overcome.  He walked inside the lobby and headed toward the elevators.  Jeff gave him a cheeky smile.  Will ignored him.  The doorman obviously knew Will was no cat sitter, but he’d been wise enough not to let on that he knew around Ken.

Will hopped onto the elevator and thought about the internal struggle Ken must go through every day.  It wasn’t just the age thing or the fact that he was still so completely closeted.  Will suspected that even if he was out about his homosexuality or straight even that he would have the same kind of problems in his relationships.  He had an inferiority complex.  A self made one Will was pretty certain, regarding his father.  He felt like he wasn’t a good enough son.  A good enough boss.  A good enough businessman.  He felt like he would never be good enough.  So, of course, he would never be good enough to deserve to be loved the way everyone around him tried to do.  The man was a freaking idiot.

Will walked down the hall and hoped none of that crap would come up tonight.  It was Valentine’s Day and Ken had specifically asked him to come over.  That had made Will curious.  Was Ken the kind of person who would be completely sappy about it?  Or would he think it was a silly holiday like Halloween?  With his personality, it could really go either way.  Though he was home early from work for this.

When Will reached the door, he knocked rather than use his key.  He’d been invited to come over after all.  He should act like a guest.  He rocked on his heels as he waited.  Ken opened the door.  He was wearing navy pants and a white shirt.  Will had checked: the man didn’t even own a pair of jeans.  He was also wearing his green Emeril Lagasse “Bam!” apron.  He started to smile when he saw Will.  And then he just looked disappointed.  Will bristled.

“What the hell is that look for?”

Ken half-shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I guess I just thought you might come over in a cupid outfit or something.”

“Dude!  For the _last_ time.  That was Halloween.  It only happens once a year.  And that’s only if you don’t keep pissing me off.”

Ken laughed and backed up to allow Will to enter.  The teenager did so grumbling to himself and messily shaking out of his overcoat and book bag.  Ken was there to catch the falling garments and hang them up on a dining room chair.  Will tossed his shopping bag of valentines beside the chair.

“How long after I graduate am I going to have to keep wearing my uniform?” Will demanded with an arched eyebrow and hands on his waist.

“As long as you can still fit into it,” Ken replied with a saucy smile.

Will made a face at him.  Ken stepped close to him.

“Come on.  Take your jacket off.”

He undid the two buttons on the blazer and pushed it off his shoulders.  Will swallowed as he looked up into Ken’s deep blue eyes.  The man leaned closer to him.

“And roll up your sleeves.”  He left Will standing in the middle of the room and headed for the kitchen.  “We’ve got cooking to do.”

Will kept staring into empty space.  Whoa.  It’d been ten months.  Why did that pervert still have so much power over him?  Will shook himself and shrugged out of his blazer.  He hung it up next to his overcoat and pulled his necktie off.  Then he rubbed Joyce Greene on the head before obeying the instruction to roll up his sleeves.  He joined Ken in the kitchen and peeked into the oven.  There was a tenderloin roast roasting away.  The smell was mouthwatering.

“Hey, close that up.  Don’t let the heat out.  That’s why there’s an oven light.”

“It’s not the same,” Will said, but closed the oven door.  He started to peek into a pot on the stove when he heard the ball retracting sounds of the eighties floating from the iPod docked speakers Ken had hiding in a corner.  He dropped the lid onto the pot and crossed the kitchen.

“What the heck is this?  I’m not—”

Ken grabbed him and prevented him from changing the music.  “Ah-ah.  My house.  My music.”

“But!  What is this?”

“It’s Bon Jovi!  Don’t act like you’ve never heard of Bon Jovi before.”

“I have.  But…what is this?  Come on.  Isn’t there something else—”

“You’re dating a thirty year old man, my sweet.”

“Thirty-two,” Will jabbed.

“That’s music from two different generations.  Get used to it.”

Will made a face.  Ken handed him the glass of white wine he’d just poured before their fight for control of the music.

“Here.  Drink this.  It’ll make you like it more.”

“What?  You mean I don’t have to fight and wheedle before I can have it?”

Ken shrugged.  “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

Will took a large gulp.  It would take a lot of alcohol to make this music tolerable.  Ken reached out and turned up the volume.

“How can you not like this?  _Everything you want is what I need.  Your satisfaction is guaranteed.  But the ride don't never ever come for free.  If you want me to lay my hands on you…Lay your hands on me, lay your hands on me, lay your hands on me!_ ”

Will watched in astonishment as his uptight lover grooved to the music and sung the slightly raunchy lyrics quite horrendously.

“My God,” Will said during an instrumental break.  “You are an awful singer.”

Ken laughed and slid an arm around Will’s waist, pulling him closer.

“Well, I’ve heard you in the shower, my love, and you’re no Pavarotti yourself.”

Will blushed.  But not from the comment.

“You must hate karaoke.”

Will didn’t try to move away from his lover, but he gave him a defiant look.  “I’m actually very good at karaoke.  Because I have a great memory.”  He smiled sheepishly.  “It just doesn’t sound good when I do it.”

Ken smiled and leaned down to give him a kiss.  Then he stepped away from him to turn the music back down.  Will wished he’d stayed closer.

“I knew there had to be something you weren’t good at,” Ken said with a small wink as he leaned against the counter and took a sip of his wine.

Will fingered his glass and held his breath at how at ease Ken seemed.  He loved him like this.  Loved him more than usual.  He could make him feel this way.  He could make Ken happy.  And that alone was enough to make him happy.

“I’m bad at poetry too,” he blurted out.

Ken raised his eyebrows.

“I hate reading it.  And I’m not good at writing it.”

“I’m the same way.  Can’t stand the stuff.”

“See!”  Will pointed at his lover.  “And that’s why we’re so right for each other.  We’re different in a lot of ways, but we’re similar in all the important ones!”

Ken laughed.  “Damn straight.  Roses are red and violets are blue but that’s because of their genetic composition.”

“Hear, hear!”  Will raised his glass.

Ken saluted him right back.  They both took a sip and Will refrained from making a face as a Guns N’ Roses song came on next.  He swirled the chardonnay around in his glass and was pretty impressed with himself that he could recognize what kind of wine it was from taste alone.

“Should we have a real toast?” he asked.

“To what?”

“Well…in two more weeks I’ll be legal.”

“Oh yeah,” Ken smiled.  “I forgot.”  His shoulders slumped a little and he said wistfully, “I probably won’t want you then.”

Will marched across the kitchen and grabbed Ken by the top of his apron.  He yanked the man down and put their lips together, but didn’t kiss him.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” he whispered darkly.  “You’re gonna want me forever.”

“True enough,” the man agreed freely.  He pushed their lips together, but being Ken, still had the presence of mind to take Will’s glass from him and put both of their half-full glasses on the counter before wrapping his arms tightly around him.  Will hadn’t meant to ignite the fire too much.  They still had…something they were supposed to be doing.  But his world narrowed down to the man holding him.  To the feelings rushing through him.  To the crackling pleasure roiling through his body.  He only became aware of where he was physically in relation to the rest of the world when Ken pulled back slightly from the kiss.  His toes were scraping the tiled floor, his arms were locked all the way around the man’s shoulders, and his head was tilted back as far as it would go.  He was a total rag doll.  But he didn’t care.

“Why’d you stop?” Will asked, his eyes still closed.

Ken kissed the tip of his nose.  “Potatoes.”

“Hmm?”  Will opened his eyes.

“The potatoes are boiling over.”

“Oh.”

They managed to control themselves just enough to not ruin any of the evening’s meal.  Ken really did all the cooking.  Will just helped by stirring things or washing a spatula or two.  When they were ready to eat Will set the table and Ken turned down the lights and lit candles.  He changed the music to a mellower playlist.  They sat down together and smiled at each other across the table.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Will Harder.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Kendall Jay West.”

After that it was pretty easy to forget all passion but that for the food.  Ken was an amazing chef.  He hated to be disloyal to his father, but Ken edged him out just a bit.  It was probably only because he got more practice though.  His father spent a lot of time in hotels.

Will trailed his finger along the rim of his glass.  It was halfway empty of the red wine Ken had selected to go with the roast.  It was his third glass.  Not including the two of the chardonnay he’d had while making dinner.  As far as he could tell, Ken was still working on his first.  He wondered if he was intentionally pacing himself because of what had happened the last time they’d done this.

“You know,” Will said, “the last time we had a candlelit dinner it didn’t turn out so well.”

Ken’s mouth twitched at one corner and he let out a humorless laugh.  “Yeah.  I tried to rape you, _again_ , in a drunken lust.”

“And then you stalked me at my soccer games for the next few weeks.”

“Good times.”

“Good memories.”

They smiled at each other.

“I bet this time will end better though,” Ken said.

“Oh, I know it will,” Will replied with a quick raise of one eyebrow.

Ken smiled and shook his head.  Then he closed his eyes and put out a hand as the next song came on.  “Oh.  I love this song.”

Will didn’t comment on it.  He supposed if he was stuck with old man songs, Chris Isaac’s “Wicked Game” was tolerable at least.  Though perhaps a little too close to home in its message.  Ken stood up and approached Will.  He held out a hand.

“Come on.  Dance with me.”

Will stared at the man—not sure what to say.  Ken wiggled his fingers at him.

“What?  You mean, like, a slow dance?”

“Yeah.”

“No way!  That’s so embarrassing!”

“Will!” Ken laughed.  “There’s no one here but you, me, and the cat.”

“But…”  Will squirmed.  “It’s so…gay.”

“Will!”

“Sorry!”  He slouched down in his chair.  “But it is,” he grumbled.

“Well, it’s Valentine’s Day.  Won’t you do this for me?”

Will grunted and squirmed some more.  That was a cheap shot—using Valentine’s Day and his apparent desire to do anything to please his lover.  He gripped the edge of the table and turned partially toward Ken, but couldn’t bring himself to stand up.  He looked up at Ken.  He had his hands on his waist and was looking none too happy.  Will kept his scowl in place.  Ken sighed dramatically.

“Fine.  Then come take a bath with me.”

Will made a face.  “That’s not any better,” he groused.

“Either dance with me or take a bath with me.  One or the other.”

Will whined softly to himself and fidgeted and stalled.  Ken wasn’t budging on this.

“Which one?” the man asked.

 

Will glowered at his lover across the bathtub.  He was sitting on the opposite side from him, slouched down against the back.  And even then the tub was so large that his feet weren’t touching the end.  The water was pleasantly warm and actually felt quite nice, but Will kept his arms crossed in a huff because the water was also milky from the addition of bath salts.  Bath salts.  He couldn’t believe Ken owned them let alone wanted to use them.  The man was leaning back on his end of the tub with his arms outstretched and his head back.  One knee protruded partially from the water and he looked quite comfortable.  Despite Will having been a royal pain in the butt during the drawing and entering of the bath, Ken seemed unaffected by it now.  That pissed Will off even more.  What was the point of behaving badly if no one reacted to it?  After several minutes of soaking, Ken finally looked up at him.  The man smiled, trying to mollify him.

“Stop being so standoffish.”

“I’m not being standoffish.  I’m being sit-offish.”

Ken chuckled and moved his leg so that it brushed Will’s.  He ignored it.

“So…what was with that bag you brought in with you?”

Will slumped down in the water to his ears, but kept his chin up enough so that he could reply.

“It’s all the presents and candy and stuff I got from girls today.”

“Wow.  Seriously?  That’s…”  Ken seemed to be at a loss for words.

“It’s really more of a joke, I think.  I mean, I know a lot of them do have crushes on me, but it’s well known that I never reject anyone or make fun of someone.  So…it’s like a safe bet, you know?  I may not reciprocate, but they won’t be rejected.  Which is kind of a best case scenario for some people.”

“Ouch.  Obviously that’s something that’s never been a problem for you.  Did you reciprocate anything?”

Will’s brow creased.  “No, I didn’t.”  He looked at Ken apologetically.  “I didn’t even get you a card.  I’m sorry.”

Will was surprised by Ken’s overly amused reaction.  He laughed and dropped an arm in the water as he slid a little further down, his knee coming up higher.

“It’s all right, my turtledove.  Material things have very little meaning when it comes to love.  Actions are where its truth lies.  You were willing to get in the tub with me.  Thank you.”

He nudged him again with his foot.  That and the comment reminded Will how “unhappy” he was to be doing this.  He put his scowl back in place and shook his head at his lover.

“This is so gay.”

Ken’s mouth curved up at one corner and he bent the arm still out of the water to put his fingertips at his hairline.

“I can think of a few other things that are ‘gay’ that you do quite willingly.”

Will blushed at his intonation.  “That’s different.”

“How so?”

“It just is.”

Ken nudged him again.  “C’mere.”

“No.”

“C’mere.”

Will heaved a short breath.  Then he unfurled his arms and moved slowly across the tub, the water rippling tiny waves in his wake.  When he reached Ken, the man turned him around so that he was sitting in his lap.  Ken raised both of his knees, forcing Will’s legs apart on either side of his.  Then he let both of their legs slide back under the water while still keeping Will in place.  Will leaned back fully against his lover and turned his face into his neck.  He kissed the warm, wet skin and then rested his head on his shoulder.  He sought out Ken’s hands underwater and their fingers twined together.

“This is nice, right?” Ken murmured.

Will nodded.  “I could die,” he whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

Surprisingly, they managed to keep their touching and kissing platonic long enough for the water to start to cool off.  When it did, it seemed that by some unspoken, mutual understanding they were going to need to warm each other in place of the water.  When Will turned fully in Ken’s grasp in order to kiss him properly, the man kept his body at bay.  When they pulled back from the kiss he shook his head.

“No sex in the tub.”  He stood up and stepped out.  “I’ve done that before and it’s really not as fun as it sounds.  Not to mention it’s messy.”  He turned on the shower and then suddenly turned back to Will.  “It’s wasn’t with Rylan.”

Will stayed as much under the relatively warm water as he could and leaned his arms on the frigid marble that housed the bathtub.  He frowned.

“That actually doesn’t make me happy.”

“Why not?” Ken asked, checking the temperature of the water in the shower.

“I don’t know.  I guess I’ve kind of accepted that Rylan’s a part of your past.  I’m not too keen on him being a part of your future…”  Ken smiled.  “But, I can’t deny he’s a part of your past.  So, you did stuff with him.  But, now there’s stuff you’ve down with _other_ people.  I’d rather it was all just Rylan.”

“Don’t be jealous, baby,” Ken said, walking back to him.  “You didn’t think I lost my virginity to you, did you?”

“No, but—”

Will gasped as Ken bent down and scooped him up in his arms.  He wanted to struggle, but he was too appalled that he was being princess carried to think about it.  Ken dumped him off on his feet in the shower.

“Let’s rinse off and then move things to the bed.”

Will balled his hands into fists and turned on Ken.

“That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Ken asked, gently rubbing Will’s skin to get the residue from the bath salts off.  He apparently hadn’t realized how upset Will actually was.

“That!  That’s why I don’t want to dance with you or take a bath with you or get carried around by you!  It’s like you’re…turning me into a girl or something!”  Ken blinked in surprise.  “I’m not a girl!”

“I know that, Will.”

“But, that kind of stuff makes me _feel_ that way.  When we’re doing it…okay, sure.  Fine.  I take the bottom position.  I take the role of the ‘girl.’  But that’s different because we’re doing it together.  We’re making love.  This stuff…it’s just.  I’m sorry, Ken.  I can’t help it!  I just.  I don’t like being treated that way.  And I know you’re not doing it to belittle me or anything.  But…that’s how it makes me feel!”

Ken turned off the water.  “I’m sorry.  I had no idea.  I guess I forget how…heterosexual you are sometimes.”

“It’s not that,” Will sighed, allowing Ken to lead him from the shower.

Ken dropped a towel on his head and began to work the water out of his hair.

“It’s the teenage boy in you?”

Will pushed the towel off his head so he could look at Ken.  He shrugged.  “Not exactly.  It’s the… _man_ in me.  You know?”

Ken began to gently towel off his body.  Will enjoyed the rubdown and allowed all the tension to drain away as Ken’s toweled hands worked over his body.

“You know what I mean, right?  Would you ever want to be princess carried?”

Ken looked thoughtful.  “I don’t know if that’s the same.  I’m too big.  It would just be awkward.”

“That’s not the point.  So what if I’m small?  I’m still a boy.”

“Ah.  I see.  So your objection is more to being treated like…a child?”

“No, you doofus!”  Will snatched the towel from Ken’s hands and began to reciprocate the drying off.  “It’s to being treated like a girl.  Girls are usually smaller than guys so they get treated a certain way.  You sometimes do that to me.”

“So, this is a height complex thing?”

Will dropped the towel as his eyebrow ticked in annoyance.  “Are you being intentionally dense?”

Ken combed his fingers through Will’s wet hair.  “Don’t worry, my pet.  I do _not_ want a girl.”

He smiled and ran the hand down the back of his head to the nape of his neck.  Will tried to repress his shiver and gave his lover the stink eye.

“So.  You don’t want a girl.”

“Definitely not.”

The man started to lean forward, but Will pushed on his chest, backing him up toward the bedroom.  Ken went willingly.

“I’ll give you the man you want,” Will said hoarsely, a little embarrassed to be saying it.

He pushed Ken all the way to the edge of the bed and then told him to lie down.  Ken obeyed.  More or less.  He pushed himself across the green duvet, leaving one knee raised and turning his head shyly against one hand.  His smile was the only thing that let Will know he was completely amused by what was going on.  Will crawled on top of him.  Not straddling him like he usually would, but pushing his knees in between his legs.  He braced his arms beside Ken’s shoulders.  And then swallowed nervously.

“This isn’t your first time, right?” Will managed to get out.

Ken shook his head, coyly biting his lower lip.

“And it’s not mine either.  So.  This won’t be weird or awkward at all.”

Ken laughed softly.  “If you say so.”

“Shut up.”

 

Will nuzzled his nose against Ken’s deltoid muscle, and then kissed it.  He hugged the man’s arm tighter to his chest.  He kept his lips pressed to his shoulder, and then after several minutes forced his eyes up to Ken’s face.  The man looked relaxed and comfortable.  His eyes were closed and he had a hand above his head on the pillow they lay on.  Will gave a little shake of his arm.

“Hmm?” the man murmured, not moving otherwise.

“ _So_.  How—what did you—Did I—”  Will let out a little frustrated growl.  “Was it bad?”

Ken smiled.  “Are you kidding?  I think I’m going to start treating you like a girl more often.”

“Shut-up!” Will huffed as he sat up on one elbow to look down at Ken.  Ken turned his head and opened his eyes.  His smile widened.

“Ah, the vigor of youth.”

Will flushed up to his ears.  “Shut- _up_!”

Ken laughed and moved the hand above his head to grab Will behind the neck and bring him down for a kiss.  Will melted into the kiss, sliding his hand across Ken’s chest and curling his fingers around a hard pectoral muscle.  He pulled back and looked into Ken’s eyes.  The deep blue was calm for once, in perfect contentment and happiness.  Ken moved his hand from Will’s neck just enough to rub under his ear.

“So.  How was it for you?”

Will began to trace shapes on Ken’s chest.  “It was…it was really good.”

“Good?  Geez.  Rylan always did say I was a lousy lay, but I thought he was just being mean.”

“No, I mean it.  It was phenomenally amazing.”

“Ah.”  Will could see Ken blush.  “That’s not quite a synonym for ‘good,’ you know.”

“It’s different, you know?  The sensations and pleasure are kind of coming from different places.”

“Right.”

“But.  What it really is…it was being able to watch you.  To see you gripping the sheets underneath me.”  Will flushed warm remembering it.  “It was really hot.  It totally heightened my own pleasure.”

“Mm.  Now you know what it’s like for me.”

Will grew even warmer.  But it was just out of embarrassment.  What kind of stupid faces did he make when Ken did things to him?  Will lay back down so he could hide his face by resting it on Ken’s chest.

“So, it was good,” Will said.  “For both of us.”

“Yep.”

“But…”

“Oh, I knew it.  Here it comes.  What is it?”

“It’s just…it’s just so much _work_.”

There was a pause, and then Ken burst out laughing.

“Why are you laughing?  I mean it!  It seriously takes a lot of effort.”

Ken laughed even more.

“For real, yo.  You can be the top from now on.”

“Oh, no, no.  You can’t give me a taste of heaven and then take it away!  We’re going to have to share duties now.”

Will sat up.  “No way!”

Ken laughed so hard he had to roll to his side and bury his face in Will’s body.  Will shook his head in mild annoyance.  It really wasn’t that funny.  And he also knew that Ken didn’t mean it.  He was quite certain the man would be happy to permanently take over the lead position.  He was too much of a control freak.

“Mwoarr-cck!”

Ken stopped laughing and they looked at each other.

“Mwaorr!”  This time the noise was followed by small splashing sounds.  Will looked at the open bedroom door.  And then at the open bathroom door.

“Did you drain the tub?” he asked Ken.

“Nope.”

They both sprang out of bed and ran for the bathroom.  Will was the first one in and easily spotted the distressed Joyce Greene in the cloudy water.  He plucked her out of the water and gritted his teeth as her back claws dug into his forearm.  Fortunately for his skin Ken had gone behind his back and had her front paws declawed a couple months ago.  He walked over to the sink and was forced to freak her out even more as he rinsed her off.  He squeezed some of the water out of her fur and then used the towel Ken had brought him to try to dry her off.  She was shaking and meowing unhappily as he tried to get her dry.

“Aw, poor baby.  But I guess that serves you right for sneaking places you’re not supposed to be.”

Will shot his lover a dirty look.  “You’re so cold.”

“No, I’m not.”

To prove his point he kissed Will.  He forgot the cat in his hands.  This wasn’t a sweet kiss or a sexy kiss or even a particularly passionate kiss.  It was a serious kiss.  The kind where all of their feelings crashed and blended together at the place with they were joined.  Ken cupped the back of his head and broke the kiss to put their foreheads together.  Will inhaled deeply, feeling the warm air from his lover’s breath.

“I love you,” Will said.

Ken swallowed and nodded.  “I know,” he breathed.  “I know,” he said, stronger this time.  “I know, I know, I know.  I promise you, Will, I know.”

Will started to raise a hand to hold him, but that made him aware of the cat again.  He absentmindedly began to rub her again.

“I love you, Will.”  Ken kissed him.  “I love you.”  He kissed his chin.  Then the side of his jaw.  Then he kissed his way slowly down Will’s neck and onto his chest.  He trailed a hand after, starting over his lips, a finger trespassing inside and creating a moist path on his chin.  Will dropped his head back, unaware that he kept rubbing the cat as Ken’s lips zigzagged agonizingly slowly down his body.  He knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight.  He really wished it wasn’t a school night.  But even the threat of an early morning calculus quiz couldn’t do anything to deter the ardor —or the man—gripping his body.

What a great Valentine’s Day.


	26. Chapter 26

Will

 

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

 

What a shitty birthday.

He couldn’t believe his friends were such ‘tards.  And it certainly didn’t help that his morning had been crappy too.  First off, he’d been forced to stay at home and not with Ken because two people felt the need to stay at _his_ house.  Okay, so technically his parents owned the house and had every right to stay there.  But they never did!  But all of a sudden they felt the need to stay over in the middle of the week.  They’d even had pretty flimsy excuses.  So, he’d thought they’d planned something for his birthday.  That he’d wake up in the morning and there’d be…a cake?  Well, his father did cook.  But cooking was different from baking.  He didn’t really do desserts.  He could have made breakfast for him though.  And his mother…well, maybe she’d bought a card.  He wasn’t expecting miraculous wonders, but it was his 18 th birthday.  It was kind of a big one.  Maybe they had actually planned something.

Nope.  Nada.  In fact, they had the gall to tell him that _now_ they were going out of town.  On his birthday.  They were leaving and wouldn’t be back until the weekend.  He could still picture the perplexed expression on his father’s face as he looked at him.

 

“What?  What’s with that look?” his father asked him.  “It’s not like we can really do much on a week night anyway aside from take you out to dinner.  If we wait until the weekend, then your friends can come and we can do something.”

Will watched his future self fuss with his tie as he reluctantly put it on.  Will didn’t know why neckties bothered his father so much, but he hated to wear them.  Which meant wherever he was going today was probably very important and not really something he could miss.  But still.  It was his _only child’s_ 18 th birthday.

“So, that’s it?  I only get a ‘happy birthday’ because I reminded you?  And now you’re leaving?  No card, no cake?”

Both of his parents blinked at him.  They looked mildly unsettled.  Like they were dealing with something out of their comfort zone.

“Did you want those things?” his mother asked.

“Maybe!”

She smiled coaxingly at him.  “Well, how about a hug?”

“No thank you!” he sniffed.  “I don’t need a pity hug.”

His mother harrumphed in mock offense and walked out of the kitchen.  Even though he knew it had been in good humor, he felt a little uncomfortable playing around with his mother.  Things had been different between them since Thanksgiving.  He glanced at his father, and backed up a couple steps.  He didn’t like the look on his face.  His fears were confirmed when his father grabbed him and smooshed him into a hug.

“I’ll hug you!”

“Aaugh.  Dad.  You’re so lame.”

So the cool, 18 year old adult claimed, but he wasn’t trying very hard to shake free from his father.  The man rocked them back and forth a little and spoke in a babying voice.

“Who’s my cute widdle boy?”

The man kissed his son’s temple.

“Gah!”

“You may be old…but at least you’re still cute.”

“Too bad I can’t say the same thing about you,” Will jabbed.

“Wha-?!  Why you little!”

His dad got him in a headlock.  Will was used to this; he wrestled with his friends a lot.  He managed to break partially free, but his father still had a good hold of him.  And then he tickled him.  Will spasmed.

“No!  No!  Stop!  Ah!”

Will laughed and screamed and struggled to break free.  His father held on to him tighter and tickled him worse.

“ _RICH_!”

They both stopped moving and looked at the entrance to the kitchen.  Marilyn Harder stood in the doorway with a hand at her hip and an icy glare.  Apparently she’d been trying to get their attention for some time.  His dad let go of him and they both immediately straightened and adjusted their clothing.  The woman tapped her finger on her watch and then turned on her heel to leave.

“See you this weekend, baby,” she called out.

His father grabbed his briefcase from the kitchen counter.

“Sorry, Will.  We’ll celebrate this weekend, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will groused.

“Hey, it’s not like today is your birthday anyway.”

 

Will frowned remembering his father pointing out that particular fact.  It was true.  Today wasn’t his birthday.  Which was evident by the fact that his friends hadn’t mentioned it.  In fact, they hadn’t even been suspiciously snickering or anything.  They’d been going about business as usual—worrying about tests and homework and girlfriends.  But if nobody did anything for him tomorrow, there would be some serious ass-kicking.

He thought he’d been mostly ticked off at his parents and friends, but it wasn’t until after school and he was dragging his feet on the way to soccer practice that he realized he was more depressed than anything.  But why?  It wasn’t like they had forgotten, exactly.  Though his friends had seemed pretty birthday-aware-impaired.  It was just that even his own parents didn’t…make a big deal out of it?  Is that what he wanted?  Was he that shallow and self-centered?  Maybe a little.  But, did most people have to bring up their own birthday?  Didn’t people usually bring it up in some way?  Will knew he was a showoff and more than a little demanding.  But for once, couldn’t he get some attention without having to _do_ something for it?

He sighed and stood outside the door to the locker room.  He was depressed for more than one reason though.  His team had already lost their first two games—to the easiest teams on their schedule.  Would it really kill him to miss one practice?  One practice of teaching newbies how to dribble a frickin’ soccer ball?  Most of their practices wound up with him and Jake coaching more than anything.  But, he might as well go.  What else did he have to do?  Obviously, no one would be waiting for him at home.  Chris had to work tonight, Scott was “tutoring” Antoinette, and Julian had his shrink appointment.  Ken certainly wouldn’t be home yet.  At least he’d be able to stay with him tonight while his parents were out of town.  That would be nice.  That was something to look forward to.  And surely Ken wouldn’t forget his birthday, right?  He’d have a little reminder pop up in his Blackberry.

With the knowledge that he’d be able to be with his lover in a few short hours, Will was feeling better.  He didn’t even mind teaching some of the ninth graders how to make a tackle without getting yellow carded.  That was always kind of a fun lesson anyway.  After practice he decided to skip the five-spigot pole at school that passed as a shower and head on over to Ken’s condo and use his magic shower.  Will dreamed about the decadent relaxation he was in store for and ignored the wrinkled noses he was invoking in people sitting near him on the metro.  In the lobby of Ken’s building, the “guards” were snickering over a monitor—though not the TV screen with its usual _Jefferson’s_ rerun.  Jeff waved him over.

“Come here,” he said, snorting as he tried to contain his laughter.  “You gotta see this.”

The other guard sniggered and pushed a button that made the images on the screen rewind.  Will leaned over the counter and looked at the tiny, black and white screen.  It was a slightly distorted shot due to a small camera at a bad angle, but it was obviously the inside of an elevator.  Autumn Rose was inside by herself—digging out a wedgie.  Will laughed and then covered his mouth.  Now, he shouldn’t be mean.  And he really needed to try to remember if he and Ken had ever done anything in the elevators that could get him blackmailed.  He was pretty certain they’d never done anything that couldn’t be passed off as innocuous in a court of law.  Though he had changed clothes in there once.

“You don’t find that amusing?” the other day guard, LaRon asked.

“No, I do,” Will said.  “I despise that woman.”

He glanced over at Jeff again as LaRon rewound the video.  Jeff was giving him that irritating, knowing smile again.

“The cameras were just installed a few days ago.  You might want to remember that the next time you’re in there.  So you don’t—pick your nose or something.”

Will sighed relief internally.  So, was Jeff giving him a friendly warning?  Hopefully that’s what this was and the guy was simply amused by the high schooler’s relationship with the uptight, closeted businessman.  He smiled warily at Jeff.

“Thanks.  I’ll remember that.”

Will left the guards to scan more videos for embarrassing moments.  He worked his brain on the ride up to the seventeenth floor.  The cameras had been in for a “few days.”  He hadn’t even been over for…well, he had been over just that weekend.  But he and Ken hadn’t been in the elevators together.  Had he done something gross though?  He wasn’t a nose picker by nature, so the odds of that were pretty low.  Will shook himself.  He couldn’t let himself obsess about the guards possibly seeing him scratch himself some place inappropriate.  Men did those sorts of things.

The doors opened and Autumn Rose looked up from digging in her briefcase.  She smiled tightly at him and hurried onto the elevator.

“Hi, Will.”

Will stepped off quickly; she looked like she was in a hurry.

“Hi, Autumn Rose.”

Hearing his voice seemed to trigger something.  She looked directly at him.  Should he turn and run away?  The doors were shutting.  Maybe she would just…

Autumn Rose slammed her hand against the elevator door and they sprung back open.  Was she glaring at him?

“Has Mr. West ever introduced you to a friend of his named Angela Moreno?”

 _Don’t smile_ , Will commanded himself.  He cleared his throat.  “Um, yes, once.  By chance I ran into him when I was with my parents at one of their business functions.  I think she was his date.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly.  “I see.  Have you seen her around here?”

Will shook his head.  “No.  But then, I rarely see Mr. West when I’m here.”

She tilted her head as she looked at him.  Her eyes weren’t narrowed in mounting jealousy anymore, but amused suspicion.

“Really?  Because it seems like you’re here an awful lot.  I can’t imagine that he’s really out of town that much.”

“Oh.  I don’t just come over when he’s gone.  He works so late that he has me stop by after school so the cat won’t starve all day long.  Plus the metro is so crowded this time of day.  I just like to hang out here and do my homework before going home.  Then it doesn’t take as long to get home and I can relax at home rather than worrying about getting my work done when I’m in a bad mood from being all jostled and stuff.”

“Oh.”  Her suspicion cleared up.  As it should.  He’d been rehearsing that spiel in his head for months.  “So.  Angela Moreno.  Do you think he’s serious about her?”

Will shrugged.  “Like, I said: I only met her the one time, and Mr. West and I don’t make a habit of discussing his personal life on the rare occasions that I do see him.”

“Oh.”

She looked really depressed.  Will chewed the inside of his cheek.  He should behave.  He should behave.

“You know, Autumn Rose…”  She looked up at him.  “If you like Mr. West, you should just tell him.”

“What?  Me?  Like, Mr. West?  I don’t!  I was just curious.”

She laughed and smoothed back her already smooth hair in its updo.  Will stepped forward and put on a sweet, sympathetic face.  He took her hand in his.

“Autumn Rose.  Now we both know how you really feel about him.  But he doesn’t.  And to be honest, he’s a little on the slow side when it comes to social skills.  Plus, he’s very big on directness.  He likes it when people say what they mean and most importantly…mean what they say.  You’ve lived on the same hall as him how many years now?”

“Five.”

“Five years.  And nothing, right?  Subtle hints and flirting just don’t work with this guy!  You’re gonna have to just throw yourself at him.  And I mean literally.  Knock him down and tell him directly to his face that he is the Clyde to your Bonnie.  He’s the Sid to your Nancy.  The Jack Dawson to your Rose DeWitt Bukater.”

Autumn Rose nodded, her expression pinched.

“Don’t all of those have tragic endings?”

“That’s not the point!  Make him see your love.  Make him _feel_ it!”

“Yes.  I can do that!”

“But don’t kiss him when you do.  That could be sexual harassment.”

“Right, right.  Okay.  Oh, gosh.  I can’t believe I need a high schooler to give me a pep talk about this sort of thing.”

“Hey.  I’m sort of an expert at this sort of thing.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “Seducing older men?”

Will couldn’t help himself.  He smiled.  “No, of course not.  I just mean I have a lot of experience with confessions and stuff like that.  Girls tell me they like me all the time.  The ones I always responded to were the ones who weren’t shy about it and told me exactly what they were feeling.  Ken is the same way.”

The elevator started to alarm because the doors had been open for too long.  Autumn Rose stepped back.

“Okay.  Thanks for the advice, Will.  But, if you see that Angela Moreno around, let me know.”

“Oh, I will, I promise.”

She smiled and the doors closed.  Will turned on his heel and skipped down the hall.  If only there were some way he could be around when Autumn Rose professed her love.  Maybe she’d do it in the elevator and he and Jeff could have a good laugh.  And even better…he could use Autumn Rose.  If Angela Moreno ever showed up again, he could sic Autumn Rose on her.  It was perfect.  Will laughed to himself as he unlocked the door to 1703.  He really was a bad person.

Inside was the quiet of an empty room.  He sighed.  He knew Ken wouldn’t be there, but it still didn’t make it any less sad when only Joyce Greene was there to greet him.  And even then that didn’t always happen.  Like today.  She wasn’t stretching her away across the floor to see him.  She always got up from whatever she was doing whenever Ken came home.  Why did she like him more?  She spent more time with Will.

Will dropped his belongs off by the dining room table and figured she’d come out when she got hungry.  He might as well go take a shower.  He dawdled in the shower.  He dawdled in the bathroom.  He dawdled getting dressed and even sat on the bed to flip through some TV channels.  Four hours was a long time to kill.  Why couldn’t Ken work normal hours?  Will trudged around the apartment feeling sorry for himself.  He stood in front of the open refrigerator until he got too cold to keep considering what he wanted Ken to make him for dinner.  Then he opened the pantry door and shook the bag of kitty treats.  No Joyce Greene.  Will made a face and went searching for her.  Eventually he found her curled up in the dirty laundry basket in the utility room.  She was sleeping on Ken’s clothes.  Of course.  Her favorite.  He picked the cat up and forced her to love on him some.  She did it willingly enough.  Will picked out a book from Ken’s meager fiction collection and sat down on the couch with Joyce Greene.  She snuggled into him and it made him feel a little better.  Until the phone rang.  Will checked his watch before answering.  It was 7:30.  Technically, Ken was half an hour late.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Will.”

Will bit his lip.  He now knew Ken said his name like that over the phone on purpose.  The man knew it made his young lover want him.

“What do you want?” Will asked, trying not to sound horny or pissy.

“What kind of response is that?”

“Hello, lover.  What do you want?”

“Well.  I’m not sure I have enough time to go into details about that…”

Will squirmed.  What an evil little…

“But, I needed to let you know that I’m going to be working late.”

Will sat up straight.  “Are you kidding me?!”  Joyce Greene opened an eye to glare at him.

“It won’t be all night.  In fact, I won’t be too much longer, but you should go ahead and make dinner for yourself.  We ordered Chinese.”

Will grumbled to himself and then let out a long, loud, dramatic sigh.  “ _Fine_.  And I’m going to _trust you_ when you say ‘not too much longer.’  Okay?  I’m making that a promise from you.”

Ken chuckled.  “Okay, okay.  I get it.  Two hours.  Tops.”

“Two h—!  Geh.  Whatever.  I’m eating that chocolate you have ‘hidden’ behind the coffee.”

“How do you know about that?!”

“I snoop.”

Now it was Ken’s turn to grumble.  “Fine.  I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Kay.  Say hi to Mr. Ramsey for me.”

“Okay.  Wait!  I can’t do that!  Besides, he’s not even here.”

Will laughed.  “Bye.”

He hung up before Ken could say goodbye to him.  He didn’t want to hear it anyway.  He glanced down at Joyce Greene.  She looked really comfortable, but he was really hungry.  And since no one would be making him a special birthday dinner tonight, he was going to have to make his own.  Or maybe he should just order out.  This was so lame!

Despite his best efforts to make a mess and a meal that would put him in an even fouler mood so he could really give Ken a good glower—he only made Easy Mac, which was neither messy nor un-delicious.  In fact, since he’d given up dairy three months ago he hadn’t had mac n’ cheese in a good long while.  So, it was extra delicious.  And even more so because he knew Ken abhorred having the stuff in his pantry.  He found it offensive.  Ken really was like his father in certain ways.  And like his mother in others.  He could only pray that the majority of Ken wasn’t like either of them and he hadn’t fallen in love with him because of a weird abandonment complex regarding his parents.

To try to bury those disturbing thoughts he let himself veg out in front of the TV for a while.  And then he returned to his book.  It was interesting enough that it kept him from checking his watch every five minutes, but he could tell he was burning through a lot of it.  He was four-fifths of the way done with a five hundred page book before Ken finally dragged his sorry ass in the door.  Will didn’t get up to greet his lover, but, of course, Joyce Greene did.  Will stayed petulantly on the couch, watching Ken love on the cat.  He swung by the couch to give Will a quick peck in greeting and to ask why it was so dark—Will only had the lamp by the couch turned on.  Then without initiating any further conversation he began to rummage through his refrigerator.  Will narrowed his eyes.

“Dude!”

Ken turned around, looking slightly alarmed.  “What?”

“It is after ten o’clock!  What happened to ‘two hours tops?’”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.”  Ken pulled out some sandwich making ingredients.  “I really only worked for two more hours.  But then I got caught up in a conversation as I was leaving.”

“Why are you making a sandwich?”

Ken sucked some mustard off his thumb.  “You really think _I_ ate Chinese food?  That greasy, oily nastiness with meat of questionable origins.  Bleh.”  He shuddered.  “No thank you.  And now I’m starving.”

“Hn.”

Ken picked up his sandwich and walked to the dining table.

“Will you join me?”

“I already ate.”

“You can sit with me.”

“I’m comfortable here.”

Ken raised his eyebrows, but didn’t respond.  He sat at the table and started eating.  Joyce Greene returned to the couch.  Will petted her and wondered if he should say something.  It was one thing to want his friends and family to acknowledge him without being told to, but his lover knew him well enough that a selfish request to be treated special on his birthday shouldn’t be entirely unexpected.  But of all people, shouldn’t a lover be the one to remember?  No.  The woman who squeezed him out of her vagina should remember.  Well, she had.  But she hadn’t much cared.  Did Ken care?  Of course he did.  He was turning 18.  Now he would no longer be threatened with jail time when they slept together.  Did he know when it was?  Had he ever told him the exact date?  He was pretty certain he had.  But Ken remained mum on the topic and ate his dinner in silence.  Then he got up, cleaned the kitchen, and announced he was going to take a shower.

Will slumped into the couch in despairing annoyance.  He couldn’t believe it.  Even _he_ had forgotten.  Well, he was just going to have to remind him when he got out of the shower.  Or maybe he could remind him _in_ the shower.  Will couldn’t help but to smile a little at the thought.  But, no.  He wanted to be in a foul temper.  And it was very hard to feel that way when you could barely remember your own name due to the waves of ecstasy crashing through your body.  Then again—that would probably be more fun than feeling sorry for himself.  Well.  Maybe he’d finish his book first.  Even though he made fun of Will for taking long showers, Ken wasn’t exactly a speed bather either.  He had time.  So, he flipped his book back open and pulled Joyce Greene into his lap.  She seemed to be awake now, so he wiggled his fingers above her where she lay on her back so that she could play while he read.  By the time he was done, the cat was back asleep and he had lukewarm feelings about the book.  It didn’t have a sucky ending, but it wasn’t great either.  It was just kind of “eh.”  Like his whole day.  He looked at his watch: 11:59.  It had been over an hour and Ken hadn’t even come back to talk to him again.  Geez.  The time changed to 12:00 midnight.

“Hey, baby.”

Will looked over his shoulder.  Ken was leaning over the arm of the couch by the end table.  He held a chocolate cupcake in one hand with a single candle flickering softly in the dark of the room.

“Happy birthday, Will.”

Will smiled, partly because of the gesture and partly at himself for being so silly.  He looked up at his lover.

“You didn’t forget,” he said softly.

Ken smiled.  “Of course not.  I just didn’t know when I was supposed to say something, so I figured midnight was the best time.  I mean, seriously.  Who forgets someone born on Leap Day?”

“Oh, just my family and friends.  That’s all.”

“I’m sure they’ll do something for you tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” Will pouted.  “But not my parents.  They went out of town!  Can you believe that?”

Ken shrugged.  “My dad missed a lot of my birthdays.”

“Oh.  Sorry.”

“Eh.  You know.  Whatever.”

Will narrowed an eye.  Was he making fun of him?

“Hey, blow this out already.  It’s getting wax all over the icing and I plan on eating it.”

Will blew out the candle, but then looked up in surprise.  “ _You’re_ gonna eat it?  It’s _my_ birthday cupcake!”

“Yeah, I’m giving it to you but…”  Ken pulled the candle out and tapped Will on the nose with the cupcake—icing first.  “I’m gonna eat it.”  He kissed the icing off Will’s nose and then sat back with a grin.  Will tried not to encourage the pervert by smiling.  His blushing didn’t help matters.

“Well, that’s fine,” Will said, leaning forward.  “I don’t want the cupcake.”

Ken laughed and Will stopped short of kissing him.  He sat back and frowned.

“Why do you always laugh when I try to seduce you?!”

Ken laughed again.  “I don’t!  But.  Right now…you’re just so cute.”

Will huffed and sat back further.  Ken followed him over the arm of the couch.

“Wait, wait, come here.  You’ve got something…”

“Where?”

Will looked down at himself, and then Ken smudged some icing on his neck.

“There.”

Will laughed as Ken kissed and licked the spot.  He ran his fingers though Ken’s hair.  It was dry, but he knew he had taken a shower because all the styling gel was out.  He ran his fingers back and forth through his soft brown hair.  Then Ken suddenly pulled back and set the cupcake on the end table.

“Come here,” he said.

Will stood up on the couch and then hopped off into Ken’s arms.  He wrapped his legs around his waist and circled his arms around his neck.  They gave each other a long kiss.  Will ran his fingers through his lover’s hair again as he pulled back to look at him.

“So, you’re finally 18.  We can do the really freaky stuff now.”

“What?” Will laughed.  “Whatever!  There can’t be anything _left_!”

“Wanna bet?”

Ken started to head for the bedroom.  He turned Will in his arms and forced him into a princess carry.

“Hey, hey!  We talked about this!”

“I know.  And I know that it’s your birthday…but if I piss you off enough maybe I’ll get _my_ wish, huh?”

“Oh, hush.  You big jerk.  And pervert.  A pervert jerk.”

“Pervert jerk, hmm?”

Ken laid him on the bed and gave him a kiss before lying beside him, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at him.  His other hand he held out and Will took it, lacing their fingers.  They continued to move their fingers together, letting the digits slide back and forth in a comfortable, contented rhythm.

“So,” Ken said softly.  “How does it feel to be 18?”

Will turned his head so that his temple was against Ken’s arm.  “Honestly?  No different from when I turned twelve.  Less in fact.  When I turned twelve was when my parents started letting me stay overnight by myself and told me I would need to start buying my own groceries.”

Ken smiled and pulled Will’s hand close to give his knuckles a kiss.  “What a big boy you are.”

Will sucked in a sharp breath.  He had a sudden desire to pull Ken on top of him.  He just wanted to get on with the main event.  But, he stayed put.  He wanted to use this opportunity to learn more about his lover.

“How was _your_ 18 th birthday?”

Ken smiled sardonically and looked down at the green duvet.  Then he looked back up at Will.  He looked like a man remembering the follies of his youth.  What a difference between them that he was feeling nostalgic about those mistakes and Will was still making them.

“Well…I got hammered so that I could sleep with my girlfriend.  And then the next day my sister was home on spring break, so she wanted to take me out.  But I was so hung over that I spent the day in a hazy blur of headachy pain.  Oh, yes.  I also found out that I had gotten into Dartmouth that day.  And had a _huge_ fight with my father about _not_ going to Yale.”  Ken kissed Will’s knuckles again.  “It wasn’t the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

“What was the best?”

Ken’s eyes flicked to the side and then he returned them to Will’s face.  “Let’s say it was my 16th.”

“The day you got that Mustang?”

“Yep.  She is a beautiful car.  I still have it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.  I’ll take you for a ride some time.”

“Cool.”  Will rubbed his thumb along Ken’s.  “But that wasn’t really your best.  Why won’t you tell me?”

“Well.  My best birthday ever…Rylan took me out.”

“Oh.”  Will tried not to make a face.  “Well.  That’s okay.  I’d like to hear about it.  I won’t mind.  Unless it ends with sex.”

Ken smiled.  “Let’s just say my 16th was the best.”

Now Will did make a face.  “Gross.”

“Heh.”

Will reached up with his free hand and caressed Ken’s cheek.  “I’ll be sure to make your 33rd the best.”  Ken closed his eyes and turned in to Will’s touch.  “Until your 34th.”

Ken opened his eyes.  “Thank you, baby.”

Will felt his heart start to accelerate just from staring at his lover’s beautiful face.

“Make love to me, Ken.”

The man nodded and leaned down to give him a chaste kiss.  He pulled back and smiled.

“Well, look at you.  You didn’t even blush when you said that.”

Will balked in annoyance.  “Shut-up!”

“Oh!  There it is!” Ken half-moaned, rolling over onto Will.  “My trigger word.”

“Trigger word?” Will asked, not minding the man’s weight, but finding it difficult to talk as a result.

“Yeah, you know.  You’ve programmed me so that when I hear the right word it gets me all revved up and ready to go.”

“Oh, whatever.  And what is this trigger word?”

“Shut-up, of course.”

“Uh!  Shut- _up_!”

“Oh, _yes_!”

 

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

 

The bunnies were singing _Happy Birthday_.  But not to him.  To some great stone alien contraption that was buzzing at them.  They wore headdresses and leaf skirts and were bowing down before it.  Their high-pitched voices squealed out ‘happy birthday to you’—but to the tune of _The Simpson’s_ theme.  Why did they care more about that thing than him?  It stopped buzzing.  The bunnies all turned to look at him.  They had dark, glittering eyes.

Something made the ground move, which made Will feel it and wake up.  He stared at the ceiling.  It hadn’t been the ground, but the mattress.  He looked to his left and saw Ken sitting with his back to him on the edge of the bed.  He was rubbing his eyes and yawning.  The clock on the nightstand said 5:36.  He and Ken had probably slept through the alarm for six minutes.  They both were two of the heaviest sleepers on the planet.  They were going to die in a house fire one day.

Will rolled over toward Ken’s side of the bed and took his wrist just before the man stood up.  He looked over his shoulder and smiled at him.

“Morning,” Will yawned.

“Morning.  Sorry I woke you up.  Go back to sleep.  I’ll set the alarm again for when you need to get up.”

Will tugged on his wrist.  “Stay with me.”

“I have to go to work.”

“Just for a few more minutes.  Come on.  It’s my birthday.”

“I thought you were all upset because nobody acknowledged your birthday was yesterday.”

“Well, it was yesterday.  But it’s also today.”

Ken chuckled and leaned down to snuggle with him.  “So you get two days every year?”

“All but every fourth year.”

They hugged each other and Ken slid back into bed with him.

“I really can’t stay long.  I’ll fall back asleep.  So.  This is all.  A nice little hug.  Now, I’ve got to get up.”

“Okay.”

Will opened his eyes.  His head was resting on Ken’s shoulder and his arm was curved around the man’s torso.  It was pretty bright in the room.  He moved his head and felt Ken’s chin at the crown of his head.  He thought about snuggling back in for a couple more minutes, but he didn’t really feel tired.  If he was already awake anyway, he might as well let Ken get ready for work.  He sat part way up and stretched.  He looked at the clock on the nightstand.

“Oooh.”

Ken stirred at the noise.  He blinked at the bright sunlight.  He rubbed his eyes with his fingers.

“Oh, man.  I think I fell back asleep.  What time is it?”

Will chewed on his lip.  “12:21.”

Ken’s eyes opened wide.  “Seriously?”

Will smiled sheepishly.  “Sorry.”

“Eh,” Ken shrugged.  “It happens.  It’s not like I really needed to go in to work anyway.  We got a lot done last night and I’ve already got, like, 30 hours this week.”

“30 hours?!  It’s only just Wednesday.”

Now Ken looked sheepish.  “I worked Sunday.”

“Freak.”  Will switched over to looking cute.  “So, hey.  Make me a birthday breakfast?”  He put on his best hurt and abused kitten face.  “I didn’t get anything yesterday.  Not a card.  Not a cake.  Barely even a ‘happy birthday’ from my parents.”

“Well, people still have today to do things for you.”

“Right.  Like you.  Now hop to it.”

“Okay, okay.”

Ken got out of bed.  Will watched him as he walked over to the dresser, his smooth skin moving over his lean muscles.  In the clean, warm light from the midday sun his skin didn’t look tanned exactly, but it had a beautiful golden quality to it that brought clichés about Greek gods to mind.  It was quite disappointing to see him cover some of it up with a clean pair of underwear.

“Will.”

Will blinked and looked up to Ken’s eyes.  “Huh?”

Ken smiled, but he also looked like he was blushing.  Just a little.  “I asked what you wanted for breakfast.”

“Oh.  An omelet.”

“Okay.”

“With the hash brown thingies in it.”

“Okay.”

“And the white cheddar cheese.  Not Swiss.”

“I thought you were off dairy.”

“It’s my birthday damn it!”

Ken laughed and waved a hand as he walked out the door.  “Okay, okay.”

Will rolled over and buried his face in a pillow.  He inhaled deeply.

“God he smells good.”

Will relaxed into the mattress.  Then someone nudged him.  He turned his head to the side.

“Hey.  I can’t believe you fell back asleep.  Get up, you slug.  Your omelet is ready.”

Will sat up.  Had he fallen back asleep again?  Well, could you really blame him?  Sleep was just such a good thing.  He bet he was one of only a handful of people in the world who was curious what it would be like to go into a coma.  He was wise enough to keep thoughts like those to himself though and finally got out of bed a little before one o’clock.  He got minimally dressed and padded barefoot to the kitchen to eat his birthday breakfast at the tall end of the island.  It was really good.  And it was nice to have a leisurely breakfast with Ken.  It actually was quite rare for the two of them to have time to sit and talk and pass the time with no worries about any responsibilities or appointments to make.  Eventually, the topic of Will’s birthday present came up.  He wasn’t sure which one of them actually mentioned it first.

“Well,” Ken said, “I got you something that I think is really cool, but it may just be wishful thinking on my part that you’ll share in my obsessions.”

“Okay.  So, it has something to do with cars, right?”

Ken grinned.  “Yep.”

“You bought me a car?!” Will bounced in his seat.

“No.  Not quite ready to draw that much attention to our relationship yet.”

“Oh, right,” Will deflated a little.  “So, what is it?”

“Do you remember where I took you the first day we met?”

“Ken.  I remember what direction the wind was blowing the first day we met.”

“That traumatic, huh?”

“Well, kind of, yeah.  So.  Do you mean the hotel, the restaurant, or the track?”

“The track.”

“Oh, yeah.  Oh yeah!  Are we going back?”

“Yeah.  Now that you’re 18 I can take you on the ‘grown-up’ track and you can drive the big boy cars.”

“Oh, cool!  Like, really fast?”

“Yep.  I’ll even let you drive my Porsche.”

“No waaaaaay!  For real?!  Sweeeet!  Not the Aston Martin?”

“Hell no.”

“Okay.  The Porsche is cool.”

“You’re damn straight it is.”

Will leaned on the granite counter and grinned at his lover.  “Do you have a fantasy about doing me on one of your cars?”

“Well…yes and no.  Yes because it would be hot.  But no because I wouldn’t want to ruin the finish on them.”

Will rolled his eyes.  “We wouldn’t have to do it on the Aston Martin.  Maybe in the backseat of your Mustang.  We can relive your sixteen year old days with you being able to sleep with someone you actually want to.”

Ken laughed.  “So, are you saying _you_ want to have sex in a car?”

Will shrugged.  “If it’s with you there aren’t many places I’d say no to.”

Ken’s look unnerved Will just a bit.  “I’ll remember that.”

Will sat back in his seat.  He kicked his feet where they hung a couple inches off the floor from the high bar stool.

“Hey, Ken?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“Anything.”

“But drive your Aston Martin.”

He nodded.  “Anything but drive my Aston Martin.”

“Can you give me a ride home?  I know you probably still want to go in to work today anyway, but do you have time to take me home?”

“Sure, of course.  That’s not a problem.  But, you don’t want to stay for soccer practice?”

“I can’t.  I missed school, so I can’t go to soccer practice.  If you miss school for any reason, excused or otherwise, you can’t participate in extracurricular activities for that day.  They send out a list.”

“I see.”

“Okay.  I’ll go get dressed.”

“You want to go now?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.  You want to shower first?”

“Nah.  I don’t feel dirty.”

About an hour later, Ken turned onto Will’s street.  His silver Lexus wasn’t out of place at all in the swanky neighborhood.

“Park across the street from my house,” Will commanded.

Ken raised an eyebrow at his authoritative tone, but obeyed him.  He put the car in park.

“So.  Why are we over here?”

“Because I want you to come in.  And I know you’ll be all paranoid if you leave your car in the driveway.”

“Ah, Will.  I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“It’s okay.  It’s the middle of the day.  Everyone’s at work.  And my parents are out of town.  Besides.  It’s not strange for people to go into houses.  Not unless you draw attention to yourself and let people know there’s something to think about.”

“I guess.”

Will undid his seatbelt and hopped out of the car.  “Come on,” he said, shutting the door on any more arguments.

Ken got out and followed him across the street to his house.  There were still some remnants of snow on the lawn and all the flowers were dormant, but the large shrubs lining the house were pruned to symmetric perfection.  The gardener must have stopped by not too long ago.  He listened to Ken’s shoes click on the flagstones leading up to the blue door in the slate colored house. He wondered if he was taking in the house or just worried that the neighbors were watching him.  Ken had been there once before, but it had been dark.  What did he now think of his boyfriend’s childhood home?  Which was _still_ his childhood home.  Man, poor Ken.  This must be weird for him.

Inside, it was dark, like always.  No matter how bright the day was, the foyer was always dark and quiet and still.  He watched Ken look around.  He didn’t look terribly out of place in his home.  He was dressed casually, but expensively—which was what most guests to this house looked like.  With the exception of his friends.  He had his hands in his pockets, like he didn’t want to touch anything.

“It’s weird,” the man said suddenly.

“What is?”

“This place.  It’s dark and quiet.  Like a movie set.  From a non-slasher type horror movie.  Or a dull British TV drama.”

Will laughed softly.  “That’s just the foyer.  Come further in.”

“Even still,” Ken said, following him down the hall toward the kitchen.  “This doesn’t feel like a home.  You had to grow up here?  You had to grow up _alone_ here?”

“It’s really not that bad!” Will laughed.

They entered the kitchen which was brightly lit from the sun flooding in from the wall of windows that stood in between the family room and the back porch area.  The kitchen itself was large and open having only two and a half walls.

“See?” Will asked, indicating the bright, homey kitchen.

“I guess.”  Ken walked around looking at the appliances.  He turned to Will looking like he’d just discovered black was really white and up was really down.  “This is a chef’s kitchen.  Please don’t tell me The Ball Breaker cooks and bakes like a good little housewife.”

Will smiled at Ken’s distressed expression.  “My father.”

The man sighed relief.  “Good.”

Will shook his head.  “Come on, follow me.”

They walked into the family room.

“See that chair there?  That’s where the tragic not-turned-on-by-porn-and-I-thought-you’d-turned-me-gay thing happened.”

Ken nodded, an amused smile on his face.  “I see.  When you were in your T-shirt and boxers?”

Will blushed.  “You remember that?”

“Of course.”

“Feh.”

“And what do you mean ‘thought’ I turned you gay?  I obviously have.”

“Whatever.  The jury’s still out on that one.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Will was about to lead him into the dining room when Ken paused to pick up a picture from the fireplace mantle.  He was looking at the picture with a gentle smile on his face.  Will wondered which one he had picked up.

“You were a fat baby,” Ken said.

“Geh!”  Will frowned.  That jerk.  “So?  You were an ugly baby!”

Ken looked up.  “How do you know?  Oh, right.  _Kennedy_.  She told you to look in that box.  Well, you know, I wasn’t ugly.  I was peculiarly cute.”

“Say that three times fast.”

 Ken shook his head at the challenge and put the picture down to pick up another.  This time his face was just amused disbelief.  “I cannot believe Marilyn Harder can smile like this.”

Will walked closer and looked at the picture in his hand.  It was a picture of his mother and father around the time they had gotten married.  They both looked younger than they did now, but while his mother looked like a young woman, his father looked like a mature adolescent.

“Yeah, there aren’t many things that can coax this kind of smile from her,” Will said, “but my father is one of them.”

“So, who is this then?  Not your brother.  A cousin or something?”

Will laughed.  “That _is_ my father.”

Ken looked at Will and then back at the picture.  He brought it close to his nose and then pulled it back.  He looked at Will again.  “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”

“No.  That’s him.  I mean, that picture was taken years ago, not yesterday.”

“But still.  He looks like…he’s eighteen.  If that.”

Will took the picture from Ken to examine it again.  Was this the year they got married or the year after?  “Um.  I think he’s older than eighteen in this.”  _Though not by much._

Ken chuckled to himself.  “Well, at least you come by your attraction to older lovers honestly.”

“I know, right?  But you saw my dad at the Christmas party.  You saw how young he was then.”

“Yeah, and I thought that she’d just married a trophy husband.  But…she’s had him for at least eighteen years I guess.  Unless…Is he really your father?”

Will held the picture up next to his face.  Ken nodded.

“Yeah.  You are related to him.  But how do you know he’s not actually your uncle or cousin who took over raising you when your real father died horribly and tragically when you were a baby?”

Will crossed his arms over his chest and gave Ken a look.

“Okay, okay.  He’s your father.”

“This way,” Will said dryly, heading out of the family room.

Will led them through the dining room and back to the main hall, pointing out the stairs to the basement.  Back in the foyer he continued the tour by pointing out the study and half-bath on the side of the house with the garage.  Then he started upstairs.  He turned back when he noticed Ken wasn’t following him.

“Come on.”

Ken put his hands back in his pockets and reluctantly began to take the stairs one at a time.  Will waited for him at the landing, strumming his fingers on top of the banister.  He gave his lover a bemused look.  So now all of a sudden he was shy?  He supposed paranoia will do that to a person.

“Down the hall are the office, the guest room, and my parents’ bedroom.  My bedroom…is right here.”

Will opened the door and stepped inside.  He’d cleaned up yesterday morning after his parents had left him.  As soon as he’d realized he’d be alone today, he’d known he wanted to bring Ken here.  It wasn’t spotless, but the dirty clothes were off the floor and he’d made up his bed.  The blue geometric pattern of the bedspread looked a little junior high-ish.  Or that could have been his imagination.  He walked over to the bed and sat on it, so he could watch Ken.  There was a wonderful sharpness in his chest, somewhat akin to fear as he saw his lover in his bedroom for the first time.

Ken’s curiosity must have overcome his apprehension.  He removed his hands from his pockets and walked around the room.  In one corner there was a TV with three game consoles connected to it.  A pile of games sat beside it.  His eyes roved over the Green Day poster on one wall and he lingered by his desk, looking at his high school level text books.  Then he reached out and picked up a picture that Will had propped up on his pencil holder.  It was the one of sixteen year old Ken and his new Mustang.

“You kept this?” he asked.

“You said I could.”

“I know.  But…you leave it out?”

Will shrugged.  “No one comes in here.  And I like to look at my hot boyfriend.”

Ken smiled at him.  “Thanks,” he said wryly.

“Plus, no one would ever connect that picture to you.  And I can’t really have a current one out, you know?”

“Yeah.”  Ken put the picture back.  He looked around the room again.

“Is it weird?” Will asked.

“A little,” Ken admitted, understanding exactly what Will was referring to.  “But it’s not—”

Ken cut off as he caught sight of the painting Julian had given Will for Christmas on the wall.  The man crossed the room and stood in front of it, examining it very closely.  Several minutes passed, and still he continued to look at it without saying a word.  Will wondered why it had gotten his undivided attention.

“Is this an original?” the man asked.

“Um, yeah.  My friend, Julian, painted it.  It was a Christmas present.”

“Julian painted this?”

“Yeah.”

That was weird.  The way Ken said his name…he knew that Ken and Julian knew each other though he still wasn’t clear on the how.  A chance encounter in the hallway due to Autumn Rose’s stupidity didn’t quite explain the level of familiarity they seemed to have with each other.  Then again, Will had told Ken a lot about his three friends.  It’s possible that knowing how much Julian meant to him and that he was the friend whose parents had died had caused Ken to empathize with Julian the instant he met him.  Possibly.  But it was still a little odd.

“So…” Ken said, still focused on the artwork, “this painting is…of what?”

“Nothing, I guess.  It’s abstract.”

“But I’m sure Julian had something in mind when he painted it.”

Will shifted a little uncomfortably.  “Well.  He said it’s how he sees me.  How he feels about me.”

Ken finally turned to look at him.  And Will was surprised to find him looking a little peeved.

“I never knew I had such a serious rival,” the man frowned.

Will laughed.  “Aw, come on.  It’s just Julian.”

“Yeah.  And Rylan is just Rylan.”

“That’s not the same at all.”

“No,” Ken agreed, turning back to look at the painting.  “I rather imagine yours is more serious.”

“Whatever.”

Ken shook himself and turned around.  Will stretched his arms behind him and leaned back on his hands.  They looked at each other for a few moments, and then Ken started looking uneasy again.  His hands went back in his pockets.

“Well.  I guess I should be going then,” Ken said.

“Not yet.  You haven’t done the favor for me yet.”

“I haven’t?”

“Seriously?  You thought driving me home was my special birthday wish?”

Ken looked like he might have believed that was it.

“That wasn’t it.”

“So what is it?”

Will had his heels on the floor with his toes in the air and twisted one foot side to side.  “I want to make love.  In my bed.”

Ken took a step back.  The chicken actually took a step toward the door.  He shook his head.

“Will…my beautiful, beloved Achilles heel…don’t you think that’s tempting fate just a little too much?”

“Well…I’m not letting you leave until I get what I want.”

They stared at each other.  It was like a standoff.  Only the tenseness didn’t come from a fear of dying.  Ken walked deliberately across the room toward him, pulling his shirt off as he came.  He leaned close to Will, putting his hands on the bed.

“See?” he said softly.  “I’m not laughing now.”

Suddenly, every nerve under Will’s skin was on end.  His body started trembling.  He forgot what to do.  He could only try to stay sitting upright as Ken pressed their lips together.  It was like it was the first time.  Like he’d never kissed him before.  It was that new, that electric.  He jumped when Ken’s hand brushed down his arm.  He’d never felt so raw in his life.  He was feeling Ken like he never had before.  It was like they had finally gotten rid of that last barrier between them.  No clothes, no skin.  Just the two of them, slowly and passionately melting into each other.  Will was seeing stars.  He turned his head and felt the sheets against his skin.  It made him aware that his arms were, in fact, stopped by Ken’s skin as he clung to him and that the stars were just the poster on the ceiling over his bed.  Then why was it he could still see them when he closed his eyes?

It was hard to tell exactly how long it took for him to come down from his high.  But long after his body recovered, his mind was still clouded with pleasure and love and happiness.  After a long while he was able to feel and recognize shapes and objects again.  He was in his bedroom, on his bed, lying under a thin sheet with his lover.  His room was so familiar to him, and Ken was so familiar to him.  Why did those pieces together feel unfamiliar?  Well, he was just glad he’d managed to bring Ken even a little bit into his world.

Will had his head on Ken’s shoulder and the man had one arm bent at the elbow so that he could play with Will’s hair.  Will ran his hand over Ken’s abdomen.  Ken bent one knee and folded his free hand under his head.

“Hey, Will?”

“Hmm?”

“Why do you have a poster of the universe on your ceiling?”

Will laughed softly.  “Because space is cool.  Duh.”

“Ah, yes.  I see.  So, when you were little, did you—”  Ken paused.

“Did I what?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?  When?  When I was little?”

“No, did you hear a sound?  Now.”

“A sound?  Like what?”

There was a thump from the hallway.

“Like that.”

Will could now hear whispering voices as well.  His reflexes bypassed all brain function as he sprang from the bed and stumbled across the floor to slam into the door just as someone tried to open it.  The two people on either side of the door stepped back for a moment from the shock.  The person on the outside said, “Ow!”  Will jumped forward and grabbed the doorknob.  He put his shoulder into the door and tried to get the lock turned.  He was pushed a little into the room as his bare feet slid across the carpet due to the force coming from the other side.

“Open up!” Julian called out.

“Yeah, let us in!” Scott whined.

“For real!” Chris complained.  “I’m stuck in the middle!”

“Okay, just wait a minute!”

“No, now!”

“Seriously, guys, just hold on!”

“No!”

“Come on!”

“Let us in!”

Will couldn’t get the door back in the jamb, so locking it was useless.  Kind of like his pitiful one versus three fight.  His friends burst through the door and the four of them went flying to the floor.  Will grunted as his friends landed on him.  Scott was squarely on top of him and Julian and Chris kind of hung to the sides, but were still on him.

“Happy birthday!” they called out.

“Gah!  Get off!” Will panted.  “I can’t breathe!”

“Hey!” Julian demanded.  “Why were you trying to keep us out?”

“Because I’m naked!”

“Ooo,” Scott drawled.  “You got a girl in here?”

“No!”

“Oh, come on, Will,” Chris said.  “You skipped school.  It was to meet with your secret girlfriend, right?”

“No!  There’s no girlfriend!  Seriously!  I can’t breathe!”

“Um, guys?” Scott asked, looking a little uncomfortable.  “He’s, uh, really naked.  And I’m like...right here, you know?  So, can we like…”

“Oh, sorry.”

Julian and Chris sat up and then Scott dug his elbow into Will’s side as he did.  Will would have been mad but he was too happy to finally draw in a decent breath again.  He quickly sat up and pulled his knees to his chest.

“Can I have, like, two seconds to put on some pants?”

“Yeah, sure, sure,” they all agreed.  They stood up and left the room, Julian and Chris teasing Scott about his close encounter with Will.  Will shoved the door shut with a foot.  They hadn’t reacted in any sort of way.  He turned around.  His bed was a mess of sheets, but it was empty.  He looked around his room.  His uniform was still scattered on the floor, but there were no other visible clothes.

“Ken?” he whispered.

The man poked his head out from behind the dresser that was next to the door.  He must have been squatting and pressed flat against the wall to have been so completely hidden.  Will stood up and grabbed his underwear.

“I am _so_ sorry,” he said softly.

“Eh,” Ken said, standing up and pulling his pants up quickly.  From the green fabric sticking out of the pocket he must have forgone the underwear.  “I’d kind of already accepted that something like this would happen the moment I agreed to do it.”

Will choked on his laugh—he was still too scared to laugh—and pulled a green dress shirt from his closet.  He started to put it on and saw Ken sitting on the window sill putting on his shoes.  Will blinked.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” Ken said, ducking out the window.

Will leapt across the room and grabbed his arm before he could fully step out onto the ledge.

“Are you crazy?!” Will hissed.  “You’ll kill yourself!  Just let me distract them outside or down in the basement and then you can go out the front door!”

“It’s okay.  This ledge is wide and I can easily get to that section of roof.  And that tree is more than strong enough for me to climb down.”

“But!”

“I may be an old man, Will, but I do work out and am quite coordinated.  Did you know I rock climbed?”

“No, I didn’t,” Will frowned.

Ken smiled.  “Besides.  I used to do this all the time when I was in high school.”

“I _knew_ it!  You were a total slut!”

“Hey.  I was a troubled youth trying to deny my own homosexuality.”

“Unh-hunh.  You know what the kids are calling it these days?”

“What?”

“Sluttiness.”

Ken grinned.  “Bye, baby.”

Will leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss, and then Ken stepped out onto the ledge.  Just as he said, he easily walked the ledge to the roof and then eased down to the tree.  He climbed down with little hesitation and had his feet on the ground less than twenty seconds after he’d left the window.  Will let go of the breath he’d been holding.  Ken turned back around and blew a kiss to him.  Will waved goodbye and watched his lover disappear around the side of his house.  He turned around and leaned against the sill.

“Holy begeezus.”

He shook himself and grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet.  He checked himself in the mirror behind his closet door.  He thought he looked normal.  And he better just go outside to his friends before they decided to come back in.  He was certain if they were given more time to look at the condition of his bed they would be back on the “he has a girlfriend over” theory.

Will walked over to his bedroom door.  Actually…it was kind of strange they hadn’t already come back in.  With Chris as the exception, they weren’t very patient people.  Will opened the door.  And was hit with three different colors of silly string.  He just stood there and they must have emptied at least half of each can on him.  When they stopped they were giggling to themselves.  Will reached a hand up and pulled some of the blue, pink, and yellow goop off his head.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Come on,” Julian said, hooking an arm around his shoulders.  “We’ve got a lot of work to do.  Preparations to be made!”

“Why?”

“We’re having a barbeque!” Scott shouted as they walked down the stairs and Will pulled off more silly string.

Julian glared over his shoulder at Scott.  “ _I_ was going to tell him.”

“Look, you made me be quiet all day yesterday!  I did the best I could!”

“For real, Julian,” Chris said.  “We’re actually lucky Will didn’t come to school today or he would have given it away for sure.”

Scott started bouncing once he hit the foyer.  “A barbeque!  A barbeque!”

“With just us?” Will asked.

“No,” Julian said as they headed for the kitchen.  “People will be here later.  And there will be fixing and cooking and stuff.”

“Yeah, we totally have a plan,” Chris said.

“I don’t know guys,” Will said.  “I’m not against a party at all.  And my parents certainly won’t care about most things.  But my dad is a little psycho when it comes to his grill.”

“Oh, _we_ won’t be grilling,” Chris said.

“Then who will be?”

“Me, of course!” a voice said behind him.

Will turned around.  His parents were coming down the front hall and his father was smiling at him.

“Mom!  Dad!”

“Come on, Will,” his dad said as he leaned against the kitchen doorway.  “You didn’t really think we’d miss your 18th birthday, did you?”

Will looked around.  His three friends were grinning at him on one side.  His parents were smiling on the other.  He was surrounded.  By people who loved him.  How had he ever been so stupid as to believe no one cared?  He should have known better.  And he was so happy.  He felt something in his eyes.  He turned away from his parents and friends and chewed on his lower lip.

“Uh-oh,” he heard his father say.  “Do we pretend we don’t see it or tease him mercilessly?”

His friends snickered.  Will turned on his father.

“Dad!”

His father reached out a hand and pulled him forward by the back of his neck.  Will didn’t resist.  He put his face to his father’s shoulder and hugged him.  Then he turned to his mother.  She smiled at him.  The tears fell from his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he managed to get out before he reached for her.  He let out a couple of sobs in his mother’s arms and she petted his head and rubbed gentle circles on his back.

“Shh, baby.  It’s okay.  Come on, now.  It’s your birthday.  Don’t cry.”

She kissed the top of his head and Will kept his face hidden by his mother’s shoulder as he used his hands to dry his eyes.  He straightened and sniffed as he looked at everyone again.

“Sorry,” he laughed.

Everyone laughed with him.

“No, consider this your present to us,” Julian said.  “Will Harder expressed an emotion.”

“Other than anger,” Scott said.

“Or irritation,” Chris said.

“Or smugness,” his father chimed in.

“Okay, okay!”  Will snapped, “I get it.  But it’s my birthday.  So, treat me nice, will ya?”

“Well, technically, it’s not your birthday,” Scott said.

“You want to start something after ignoring me all day yesterday?” Will asked with a warning tone.

Scott broke down.  “They made me do it!  I didn’t want to!  I felt awful!”

Will held back his laugh and bit his smile.  “Thank you, Scott.  I won’t hold you responsible.”  He turned his glare on Chris and Julian.  They looked away, trying to look innocent.  Finally Julian jabbed a finger at his parents.

“It was their idea!”

Everyone laughed again.  And then his father took charge.  He started ordering his friends around and they hopped to.  No one ever disobeyed his mother for any reason, but they were even less inclined to disobey his father when he was giving directions related to food.  They all started chattering and he heard Scott burst out, “Omigod, you guys, just _wait_ until I tell you what my father did last night.  You will _not_ believe it.  _I_ still don’t believe it.  And I was there!”

Will smiled.  He was happy.  Everyone he loved was here with him on his birthday.  Then a little sadness leaked in.  No, not everyone was here.  Would he ever be able to have everyone all together with him?  Will walked down the hallway to the front door.  He looked out one of the windows.  He scanned the far side of the street.  Ken’s car was already gone.  Well, of course.  He didn’t have any reason to stick around.

“Looking for something?”

Will spun around, his heart racing.  His father was standing at the foot of the stairs like he was getting ready to go up.  He turned back around when he noticed something was up with his son.  Will forced himself to calm down and sighed the unease out of his body.  He smiled at his father and shook his head.

“Nothing.  I was just trying to get over the fact that I just cried like a girl.”

“Hey now, like a baby.  I’ve seen girls cry and it’s usually not out of sadness but some evil scheme of manipulation.”

Will laughed.  “Great.”

His father took a step closer and ruffled his hair.  “So.  Eighteen.  Do you feel any different?”

Will shrugged.  “Not really.”

“Do you have any special plans?”

He shrugged again.  “Not really.”

“Well, settle down, wild child.  I’m not sure this party can handle that much excitement.”

Will smiled.  “Sorry.  Hey.  What did you do for your 18th birthday?”

His father gave him an amused smile.  “I got married.”

“Oh, yeah.  Right.  Well, I _definitely_ don’t have plans to do that.  Maybe I could get a tattoo like Julian.”

He laughed.  His father laughed with him, and then went deadpan.

“Do it and I end you.”

Will’s jaw dropped.  “What?  Never mind that you’ve never prohibited me from doing anything before in my _life_.  But I’m 18 now.  How are you going to stop me?”  Will wasn’t really balking at not being able to get a tattoo—he didn’t want one—but where was this coming from all of sudden?

“I can as long as I support you.  Including paying for your education through med school.”

“But!  You can’t—”

“No way.  Do it and I cut you off.”

“I cannot believe you’re being uptight about something like that!”

His father shrugged, looking unaffected by his son’s indignation.  “No tattoos.”

“Okay.  How about a piercing?”

“Nope.”

“What?!  What’s wrong with that?”

“I said no,” his father said blandly.

Will huffed and nearly stomped his foot.  “This is so backwards, you know?  Setting rules and limits _after_ I’m eighteen.”

“Well, you can’t do anything truly stupid or get into _serious_ trouble until you are eighteen.  _That’s_ when you need people telling you what to do.”

“Hmph.”

“Besides,” his father said with an irritating little smile, “don’t you have enough excitement in your life right now?”

Will narrowed an eye.  What did _that_ mean?  Oh, right.  He knew about the “older lover.”  He was eighteen now.  Was he supposed to bring it up again and this time tell his father _everything_ about it?  He was saved from having to acknowledge that he knew what his father was talking about when the doorbell rang.  He turned quickly away and opened the door.  The girls were on the doorstep with bags of party supplies in their hands.

“Happy Birthday, Will!” they chorused together.

Ah.  Nothing like the sound of a horde of girls ready and willing to make you happy.

“Hi, girls,” his father drawled, stepping up beside him.

They all went red in the face.

“Hi, Mr. Harder!” they tittered.

Will made a face.  Even Riley was all giggly.  And his father.  Feh.  Leaning against the door and smiling like the big bad wolf at his cute, fluffy little lambs.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he cut in, pushing his father toward the stairs.  “Didn’t you have something to get?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the man grumbled and headed upstairs.

“It’s _my_ birthday, you know,” Will groused as he let the girls inside.

“I know,” Anna said.  She hugged him around the neck and kissed his cheek.

“That’s more like it,” he said.

Laney hugged him too.  “I’ve been so excited since yesterday!”

“You knew about this too?!”

“Chyeah!”

“Hey, Liz.”

She managed a small smile.  “Hey, Will.”

Riley stepped in between them.  “Do we hug?” she asked.

“Of course not, Riley.”  He grabbed her around the waist and she yelped.  “We tongue.”

“What?!  No way!  Get off!”

“Aw come on!  I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw what you did to Chris!  Do it to me, Riley!”

“Aahh!”

His friends popped their heads out of the kitchen.

“Who’s getting done?” Scott asked.

Riley broke free of Will and he laughed as she ran away from him.  The girls followed her into the kitchen and he walked slowly after them.  His father passed him with his grilling apron in hand.  Good God.  He and Ken were scary alike.  Will paused at the entrance to the kitchen and watched his friends and family laugh and talk and try to get organized.  Anna and Liz were hanging a “Happy Birthday” sign over the sliding glass door to the back porch.

This was really a nice surprise.  He’d been totally fooled yesterday.  His eyebrow ticked in annoyance.  To make up for it, next year he was getting _two_ parties.

 

Scott

 

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

 

Scott snickered to himself as he watched Will’s face crumble when Julian cut him off from mentioning his birthday.  He had to turn into his locker to hide his expression.  Will was so cute when he looked crushed and devastated!  And with any of the other three of them, it would never have worked to try to pretend like they had forgotten their birthdays.  It only worked with Will because they had before.  Well, not truly.  They always knew it was coming up and would make plans and buy their presents.  But when it went from February 28th to March 1st, sometimes they just didn’t think about it.

But this year…they were merely faking it.  And it was so pitifully obvious that Will was buying it.  Scott glanced at Will again.  He was listening to Julian and Chris have a conversation about their government projects.  Usually when Will wasn’t getting his way, he would look irritated or completely placid, like nothing was bothering him.  Right now…he looked a little blue.  Scott felt his heartstrings get tugged on.  Stupid heartstrings.  He was the only teenaged male on the North American continent who had them.  And they were starting to twang away in sympathy for poor Will.  He really did seem sad.  It was one thing to surprise someone on their birthday, but he didn’t want his friend to feel bad all day.  That wasn’t very nice: to make someone feel forgotten on their birthday.  Maybe if he just kept quiet about the barbeque, it wouldn’t hurt to let him know that he remembered his birthday.

Scott shut his locker door and the other three turned toward him, ready to head to English class.  Scott took a step toward Will and opened his mouth.  Suddenly Chris and Julian snatched him up by the biceps and hauled him around the corner.  They were saying something about him having something on his shirt.  Or maybe on his ass.  They were babbling.  But they successfully dragged him away from Will and slammed him against some lockers.

“Do _not_ ruin this,” Julian warned while looming over him.

“I’m not!” Scott defended himself.  “I just feel bad for him.”

“Suck it up!” Chris barked.  Scott started in surprise at Chris’ authoritativeness.  “If he knows we remembered his birthday, but haven’t brought up any plans yet, he’ll know we’re planning something!”

“Not necessarily,” Scott protested meekly.

“No!” Julian shouted and pinched his arm.

“Ow!”

“You tell and you die!”

“Okay, okay!  Geez.”

Julian and Chris backed off a step, but kept their glares up.  Scott waved his hand in defeat.  They eyed him for a few more moments before heading off for English class.  Stupid jerks.  He straightened his blazer.  If they were so worried about tipping Will off, they should have thought twice about suddenly grabbing him and dragging him away from him.  Then again, that wasn’t the first time they’d done something like that.  And it obviously hadn’t triggered any suspicions in Will’s mind because he was even mopeier when they found him sitting by his lonesome in English class.  Fortunately Antoinette would be able to distract him enough that he wouldn’t keep shooting sympathetic looks in his direction.  And it wasn’t really _that_ bad, right?  After all, today wasn’t actually his birthday.  To be on the safe side though, he better avoid Will the rest of the day.  And he meant be safe from Julian and Chris, not safe from spilling the beans.  Man.  He could feel their eyes burning a hole into the back of his head.  He didn’t like having them sit behind him.  Couldn’t they be just a tad more trusting?

And because of their little mafia shakedown impersonation, they were barely on time to English.  English was the one class he made it to on time now because he got to talk with Antoinette before the bell rang.  After English he didn’t have any more classes with her for the rest of the day and only occasionally passed her in the hallway.  Those jerks had taken away his girlfriend time.  Well, that could help justify his need to avoid Will; he’d just intentionally seek out Antoinette after her classes.  But…what were her remaining classes?  Why didn’t he know her schedule?  Did that mean he didn’t care, or that he wasn’t creepy?

Scott was quite proud of himself by the end of the day.  He’d completely avoided seeing Will for more than twenty total seconds (excluding class time) and had remembered that Antoinette’s second to last class was French and therefore been able to catch up with her beforehand and walk her to class.  Now that school was over, he definitely knew where she would be going.  He waited for her beside her locker and considered whether he should buy the supplies for the barbeque today or tomorrow.  He wasn’t in charge of anything perishable, so maybe he should just go today.

“Hey, sweetie.”

Scott looked to his left in time to see Antoinette’s locker door swing open.  It bumped his nose.

“Ouch.”

Antoinette pulled the door partially shut.

“Oh, gosh!  I’m sorry, did I hit you?”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his nose.

“Well, why were you standing so close to it?”

She returned to digging in her locker and Scott stepped behind her, snaking his arms around her waist.

“Because,” he murmured into her hair.

He used a hand to pull her hair over one shoulder and kissed her neck.  He tightened his hold around her waist, pulling her closer.  He kissed her neck again and she giggled softly, not stopping with her book exchanging.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she said, “but why are you suddenly so super affectionate?  In public.”

“Withdrawal,” he stated, nuzzling behind her ear and worming a hand under her blazer.

She laughed and stilled his hand as she turned in his embrace to face him.  “What do you mean?”

He undid the two buttons of her blazer and slid both his arms around her again, this time having only her thin dress shirt between him and the warmth of her body.

“I only see you at school now, and we only have two classes together.  And you have your car back, so we can’t go home together.”

“We could,” Antoinette said with a touch of offense.  “I’m not _that_ bad of a driver.”

He kissed her. “You are, my love.”  He kissed her again.  “I miss you.  I never see you.”

“Well, you’re not seeing me now either,” she teased.

“True,” he agreed, his eyes still closed as he kissed her again, deeper this time.

She let out a small noise of happiness as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.  He curled his fingers into her shirt and commanded himself not to un-tuck it from her skirt.  She moved her hands to his back and then pressed her fingers against the line of his spine and massaged her way down.  He imitated the motion on her.  Then she turned her fingers down and slid them in between the part at the back of his blazer so that she could slide the tips just underneath his belt.  He did the same at the top of her skirt.  Then she pulled her fingers to his sides and lightly scratched him through his shirt with her nails.  It didn’t affect him at all.  But he knew what it would do to her.  He again copied her and she jerked and pushed away from him, laughing.  He didn’t let her go though and continue to tickle her.

“No, no!  Stop!  Come on!  I was just—!  Ah!  Playing!  Ha!  Scott, stop, stop!”

Even while she struggled and protested, he kissed her neck and kept their bodies as close together as possible.

“Kyah!  Seriously!  Scott!”

“Good God!” someone complained loudly.  “Some of us would like to be able to walk down the hallways without seeing a scene from last night’s Animal Planet show: Horny Monkeys Gone Wild.”

Scott pulled away from Antoinette and internalized his sigh as he turned a reproving look on Anna.  It didn’t bother her.  Because she wasn’t even looking at him.  She was just glaring at Antoinette.  His girlfriend returned the glare and took a step forward, almost pulling off a bob of her head as good as Anna could when she was channeling her black side.

“If you don’t want to see it, why don’t you try closing your eyes and keep walking?”

“And why don’t you try keeping your legs—”

“Whoa, hey!” Scott jumped in.  He wasn’t interested in distracting them at his own risk again, but he would definitely get drawn into the battle if his best friend called his girlfriend a whore one more time.  “As Chris would say, simmer down.  I’m sure Anna had a reason for addressing us, right, Anna?”

He warned her with his eyes that she had better have a reason.  She gave him a look to show she wasn’t afraid of his girlfriend.

“Well, getting you two to stop humping in school is plenty reason enough.  But I came to tell you that I heard from Riley’s field hockey teammate’s boyfriend that today is re-opening day at Artie’s.”

“Ah!”  Scott jumped toward Anna.  “That’s today?!”

“Yep!”

“Yes!  We _have_ to go.  Like now.”

“Um…” Antoinette reminded him she was there.  “What’s Artie’s?”

“Oh, it’s this totally awesome dive downtown.  It shuts down from mid-August until mid-February or so.”

“No one knows why,” Anna chimed in.  “Some think it’s drug running.  We think its cock fighting season.”

“Whatever the reason, we’re like, _deprived_.  For over six months.”

“Deprived of what?” Antoinette asked with a raised eyebrow for them both.

“The best cheese-chili-loaded fries on the planet,” Scott drooled.

Antoinette wrinkled her nose.  “Ew.”

“They’re actually quite good,” Anna said.

“I’m sure.”

“So,” Scott said, getting even more excited, “we always go the day they re-open.  And that’s today!”

“Everyone goes?” Antoinette asked, feigning nonchalance as she put her math textbook in her book bag and shut her locker.

“No.  Just Anna and me.”

“No one else likes it,” Anna laughed.

Scott looked at her and laughed too.  Then he turned back to Antoinette.  She didn’t _look_ upset.

Okay.  So, he knew he couldn’t bring something like this up with his girlfriend and then not ask her to go.  But, this was a special tradition he had with Anna.  And Anna might de-ball him if he invited her arch-nemesis along.  However, he knew Antoinette wouldn’t be able to go even if he invited her because she was still grounded.  So, that would save him from having his girlfriend upset with him.  Then he could tell Anna later that he knew Antoinette was grounded and therefore couldn’t come when he invited her.  That should at least mitigate some of his best friend’s rage.  His ass should be covered from all angles.  Here goes everything.

Scott took a discreet step back from both girls.  “You should come with us, Antoinette.”  He could feel Anna’s razor sharp gaze slice his way.

“Well,” Antoinette said, shouldering her bag, “while I would love to tag along and have the dubious pleasure of feeling my arteries slam shut, I’m still grounded.  So I have to go straight home.”

“Oh, right,” Scott said, not having to fake his disappointment.  Even though he already knew it, it still sucked to hear that she was off-limits.  “Do you have any idea for how much longer?”

“Well.  My mom said until I graduate.  And my dad qualified that with ‘from college.’  So…”

“Heh,” Scott let out a soft laugh, but he felt bad.  It was technically his fault she was in trouble.  “I’m sorry, honey.”

“You should be,” she grumbled.

He smiled and pulled her close.  “I’m very, _very_ sorry.”

“Oh, yeah?  How sorry?”

He brought their smiles together and they giggled as they half-kissed, half-laughed.

“Hey!”

Scott grunted as something large and hard hit him square in the back.  His teeth clacked against Antoinette’s.  He pulled back and whipped his head around to give Anna a nasty look.  Antoinette rubbed her teeth.

“Come on, Scott,” Anna said, re-shouldering her two ton backpack.  “Let’s get going.  We don’t want her to get in trouble for getting home late, now do we?”

Scott sighed.  “No, I guess not.”

He gave Antoinette’s hand a squeeze.  “Bye, Ann.”

“Bye, Scah.”

Scott paused mid-stride, but kept walking rather than make an issue of it.  Every time he called her “Ann” now, she would call him “Scah” and not put the “t” sound on the end of his name.  If only Anna and Antoinette realized how much they were _alike_.

He and Anna made it outside the building before she turned and wailed on his shoulder.

“Ow!  Damn it, woman!  I use this arm!”

“How _dare_ you invite _her_ to our sacred cheese-chili-loaded fries re-opening day?!”

Scott rubbed his arm and glared at his friend.  “I _knew_ she was still grounded and wouldn’t be able to come!”

“And if she hadn’t been grounded, would you have still asked her?”

“That is a hypothetical situation that doesn’t exist and I will not answer it.  Jesus, Annabelle.  That seriously hurt.”

“So, sorry, Scott-belle.  But I get you to myself precious little as it is.  I was just upset that you might bring her along on something not even the boys would get an invite too.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“I know.”  She nudged his sore shoulder.  “You sly dog.  Playing us both like that.”

“I know, right?” Scott grinned.  “I’m so slick.  Will has no clue about the barbeque tomorrow.  You’re still coming, right?”

“Of course!  The four of us will come over together around 4:00.  There’s no way I would miss this.  I want Mr. Harder’s ribs.”

“Ewww!  He’s like, twenty years older than us!”

“You turd!” she laughed, hitting his arm again.  In the exact same damn spot.  “You know what I mean.”

Scott laughed to cover his grimace.  Geezus.  What happened to nice, sweet, meek girls?  Obviously those weren’t the ones that were attracted to him.

“And don’t act grossed out,” she chided him.  “If you were gay you would totally want him too.”

“Are you kidding?  I want him even when I’m not gay.”

“Ha!  Wait a minute.  So, are you saying there are times when you _are_ gay?”

“No!”

Anna cackled and Scott yelled at her to shut-up.  A pretty typical Tuesday afternoon for them.  The line at Artie’s was out the door, but since the weather had taken a turn toward spring it wasn’t so bad.  They talked with each other.  They talked with the businessman in front of them.  They talked with the construction worker behind them.  Artie should be tapped for negotiating peace agreements: he could bring anyone together.  Granted, afterward, most people were ready to just sit down and die of heartburn, but Anna and Scott were still young.  The price they paid for enjoying their awesomely delicious cheese-chili-loaded fries was a little gas.  It was also the price the people who sat near them on the bus paid.

Scott took out another piece of the cinnamon gum they’d bought after leaving Artie’s and refreshed the six pieces already in his mouth.  He could still taste the onions just a little bit.  Anna was on her fifth piece.  They’d nearly depleted the pack already.  It was actually a very good thing his girlfriend—someone he wanted to kiss him again, ever in his life—hadn’t been able to come along.

“Ahhh,” Anna sighed.

Scott glanced over at her.  She looked very relaxed.

“Gross,” he said.

She gave him a half-hearted slap on the thigh.  “That wasn’t a fart.  That was happiness.”

Scott chuckled.  “Yeah.  It’s been so much fun lately.  Like old times.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, staring absently at the back of the seat in front of her.  Then she turned to look at him.  Her hazel eyes were focusing intently on him.  He didn’t really mind it, but he was a little worried what she was going to say next.  “But…it’s been that way because Antoinette has been grounded.  Right?  It’ll change back when you can see her again.”

Scott looked at his lap and fidgeted.  What was he supposed to say to that?  The hard truth was that she was absolutely right.  He’d been spending more time with her simply because Antoinette was unavailable.  And as soon as she was again, he would spend less time with Anna.  He supposed he should be grateful Anna wasn’t offended.  But it wasn’t that he chose Antoinette over Anna.  Not exactly.  He’d be more than happy to be with both of them.  If they could ever just be in the same room at the same time without getting into a fight.  An actual physical fight.  He turned back to Anna.  She was still looking at him, her brownish hair puffing out around her head like a wiry cloud.

“Maybe you should hang out with us,” Scott suggested…already knowing her thoughts on that proposal.

“No way,” she said.  “I’m not gonna be a third wheel.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

“Yes, I would.  And seriously, watching you two go at it like adolescent monkeys totally grosses me out.”

“Sorry,” he muttered.

She faced the seat in front of her again.  “Well.  It half grosses me out.  I like to watch you kiss her.  You look so cute and… _sweet_ when you’re kissing.  It’s kind of hot.  I like to imagine you’re doing it to me.”

Scott was aware that if his eyes opened any wider his eyeballs would pop out onto the floor.  Should he respond to that?

“Anyway,” she said, shaking off her daydream.  She faced him.  “You should enjoy it while you can.”

“Being in your imagination?”

Anna smiled at him like he was a little slow.  “Enjoy _her_ while you still can.  I’m sure she’ll do something stupid to lose you.  You’ll get over her.  I can wait until then.”

“Uh…”

Should he protest?  Declare his undying love for Antoinette?  Laugh off Anna’s suggestion?  Stare blankly at her?  That one sounded good.

“Um.”

“Oh, this is my stop,” Anna said, standing up and stepping over him to the aisle.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Scott nodded dumbly.  “’Kay.  Bye.”

He watched Anna half-skip down the aisle and debus in a couple of jumps.  Scott rubbed his forehead.

“Oh, dear,” he said softly.

He thought Anna had given up on him.  Maybe she was just viewing it as a project.  Maybe she just needed a distraction; someone else to be interested in.  Should he try to find someone to set her up with?  Did he know anyone he trusted enough to date his beloved best friend?  No.  And that was the problem right there.  Scott sighed.  He didn’t want Anna crushing on him forever.  That wasn’t fair to _her_.

The walk from the bus stop to his house wasn’t as pleasant as standing in line at Artie’s had been.  The sun had gone down and the temperature with it.  So, he forced himself into a marginally faster gait and got home by five o’clock.  Though was his magic number supposed to be four o’clock today?  The twins were picked up from school by a nearby neighbor who had two boys around their age who also went to Calverton.  The four of them would play together until either he or Joanna picked them up.  But was today the day the Gardner boys had a dentist appointment and had to be picked up early?  He didn’t think so.  He wouldn’t forget something like that involving the twins.  But he was always paranoid now.  It made him wonder how his mother had managed to keep up with the different and constantly changing schedules of four children.

The first thing he heard when he opened the front door to his house was the desperate clicking of tiny little nails trying to gain purchase on the slippery tile floor of the kitchen.  Then he heard the twins shouting out an announcement of his arrival.  Well, even if he had forgotten something important, at least they were safe.  Coco finally managed to make her appearance as she struggled out of the kitchen and had marginally better success at running across the wood floor of the foyer.  Scott dropped to one knee to greet the super-excited puppy and she whined and jumped and licked and wagged her tail in frantic welcoming.  Coco was a little co-dependent, but Scott didn’t mind.  He understood.  He let the puppy stand on one of his legs and lick his face.  She paused to sniff his mouth, but then kept licking.  He probably should never let Antoinette see him with his puppy either if he ever wanted her to kiss him again.  Coco gave more tongue action than his girlfriend did.  He let her have her way for a moment and then stood up, wiping his lips.  He bent over slightly so that the puppy could still lick at his fingers.  She was a little bigger than she had been at Christmas, but still a long way away from her full Chocolate Lab size.

The twins hadn’t yet shown themselves, which was strange because from the sound of their voices they had only been in the kitchen.  And they always came to greet him if they were nearby.  And they always chased Coco wherever she went.  Behind him the front door opened and Joanna stepped inside.  Coco bounced over to say hi.  Scott gaped at her.

“Where the hell were you?”

She paused in taking her jacket off and stared at him in surprised offense.  “I was at band practice.  It’s _every_ Tuesday and Thursday.”

Oh, right.  How could he possibly forget that?  Joanna now played the clarinet in her new high school’s band.  She had a lot of time to make up for since most kids in public schools started in sixth grade.  As a result, she practiced all the time at home.  They made her go to the basement.  But, if she was at band practice…

“Then how the hell did the twins get here and who was watching them?”

“Why are you late?” she threw back at him and bent over to pet the spastic ball of fur at her feet.  “Mrs. Gardner usually gets here before five o’clock and she always acts all prissy like she doesn’t want to leave them here with just _me_.  Like, I’m not 15 and old enough to be a babysitter for strangers’ kids.”

Joanna hung her coat up on the coat rack and Coco returned to prancing at Scott’s feet.  He was momentarily distracted from worrying about the twins as he recalled today’s parting moments with Anna.  He had thought Anna had been over him, but here it was that she’d still been crushing on him and waiting for him to dump Antoinette.  Joanna had seemed like she was over her…“thing” as well, but what if he was wrong?  What if she was just hiding it?

Joanna only got one step away from the door before she realized she was being stared at.  “What?  _What_?  It’s not like I did anything wrong.  You said you’d be here by five on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“I know, I’m sorry.  I’m not staring.”

“I never said you were.”

“Oh.”

Joanna looked at him like he was weird, and a little annoying.  It actually made him feel good.  It was a normal brother-sister look.

“So, are you sure the twins are even here?” she asked.

“Yeah, I heard them.”  Scott turned toward the interior of the house.  “Ferris?” he called out.  He took a step forward and stumbled against the puppy.  He bent down and picked her up.  “Drake?  Are you guys here?”

“Here we arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!” they yelled and ran out of the kitchen.  They were wearing matching khaki cargo pants and long sleeved T-shirts, except Ferris was in red and Drake was in yellow.  Their sleeves were pushed up like they were working on something.

“Sorry we couldn’t come!” Ferris said.

“We were doing _our_ project.”  Drake said it like it was something special and top secret only they could do and know about.

“You’re not supposed to do ‘projects’ when you’re alone.  You know that.  Who—”

“Dad’s here!” Ferris shouted.

“And he brought a friend.”

“Oh.”

Scott and Joanna exchanged looks.  They knew what that meant.  A lady friend.  And probably not Kristen.  The twins knew her and would use her name.  Plus, she hadn’t been over since Christmas.  Apparently his father had some standards after all and had broken off the “relationship” because of her horrible behavior at his office’s party.  Either that or the threat from his mother that she might bring up an investigation into her interactions with the children.  Mainly was she boinking Scott as well.  Thankfully he’d managed to convince his mother—eventually—that there was nothing even remotely like that between them.

Scott put the squirming puppy back on the floor and gave Joanna a commiserating look of displeased resignation.  She returned it.

“Here we go,” he said.  “I think it’ll be a redhead this time.”

“I think it’ll be like a younger looking version of Mom.”

“Ooo.  Good one.”

They followed the scampering twins and puppy into the kitchen.  Their patriarch was setting the kitchen table—and putting the forks on the wrong side of the plates.  He looked up when he saw them come in.  Involuntarily, the man’s eyes flicked toward the stranger by the stove, but he quickly looked back at his children and smiled.  Scott looked at the woman.  She was not…what he was expecting.

She was around his father’s age.  Actually, probably a little older.  She wore her greying brown hair very short and was dressed conservatively in grey, striped dress pants and a muted lavender dress shirt.  When she saw them come in, she gave a couple more quick pokes with a fork to something in a pot and then turned around to face them.  She smiled, and it revealed lines around her mouth and eyes.  Scott didn’t think they were from excessive smiling and laughing though.  Her eyes had a weary look about them, even though the rest of her seemed pleasant enough.  Maybe she was a lot older than his dad.  Or did his father just look good for his age?

The man in question walked over to the woman and took in a discreet deep breath.  Scott saw it.  His father was nervous about something.  But what?  There was no doubt in Scott’s mind that his father was _not_ sleeping with this woman.

“Hey guys.  How was school?”

They stared blankly at him.  His father nodded.

“Right.  This is Linda.  Linda, these are my oldest two.  Joanna and Scott.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Linda said.

They were still staring.  Scott shook himself.

“Hello.”

He nudged Joanna.

“Hi,” she said.

“We already met her,” Drake informed them.  “Daddy picked us up from school and she talked to us on the way home.  She came for dinner.”

“She gave us a project,” Ferris added.

“Yeah.  We’re mixing up the cornbread mix.”

“Are you watching them?” Scott muttered softly.

His father tried to hide his laugh.  “Don’t worry.  It’ll be safe to eat.”

“Yeah, it was a total surprise,” Drake said.  “Daddy came to watch basketball practice and then he said Ms. Linda was going to come over for dinner.”

“Isn’t it great that he’s home early?” Ferris asked.

“Yeah, great,” Scott said, feeling bad for not actually thinking it was great but wondering what devious purpose had led him to come home early.  With an age appropriate woman.  Though it was nice to see the twins so excited and happy.  It was as if the six months at their grandmother’s had never happened.  When Linda turned back to poke at the pot again, it made something in his brain click.  He looked at his father.

“Wait.  You invited her over for dinner—and then made her cook?”

“Wha—?  No.  She volunteered.”

Linda looked amused, but didn’t join in the conversation.  Scott shook his head.  Then he looked around the kitchen.  The twins were getting back on their chair to stir the corn muffin mix, Linda was checking on something in the oven, and his father was standing awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, looking a tish guilty.  He and Joanna exchanged looks again.

“Well, I’m gonna go put my stuff upstairs,” Scott said.  “Is there anything I can do to help out?”

Linda smiled at him.  “That’s okay.  It’s almost ready.  We’ll sit down in about five minutes or so.”

Scott kind of smiled.  “So early?” he asked, shifting his feet and feeling the load of dairy and carbohydrates slosh in his belly.  His father crossed the room and put an arm around his shoulders as he led him out of the room.

“You will be eating,” his father warned quietly.

“Well, I’m not trying to be rude.  It was opening day at Artie’s and…”

“Great.  Do we need to get out one of the mini fans to sit beside you and blow the toxic fumes out of the kitchen?”

“Dad!  Shut-up!”

His father laughed and started to turn back toward the kitchen.  Scott stopped him by gently grabbing onto his tie.

“What is going on?” Scott asked.

“We’ll talk at dinner,” his father said, and pulled away from him.

Scott heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes.  He had no idea what was going on, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.  He wondered who Linda was.  Not a girlfriend, that was for damn sure.  Maybe a counselor?  Did he think his children were messed up?  They kind of were.  Well, the twins were fine at least.  Maybe she was a lawyer?  Was he making a will?  Or was she changing the terms of their visitations rights with their mother?  But why would she be here?  Oh, no.  She was a nanny.  His father was so stupid.  They didn’t need a nanny.  Even when he left for college in August, Joanna would be in the tenth grade then.  Perfectly old enough to watch herself and the twins.  Or maybe she was his personal assistant, and he commissioned her to make dinner.  Knowing his father, that wasn’t entirely out of the realm of reality.

By the time Scott got back to the kitchen, he was partially convinced “Linda” was a robot his father had had made to be their nanny.  And he was okay with a nanny as long as it was a robot.  By why wasn’t she a sexy robot?  Surely if his father had a girl robot made, it would be a sexy girl robot.  Or maybe that would be too tempting.  Joanna intercepted him before he got to the table.

“Psst,” she whispered.  “Relax.  I asked.  She works with him.”

“Ah.”  Scott was disappointed.  He didn’t think K&K Consulting did anything with robotics.  But, even if she was a normal person who worked with his father…why was she here?  As far as he could remember his father had never had work colleagues over for dinner.  His mother used to throw and hostess parties all the time, but the guests were always her friends or his parents’ joint couple friends.  Well, he supposed he was just going to have to wait for the other shoe to drop.

The six of them sat down to a dinner of chicken casserole and steamed broccoli.  The muffins were still baking.  It was a little awkward at first because they hadn’t had to use their table manners in so long.  But once they started eating, the tension passed.  Scott was certain they were all happy to be eating real food again.  He did the best he could, but his cooking skills maxed out at ordering take out and putting frozen entrees in the microwave.  That was probably why he was able to eat on top of Artie’s fries.  It tasted good.  It tasted fresh and healthy.  And that made it awesomely great.  Whatever it was his father had up his sleeve, this meal would more than make up for it.  At least, there were only a couple of things that could ruin it and those weren’t likely to happen.

The conversation consisted mostly of the twins talking about basketball and rocks.  Well, Drake talked about basketball and Ferris talked about rocks.  Joanna brought up how she was improving at the clarinet, though Scott hadn’t heard it yet based on all the squeaking that came out of the basement.  He didn’t volunteer any information about himself and when Linda talked, it was only to bring up something that her own children did that was vaguely related to what Joanna and the twins were talking about.  His father hadn’t spoken a word.  They finished eating and Linda got up to get the corn muffins out of the oven.  She was serving them all one when his father finally cleared his throat.  He and Linda exchanged looks.  She kind of nodded.  Scott felt suspicious.  Here it came.  Whatever it was.  Linda returned to her seat.  Scott broke open his corn muffin and watched the steam rise out of the two halves.  The twins were putting about half a stick of butter on their muffins.

“Well,” his father started, “I guess you guys are wondering why Linda is visiting tonight.”

Scott took a bite of his muffin.

“It’s because I wanted you all to meet her.  Because.  We’re getting married.”

Scott took in a breath, and the corn muffin lodged in his trachea.  He put his hands on the table and tried to gasp in a breath, nothing happened.  He couldn’t breathe.  He coughed to try to dislodge the dry material blocking his airway.  His father jumped out of his seat and hit him hard on the back.  The muffin came out.  Scott sucked in air and coughed some more.  His father continued to pat his back.  Scott waved him off.

“It’s out,” he said.  He picked up his napkin and spit the muffin out into it.  Hopefully Linda wouldn’t take that as offense at how it tasted.  Oh, God.  Linda.  He looked up at the woman, and then at his father, where he was returning to his seat.  Joanna looked like she had just choked on something too.  The twins didn’t look upset, but they were aware that something big was happening.  Surely they understood the concept of marriage.  Marriage.  Good grief!

“Scott?” his father asked.  “Are you okay?”

“Concerning what?” he burst out.  “The choking?  I’m fine!  About anything else?  No!  What did you just say?”  He waited for his father or even Linda to repeat the word that had come out of his father’s mouth.  They both remained quiet.  Scott couldn’t do that.  “ _Married_?!”

“Yes,” his father started, “we—”

“How long have you two even known each other?  Or are you still on your acid trip?”

Joanna coughed over a laugh and his father held back a huff of annoyance as he gave him a look.

“I’ve known Linda for about 15 years now.”

Scott blanched.  “You—you mean you’ve been having an affair with her too for this long?”

Linda cleared her throat and dropped her eyes.  She looked a little embarrassed.  His father looked like he wished Scott hadn’t said that, but he didn’t look particularly embarrassed.

“No.  I have not had that kind of relationship with her.  She’s one of the paralegals in our legal department.  I work with her supervisor a lot, which is to say we mostly talk to each other’s assistants.  So, I’ve worked with Linda quite a bit over the last fifteen years or so.  And that’s all.”

Scott strummed his fingers on the table and glanced at his siblings.  They all seemed perfectly content to let him handle this.  He was pretty certain the twins knew what was going on.  At least he wouldn’t have to explain it to them later.  Scott sat back in his chair and tried not to glare at his father.  He tried to remind himself that his father loved him and might actually have some twisted, deluded logic behind all this.

“So, what is this?” Scott asked.  He waved a hand between them.

Linda looked like she might speak, but then just laced her fingers together and sat them on the table.  His father’s fingers extended toward the fork beside his plate, but he refrained from fidgeting with it.

“It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Oh, good God,” Scott groaned and covered his eyes with a hand.

“What does that mean?” Joanna asked.

“Well.”  Scott could hear his father start to play with the fork now.  He was stalling.  What was he about to say now?  “Well.  You guys need a mother.”

Scott dropped his hand just in time to see Joanna thump both of her hands on the table.  The plates and glasses shook.

“We _have_ a mother!” she shouted.

“I know,” his father said calmly, putting out a soothing hand.  “I know.  What I meant is that you need one at home.”

Joanna sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.  “We _had_ one at home,” she said, a little calmer.

“But you don’t now,” their father said forcefully.

The four of them didn’t argue that point.  Drake kept looking back and forth between Scott and Joanna, and Ferris picked at his corn muffin.  Scott didn’t know what to do or say.  Well, he did have some questions, but it might be best if he waited until he and his father were alone.  His father finally filled the silence.

“Linda has also had some hard times.  She was widowed about six months ago.  She has three children of her own.  It’s been really hard trying to take care of everything by herself.  She—”

“Has it been hard for you?” Joanna interrupted, her voice sounding a little hollow.

“No.  No, of course not,” his father replied, leaning on the table and reaching out for Joanna’s hand.  She hesitated, but then gave it to him.  He gave it a reassuring squeeze.  “This is not about me at all.  I have loved having you all here with me.  I love taking care of you.  But…it’s been hard…for _you_.  Right?”

No one replied.  Then Joanna gave a little nod of her head.

“I’m doing this for you,” he said.

“Oh—” Scott cut off his scoff and slouched down in his chair, rolling his eyes.  He _knew_ his father was doing this colossally stupid thing for stupid reasons.  His father pulled back from Joanna a little to look at him.  Scott could feel his jaw jutting out in annoyed anger.  He didn’t care that his eyes had hardened quite a bit as he looked at his father.

“Your intentions may be good, Dad, but did you _really_ think this through?”

“Yes,” his father replied without hesitation.

 _Liar_.  Scott swallowed.  He hated that that had been his first thought.  He stood up.

“Can we talk for a minute?  Alone.”

Linda stood up.  “Well.  Obviously you and your family have a lot to discuss.  Perhaps we can all talk together again when you’ve had some time to digest this information.”

Scott’s stomach turned at the word “digest.”  It reminded him that he still had remnants of Artie’s in there.  He really shouldn’t have eaten dinner on top of it.

His father was standing up to escort Linda to the front door.  Scott started to follow them.  Joanna and the twins got up.  Scott turned back to them.

“You guys just stay here for a while and finish your dinner.”

“But we’re finished,” Joanna said, “and we want—”

“Then do the dishes,” Scott snapped and walked out of the kitchen.  He heard the twins gasp in outrage.  They hated doing dishes.  Well, too bad.  Sometimes people had to do shit they didn’t want to.  Coco, who had been lying in between his and his father’s chairs, followed him into the foyer.  His father was helping Linda into her coat—and they were laughing softly.

“Well,” Linda said.  “That went better than it did at my house.”

His father laughed again.

Scott went a little cold.  So, they’d already told her family.  His father had gone over to her house and sat down to dinner with them and told some stranger’s kids that he was marrying their mother before he bothered to tell his own children.  And heck, if he’d known he could have behaved worse than he already had, he sure as hell would have done it.

“Goodbye, Linda.  You know your way out?”

“I do.  Thank you, David.  Really.  I know this will work.”

His father nodded and closed the door behind her.  He turned around and saw Scott staring at him.  Scott pointed toward the living room and then walked over without checking to see if his father was following him.  He started pacing near the coffee table and on his second turn saw his father take a seat on the couch.  He sunk into it and rested an arm on the back so that he could hold up his head.  He rubbed his eyes for a second.  He looked really tired.  It made Scott feel sorry for him.  And that made him a little angrier.

“What the fuck, Dad?!”

“Hey,” his father said sharply and looked directly at him.  “Watch yourself.  I am still your father.”

Scott swallowed and took in a deep breath.  He stopped pacing.  He didn’t apologize, but he forced himself to calm down.  He walked around the coffee table and sat on it in front of his father.  He helped Coco up onto the couch so that she could flop in his father’s lap.

“Dad.”  Scott stopped and tried to organize his thoughts.  “I know that there are some things about this that make sense.  In _your_ head.  But if you would just stop and think about—”

“Scott, I’m not doing this on a whim.  I was thinking about what I was going to do for you guys before I even got the others back.  And I thought that I would be able to be everything and be everywhere and do everything.  But these last two months have shown that, obviously, I can’t.  I’m letting you guys down.”

“You’re not—”

“I am.  I am at least that much self aware that I’m barely adequate as a father and you guys need more than that.”  His father rubbed his forehead.  “I don’t know what to do with Joanna.  I’m too afraid to do anything at all.  I could make things worse.  At her age, she really needs someone, you know?  And Linda has two daughters about her age.  It will be good for her to have a mother figure and sisters around to help out.  And I work so much the twins are practically living at the Gardner’s.”  He paused and rubbed Coco’s belly.  “It’s not just me.  Linda is working really hard and is never home.  She was only a part time employee.  But when her husband got sick, she started to work full time to help cover the cost of their bills.  And after he died, she had to continue working just to make ends meet.  And that was after selling her house and moving her family into a small apartment.  My salary is more than enough to support all of us so that she can start working part time again.  Then she can be at home with the kids.  Make real suppers instead of ordering take out.  She can pick the twins up after school and Joanna after band practice.  She can be around when you guys have stuff going on, so that it feels like you actually have a parent at all times.  You know, the normal things you have in a two parent household.”

Scott let out a breath.  His father wasn’t looking at him, which gave him the courage to mutter, “Joanna was right.  We _had_ a two parent household.”

“Hey,” his father said, forcing Scott to look up at him.  “I’m not the one who asked for a divorce.  _I_ didn’t want to get divorced.”

“No, you just wanted to screw around on your wife.”

Anger momentarily flashed over his father’s features, and then the man sighed and slumped further into the couch.  “None of this would have ever happened if I’d not stopped trying to hide it.”

“It never would have happened if you hadn’t had the affair in the first place!”

His father laughed bitterly.  “If I’d never had the affair I probably would have divorced your mother a long time ago.”

“Shit, Dad.”  Scott ran a hand over his brow and then leaned his elbow into his thigh so he could rest his head.

“I’m sorry, Scott.  I really am.  I know you don’t need this and I didn’t want to do this to you.  I wanted to wait until after you’d left for college, but Linda pointed out it might make the transition for the others easier if you were still around when it happened.”

Scott processed that for a second, and then he raised his head.  “So, what?  You were going to let me go to college and not tell me?  I would just find out when I came home for Thanksgiving and there were four new people at the dinner table?”

“No, I would have told you, of course.  I just didn’t want you to have to have the stress of living with them.”

Scott hoped he wasn’t making a face, but his dad was being weird about him again.  He really shouldn’t give him such preferential treatment.  He shouldn’t worry about him first and foremost and then secondarily his other children.

“See, I have a whole plan,” his father said softly.  “I’m going to finish off the basement and make a bedroom out of it and put in a bathroom.  That way you can have your own living area when you come home for breaks.  And that would free up your room for some rearranging up there.  Now I am glad we opted for the extra bedroom.  Though one bathroom may be a problem.  Anyway.  But, I really think it will be better for the twins if you’re here when it all happens.  We’ll have to do some interesting arrangements before the basement’s finished.”

His father had started musing and planning.  Did he think the discussion was over?  That it had been decided?  Well, it’s not like Scott really had a say in the matter.  Or did he?  Would his father listen to his beloved, favorite firstborn son?

“You’re really going to do this,” Scott said.

He looked at his father.  The man didn’t waver or flinch under his gaze.

“The wedding will be in about a month.  Nothing big.  Just a justice of the peace deal.  I expect Linda and her children to move in around the end of March.”

Scott’s arm and jaw dropped.  He had no idea what was holding his head up.  How long had he and Linda been planning this?

“Their apartment isn’t that far away from here.  Her kids will finish out the year in their own school, and then next year either go to Joanna’s public school or Calverton.”

“You’re going to pay for three more tuitions?” Scott asked incredulously.  He knew his father made a lot of money, but Calverton wasn’t cheap.

“Well, you won’t be there next year.  And neither will Joanna.  So, even if all three go it’ll only be a difference of one more tuition.”

“Except, are you forgetting I’ll be in college?”

“Scott.  The one good thing my parents ever did for you four was to set up a trust fund for college.  There’s enough money for all four of you to go to private schools or out of state schools for four years.  And still have some left over for graduate school.”

“Really?”  Scott hadn’t known about this.  And he certainly thought his grandparents on his father’s side had done more than just that for them.  Maybe his father was just still bitter about being forced into marrying his mother.  Which was ridiculous.  He couldn’t imagine his father being forced into doing anything.

“Dad…why did you marry Mom?”  His father seemed a tad surprised by the sudden change in topic.  “You say it was because you were forced into it, but I’ve seen you with Granddad and Grandma.  You don’t listen to them at all.  And they are so not that bad.  They’ve done a lot for us.”

His father delayed in answering the question by turning the puppy around in his lap so that he could play with her feet.  She looked catatonic and in pure bliss as she lolled on her back in her daddy’s lap.

“Look.  I know they’ve been very good to the four of you.  They’ve treated you as well as all their other grandchildren.  But, I never forgave them for being so unsupportive of the situation I was in with your mother.  I was twenty-one years old.  I wasn’t really in love with her.  They threatened to disinherit me if I didn’t marry her.”

Scott shook his head in disbelief.  “No way.  Why would they do that?  They care about you.  They wouldn’t want you to be miserable.”

His father rubbed his eyes again and smiled in bitter amusement.  “She was pregnant.”

“What?”

“Your mother.”  He looked at Scott.  “She was pregnant.  And my parents felt that meant I had to marry her.”

Scott tried to imagine that situation.  His father—just out of college and being forced to marry someone because he got her pregnant.  Now it was all starting to make a lot more sense.  Except…

“I wasn’t born until you guys had been married for four years.”

“Yeah.  Funny story, huh?  She miscarried.”

Scott swallowed.  “It’s not that funny.”

“No, I suppose not.  Not if it’s true.  I never really believed she was pregnant.  She convinced my parents we needed to rush the marriage along as fast as they could.  She said she didn’t want to look pregnant in her wedding gown.  And then, a month later, there’s a miscarriage.  I almost had the marriage annulled….now, I can’t remember why I didn’t.”

“So, you spent the next twenty-one years making her pay for it.  Because you think she made up a pregnancy.”

“Scott, I wasn’t a good man then either.  It was her decision to marry me.  She should have known what she was getting in to.”

“What the hell kind of excuse is that?”

The man shrugged.  Scott put his arms on his thighs and slouched over.  This sucked.  It was so pathetic.  And yet…he couldn’t be angry at his father.  He didn’t choose this life after all.  Maybe it was his fault for not being in control of his own life, but he had tried to keep up a pretty good charade for twenty years.  And would he be any different?  If he got some girl pregnant—not Antoinette of course because he’d happily marry her—but someone else.  If it was just some thing, some careless mistake—would he, _could_ he marry someone he didn’t love for the sake of a baby?  Marry that someone while Antoinette was still alive in the world?  God, why was sex so destructive?

Scott was pulled from his thoughts by Coco’s struggles to get to her feet.  She got into a play bow stance and waited for his father to wave the squeaky toy at her that he’d found underneath one of the cushions.

“So.  What about Kristen?” Scott asked.

His father let out a small laugh.  “What about her?  Do you want _her_ for a stepmother?”

“No.  Of course not.  But.  I mean.  Look.  I seriously want as little detail as possible to come up in this next bit of conversation, but…you and Linda aren’t going to like…be a _real_ married couple, right?  Are you going to see other women?”

His father squeaked the toy and Coco pounced.  “I don’t know,” he said, finally sounding unsure about something regarding this mess.  “We never really discussed… _that_.”

“But she works with you, right?  She must know how much you like your sex.”

His father looked up at him.  Instead of looking angry, he looked a little hurt.

“Sorry,” Scott muttered.

“No.  That’s fair.”

“No, it’s not.  But what do you want me to say?  That I’m okay with this?  I’m not.  I really think it’s a bad idea and no matter how much you two have thought about it, you need to think some more.”

“Scott…I _have_ thought about this a lot.  And I know that it’s kind of bad and a little stupid in a lot of ways, but I _am_ doing this for _them_.  You know how much I work.  My stupid boss is so OCD that it makes me paranoid and I check everything three times over.  So the simplest task that should be done in an hour takes all damn day.”  He shook his head as if to shake off the slight anger that had come upon him.  “But, even if I worked normal hours, that’s still eight and a half plus commuting time.  You guys are only in school for a little over seven hours.  It’s not fair to you to not have someone there to pick you up or go to band concerts or basketball games.  I have missed so much in just eight short months.”

“If you’re talking about Joanna’s concert…you didn’t miss much.”

“I know I was never really around before.  But you had a mother there.  You know…before I ever seriously talked with Linda…I offered to pay for an apartment here for your mother.  So that she could be nearby and still be with you guys.”

Scott looked up, surprised.  “She turned you down?”

“She said she didn’t want to be in my debt for anything.”

“She chose her pride over her children?”

“No, Scott.  It wasn’t like that.”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“Then I’m saying it wrong.  Look.  I just.  I just want…”  Scott could hear the genuine emotion and distress in his father’s tone, see it in every rigid line of his body.  He knew his father was in earnest.  “She’s had such a hard time.  I can help her and her children.  And she can help me.  I’m sorry I couldn’t make a normal or happy life for you guys with your own mother.  But I still want to try to give that to you in some way.”

Scott didn’t respond right away.  What could he say?  His father was doing what he thought was best for his children.  Quite possibly sacrificing his own happiness for it.  And in a way…this could be good.  The twins were only nine years old.  Joanna was still kind of a mess.  But was Linda the answer?  She could be.  For every nine reasons she wasn’t, surely there was one that she was…right?

“I get it, Dad.  I get it.  I’m not angry with you.  And I’m not going to cause a lot of pointless stress between us by fighting you every step of the way on this.  I’m going to trust you.”

“I’d rather you fight me.”

“Come on, Dad.  Be a dad.”

He nodded.  “Okay.  But, can you help…with the other three?”

“Of course.  The twins are going to be fine, I think.  They rely on each other more than anyone in the world anyway.  So, as long as they have each other they can face anything.  Joanna…she’s another story.  And I really don’t think I’m the one who should be helping her.”

“Why not?  What happened between you two?  I was kind of embroiled in the whole getting caught thing, but something got weird in the house.  What was it?”

Scott shook his head.  “You don’t wanna know.”

“But—”

“ _Trust me_.  You _don’t_ wanna know.”

“Okay then.”

They sat in silence for several minutes.  Scott couldn’t hear noises coming from the kitchen.  So, either the twins and Joanna had finished the dishes and were eavesdropping, or they had never started the dishes in the first place and were eavesdropping.  Scott stood up and Coco took notice, but it didn’t look like she was going to leave her daddy’s side just for him.  He wondered why she’d imprinted on his father—he certainly was around the least of them.  Then again, he was the one who played the alpha dog and disciplined her.  And took her on walks before and after work.  Scott wondered if he should take her tonight.  His father looked more than just tired.  He looked wiped out.  How much stress was he under right now?

“This is crazy, Dad.”  He just blurted it out.  He’d meant to say something reassuring.  The truth had come out instead.

“Is it really that bad?” his father half-laughed.

“Yes.”  Scott paused.  “And no.”

His father looked up at him.  He searched his face for a couple of moments, and then gave a little nod.  Scott returned it.  He started to leave and heard movement behind the living room wall that met the foyer.  The other three were skedaddling.  Scott turned back to his father.

“Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you earlier, but, tomorrow we’re having a barbeque for Will’s birthday.  It’s going to be, like, a whole big family thing.  And it’s dinner.  I’m picking the twins and Joanna up after we get everything set up and bringing them over.  So, if you can get off work in time, you should come over.  Otherwise you’re gonna be stuck with cereal for dinner.”

His father smiled.  “Got it.”  He rubbed his head again.  Did he have a headache?  “Is, um, Nik going to be there?”

“Nik?  Nik who?”

“Oh.”  His father laughed humorlessly.  “I meant Rich.”

“Yeah, both of Will’s parents will be there.  I’m not sure about Chris’ mom.  She said she’d try to make an appearance, but you know she works crazy late hours.  Um, Laney’s mom is coming.  I don’t think Liz’s family will come, but Riley’s and Anna’s are probably all gonna show up.”

“Oh, yeah?  Well, it would be good to see Katherine again.”

“Dad!”

His father looked startled.  “What?”

“Gross!”

“Wha—No!  Not like that.  Geez.  Pervert.”

Scott ducked his head.  “Sorry.”

“Hmph.  Though I could do without seeing John.  I don’t think he likes me for some reason.”

“He doesn’t like me either.”

“Well, that’s because his daughter is in love with you.”

Scott stared at his father.  “How—How do you know that?”

“Please,” the man said standing up, “that girl has been in love with you since you were babies.”

“Really?” Scott squeaked softly.  Had anyone else noticed?

“Well, I’m going to go to bed,” his father said, dumping Coco off in Scott’s arms.  “Keep her down here.”

“Okay,” Scott nodded.  “I’ll just clean up and do my homework.  Or talk with the others some more.”

“Oh.  Oh, right.  I should go talk to them.”

“No, Dad, it’s okay.  You look…kinda dead.  You should just go to bed.  We can talk more tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Scott tilted his head as he examined his father.  Why had he picked the word “dead?”  He did look tired, but what it was…he looked sad.  Had he meant Nik March?  When he’d slipped on Will’s father name, had he accidentally meant Julian’s father?  He knew that his and Julian’s fathers had been friends before the accident.  Did his father miss his friend?  Did he miss—did people that age “hang out?”  Scott reached his father just before he got to the stairs.  He put Coco to one side and hugged his father.  His dad stood motionless for a moment, and then he hugged him back.

“What’s this for?”

“Because I love you.  Don’t ever doubt that.  No matter what stupid things you do…I will always love you.”

“Thank you, Scott.”  His father took his face in his hands and then kissed his forehead.  “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

Scott had to use two hands to keep Coco from squirming out of his arms and following the man up the upstairs.  Scott shook his head.  There was no way he could not tell his friends about this tomorrow.  But would Will be pissed that he stole some of his thunder?  Quite possibly.  Aw, who was he kidding?  Will just might lock him in a closet if he got too much of his attention.

 

 

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

 

Scott snickered and eagerly took the can of silly string from Chris.  Then he and Chris and Julian hid behind the corner and waited for Will to come to his locker.  They giggled and sniggered gleefully.  Then time dragged on a bit.

“Where the hell is he?” Julian asked.

“Just be patient,” Chris said.  “He might suspect something and is staking out his locker.  If we let ourselves be seen, we’ll never get him.”

“I _hate_ being patient,” Scott hissed.

The warning bell rang.  They fidgeted and felt their trigger fingers itch.  The halls started to clear out.

“Maybe he decided not to go to his locker,” Chris said.  “He does have calculus first period.  Maybe he took his book home with him last night to do homework?”

Scott and Julian gave him a look.

“I know, I know.  Look, I gotta go.  If I’m late Mr. Goldstein’s gonna do something mean.  I know it.”

Chris shoved his can of silly string into his backpack and took off down the hall.

“Okay,” Julian called out.  “Meet back here after first period!”

“Roger!”

Scott sighed and Julian patted his head.  “Don’t worry.  We’ll get him.”

But they didn’t.  After first period he didn’t show up at his locker.  Nor after second or third.  It wasn’t until they all showed up at English class and saw that he wasn’t there that they began to realize that he’d cut school.

“I can’t believe he cut,” Chris groused.  “He never cuts.  Well.  He’ll cut class.  But not school.”

“Yeah, especially on soccer practice days,” Julian mused.

Scott took this information in.  He felt his insides getting all twisted up.  He leaned over the back of his seat and thumped a hand on the top of Julian’s and Chris’ desks.  They started in surprise and stared in—in fear?  Surely they weren’t afraid of him.

“You guys!” he shouted.

They blinked.  And then glanced at each other.  And then they looked back at him.

“W-what?” Chris ventured.

“Don’t you get it?!  We did this!”

“Did what?” Julian asked.

“We pretended like we forgot his birthday!  We made him all sad!  He thought we forgot him!  I _knew_ we should have told him!  He got so depressed he went home and committed suicide!  What have we done?!”

Chris and Julian continued to stare at him.

“Who committed suicide?”

Scott turned in time to see Antoinette plop gracefully into her seat, her wavy, golden hair bouncing around her shoulders.  He started to reach out a hand to touch her hair, but then she tossed it over her shoulder.  He snapped his hand back to his side.  Chris and Julian would probably tease him if he did something sappy like that.  But then, would that be anything new?  Antoinette looked at him expectantly.

“Oh,” he said.  “Will committed suicide.”

Antoinette let out a small disbelieving laugh, and then stared at him.  She glanced over at Chris and Julian.  Then her features relaxed and she sat back in her seat.

“No way.  If he had committed suicide there’s no way you guys would be this calm about it.”

“We might be,” Chris said.  “We might actually just pretend like it never happened.”

“Talk to thin air,” Julian said.

Antoinette frowned at them.  “You guys are creepy.”  She faced Scott.  “So, why are you worried he’s pulling a Kurt Cobain impersonation?”

Scott sighed. “We pretended to forget his birthday so that we could throw him a surprise party today.”

“Oh.  His birthday was yesterday?”

“Kinda sorta not really.  He was born on the 29th.”

“Of February?”

“Yep.”

She shook her head.  “Figures.  Will Harder couldn’t be born on just any old day.”

Scott smiled.  “Ain’t that the truth?  Anyway.  We’re having a barbeque at his house today.  You should come.  You don’t have to bring a present or anything.  The party is the gift.  Well, I mean, we got him something else too, but—”

“I get it,” Antoinette patted his hand before he could launch into a full explanation.  “If someone tells me not to bring anything, I certainly don’t question it.  But…I can’t go anyway.  I’m still grounded.”

“Still?”

“Well, I was yesterday…so…”

“I know, but.  Your parents let you stay after for prom committee.  Can you tell them it got switched to today?  Or there was an emergency centerpiece crisis you have to stay for?”

Antoinette smiled.  “I would love to come, Scott, but I’m a little worried about lying to them.  If I got caught…it would be _so_ bad.”

Scott nodded.  “OK.  I understand.”  He turned to Chris and Julian.  “So, are we sure he didn’t—”

“That’s it?”

Scott turned back to Antoinette.  She was looking a little disbelieving—though he wasn’t sure about what.

“What’s it?” he asked.

“You’re not going to keep trying to convince me to go?  No wheedling?”

“No.  You have to make your own decision.  I already told you I’d like you to come, but if you can’t, why would I pressure you into it?”

Scott watched as Antoinette’s face softened into sappy adoration.  Uh-oh.  When she looked at him like that, he tended to return the expression.

“You’re so sweet, Scott.”

“Well—”

“Oh, baby, can I copy your homework?”

Antoinette and Scott turned to look at Chris and Julian.  Julian was leaning over his desk toward Chris and Chris was feigning the shyness of a simpering rose.

“But—it’s wrong, honey.  I don’t think I can do it.”

“I understand,” Julian said solemnly.

“So, you won’t pressure me?”

Julian reached out and took his hand.  “Of course not.  You mean the world to me.  I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“Nor would I.”

“Well, not unless I ask for it.”

Chris cracked and laughed.

Scott was halfway out of his desk to accost Julian when Mr. Richie yelled at him to get back in his seat.  Scott protested that class technically hadn’t started yet and Mr. Richie countered with a trip to Mr. Hayden’s office.  Scott took a seat.  He wasn’t sure who he was more ticked off with: Chris & Julian, Mr. Richie, or Mr. Hayden.  All this irritation couldn’t be good for his skin.  He ran a hand over his forehead and cheek.  It felt smooth.  He hadn’t had a breakout in a while, and he’d certainly had enough stress to induce one.  Maybe he’d outgrown that phase.  He froze with his hand on his nose.  He didn’t feel anything, but he knew he would.  How could he jinx himself like that?

Scott spent the rest of the day trying to make it seem like he didn’t have his hands on his face.  But he couldn’t help it.  He was paranoid now.  He just knew one was going to pop up at the grossest and least desirable moment.  It wasn’t fair.  Had Will ever even had a zit in his entire life?  He doubted it.  Which is why he deserved silly string in the face.  And also why Scott was willing to let Julian use the hidden key under the geranium planter on the Harder’s front porch to let them in.  Technically that was—well, not breaking, but entering.  They had been told of the whereabouts of that key for emergencies.  Surprise birthday parties didn’t count as an emergency, but silly stringing a frickin’ inhumanly perfect zit-free turd was.

The three of them snuck around quietly, worried Will might be on the first floor.  They didn’t hear any noises and dropped off the party supplies and food they’d picked up in the kitchen.  They searched the main floor and looked out back.  Chris signaled that the basement was empty, so that meant he must be upstairs.  They started to tiptoe up as quietly as they could.

“What if he’s taking a dump?” Scott asked.

“We’ll get him when he comes out then.  We’re not going to just burst in and do it,” Chris said.

“Unless he’s in his room,” Julian said.  “Then we can burst in.  That should be safe.”

“Seriously?  He does masturbate, right?”

“How would I know?”

“Because you stalk him.”

“I do not stalk him!”

“Shh!”  Chris whapped them both on the shoulder.  “Got your cans?”

Scott and Julian popped the lids off their cans of silly string.  “Ready!”

Chris put his hand on the doorknob.  “Okay.  One, two, three!”

“Hap—” the three of them rushed the door and then “oofed” when they piled together against the unmoving door.

“Ow!” Chris said, shaking his hand.  “What the hell?”

“Is it locked?” Julian asked.

Scott took Chris’ place and grabbed the doorknob.  He leaned into it, gently, feeling resistance from the other side.

“No, he’s pushing back.”

Chris and Julian threw their weight onto the door—and him.  The door gave way, but only a little.

“Open up!” Julian called out.

“Yeah, let us in!” Scott called out, worried about why he was keeping them out.

“For real!” Chris complained.  “I’m stuck in the middle!”

 _He_ was stuck in the middle?  He was between two relatively soft bodies.  Scott was flat against the door.

“Okay, just wait a minute!” Will called out from the other side.

“No, now!” Julian insisted.

“Seriously, guys, just hold on!”

“No!”

“Come on!” Chris whined.

“Let us in!” Scott shouted, not so worried about his own well being, but trying to stop his imagination from taking off.  But it was too late.   Scott couldn’t believe Will was able to hold all three of them at bay.  What was driving him to such a feat of strength?  And why would he try to keep them out?  Maybe he was committing suicide right now!  Maybe they’d just got there in time!

“Ahhhh!”

Scott screamed as the door, and Will, gave way and the three carried their pent up kinetic energy into the room.  They crashed onto the floor.  Scott was grateful his fall had been cushioned by Will, but Chris and Julian weighed a ton.  Scott smiled down at Will.  He looked ticked off to the max.  No way had he been committing suicide.  Scott was so happy.

Until he learned that Will was naked.  Not that he was opposed to nakedness as a rule…just when that nakedness involved one of the male friends that he was waaaaay too close to already without adding nakedness to the mix.

The good news was that even though he’d been irritated they’d barged in on him naked in his room, he seemed to enjoy the silly string.  And he even seemed to be okay with the fact that everyone, including his own parents, had tricked him into believing they’d forgotten about him.  Scott couldn’t help it: when Will began to tear up, he had to turn away from his friends and wipe away his own tears with his sleeves.  It was weird to see Will _moved_ to tears, but it felt good too.  Seeing Will genuinely happy made him feel that same happiness.

That happiness was quickly overshadowed by orders.  Mr. Harder was throwing a dinner party of sorts—and that meant work or get the hell out of the way.  Scott knew he had to behave himself and do his best to execute Mr. Harder’s orders, but now that everyone was there and the main event was out of the way—the silly stringing—he could focus on his problems again.

“Omigod,” Scott said as he started mixing together the French onion dip, “you guys, just _wait_ until I tell you what my father did last night.  You will _not_ believe it.  _I_ still don’t believe it.  And I was there!”

“What?  Did he find a younger, hotter model to date?” Chris asked, washing off the potatoes.

“ _No_.”

“Did he sprout wings and fly?” Julian asked, pouring ice into an ice chest.

“ _No_.”

The two continued their tasks.  Scott stopped stirring his dip.

“Seriously!  It’s crazy!  You don’t want to know?”

“Well, we want to know,” Chris said, “but it’s more fun teasing you first.”

Julian laughed.  “I knew I’d bring you over to my side.”

“Julian, Julian, Julian.  You’re on _my_ side.  I’ve known how cute he gets for years.”

“Gah!”

They both laughed and the doorbell rang.

“You both are a couple of tools.  I bet Will would be more supportive.”

“Supportive?” Julian chuckled.  “If this news is as big as you say it is, he’s going to lock you in a closet for stealing his spotlight.”

Scott gulped.  His suspicions had been right.  They turned toward the kitchen entrance as a girl began to squeal.  So, the girls were here.  But who was making them squeal?  Will, or his father?

“Do it to me, Riley!”

The three of them looked at each other and then stopped what they were doing to run for the kitchen entrance.  They looked down the hallway.

“Who’s getting done?” Scott asked.

Riley pushed away from Will and starting griping loudly as she marched for the kitchen.  She punched Chris in the shoulder.

“Ow!  What’d _I_ do?”

“Scott, bring me that chair!” Anna commanded.

Scott obeyed, even though he was nervous about leaving his dip unfinished since Mr. Harder was back in the kitchen.  And he was wearing his chef’ apron.  Oh, he was in a serious mood tonight.  Scott looked around the room and felt heartened by all the excitement and effort and fun.  He almost felt like it was _his_ birthday.

“So, what’s this big news?” Chris asked.

Most of the people in the room kept doing what they were doing, but they were now focused on him.  Did he tell them now, here?  In front of everybody all at once?  Well, it’s not like it was really a secret.  His father said they were getting married at the end of March.  But maybe he was going to rethink it?  He didn’t want to say it and cause a ruckus and then have his father not even go through with it.  Or worse yet, trap his father into doing it if he told everyone.  Well.  Wording was everything.  And he had to tell someone.

“Well, my dad _said_ that he’s getting married.”

There was a burst of gasps and shouts and short questions.  He glanced at Will.  He looked surprised—and not upset yet that people were now focused on Scott.

“Heh,” Mr. Harder laughed softly as he dug around in the refrigerator.  “To that redhead?”

“What?” Scott asked sharply.

“What?” Mr. Harder replied, looking like he hadn’t just said anything.

“Yes, what?” Mrs. Harder asked as she turned from opening a box of plastic cutlery and eyed her husband.

“Is it Kristen?” Chris asked.

Scott turned to him.  “No!  You’ll never guess.”

“Oh.  Is it—”

“No, I mean, you’ll never guess.  I’d never met her before.  Or heard of her before.  He brought her over for dinner last night.  Actually, she did the cooking.  And was pretty good.  As far as stepmothers go, at least she’ll be able to cook.”

“Whoa, hey!” Anna shouted.  “Too calm!”

“What is?”

“You!”

“And you still haven’t said who it is,” Julian said.

“Oh.  Someone from work.  Like, a secretary or something?  But not his.  She does legal stuff.  And she has, like, three kids.  And they’re moving in with us!”

“What?!” someone screeched.

“So, he’s marrying a young, hot secretary,” Julian mused.  “Doesn’t he know he’s only supposed to date those?”

“That’s just it!  Not young.  Not hot.  Woman.  Like, old.”

“Like, our age?” Mrs. Harder asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes,” Scott said.  “I mean no.  No, no, no.”

“Well, maybe _your_ age,” Mr. Harder teased his wife.  She shot him a dirty look.

“I wonder if that’s who I saw him with on New Year’s,” Will said.

“When did you see him on New Year’s?”

“Um…”

“Scott!” Anna practically yelled in his ear.  “What is going on?!”

“Why are you yelling at me?!  I didn’t keep it a secret, I just found out yesterday.  And it’s not like I can tell my dad ‘no,’ now can I?”

“Most people can’t,” Mr. Harder smiled.

Mrs. Harder hit him.  “Go get the meat from the downstairs refrigerator.”

“Okay, okay.”

The man left and Scott kind of wished people would pay attention to Will again.

“Look, I know it’s weird and all.  But, it might be good.  You know, she can help take care of Joanna and the twins.  Especially after I’m gone.  Dad couldn’t do it alone.  Not with the hours he works.  Plus…the woman…she was widowed.  And like, has no money.  He’s helping her too.”

Why was he defending his father so much?

“Yeah, but—”  Anna looked stunned.

“I’m right there with you, Anna.”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” Scott called out.

He ran from the kitchen.  Okay, maybe talking it over with his three best friends first would have been a better idea.  But what was he supposed to do?  It was a huge shock, and he had to tell someone!  Or eight someones.  At least the families hadn’t all showed up yet.  He met Mr. Harder in the hallway on the way to the door.  He had a grocery bag in one hand filled with what looked like a lot of yummy, raw meat.  Mr. Harder ruffled his hair.

“Poor Scotty.”

“It’s not so bad.  I think my dad knows what he’s doing.”

“Do you?  And I didn’t mean about that.”

He nodded over his shoulder back down the hall as he reached out to open the front door.  Scott looked behind himself and saw Will giving him a glare from the kitchen entrance.  Whoops.  Maybe he was mad about the attention-stealing after all.  They were probably all still talking about it in there.

“Why, hello, there,” Mr. Harder said.

Scott turned back around.  He blinked in surprise.

“Dad!  Hey, guys!” he said to his siblings.  “What are y’all doing here?”

“You said we could come!” Joanna said, all huffy probably because she was excited about getting invited to one of his “high school parties” with his “cool” friends and then having that taken away.

“Yeah!  It’s a birthday, right?” Drake asked.

“Yep.  It’s Will’s birthday.  Why don’t you go give him a special birthday hug?”

“Okay!”

The twins sprinted down the hallway.  Scott smiled maliciously.  Mwa-ha.

“Holy bejeezus!” Will shouted from somewhere in the house.

Scott bit back his smile and turned to Joanna.  “It is his birthday you know.  You can get away with giving him a kiss.”

“Oh, whatever!” Joanna replied, her voice getting a little high-pitched.  “As if.”

She glanced around nervously and tucked some hair behind her ear.  Then walked quickly down the hall.

“I mean on the cheek!” Scott called out.

“Shut-up!”

He sniggered and turned back to the door.  His father and Mr. Harder were laughing too.  They really were bad.  But, he was glad his father came.  He didn’t think he’d show up at all let alone early.  Mr. Harder was leaning on the doorknob, looking, in Scott’s opinion, like he normally did, but his father was eyeing the man.  Then he half-sighed/half-groaned and looked at Scott.

“You told them.  Didn’t you?”

Scott shrugged.  His father gave Mr. Harder a look.

“Not a word,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything,” Mr. Harder said with a smile.

“Don’t forget that I can read you like a book, Harder.”

Mr. Harder grinned.  Scott thought this interaction was a little weird, but then again, neither he nor Will had normal fathers.

“What are you doing here so early?” Scott asked, changing the subject.

Mr. Harder shut the door as his father stepped into the foyer.  He shrugged and Scott noticed he was wearing casual clothing, not his suit.

“My boss never came in today, so I left early.”

“You work for Q*West, right?” Mr. Harder asked.

“Yes.  Well, the subsidiary K&K Consulting.”

“Is that one run by a proxy?”

“No.  The son runs it.”

“Really.  And he didn’t come in at all today?”

“Well, he could have after I left, but I don’t particularly care.”

“Ah, the work ethic of a Ramsey.  I believe that’s why my wife enjoys cases against you so much.”

“You keep telling yourself that’s the reason.”

The two men laughed and then stopped as they looked at Scott.

“Ew,” Scott said.

The doorbell rang again.  Mr. Harder opened the door a little since Scott’s father was partially in the way and leaned around it to peek outside.

“Why, hello,” Mr. Harder said.  “I don’t know if you have the wrong house or not, but I’m certainly not going to tell you if you do.”

A girl laughed.  Like, a tittery, embarrassed, “Omigosh he’s so cute” kind of laugh.  And he knew that voice.  Scott jabbed Mr. Harder in the ribs.

“Let her in!”

The man frowned at Scott, but backed up so he could open the door.  His father stepped to the side so that it could open all the way and reveal Antoinette on the doorstep.  He immediately forgot Mr. Harder’s perviness.  He was so happy to see her.

“Hey,” he said, stepping forward.  “You came.”

“Yeah.  And I even went home and asked my mom first.  She said I could come.”

“Really?  You’re not grounded anymore?”

“Well, she didn’t say that.  Just that I could come.  And…”  Antoinette held up the tinfoil-wrapped plate in her hand.  “She made me bring cookies.”

“Great!” Mr. Harder said, taking the cookies from her and peeking under the foil.  “Ah.  The cut and bake kind,” he said, disappointed.

Scott nudged him.

“Thank you.  It’s very kind.”

Antoinette smiled.  Kind of big and flirty.  No way.  Why did all these girls like this old man?  Scott looked at Mr. Harder.  This old, really attractive man?

“So, you must be Will’s dad?”

“I am, if you can believe it.  Please come in.”

Mr. Harder stepped aside so that Antoinette could come in.  He shut the door and she stuck out her hand.

“I’m Antoinette Bixby.”

Mr. Harder transferred the cookies to the hand with the bag of meat and shook her hand.  Scott kicked himself for not being polite and introducing her.

“It’s nice to meet you, Antoinette.  So, you’re a new friend of Will’s?”

“Um, yeah, I’m new.  Not sure about friends yet.  He’s a little picky.”

Mr. Harder smiled.  “Yes, he is.”  He turned and extended his hand down the hall.  “This way.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled at Scott and he started to walk beside her with Mr. Harder and his father following them.

“That’s my son’s girlfriend, you know.”

Scott went rigid.

“Really?  Atta boy,” Mr. Harder said a little too softly for it not to sound a touch obscene.

Scott blushed.

“Even I had to work to get a girl that beautiful to look at me.”

Antoinette laughed.  Not in a giggly, under his spell sort of way, but perhaps in recognition of the man’s skills.  She was well experienced in being hit on after all.  Hit on.  She was eighteen years old!  Okay, that meant she was legal.  But…she was in high school!

“Gross, Mr. Harder!  You’re, like, _old_!”

“So?” the man said leaning close to him, “I’m still hot, aren’t I?”

Scott couldn’t move because he was afraid he’d start blushing even worse if he looked at him.  But he could tell the man did something to Antoinette.  Gave her a smile or a wink or a look.  Because she licked her lips to cover a smile.

“And besides,” Mr. Harder declared, grabbing his son around the shoulders as they all came in to the kitchen.  “What does age matter when it comes to love, right son?”

Will was struggling to get the twins off his legs and couldn’t fight off his father.

“Why are you asking me?” Will asked, though he seemed a little embarrassed by the question.  Maybe he was just embarrassed to be hugged by his father in front of everyone again.

“What’s _she_ doing here?”  Anna’s voice cut through the noise of the busy kitchen.

Everyone pretended to still do what they were doing as they discreetly watched Anna take a couple steps toward Antoinette.  Scott opened his mouth, but then crossed his arms and took a step back. He was not doing this here.  They could, but he was wussing out of this fight.

“Is there a problem here?” Mrs. Harder asked politely, smiling…but there was a definite chill in the air.

“I don’t have any problems,” Antoinette said.  “ _I_ have everything I want,” she added with a pointed look for Anna.

She took the cookies from Mr. Harder and walked over to the counter.  Scott saw his father put a hand to his mouth to cover an amused and shocked smile.

“Oh, I like her,” Mr. Harder said softly.

The two men laughed to each other.  Scott rolled his eyes.  Good God.  High school really did never end.

 

Julian

 

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

 

He couldn’t help it.  He knew it was wrong and kind of unhealthy, but it was almost funny.  Julian listened to Chris gripe about his government project, but out of the corner of his eye he watched Will mope.  The pretty boy kept looking from one to the other, trying to make eye contact so that he could bring up his birthday.  But he was being ignored.  And rather than making him angry, it was making him sulky.  And he was cute when he was sulky.  Julian sighed inwardly.  Hell, he was cute when he was anything.  Julian rubbed his head.  What was it going to take to get over Will Harder?  Separation?  He wasn’t willing to do that.  But then again, in a few short months that control would be out of his hands.  So, he might as well enjoy moments like this while he could: Will looking all petulant and self-pitying because he thought they forgot his birthday.  What a silly boy.  He should know better.  Even if they did forget to say something today, surely they would have already planned something weeks ago.  And besides, if Will really wanted to have a party or something, he should have brought it up sooner.  He had a whole year to plan his 18th birthday.  It was his own fault for not bringing it up until the day of—or before.  Or, however that worked out when you were born on Leap Day.

So, even though he was enjoying watching Will pout, he knew he couldn’t stay around him.  He and Chris had thwarted Scott’s attempt to ruin everything, but he might just give it away too.  Not because he would feel sorry for him and want him to feel better, but because he would tease him too much.  If he did that, Will would definitely become suspicious.  The best thing to do was to stay away from him.  Which wasn’t too hard since they didn’t have the same lunch period and only shared one class together in the second half of the day.  The real problem would be tomorrow.  In the past they’d forgotten to say something about his birthday on February 28th, but they’d always remembered when March 1st rolled around because that meant they missed his birthday since it was in February.  So…should they acknowledge his birthday tomorrow and try to play off the whole “we’ll plan something for the weekend” thing?  That was probably what they should do.  If they tried to make it seem like they’d _completely_ forgotten his birthday, he’d never buy it.  As long as he made it until tomorrow he’d be fine.  And now that school was over…he was all set.

“Julian!”

Julian pulled up short and made a face.  He’d almost made it.  The door was in sight, but Will had called out to him, rather loudly.  There was no way he could pretend like he hadn’t heard it.  He took in a breath.  _Okay, keep it short and sweet and then get the hell out!_   Julian turned around and waited for Will to jog up to him.  He looked a little peeved.  Uh-oh.  Had Scott slipped?  That little dill weed.  He was going to kill him.

“Where are you going?” Will asked.  “We have practice today.”

“Practice?”

“Um, yeah.  For soccer?”

“Oh!  Oh, right.”  Julian cleared his throat.  _Calm down.  He doesn’t know, so keep cool.  If Scott can keep it a secret, so can I!_ “I can’t go today.  You know Tuesdays and Thursdays are my head shrinking days.”

“Oh.”  Will’s expression became unreadable.  But there was a touch of melancholy to it.  “I thought you didn’t have to go on Tuesdays anymore.”

“No, just the last two.  Because of Valentine’s Day and last week Dr. Corbin had some sort of emergency and cancelled on me.”

“So…you’re still seeing him twice a week?”

“Yep.”

Will paused and looked like he was debating whether or not to ask his next question.

“Do you really need to?  See him so often I mean.”

Julian shrugged.  “I guess so.  He hasn’t said anything otherwise.”

“Well.  I bet you’re just trying to get out of soccer practice is all.”

Julian laughed.  “I’m not.  I promise.”

“I wish you were,” Will said solemnly.

Julian felt pressure on his chest.  The kind he felt whenever he was afraid he wasn’t getting better like he thought he was.  Will was right.  Seeing a psychiatrist twice a week was a lot of therapy.  And he wasn’t better enough to cut it down to once?  Julian flexed his shoulders to help release some of the tension.

“Yeah, me too,” Julian replied.

Will had been looking sad all day long, but now it was different.  It was worry and disquiet that showed on his features.  Julian hated that he made his friend feel that way.

“I’ll ask him today.  About cutting back my therapy time.  Maybe he thinks I’m ready and has just been keeping me doubled up for the money.”

Will instantly looked better—and miffed.  “That’s it!  I know it.  Dirty, overcharging doctors.”

“For real.  And you want to be one?”

“Well, yeah.  I can overcharge people for my services and still get thanked for it at the end of the day.”

“Heh.”

“So, uh.”  Will rocked on his heels and looked to the side, trying to appear casual.  “Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

Julian pretended to ponder for a moment and then said, “Nn, nope.  Not that I know of.  You?”

Julian bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at Will’s adorably pitiful face.  God he was cute.

“Oh.  I guess not.”

“Well.  Have fun at soccer.  See you tomorrow!”

Julian turned and hurried for the door.  He didn’t need Will to finally break through his self-pitying and demand to have someone acknowledge his birthday. 

“Oh, hey!  Julian.”

Julian stopped again and growled at the ceiling.  He was never going to be able to pull this off.  He schooled his features and turned back around.

“Yeah?”

“How’s your new piercing?”

“Oh, it’s great.  It’s completely healed.”  He leered at his friend.  “You wanna see it?”

“No thank you,” Will snipped.

Julian laughed.  “Come on.  It’s not like it’s in a naughty place.  Exactly.”

“ _Exactly_.  You know…I’m thinking I might get a piercing.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, now that I’m eight—”

“Oh, crap!  I gotta run.  Dr. C flips when I’m late.  Bye!”

Julian turned tail and ran.  Shwoo.  That had been a close one.  He should never forget that Will was a clever little bugger.  He should have figured where he was going with that the second he asked after the piercing.  After he’d told his three friends he was going to get his nipple pierced, they had all declined to tag along and asked that he never bring it up again.  Even Scott had seemed a little icked out by it.  Will had brought it up only to segue into being eighteen.  Well, he had failed and remained miserable.  It was only one day; Will could survive that.  And he would thank them tomorrow.

Julian went straight to his appointment even though that made him half an hour early.  His sessions normally began at 3:30, which always left him with fifteen to twenty minutes to kill excluding travel time from school to downtown.  Usually he would loiter around school or look in the few shops near Dr. Corbin’s building.  But today he decided to go straight to the office.  Dr. Corbin actually had a pretty good selection of reading material in his waiting room.  Julian waved hello to the agoraphobic secretary.  She sniffed in his general direction and crouched further down in her chair.  Even though she was a mental case, he couldn’t help but feel a little offended.  He’d been coming to the office twice a week for three months now.  Surely she should start feeling a little more comfortable around him.

He took a seat by the door—the one furthest away from Margaret the Paranoid—and picked up a _People_ magazine.  Normally he would try to be pretentious and read _National Geographic_ or _Newsweek_ , but today he wanted to read about people he didn’t know but for some reason cared what retarded name they gave their baby.  He slouched down in the chair and stretched his legs out.  He realized that he must look like a long, lanky kid in the somewhat tiny chair.  Or maybe he looked like a long, lanky man.  Hmm.  Would Margaret know the difference?  Julian let the magazine drop down a little and looked at the secretary.  She was punching one key at a time on her keyboard and looked like she might start crying at any moment.  Okay.  So maybe today wasn’t the day to engage her in a breakthrough conversation.  He returned to his magazine.

The door to the office opened and someone came in.  Julian paid them no attention.  Until she started speaking to the secretary.  He recognized her voice and lowered the magazine again to confirm that it was Dr. Gorman.  He crossed his legs at the ankle and played with the edges of the magazine while he watched her.  She looked awful.  Not in complexion or health; she in fact looked quite good in that respect.  But she was wearing a poorly made and ill-fitting skirt suit in a color so hideous that calling it “kitten shit green” would be kind.  And she wore it “matched” with a mauve undershirt.  She had to be colorblind.  It was the only reasonable explanation.  Julian raised the magazine back up and listened to her try to get some information out of the secretary.  Once she wrangled the time of Dr. Corbin’s last appointment out of Margaret, she headed out of the office.  Julian pretended to read his magazine.  There was no way she’d not be able to see him on the way out.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her pause, just for a moment as she passed him, but then she reached for the door without saying anything.

“You’re not even going to say hello?” he asked before she could get out the door.

She stopped and turned toward him.  He dropped the magazine and looked over his shoulder at her.  She smiled awkwardly and tried to look a little surprised.

“Oh, Julian.  Hello.  I didn’t see you there.”

“Mm-hmm.”

She shifted her weight, a little uncomfortably.  “So, how are you doing?”

“I’m good,” he said, dropping the magazine on the table and standing up.  When he turned toward her he saw that she had become even more anxious.  Just because he stood up?  What did she think he was going to do to her?  “How are you?” he asked.

“Good.  Great.”  She nodded, almost to herself.

Julian took a step closer and was pleased when she didn’t retreat.  He lowered his voice.

“How’s Barry?”

She relaxed a little now.  For some reason she gained confidence in being able to rebuff him when he was teasing her than when he was being serious.

“He’s great too,” she said.

“Mm-hmm.”

They looked at each other for a moment.  He let his eyes travel over her body.  When he met her eyes again she shifted her weight and cleared her throat.

“So.  How are your sessions with Dr. Corbin going?”

“Well, honestly, it’s hard to tell with him.”  She smiled in acknowledgement of that fact.  “But, I’ve been feeling better.  Every day I feel a little better.  Since Thanksgiving.  I’m doing all right.  I’m doing good.”

She reached out and took his hand.  “I’m glad, Julian.  I really am.  I’ve been worried about you.  I want you to be well and happy again.”

Julian nodded.  “Yeah.  I think I’m a hell of a lot closer to that than I thought was possible a few months ago.  It also helps that it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.  Thank you.”

She smiled again and met his eyes with gladness.  He wasn’t sure which one moved first, but one of them shifted their hands, and upon feeling the slight movement of skin on skin, they continued to gently rub their fingers together.  Then Dr. Gorman yanked her hand away and took a step back.

“W-well.  Anyway.  I have to—” she whipped her head toward the door, and then turned back to look at him.  “I have to, um—I have an appointment.  Yes.  So.”  She did another head whip.  “I have to go.”

“Okay,” he nodded.

She nodded back and then decided against saying anything further.  She turned around and hurried out the door.  After all her head whipping, the pen that had been in her hair fell to the floor.  Julian bent over and picked it up, and then he followed Dr. Gorman out into the hall.  He reached for her hand and said, “Dr. Gorman, wait.”

She jerked away from him and turned back to him with both of her hands held out to ward him off.

“Julian!  Don’t!”

“Don’t what?” he asked, holding out the ballpoint pen.  “You dropped this.”

She looked down at the item in his hand.  “Oh.  Right.”  She took it from him.  “Thank you.”

Julian laughed.  “What did you think I was going to do?”

She blushed and wouldn’t look at him.  “Nothing.”

“Mm-hmm.  Were you worried I was going to—”

“No!” she said looking up.  “Of course not!”

“Well.  You should have been.”

He’d had no intention of doing anything to her.  None whatsoever.  He was just going to return her pen.  But…he stepped forward and put his hands to her waist.  He leaned over and kissed her.  He didn’t wrap his arms around her because he wanted her to be able to pull away easily if she wanted to.  Though that’s not what she appeared to want.  He didn’t know why he’d been expecting her to push him away or slap him.  She never did.  She just put her hands to his face and kissed him back.  Julian enjoyed the slow pace of the kiss.  He even liked the fact that it wasn’t deep and sloppy.  It was just a nice, controlled, slightly longing kiss.  He moved one hand around her waist, and one of hers moved to stroke through his hair and hold the back of his head.

_Crap.  I thought I was over this.  Why do I still like her so much?_

They pulled apart at the same time and looked each other in the eyes, just a touch out of breath.  She swallowed a soft laugh.

“I had forgotten how much I hate that lip ring.”

Then she stepped back from him.  Julian put his hands in his pockets.

“Sorry,” he muttered, hoping she would understand he wasn’t referring to her detestation of his piercings.

Her sardonic smile let him know she understood.

“It’s okay,” she said.

Julian perked right up.  “Really?  So, it’s okay if I—”

He started to reach for her again and she swatted his hands away.

“No,” she said sternly.

“Aw, come on,” Julian goaded gently with an inviting smile.  “You’ve got to take responsibility.”

“For what?” she asked haughtily.

He scuffed his toes and stuck out his lower lip.  “I’m still a virgin.”

She crossed her arms.  “Good.  Kids nowadays rush in to pleasurable activities without taking the time to consider the complex feelings and consequences that go with it.”

Julian stood up straight.  Mr. Ramsey was right; he had definitely grown because he could tell he was taller than Dr. Gorman than he used to be.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t the least bit impressed or intimidated by his height.

“Come on, Camellia.  Even if you don’t want me, you don’t want Barry.”

She huffed in offense.  “And what would make you think that?”

He took a step closer, leaving only inches between their bodies.  She looked up to meet his eyes.  He tried not to laugh at her.

“Because you want _me_.”

She didn’t protest.  And she didn’t act even more offended or upset.  He slowly lowered his face closer to hers.  She didn’t move away.  He brushed her cheek with a finger, and then trailed it down under her chin.  Her expression didn’t change and she didn’t attempt to move away or stop him when he kissed her again.  He moved his hand to cup her face and kissed her more insistently.  She responded in kind and put her hands to his waist under his blazer.

The elevator down the hall dinged and they pulled apart before the doors were all the way open.  They stood awkwardly, hoping they didn’t look like they’d been doing anything suspect.  The pair of men walked down the hall and Dr. Gorman gave them a slight nod in greeting.  Once they disappeared around the corner Dr. Gorman rubbed her brow with a hand and then looked Julian hard in the eyes.

“Julian, please leave me alone.  I am, obviously, not strong enough to resist you.  So.  Please.  Stay away.”

She walked away from him toward the elevators.  Julian flexed his jaw in annoyance.  Why was she blaming him for this?  Why was the responsibility his?  It wasn’t like he’d sought her out.  Everything today had been coincidence and spontaneity.  And she hadn’t exactly been unwilling.  He turned and saw her about to step onto the elevator.

“And what if I don’t?” he called out.

She paused in the door and turned her head toward him, but didn’t look at him.

“Well.  Then I guess you won’t be a virgin for much longer.”

She got on the elevator and the doors shut.  Julian cursed softly.  That hadn’t been an invitation.  He couldn’t go to her now.  It would be like forcing her into going through with her concession.  Admitting that she would give in if he kept pushing was far more effective at keeping him away than appealing to his sense of reason.  He sighed and rubbed his head.  Why had he even gone there?  He’d gotten over it.  He was sure of it.  So, why did he start the obsession up again?  It was going to take several more weeks to get her out of his system again.  Geez.

The office door swung open with a bang and Julian started back from a crazed Dr. Corbin.  His glasses were askew and the tufts of hair at his ears were sticking up wildly.

“Escapee!” the man shouted.

“No, no!” Julian protested.  “I wasn’t leaving!  I was just—!”

Dr. Corbin grabbed him by the tie and yanked him back into the office.  “And here I thought you were healing!  Dear boy.  Should we add another day of therapy to your regimen?”

“No, nooo!  Please, no!”

 

Julian stomped out of Dr. Corbin’s office, not caring if he looked a like a bratty child.  He couldn’t believe it.  That man was certifiable, so how on earth did that make him qualified to treat other crazies?  He’d had to spend most of his session listening to the man rant about responsibilities and progress and regress—and congress too for some reason.  He’d barely been able to worm is his way out of a third weekly session, so his hopes of dropping down to one had been dashed.  It wasn’t fair.  These sessions were seriously expensive, and he truly felt well enough that once a week would be more than adequate.  And it wasn’t like Dr. Corbin could force him to come twice a week.  If he dropped back to one, what would the man do?  It wasn’t like he could report him to the police for attempted rape.  That was covered under confidentiality clauses.  But he could stop treating him altogether.  As much as Julian disliked most of their sessions, the one or two that were serious he did need.  He wasn’t ready to not have a therapist yet.  Maybe he could find someone a little saner to go to and then drop Dr. Corbin like a hot, diseased potato.

When Julian stepped outside the building, he didn’t have to wrap his arms around himself to ward off the cold anymore.  Which was a good thing since the first day of March was when the Calverton students went back to wearing sweater vests.  It had been bad enough with the blazer lately, but he just knew that he would look ridiculous in the sweater vest.  He looked silly in a school uniform period.  He really did look too old for it.  Not just because of his height and build, but his eyes mostly.  He knew he didn’t look like most eighteen year olds anymore.  But at least his eyes didn’t look as old as all the employees’ of Blue Boy did.  And since he was thinking of it and the weather was decent, he might as well swing by and pick up his schedule for the weekend.

Jonas had been right.  Business had really slowed down after Valentine’s Day.  He’d only had one interview over the past two weeks and a lot of the escorts had actually gone on vacation.  Hopefully it would still be slow and he could have the weekend off again.  He didn’t get paid when he didn’t have interviews, but with the money he made he didn’t need to work every weekend.  Rylan’s explanation of his salary, or lack thereof, had been a little exaggerated.  Probably just to piss him off.  Why did that man delight in others’ frustration?  Julian pondered this all seven blocks to the Blue Boy building and couldn’t decide if it was even worth trying to puzzle out as he pulled open the big heavy door.  As soon as the door was open, he was assaulted with the loud, echoing shouts of a man standing up by the front desk.  The marble lobby really wasn’t built with good acoustics in mind.  The echoes doubled back before the sound had fully dissipated thus making a person’s words get all blurry.  Of course, that was only if you were shouting in the space, which was an extremely rare event.  Julian wasn’t sure if he should go in or back out.  Considering the look on Rylan’s face, it would be best not to move and draw attention to himself.

Rylan was standing across from the man who was shouting.  He was white and middle-aged, as were most of the Blue Boy clients, but his suit didn’t look as expensive as the typical member.  He still looked rich, just not truly upper-crusty.  Especially compared to Rylan who was wearing what looked like a designer labeled suit that had been custom tailored to his body.  It was a dark pinstripe suit and today he wore a red silk tie.  He must have had an official meeting or event of some kind because he usually didn’t bother with a tie or the top two to three buttons of his shirt.  So today, he was looking extra debonair.  Which made the irate man look even more second-rate in comparison.  Of course, the yelling and arm-waving weren’t particularly dignified either.

Adam the Receptionist had pushed his chair back from his desk just a little to distance himself from the commotion.  Rylan was listening to the man, but he was frowning.  Usually, Julian would have thought nothing of that expression on that man, but he never frowned at clients.  He was never rude to them nor did he ever show a face that wasn’t professionally courteous if not exactly friendly.  Rylan must actually be quite upset with this man if he was letting his true unhappiness show.  Julian wasn’t entirely sure what the man was upset about because of the fuzzy words.  Finally Rylan cut through the man’s tirade with an abrupt iterance of the man’s name.  The client stopped talking and the echoes faded.  When Rylan spoke, he was very calm, though his voice carried the full weight of his displeasure.  This time the room made the words sharp and clear and just a touch scarier than usual.

“I don’t know what kind of business you think this is, Mr. Foster, but _no one_ here is obligated to have sex with you.  It is up to the discretion of the individual as to what they do with their personal free time.  If you want to pay for sex, I suggest you go hire a prostitute.”

The man’s face contorted into extremely annoyed disbelief.  “Oh, don’t even—”

“Mr. Foster.  Leave these premises at once or your membership will be permanently revoked.”

Mr. Foster stayed put for a good while, staring Rylan down.  Julian had to admit he was impressed with the man’s ability to stand up to Rylan without flinching.  Then he buttoned his suit coat and adjusted his shirt cuffs.

“Fine.  But the next time I’m here, I’d like to see someone who is more agreeable on their free time.”

“I’m sure something can be arranged.”

Mr. Foster turned on his heel and walked away, not giving Rylan a second thought or a second glance.  Julian wondered if the man really had balls that big or if he just didn’t understand how horrible Rylan could be.  Julian was still in the doorway, so he quickly stepped inside to avoid getting shoved out of the way as Mr. Foster left.  Julian started walking toward the desk and didn’t think Rylan had noticed him yet because he was pulling out a cigarette and lighting up.  Before he got too close, Adam caught his eye and gave a curt little shake of his head.  He was warning him off.  Julian immediately redirected his path and headed for one of the side hallways that led to the elevators.  He wasn’t aware that Rylan had followed him until he was on the elevator and turned around to push the button for the fifteenth floor.  He started as discreetly as he could as the glowering man stepped onto the lift.  Julian watched as Rylan blew out the smoke in his mouth with unusual relish.  He wondered if the man had tried to stop smoking and this was his first trip off the wagon.  Then Rylan’s eyes sliced over to Julian.

“Why are you here on a Tuesday?” he snapped.

Julian tried to appear as normal as possible.  Like he hadn’t witnessed why Rylan was in a particularly foul mood.  If one could actually tell the difference from one of his normal moods.

“I’m here for my schedule.”

“You could have called for it,” the man pointed out sourly.

Which was really only half true.  Nothing was ever sent out electronically here and all electronic records were only kept on their closed network.  Julian wasn’t sure there was an actual Internet connection in the whole building.  It was too risky to have that kind of information leak out on the web.  So, any business that wasn’t conducted in person was over secured phone lines.  And since Julian hadn’t actually been issued a secure work cell phone yet, he wasn’t allowed to call for his schedule.  Maybe this would be a good time to point that out and finally get his work cell.  But then again, this might be a really bad time for that.  In fact, it might be bad to point that out at all regardless of whether or not he was asking for a new phone.  So, he decided to change the subject.

“Do you not want me here?” he asked, steering away from _why_ he was there.

“Well!  Just don’t come in your goddamn high school uniform!  We get away with a lot here because a lot of our clients obviously turn a blind eye to us.  But if someone gets wind that high schoolers are coming here, different people are going to start asking a lot more questions.  It doesn’t matter if you’re eighteen or not.”

“Why are you so grumpy?” Julian dared to ask as the elevator arrived at the fifteenth floor.

“Isn’t that the way I always am?” Rylan mumbled around his cigarette.  “According to everyone.”  He took a drag and held the smoke in his lungs, closing his eyes and leaning against the back wall as he did so.  Oh, yeah.  This was Rylan’s first cigarette in a good long while.

Julian stepped partway off the elevator to keep the doors from closing.

“Well, yes.  But right now you’re grumpy even for you.”

Rylan opened his eyes and let the smoke out.  Julian almost wanted to laugh at the glare the man was giving him.

“Are you still POed about Valentine’s Day?” he teased lightly.

Rylan lifted a foot and shoved him gently off the elevator.  Before the doors could close, Julian stuck his arm back in the way, making them open again.  Rylan stood up straight and pulled the cigarette from his mouth, looking more personally upset with Julian now.

“Is there something—”

“How’s Ken?”

Rylan paused and narrowed his eyes just a little.

“I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Julian was surprised he bothered to answer him at all.  Then the man pushed his arm out of the opening.

“He’s under the control of a madman.”

Julian grinned.  “So he finally gave in to you?”

The doors started to shut.

“No,” Rylan said quietly.

Julian tilted his head as the doors shut.  Well, that was…odd.  Either the encounter with Mr. Foster had really disturbed him, or Rylan was having some issues that were preventing him from being himself.  Was Ken the root of those problems?  It didn’t seem likely even if Julian’s inference that Ken now had a boyfriend was true.  Julian shrugged his shoulders to himself.  People were weird.  It was just how the world worked.

Julian walked down the hall to the accounting office.  There was a small desk in the corner where one poor guy was responsible for planning the schedules of 33 employees: 32 escorts and one test dummy.  He wasn’t sure who planned everyone else’s schedules.  Julian knocked on the open door and stepped inside.  The two accountants were too busy on their computers to look up, but Rob the Scheduler peeked out from his corner.  He smiled when he saw Julian.  Julian wished he didn’t feel so uncomfortable around him, but he was one of those really effeminate, barely-actually-a-guy gays.  And it was hard to tell if he was just a sappy, sweet guy or if he had a thing for Julian.

“Hey, Julian.”

And he always spoke in a soft, gentle, I’m-trying-to-lure-small-children-into-my-lair kind of voice.  He was certain Rob wasn’t a pedophile because Rylan was careful about those kinds of things.  But he sounded a bit like Michael Jackson, which was always a little creepy.

“Hi, Rob.”

“You’re here for your schedule?”

“Yeah.  If there’s even anything for me.”

“Well.  There is one interview I could give you.  I know it’s usually not worth it just for one interview, but we expect a serious upswing starting next week.  So, it might be good to get this one out of the way.”

“Define ‘serious upswing’ before I make my decision.”

“Well, spring fever and all that.  You could have up to six a day on both days.”

“Really.”  Julian made a face.  He was going to spend his weekend talking to a dozen or more pervy, horny old men?  What the hell kind of job had he gotten himself into?  He sighed.

“Can I do this one interview during the week?  I know Rylan and the clients normally don’t like that, but maybe this one won’t mind.”

“Well…I could ask him.  But…”

“What?”

Rob fidgeted.

“What is it?”

“Rylan sent out a memo on Monday that if you show up in your school uniform one more time you were to be thrown out of the building.  Literally.  No matter what floor you were on.”

“Unh-huh.”  Julian rolled his eyes.  “Fine.  I’ll change before I come over.  So, can you ask the client?”

“Sure.”

“Hey,” said one of the accountants, “does this mean we get to toss him out the window now?”

Julian gave the man a little glare and he grinned back.

“Look, if you want to put your hands on my body you just need to ask,” Julian said snootily.  “I’ll turn you down, but you should still ask first.”

“Whatever.  I’m straight.”

The other accountant snorted.

“I am!”

“I’ll ask the client and have an answer for you by Friday if you want to stop by again then,” Rob said.

“Okay.”  Julian took off his blazer.  “So, when do I get a work phone of my very own?”

“Your one year anniversary.”

“Crap.”  He yanked on his tie and pulled it off.  Now he was just wearing pants and a white dress shirt.  That didn’t look particularly school uniform-y.  “Well, thanks, Rob.  I’ll swing by Friday and keep my weekend open until then.”

“Thanks, Julian.  You’re such a sweet, accommodating boy.”

Julian half-smiled.  Was that a compliment?

“Well, anyone is compared to the other riffraff that work here,” muttered one of the accountants.

“Why are you always so down on them?” asked the other.

Julian gave a little wave to Rob and made a quick exit.  He didn’t want to listen to another one of the escorts are stupid whores/down on their luck victims debate between the two accountants.  They always tried to draw other people into it.  And Julian couldn’t pick a side because depending on which escort they were talking about his opinion changed.  He really didn’t like Ian.

On his way down in the elevator, it stopped on the tenth floor.  Tyler was leaning on what looked like one of the carts that hotel staff used when they were cleaning rooms.  He straightened when he saw Julian.

“Hi, Julian, old buddy, old pal!”

Julian stepped to the side so that Tyler could push the cart on.  He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and his hair was pulled half back.  He wasn’t working today.  At least, not as an escort.

“What do you want, Tyler?”

“Aw, come on, can’t I just enjoy the pleasure of your company?”

“Yes.  But you usually want something else with it.”

“True.”

He pushed the button for the fifth floor.  The slightly mysterious and extremely sketchy open floor above the main room where all the closed doors were.

“I’m on laundry duty this week.  So, I’ve got to change the sheets on all the used beds and replace the water bottles and stuff.”  He smiled prettily at Julian.  “Be a pal and help me out?”

“Tyler—”

The doors opened and Tyler made a puppy dog face.

“Pleeeeeeeease.  It’ll go really fast.  It’s like four or five rooms.  I think.”

Tyler pushed the cart halfway off and laced his fingers together in a pleading gesture as he silently mouthed “please please please” over and over.  Julian one: didn’t really want to.  And two: needed to buy supplies for the barbeque.  Tyler started letting out little keening sounds of pathetic-ness.

“Fine.  But only for an hour.  I have some errands to run.”

“Sweet!  I promise it won’t take longer than that.”

“Well, that’s okay because even if it does…”

“You won’t be here.”

Julian smiled and nodded as he helped push the cart off onto the floor.

“Aren’t you curious to see what’s up here anyway?” Tyler asked as they stepped out onto the open balcony.

“Um.  No.”

“God, you really are straight, aren’t you?”

“Mostly.”

Tyler gave him a smile for that answer.  They rolled the cart past a couple of doors.  Julian wondered how he knew which ones needed to be changed and which ones weren’t…occupied.

“Don’t you guys have English-impaired, illegal immigrants to do this kind of work?” Julian asked.

“No.  It’s cheaper to make it part of the ‘duties’ of the necessary employees.”

“Are you still not on active duty?”

“No, I am.  We all have to take a turn.  It’s kind of like working in a restaurant where you have to buss your own tables.”

“Oh, gross,” Julian laughed.

Tyler stopped at a door and Julian wondered about the escort’s sabbatical.  Why had he been off duty?  It seemed like it was a health reason.  Would it be impolite to ask?

Tyler opened the door and Julian was accosted with the sights and sounds of two dudes going at it.

“Whoa!”

He backed up and looked at the ceiling.  He was making his brain try not to process the images so that he wouldn’t be able to piece together what that tangle of limbs had been.

“Sorry,” Tyler said, not sounding the least bit embarrassed.

“Mr. Weiss!” the escort in the room admonished teasingly.  “Did you take off the occupied sign again?”

“Um…”

“I _told_ you.  If you like to have someone watch, there are plenty of guys downstairs who would _love_ to volunteer.”

“Oh…no, no.  Of course not.  That’s silly.”

Julian didn’t see it because he was still staring at the ceiling, but he was pretty certain the two escorts just exchanged looks in the brief silence that followed.

“Well,” Tyler said, “sorry to have disturbed you.”

The door shut and Julian let out the air he’d been holding.

“Good grief,” Tyler half-laughed.  “Are you heterosexual or a virgin?”

Julian looked at him.  “Both actually.”

Tyler put a fist to his mouth.  “Oh.  I want it.”

Julian made a face at him.  Tyler turned what looked like a lock on the door and Julian noticed for the first time that there was a small rectangular slot above the doorknob.  As the switch was turned, the rectangle went from orange to red.  He looked back at the other doors they had passed.  They had either green or red rectangles.  Julian assumed that green meant it was available, red meant occupied, and orange must mean it was empty, but had been used.  They continued on to the next orange room.

“That’s funny,” Julian commented.  “It’s like an airplane bathroom.”

“Kind of,” Tyler said.  “Except they don’t lock.  Safety reasons.”

“Ah.”  It bothered Julian how many “safety” measures were implemented by Blue Boy.  Not because they had them, but because they needed them.

This time the door they opened was thankfully concealing nothing but an empty room.  There was a desk and chair at one end and a bed with wadded up sheets at the other.  Other than that, there was no other furniture or…paraphernalia.  Though Julian did notice that there was a removable plastic covering on the ceiling over the bed.  He couldn’t help it.  His first thought was “sex swing.”  And for all he knew he was right.

“Hey,” Tyler got his attention.  “Check the seals on the water bottles on the desk.  If they’ve been opened there are some replacement bottles on the cart.”

He was pulling on a pair of latex gloves.  Julian shook his head.  Sex was so gross.  Why did he want to have it?  He shook off that thought and walked over to the desk.  There were two bottles of water and neither looked like they had been opened, but Julian picked them up and checked anyway.  Then he turned around and sat on the desk.  He watched Tyler pull off the sheets and stuff them into the bin on the end of the cart.  There was no bedspread or dust ruffle or anything else decorative.  He turned his head and looked at the drawers on one side of the desk.  He used a finger to nudge one open.  He didn’t need to get it very far before he realized that that was where they stored the “paraphernalia.”  He shut it and focused on the escort nonchalantly cleaning up someone else’s sexcapades.

“Hey, Tyler?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

The pretty boy gave him a flirty smile as he snapped off the gloves.  “Sure.”

“How did you end up here?”

“Ah.”  Tyler’s face now matched his utterance.  Then he shrugged.  “I told you.  At Thanksgiving, you know?  It’s a pretty typical story here.”

Julian nodded.  If Tyler didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to push.  Tyler threw the gloves away and then bent over and pulled out some fresh sheets from the bottom of the cart.  He plopped them on the bed and turned to Julian.

“What, you really want to know all the horrible, sad specific details?”

“Yes,” Julian said honestly.  “But if you don’t want to tell me…”

Tyler took in a breath and let it out slowly as he looked Julian over.  “It’s fine.  I don’t mind.  It’s not like it’s a secret or anything.  It’s just…baggage, you know?  I didn’t think you’d want it on you.”

“I didn’t when I first met you.  I didn’t care.  But I think of you as a friend now.  And I’d like to know more about you.  Where you came from.  Who you are.  If you’re willing to share it with me.”

Tyler put his hands on his narrow waist and strummed his fingers as he chewed on his lip.  He was looking at Julian not like he was nervous about divulging his past, but like he was trying to figure something out.

“Okay.  I’ll talk.  But you need to get your butt over here and help.”

Julian eased off the desk and walked over to catch the flying end of the fitted sheet that Tyler was shaking out.

“Okay.  It all started on a chilly January morning in Lawton, Oklahoma when a little bundle of joy of the male variety was dropped off on the Williams’ doorstep.”

Julian smiled and rolled his eyes as he stretched the sheet over the mattress.

“Flash forward twelve years and the little Williams’ boy, called Tyler or Ty, realizes he’s gay.  Every boy in the class liked Jenny Ripple…and he liked her shoes.  And her older brother.”  Tyler pointed a finger at Julian.  “He was hot.”

“Okay.”  They worked on pulling the sheet over the top of the mattress.

“But, I guess the answer to your question starts when little Tyler’s _father_ realized he was gay.”

“Are you going to tell the whole story in third person?”

“Maybe.”

Tyler threw the flat sheet at him and Julian started to unfold it.  Tyler was looking down at the bed.  It seemed like he was trying to figure out how to tell the story from there.  Julian wondered if he should just tell him that he didn’t have to talk about it.  He was certain the past bothered him more than he was willing to admit.

“It’s so stupid,” Tyler said softly.  “Even after all this time, I still have this hope that it was just the circumstances that set him off like that.  Like, it would have made a difference if I’d had the chance to tell him myself.  Or if he hadn’t…”  Tyler started to help smooth out the sheet on the bed.  His whole aura had shifted.  Julian wondered if Tyler ever let himself think about it at all.  “I mean, it wouldn’t have been pretty regardless, you know?  But.  Maybe I wouldn’t have left home until I was older.”  Tyler absentmindedly made a hospital corner.  “It’s weird.  I like, want it to have been both better and just as bad.  Like, I would have wound up in the same place no matter how it went down.  But to be here and believe that my parents really didn’t hate me _that_ much.”

Julian stood silent.  He had asked to hear the story, but he’d been thinking it would mostly be about living on the streets.  It never occurred to him that the real reason he was at Blue Boy was because of the reason he’d been on the streets.  He didn’t want to hear a story about parents rejecting their child.  But, he owed Tyler to hear him out.  He’d got the ball rolling after all.  Tyler walked to the end of the bed and sat down.  Julian sat beside him.  Tyler shook himself and sat up straighter.  Julian felt his energy shift again.  He’d pulled himself out of the sudden and unexpected depression that had hit him.  Now it seemed like he was ready to just tell the story.

“To be fair to my parents about the whole hating me thing…like I said.  We were from Oklahoma, so they were a little…a _lot_ homophobic.  And it was rather shocking how they found out.

“I started fooling around with boys when I was like, 14.  And by 15 I was having sex.  And it’s not like that’s weird.  Other boys my age were doing it too.  Just.  With girls.”

Julian wondered who he was trying to justify himself to: himself, Julian, or the mass opinion that homos were promiscuous sluts.

“So, one night my parents are going to be out at my younger brothers’ band concert.  They were both percussionists.  That’s a detail that’s easy to remember.  My parents told me they were going to go straight from work and then take them out for dinner afterwards.  I said I had a paper to write so I couldn’t go.  Really, I just wanted to use the chance to have any empty house so I could have my…well, he wasn’t exactly a boyfriend.”

Tyler paused and shook his head.  “I have no idea why they stopped home first.  Never heard that part of it.  But the long and the short of it is that my dad walked in on us having sex.  Which would have been shocking enough, but…geez.”  Tyler laughed and he sounded a little embarrassed.  “It was _so_ bad.  I was, like, hanging backwards off the bed with my legs straight up in the air and the other guy…I can _not_ remember his name…was kind of on his knees and bouncing into me.”  Tyler ran a hand over his eyes.  “Man, he saw it all face on.  And I know I must have been making _ridiculous_ sounds.  Oh, God.  Anyway.  My dad snapped.  Totally Hulked out on me.  He just started screaming and yelling and hitting at us.  He knocked the guy off the bed and grabbed me by the hair.  I don’t know what the guy did.  Ran out the back door I guess.  But my dad was screaming right in my face.  So loudly.  Using obscenities I’d never even heard before.  He dragged me down the hall really violently.  I couldn’t stay on my feet and kept running into walls.  He dragged me right to the front door, out of the house, and then shoved me onto the front lawn.  Completely naked.  And he was still screaming at the top of his lungs.  God, the things he said.  I won’t repeat any of them but I haven’t forgotten a single one.

“My mother was in the car with the engine running.  Obviously this had just been a quick trip.  He could have gone in and out and never known if he just hadn’t come in my room.  If he’d decided not to check on me.  Or if I hadn’t been so loud and drawn his attention.  Or if I hadn’t been so loud and heard him come in.  Well.  Whatever.  So, my mom is sitting in the car, looking absolutely shocked.  She starts to get out and my dad yells at her to get back in the car.  He turns to me and the last thing he tells me is to disappear from their lives and if I ever showed my face to him again he’d kill me.”

“My God.”

“I know, right?  I’m freaked, disoriented, absolutely humiliated.  I’m naked on the front lawn being told to get my faggy ass out of town before he or someone else kills me.  And yet, the worse thing had yet to happen.  My father gets in the car and I can see my mother ask what’s going on.  I don’t know in what manner he explained it to her, but when she looked at me…her face went from worry and concern to hate and disgust.  It was like a switch.  Like I had gone from being her son to some horrible pervert who had broken into her home and raped and killed her son.  It was the absolute worst feeling of my life to see my mother look at me like that.”

Julian put a hand to his mouth and felt tears stinging his eyes.  He couldn’t imagine it.  He couldn’t.  Not even his own grandparents had been that horrible, had they?

“And then they drove off.”  Tyler leaned back on his elbows and looked at the ceiling.  “So, there I am.  Butt naked on the front lawn.  I don’t even know if anyone else saw me.  I ran to the front door…and it was locked.  He’d locked me out of the house.  Literally, with nothing.  So, I walked around to the back of the house and crawled in my bedroom window.  It was a ranch style home, so everything was on the first floor.  And when I say ‘walk,’ I mean stumble crying and bawling like a little bitch.  I was hysterical and not even thinking let alone rationally.  I just started throwing things randomly into a bag.  Crying and cursing and promising never to come back.  And I think that if I’d left like that…If I’d left with just the stuff I had happened to throw in then and that upset…eventually I would have come back.  Because I probably would have hid at the school or the park.  And in a few days I would have gone back.  I don’t know what they would have done, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to stay away.  But, you know how little things happen and we call them fate?  Well, mine was a stubbed toe.

“I stubbed my toe on the dresser and my God did it hurt.  I wound up on the floor crying and holding my foot.  And then I laid back on the floor and took in calming breaths while I waited for the pain to subside.  When it did, I was calm.  And able to think again.  I realized they were probably still going to go to the concert and dinner afterwards.  I had time.  So, I took a shower to help me calm down a little more.  And when I got out, I looked at myself in the mirror.  The whole left side of my face was already bruising.  I didn’t even remember him hitting me.  And my dad is not a violent man.  I’d never even been spanked in my entire life.  Seeing that affected me more than anything.  I think…that made me actually believe just a little bit that he might kill me.

“I calmly repacked my bag.  I made sure not to take anything that was remotely valuable in case they would file a police report.  I only took the money I’d earned from summer jobs.  I made sure not to take anything they’d miss.  Because then they’d probably just let me go.  I walked rather than take my bike to the bus station and got on the next bus leaving town.  I didn’t care where it was going; I just had to get out of Lawton as soon as possible.  I went to Oklahoma City and then transferred to the first bus going to New York City.  On the way, there was a layover here.  I got off to use the bathroom and get something to eat.  And…I just never got back on the bus.  I couldn’t tell you what made me decide to stay here.  Maybe I thought it would be easier to get lost in a slightly smaller city.  Kids runaway to New York and Los Angeles.  I bet not many people would think to look here for a runaway.”

Tyler lay back fully on the bed and put his hands under his head.  Julian was grateful because it gave him the privacy he needed to wipe away a couple of stray tears.  Hopefully the story wouldn’t get any sadder.  Julian laughed softly to himself.  He had a feeling the really bad part was just about to begin.

“So, I knew my money wasn’t going to last.  I had barely two hundred dollars when I left the house.  And I looked _way_ too young to pass for eighteen.  I had to get a job that would pay in cash and not care who or how old I was.  You know, like dishwashing or a delivery boy or something.  But, shit, it’s not like it is on TV.  A lot of people are worried about the IRS.  I have no idea how the Mexicans do it.  I couldn’t get a job at all.  And I stayed away from shelters and places like that.  I knew I looked underage and I didn’t want some well-meaning do-gooder snooping in my business and calling child services or something.  If I lied they probably wouldn’t connect me with any missing person cases in Oklahoma—if one was ever filed—but I didn’t want to risk it.

“I scraped by on the money I had and panhandled enough to sort of live off of for the next six months.  And then winter came.  It gets cold in Oklahoma, but you never realize just what cold weather is until you don’t have a place to go inside to get away from it.  The best I could find was an old abandoned building that a whole bunch of people squatted in.  It had no windows, no doors, and I think the insulation was stripped from it or never finished.  All I know is that it was little better than a cardboard box at keeping the cold at bay.  But then, when it turned freezing—it was so fucking cold.  I mean, it was so cold all you wanted to do was sleep, but you’re too hungry to sleep.

“Even then, though, it never once crossed my mind that I would have to resort to stealing or prostitution.  I thought for sure I’d give in and go to a shelter before that.  But it had barely been half a year.  I was just too worried that I hadn’t been gone long enough for people to stop looking—if they ever started.  So, I stayed away.  I ran out of money.  I got hungry.  I had gotten used to eating less, but I went three days with nothing but water.  I was feeling lightheaded and weak.  I kept thinking it should be around Thanksgiving or Christmas, shouldn’t people be willing to give a homeless boy some spare change?  And I think I was so hungry that I lost it a little because I kept thinking I was owed something.  That I had given out money to homeless people before, why wasn’t I getting any back?  I deserved it, you know?  So.  I picked a pocket.  And totally got caught.  I just took off running.  I was scared out of my mind.  I couldn’t get picked up by the police.  I ran and people chased me, but I somehow managed to get away despite having no energy at all.  I guess that was all adrenaline.  Because when I was hiding, I crashed.  I felt nauseous and guilty and so hungry—and it didn’t even matter.  I had dropped the damn wallet.  I still had no money.

“Day four came.  And I ate out of dumpster.  Day five came, and I was ready to forget the shelter and just go home.  Maybe being gone for six months had scared them enough that they’d feel bad for what they said and would take me back.  So, I’m sitting in an alley, half-imagining, half-hallucinating that my parents are happily inviting me back home and feeding me warm, yummy soup when I hear an argument.  Behind a dumpster two johns were arguing over who got to have a BJ first from a scrawny kid.  One guy said he was in a hurry and had an appointment and the other one was like, ‘Well, I was here first.’  So, I didn’t allow myself to think.  I just saw that the kid they were arguing over was a boy and I stepped forward and said I could take the guy who was in a hurry.

“Jesus.  Then it happened so fast.  He just walked over to me, shoved me to my knees, and whipped it out.  He rolls a condom on and shoves it in my mouth before I even have a chance to have second thoughts.  I mean, it’s not like I’d never given head before…but what I was doing at that moment.  I was taking some stranger for money.  I had crossed a line I hadn’t even known had been at my feet the whole time.  Then the guy yelled at me because I was just sitting there, so I stopped thinking.  And just did what I thought I had to do.  It didn’t take long at all.  And since he was wearing a condom it didn’t actually get in my mouth or anything.  So, he zips up, drops a twenty, and walks away.  I just sat there.  Kind of in shock at what I had done.  The other kid was still going down on the other guy, but I could see him eyeing the twenty on the ground.  I snatched it up and ran away.  First place I went was McDonald’s.  It was one of the best friggin’ hamburgers I’d ever had in my life that night.”

Julian smiled and turned partially to look at Tyler.  He sat up and crossed his legs Indian style.

“Keep going?” he asked.

Julian nodded.

“So.  Where was I?  Ah, yes.  My first income for a sexual act.  I made that twenty dollars last a week.  And you know…it had been so easy and quick to get that twenty dollars.  Begging and starving and looking for non-existent odd jobs just weren’t strong enough to support my sense of dignity and self-worth.  Of course, I told myself I would only do it when I was desperate.  That I would only do it again once I was completely out of money and had no other way of getting more quickly.  But it really was just so much easier to find a john in a dark alley.  And as with any new career, you meet new people and learn more about your job.  I found a group of boys closer to my age and they told me where to hang out to find my clientele.  You know, some men want women, some want men, some want young girls, and some want young boys.  And they all had specific territories.  Since I was new I always got last pick, but since I was pretty, sometimes I got picked first anyway.”

Tyler rubbed the back of his head and looked away.  “Look.  I don’t want to gross you out with the details, but I eventually spent all my time doing that.  Offering more and more services if you know what I mean.  But when you do that…things start to get bad fast.  You get fucked, and then you don’t get paid.  You get chased by police and always have to try to figure out if an unfamiliar john is a set up.  And sometimes, well, it just grossed you out.  Some men are just gross, you know?  They want to slobber on you.  Or kiss you.  Or do weird ass shit with you.  It’s really…Every bad thing you’d ever read about in the news or seen on TV of what pros do and what gets done to them…it’s all true.  And then some.  And if you stay on the streets long enough, it all happens to you.  It was such a miserable existence, Julian, but I convinced myself that it wasn’t because, hey, I’m alive.  And not living with my horrible, no-good parents.

“Of course, ‘alive’ is a relative term, isn’t it?  I got so sick.  Not just from disease, that happened too, but I mean malnutrition.  I lived off fast food.  After seeing that documentary that guy made, I understand why now.  And as for the other kind of sick—I got cold sores all the time.  And I usually ran if I thought a guy looked like he had something, but you know, they pay more if you don’t make them use a condom.  I got lucky.  I never picked up anything serious.  And I bet you’re probably thinking it must not be so uncommon considering there are thirty clean pros here at Blue Boy.  But…we’re not all from here.  The vast majority of the others that work here were picked up by Rylan in other cities like New York, LA, New Orleans, Miami.  Out of all the major cities in the country over a period of about ten or twelve years, he’s only found thirty that he can use.  That kind of puts the numbers in perspective, huh?  And I still don’t know how he chooses us.  I’m sure a lot of the ones he picks up aren’t clean and…I honestly don’t know what he does with them.  But, how could he tell me apart from anyone else?  I was skinny, scabby, and sallow.  I know I looked awful, but I tried to pretend I didn’t.

“Oh, yes, even _then_ I still had my pride.  I would occasionally use my money to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste.  And I would try to clean up in restaurant bathrooms.  Wipe my face and neck.  Wash other more— _used_ areas.  Actually, I made pretty decent money.  Never enough to cover rent or anything like that, but I hadn’t gone hungry in months.  I could sometimes buy shoes or a shirt at the Goodwill store.  But I was still too nervous to go to shelters.  I didn’t look anywhere near eighteen.  I had a baby face right up until I was twenty or so.  Fortunately it straightened out into something pretty as opposed to other baby faces who wind up looking a little creepy.  You know?”

Julian smiled and nodded.

“So.  There came my second winter on the streets.  I’d just turned seventeen in January.  And I think I caught a cold.  It could have been the flu, but honestly, any sort of bug would have knocked me on my ass.  And it did.  I was unhealthy, you know?  So, I couldn’t even fight off a simple virus.  I was so sick I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat, I could barely even move.  I was in that state where you just kind of move as slowly as you can so your body won’t ache worse and when you do your vision is slow to follow it and you almost feel like you’re drugged.  You know what I mean?”

Julian nodded again.  Of course, when he’d had that feeling it had been because he was actually drugged on Nyquil and tucked away safely and warmly in bed.

“I was so sick and tired that I actually slept deeply.  Which is about the most dangerous thing you can do on the streets.  I got rolled.  They took all my money, my jacket, and my shoes.  When I came out of my fever I was nearing frostbite on my feet.  I have no idea how long I was sick for or how many days passed that I didn’t eat.  I know it was at least two because I do remember seeing the sun rise twice.  I was still weak and sick, but I knew I had to get some kind of cover for my feet.  But, I didn’t have any money.  I managed to get down to the alley beside the building I was squatting in and dug around in the dumpsters.  For the first time I regretted distancing myself from the other boys.  I’m not sure if they would have helped if I’d been closer to them, but I _know_ they wouldn’t have helped me then.  And I couldn’t find anything that would protect my feet.  I thought about going to a shelter, but was worried I wouldn’t make it on bare feet.  And I could barely stand.  Just getting down to the street had winded me.  For some reason I thought if I just got a little money and some food, I could go to a shelter and survive the night.  That’s all I needed…to survive the night.

“Have you ever been in the place between waking and sleeping where you think you’re getting up and doing things, but you’re not?  Like you think you’ve gotten up and showered and are getting ready for school…but then you come out of it and you’re still in bed?”

Julian nodded.  “Yeah.  It’s nice because you feel like you’re doing something, but then when you realize you’re not, it kind of makes it harder to actually get up.”

“Exactly.  That’s where I was.  I kept thinking I was going places and doing something, but really I was sitting beside a dumpster in a dark alley, not even moving.  And I was hidden from view.  You would have only been able to see me if you walked all the way down and around the dumpster.  No one would ever see me there.  I was freezing, starving, and too sick to do anything about it.  I would have died that night.”

Julian tried to swallow quietly.  He was nervous and anxious.  Clearly he knew Tyler didn’t die that night, but what had happened?  How had he survived that night?  How could anyone?  Why had Tyler had to go through that at all?  Because he was gay and had jerks for parents?  That wasn’t fair.  Forget fair, that wasn’t _right_.

“Then someone nudged me awake.  I was vaguely aware that some guy was trying to make me stand up, but I just couldn’t do it.  I was too tired.  I just didn’t want to.  I kind of wanted to give up.  But, since he was there, I figured maybe I could get the money I needed.  Like having money would do me any good if I couldn’t actually walk anywhere to use it.  So, I just tell the guy to do me right there on the ground.  I didn’t care which end.  I just asked that he please leave some money so that I could eat.  I figured that sounded more pitiful than saying I needed shoes.  But this guy just wouldn’t do it.  He finally got me to my feet and made me walk.  Or he dragged me.  He dragged me out of the alley, and kept walking.  Right out of the slums.  So, now I’m thinking it’s a cop.  I tried to fight him and escape, but I think that was in my head.  I don’t think I actually moved a muscle in my defense.  But then we don’t get in a police car, we get in a taxi.  _Now_ , I’m really worried.  This guy isn’t a cop.  He _is_ just some guy that wants to do me.  And while some guys would leave the streets and go with a John somewhere, I never did.  It was just too dangerous to lose any of the control.

“I’m freaking out—when I’m lucid.  Which wasn’t a whole lot of the time because I don’t even remember the cab ride.  I do remember stairs, but I don’t remember a door.  Just the inside of an apartment.  And at this point my mind is the only part of me still weakly functioning and I’m thinking the worst.  That he’s brought me there for a gang bang.  Or to make amateur porn.  Or to shoot drugs.  Or he wants to do water sports.  I didn’t know.  Then…the guy says he’ll feed me when I’m clean and leaves me alone in a bathroom.  This made me feel a little better about the situation.  He was one of those repressed homos who when they finally breakdown and hire a pro have to take them home and clean them off first.  And honestly, I didn’t even care what he wanted anymore.  I was feeling a little warmer and I had been promised food.  I was ready to let him film me while some guy peed on me.  Or had a dog lick me off.  Seriously.  I would have done _anything_ that night.”

Tyler closed his eyes for a moment.  Julian wondered if he was thinking about what had happened next or what would have happened if he really had done _anything_ next.  Julian refused to believe that the story was going to get worse.  This had to be the end.  This had to be when he got saved, right?  Tyler opened his eyes and met Julian’s.  The blue of his irises was clouded with a lifetime’s worth of hardship.

“It’s amazing what a little hope can do for you.  I actually managed to stand up on my own and got into the shower.  I hadn’t had a warm, real shower since I’d left home.  And when I got in…the water turned brown.  Dirt just kept coming off no matter how long I stayed under the water.  I realized that…I was dirty.  And no amount of washing up in restaurant bathrooms could keep off the filth of living on the streets.  And I finally broke down.  I finally realized how pathetic and sad my life had become.  I couldn’t stand anymore and slumped down to the floor, naked and crying in some stranger’s bathroom.  I think I had finally reached that point where I would have completely lost myself.  Who I was as a person.  I was so hungry and cold and disgusted with myself that I would have done sick sexual shit with some freak…and that would have been the end of me.  I’m sure my body would have gone on living, but _me_ …I would have died.  But…by the grace of God, you know?

“The man who had picked me up was Rylan.”

Julian let out a quiet, shaky breath.  His ill-ease was dissipating.  Thank goodness this story was taking a turn for the better.

“He came back in the bathroom and found me crying.  At first I thought he was going to yell at me or beat me or something.  But he picked up a washcloth and scrubbed my face.  Rather hard too,” he said making a small face at the memory.  “Then he held my chin and looked at me.  Then he said—and I’ll never forget it—‘I’ve seen you around before.  I knew there was a pretty face under all that crap.’”

Julian let out a little laugh.  Tyler waved a hand.

“Typical, Rylan, right?  I didn’t know if that was a compliment or an insult.  Then…well.  Okay, this part is going to sound weird and little creepy…but then he bathed me.  Not like, ‘Ooo, feel you up with a bar of soap’ kind of way, but he just cleaned me off.  He got all the dirt off me, and had to use three wash cloths to do it.  He washed my hair about four times.  And he used a file to get the dirt out from under my nails.  And then he dried me off too.  And like, gave me a massage.  But again, not in a ‘I want a happy ending’ kind of way, but like—well…I guess how you rub a horse down after a hard run?  To relax his muscles and make him feel better?”  Tyler laughed a little embarrassedly.  “I guess that sounds kind of weird.”

Julian smiled awkwardly.  “Not that weird.”

“At the time it didn’t seem weird.  Not at all.  It just felt _so_ good to be touched, to have human contact and interaction that wasn’t sexual.  It was so calming and relaxing.  I felt _safe_ for the first time in almost two years.  And it’s strange.  Like, if he’d been all sweet and really nice, I would have been suspicious and definitely not felt safe.  But you know Rylan.  He was kind of business-like about it.  Like, I knew he had reasons for doing this for me, and he wasn’t trying to make it seem like it was just out of the goodness of his heart.  And yet, there was real compassion in his hands, his eyes, and his few words.  I could feel that.”  Tyler let out a little laugh.  “I know you would never believe that of Rylan.”

Julian half-shrugged.  “I think I understand.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right.  He saved you too.  Though your story is a little different from mine, huh?”

Julian wasn’t sure if he nodded.  He kind of felt ashamed of his behavior back then when he compared his problems to Tyler’s.  But he didn’t really think there was any other way for him to have reacted and dealt with it.  That’s just what had happened to him.  He could feel Tyler watching him, but he wouldn’t meet his eyes.  He may have told Tyler he was ready to hear his story, but he wasn’t necessarily ready to share his own in return.  He wondered if Tyler would understand that.

“Anyway,” Tyler continued, “I was safe.  I was warm.  And then I was fed.  It was great.  And then it all shattered.”

Julian whipped his head up.  “No.  What happened?  I thought you were safe now!”

Tyler smiled and patted Julian’s knee.  “Calm down.  It was only for a moment.  He led me to a bedroom and I thought that there was the other shoe finally dropping.  He wanted sex now.  I was ready to breakdown again.  But then he tucked me into bed.  Actually pulled the covers up to my chin and everything.  He told me I could leave as soon as he left the room.  I could sleep a few hours and leave, or I could stay until the morning.  He left a couple hundred dollars on the bedside table and said I could leave at any time.  I thought about it.  Just taking the money and running, but it had been a long time since I’d slept in a bed.  So, I thought I’d go ahead and sleep through the night.  And I did.  I have never slept so well as that night, before or since.

“The next morning I looked at the money.  I wondered if I should just take it and go, but then I figured I might be able to get one more free meal out of the guy.  So I get up and go looking for him, and I realize that he’s left me alone in the apartment.  With a lot of expensive equipment and stuff.  It would have been so easy to get someone inside and hock his stuff.  Or I could have stolen whatever I could have walked out with.  Except his bedroom.  That was the only door he locked.  And I was gonna do it too.  Rip off the poor sap who had taken in the dirty whore from the streets.  Well, I kept telling myself I was going to.  But I kept looking outside and it was all grey and depressing and every now and then a snowflake swirled down.  I just didn’t want to go back out into the cold.  So, I stayed in and watched TV all day.  I ate so much food out of his pantry.  And almost all of his fruit.  Then I took another shower.  Followed by a bath.”

Julian smiled.

“And then Rylan came home.  I felt a little awkward sitting on his couch, watching his TV, drinking his soda, in the clean clothes he’d given me when he’d obviously come home from working all day.  I had no idea what to expect.  And yet I was still surprised when he just made me dinner.  And of course, I tried to be all tough and whatever.  I was like, ‘Why you’d pick me up?’ and ‘What do you want from me?’  He was reading a newspaper and just ignored me.  When I _finally_ shut-up, he asked how old I was.  I told him I was eighteen.  He dropped the paper and looked me right in the eyes.  It was the first time I saw the real him.  He told me I got to lie to him exactly once.  It wasn’t like he was threatening me…but letting me know that whether or not I continued to receive his help was now entirely in my own hands.  Then he asked me how old I was again, and I told him the truth.”

“Was there really another option?”

“Right?  Then he asked if I always used condoms.  I hesitated.  But I told him the truth again.  Then he said that if I wanted to stay another night I was going to have to agree to go to the free clinic in the morning and get a full STD panel.  I’m not sure what my first response would have been because then he looked in the paper and commented how they were predicting that it might drop into the single digits that night.  I told him I had no problem going to the clinic in the morning.”

Julian laughed.  “You are a smart guy.”

“I don’t know why more people don’t see that.  So, I went to the clinic and my tests came back clean.  I’m not sure what would have happened if any of them had been positive, but the way my story goes is that I would be useful to Rylan, so he kept me.  I lived with him for a year, getting tested every six weeks for six months.  The tests always came back clean.  And I was eating better, so I got healthier.  Rylan told me that when I was eighteen I would be on my own…but he would be willing to offer me a job.  As an escort, of course.  So, I’d still have to have sex with men for a living, but at least it would be a lot safer and much more lucrative.  It would even come with health and dental insurance.”

“I don’t get benefits!”

“You’re part time.  So, believe it or not, but I _didn’t_ jump at the chance to get back into prostitution.  It had been almost a year since I’d had sex…and it felt great.  I didn’t know if I wanted to get back into that meaningless pounding of flesh.  Rylan also offered to direct me to a community outreach program if I didn’t want his job.  You know, so I could get my GED or technical training that I could use to get a job.  But if I did that…I would be gone from his life.  That’s what made me hesitate: losing Rylan.  Of all things.  Then he sweetened the offer a little.  I didn’t have to start as an escort right away.  I just had to be a test dummy.  If I did that for him for three years, then he would give me the option of becoming an escort or taking a desk job.  It seemed fair to me.  Especially after a year of a bed and healthy meals.  Talking to horny old men on the weekends really isn’t a bad gig.”

“It’s kind of not.”

“I mean, Rylan wasn’t going to be my pimp.  He wasn’t going to force me into sex.  At least, that’s what he said and I believed him.  And honestly, I thought in three years I’d probably be long gone.  Or that I would just take the desk job.  But then you see how much money the escorts make for surprisingly little work.  It didn’t seem that bad.  So, I agreed to do it.  And…here I am today.”

Julian stared at him.  Tyler smiled.

“Any questions?”

“What was it like living with Rylan for a year?”

Tyler laughed.  “After that story and _that’s_ what you’re curious about.  Well.  It was good.  I actually didn’t see him that much.  He was really busy that year building up his business and getting the new location ready.  This building has only been open and _fully_ operational for about five years now.  But…living with him was also a little weird.  When he was home we ate meals together.  And we watched TV together.  And sometimes he would take me places to go shopping for clothes or to a basketball game or something.  We just…never talked a whole lot.  I guess we didn’t feel the need to.”

Julian wiggled his fingers.  Then he had to ask.  “Sex?”

“Nooo…we never did have sex.  We made out a few times.  I thought he might like me, but then I figured out he was coming to me only after getting rebuffed by his friend.  Apparently the guy had just moved back into town that year so Rylan spent a lot of time with him.  But he was so… _Rylan_ about it.  Like, he never acted interested in the guy, but then he would whine and complain to me every time his friend told him about a new boyfriend or something.  So, he’d love on me instead.  And it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it.  I totally did.  Though he’d never go all the way with me.  And what I _couldn’t_ figure out was if he stopped because I was underage or if he just loved his friend that much.”

“Hmm.”  Julian nodded, perfectly capable of imagining Rylan acting that way over Ken.

“Hey,” Tyler said.  “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“Do _you_ know who I’m thinking about?”

“Talk, dark, and handsome?”

“Fucking handsome?”

“Hell yeah.  I would _love_ to get me some of that.  He does sometimes get an escort here, but he never goes to the main room.  He lets Rylan pick them out.  I was really surprised when he picked me once.  Unfortunately there was a thing and I couldn’t make the appointment, but I was kind of proud that Rylan was willing to offer me to his ‘special’ friend.”

Julian thought it was weird to be proud of being offered up to be someone’s sex toy, but whatever.

“So, do you know what’s going on there?  Between Rylan and the friend?”

“Eh, not really.  We’ve all caught snippets of conversation here or there.  Or heard a story or two.  We’ve pieced it together a little bit.  The best we can figure is that they went to college together.  And sort of dated.  Well, the friend had a thing for Rylan, and Rylan kind of used him as a fuck buddy.  And then they go their separate ways.  And I guess the friend finally managed to move on because he doesn’t seem particularly interested in Rylan that way anymore.  Or even if he is, he probably hides it because Rylan still seems uninterested.  But he’s so totally jealous.  Rylan that is.  Everyone can tell.  But we just don’t know if it’s like a possessive jealousy where he just doesn’t want anyone else to have him…or if he seriously regrets letting him go.”

“Interesting.”  Julian sat back a little and looked Tyler over.  He seemed excited over the story for gossip’s sake and not very perturbed at its implications.  But that didn’t mean it didn’t affect him in other ways.

“So what’s your relationship with Rylan now?”

“What do you mean?  I’m his employee, and he’s my boss.”

“No way,” Julian scoffed in disbelief.  “He pays _way_ more attention to you than any of the others.  I’ve seen it.”

Tyler shrugged.  “Maybe.  Maybe it’s just because he knows me better.  We did live together for a year.  He’s not _incapable_ of forming relationships with people.”

“Yeah, but he _chose_ to live with you for a year.  Has he ever done that with anyone else?”

“Well…no.  Usually the other underage kids he picks up live with other escorts.  I just stayed with him that year because it was a transition year with the new building and expanding business and all.”

Julian gave Tyler a look.

“What?”

“You’re telling me there’s _nothing_ going on between you two?”

“Technically…no.  I’m not really sure how he feels about me.  And for my part—well, it’s like Hayden said.  He saved us.  So we’re all a little bit in love with him.”

“There’s no physical relationship?”

“Nosey!  I’ve told you before.  He doesn’t let any of us service him.”

“I’m not talking about service.  I’m talking about a physical relationship.  A close, personal relationship that has a physical side to it.  You don’t have that?”

Tyler opened his mouth and then closed it.  He rocked from side to side for a moment.  “No, not really.  But, you know, lately?  These past few months he’s seemed extra pissed off at his friend.  He complains to me about him a lot.  And all he really wants to do is complain to me.  But…sometimes I demand a little compensation.  And he’s very willing to oblige.  Though he still won’t have sex with me.”

Tyler frowned just thinking about it.  Julian smiled.

“Well.  I guess that means he either _really_ likes you…or he really doesn’t.”

Tyler slapped his knee.  “Shut it.”  He bounced off the bed.  “Come on.  Look at all this time we’ve wasted.  We’ve got more rooms to do and I’ve only got you for another half hour.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Julian stood up from the bed and stretched out his long arms and legs.  Sitting in any manner that couldn’t be described with the adjective “sprawling” just wasn’t comfortable for him anymore.  Tyler tossed him a pillowcase and Julian wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Then he saw the corner of a pillow sticking out from underneath the bed.  Well.  Things had gotten a little frisky in here.  He bent down to pick it up and then stopped.

“I don’t wanna touch it.”

“Oh for crying out loud.”

Tyler tossed him a latex glove.  As Julian struggled to get the little rubber glove on, he watched Tyler.  After hashing out his sad and miserable past, he didn’t seem much changed or bothered.  Of course, he said he’d been kicked out when he was fifteen?  It must have been some time ago…right?  How old was Tyler again?

“Hey, Tyler?”

“Yeah?”

“How long has it been since you left Oklahoma?”

“Um…”  Tyler bounced a pillow into the clean pillowcase.  “What is it now, March already?  I guess it’ll be ten years in May.”

“Wow.”  Julian worked on his own pillow.  “Have you…um.  Have you ever tried contacting your family?”

“Nope.  Not once.  And I have no regrets about that,” he added with a small glance in Julian’s direction.

Julian put his pillow at the head of the bed next to the other one.  “Maybe you should.”

“Hey,” Tyler said with a wagging finger, “this is not a fair argument if I have to have it with the kid with the dead parents.  Having parents that hate you _is_ worse than having none at all.”

“But.  You said so yourself.  You’re not _really_ sure they _hate_ you, right?  It was a kneejerk reaction.”

Tyler shook his head.  “It was a pretty hard jerk though.”  He dropped his eyes.  “You didn’t see their faces, Julian.”

Julian felt his insides go all funny.  This was so not right.  Tyler didn’t deserve this.

“Look.  I’m not saying this based on my experience.  It’s based on my grandparents.  They rejected my parents.  Disowned them.  Hadn’t spoken to them in years.  And then, they died.  It really tore my grandparents up.  I didn’t want to acknowledge it at the time, but they really regretted what they had done.  And it was just ten times worse when they never got the chance to reconcile.”

“So?” Tyler snapped.  “Maybe I want them to regret it.”

“Ah.  That’s a different story now.”

Tyler turned away from him.  “Did you check the water?”

“Ye—”  Julian looked away as Tyler balled his hands into fists.  “I’ll go check now.”

 

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

 

Julian bit hard on his lips to keep from smiling as he watched Mr. Harder give Scott a tutorial on how to mix up onion dip.  If he showed the least bit of amusement, Mr. Harder would be on his ass in a second about how he was making up the hamburger patties.  And he did not want Mr. Harder’s attention while the man was in a cooking frame of mind.

Seeing Mr. Harder in chef mode for the first time had been positively scarring.  Literally.  He’d been about seven years old and on the rare occasions that he had seen the man always thought that he was a friendly, young-looking, bear-hugging, good dad.  Then they’d made nachos for a sleepover.  He’d been scared to death of Mr. Harder’s seriousness as he instructed them on the proper way to do things.  The man had no concept of age appropriate instruction.  And Julian had been so scared that if one thing turned out wrong, something very bad would happen.  So, when the timer went off for the ground beef to come out from a quick crisping under the broiler, Julian had felt compelled to get it out himself since Mr. Harder had left the kitchen momentarily.  He didn’t have time to find a towel or oven mitt.  He’d thought it had to come out now.  So, he opened the oven and pulled out the cast iron skillet with his bare hand.  And he knew dropping it on the floor would be an even worse offense, so he’d managed to hold onto it as he struggled to lift the heavy pot onto the stove.  Once the meat was safe, he’d started crying and screaming, bringing Mr. Harder running back into the kitchen.  When he’d managed to piece together what had happened in between Julian’s sobs, Mr. Harder held him in his lap and tried to explain to him that safety always came before anything.  Even the food.  Julian did understand that, but for the rest of his life he’d always retained a since of duty and a need for perfection when cooking for Will’s father.  Julian opened his right hand and examined his palm.  It really wasn’t visible anymore.  You had to really look to see it, but there were still a few small marks from the burns he’d received that day.

“That was not my fault,” Mr. Harder said as he peered over Julian’s shoulder.

Julian smiled and turned to the man.  “Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”

“It does actually.  I’m a very emotionally shallow man.”

“I don’t believe that.  You just give so much of yourself to your wife and son that you don’t have anything left for the rest of the world.”

Mr. Harder made a face at him.  “You need to stop seeing that shrink.  You’ve reached the saturation level.”

Julian considered what he’d just said.  “You may be right.”

“I’m _always_ right.  About everything.  Trust me.  Including the fact that you aren’t getting those patties to exactly a one and two-fifths inch thickness or a perfect four and half inch diameter.  They look awfully lumpy.”

“You want to do them yourself?”

“Well.  Yes.”

“Well, you can’t.  Who will be in charge of getting the grill ready?  It won’t take Scott long to finish that onion dip and then he’ll be looking for another job.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t he?”

Mr. Harder looked around the kitchen in alarm.  “Where the hell did he go?”

Then the man flew out of the kitchen in search of Scott.  Julian felt a little bad about throwing his friend under the bus, but seriously.  He was not about to get out the ruler so he could make perfect hamburgers.  This crowd really didn’t care that much.  They would eat anything.  Except Scott’s brother, Ferris.  Julian had never met a pickier eater in his life.

Someone pushed their toe against the back of his knee and his weight made the leg buckle.  His knee cap thumped into the cabinets.  He’d put his hands on the counter to brace himself and found that he’d squashed two of his patties.  Now this was something he couldn’t get away with.  He would have to completely redo them.  He turned to glare at his attacker.  He was expecting Scott since it was possible that he’d heard him sell him out.  But it was Will.  And his pretty little friend was looking well beyond miffed with his arms crossed over his chest and a rather unpleasant glare.  Julian smiled sweetly.

“What is it, precious?  Are you still upset that we gotcha that good?”

Will hit him in the arm.  “You jerk!  You know, I totally believed you forgot!”

Julian relaxed his smile a little.  “Why?”

Will was surprised by his question.  Then he pulled back into himself, looking a little guilty.  “Well.  It’s been a rough year.”

Julian almost laughed.  “Will.”

That’s all he had to do: say his friend’s name.

“I guess I should have known.  I was being avoided.  Ignored.  Interrupted…Omigod.  How did I _not_ know I was being played?”

Julian grinned.  He wanted to ruffle Will’s hair, but he had a feeling if he got meat grease in his hair he’d do horrible things to him.  “Self pity is fun.”

“Yeah.”  Will scratched his temple.  “For some reason this last year I’ve been so adolescent-y angsty that I want to make a TV show about myself so that I can have someone yell at my stupid behavior as I do it and want to slap me upside the head.”

“Will.  You don’t need to be a on a TV show for someone to be willing to do that.”

“Shush.”

Julian chuckled and began reforming his patties.  He watched out of the corner of his eye as Will leaned on the counter and looked up at him.  He was trying to look cute and sweet so that he could work Julian over.  And damn it…it was working.

“Sooooo…what’d ya get me?”

Julian snapped his finger.  “That’s it!  I knew there was something that I _did_ forget.”

Will made a face and hit his arm again.  And yet…he still looked cute.

“Oh, come on.  You know I got you something.  You can open it later.  For now, you need to be a good host and go greet and mingle with your guests.”

“Whatever.  _I’m_ not the one throwing this party.”

“Okay.  Then if you want to stay in the kitchen and bother me while I work, I get to pick the topic of conversation.”

“Okay.”

“So…what were you doing?  Alone.  And naked.  In your bedroom.”

“Uh!  Nothing!  I was _changing_.  I’d just gotten out of the shower.”

Julian turned to look at him.  “Your hair’s not wet.”

“It dries fast.”

“It wasn’t then either.”

“How do you know?  Were you really paying that close attention?”

“I’ll ask Scott.  He was close enough to tell since he was the one…all pressed up against your man-flesh.”

“Geh.”

“So, did you like that?  Feeling up our baby boy?”

“I did no such thing!  I couldn’t breathe!  It’s hard to even think when you’ve got 400lbs crushing you!”

“400lbs?!”

“Yes!  You’re what, 180?”

Julian averted his eyes.  With the height had come the weight.  “Somewhere around there.”

“And Scott is skinny, but he’s at least 130.  And Chris is probably a good 140-150.  So.  It’s simple math.  400lbs!”

“All on your tiny, delicate 110lb frame.”

“Hey!  I weigh 122, thank you _very_ much.”

“Ooo.  I think you crossed over into the featherweight division.”

“Shut-up.”

“Will!”  His mother called him from the patio.  “Come here, please!”

Will pointed a finger at him.  “Don’t do anything to the food to set my father off, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And make mine a veggie burger.”

“Gross.  Do you even _have_ balls during soccer season?  Or do they get sucked up inside your no-dairy, low-fat vagina?”

“You know what?”

“What?”

Julian turned to smile at his friend.  Will was still leaning on the counter on his elbows.  Julian decided this might be one of the days that he could get away with a little indiscretion.  He bent over.

“Happy birthday, Will.”

He kissed his friend on the cheek as close to his mouth as he dared.  Then he pulled back.  Will straightened.  Julian wondered if that had upset him or creeped him out.  He wasn’t feeling that vibe though.  So, what was with Will’s look?

Will reached out and put a hand behind Julian’s neck.  He only had a moment to wonder what was happening before Will brought their lips together.

_Omigod.  Omigod.  Will is kissing me.  His lips are on mine.  And it’s not because of a joke or a dare or to piss off my relatives.  Wait.  Are his relatives watching?!  Argh!  Shut-up!  You’re ruining it!  You can’t even enjoy it because you’re thinking too much.  Okay, just stop thinking.  Please, keep kissing me, Will, until my brain calms down.  Hold on.  Hold on!  I have to feel this!  This is it!  This is it!_

Julian closed his eyes and finally managed to return the kiss.  Will pulled back.  Julian’s eyes snapped open.

_Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!_

Julian was pretty sure he was breathing.  His eyes were focused on Will’s perfect face.  On his slightly reddened lips.  He’d done that.  No, they’d done that together.  Julian clenched his teeth to feel a little pain—to make sure he was alive and conscious.

“Every time,” Will started calmly, “that we, the four of us.  Or anybody for that matter.  Jokes about how close we are.  Or what we’ve done with each other.  Or how we’ve all kissed each other at some point.  I know… That both of us always think of that day.  But now…we’ve had a good kiss.  So, let’s think of this one from now on, okay?”

Julian took a step back and turned away from him.  He pinched the bridge of his nose.  He didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever.  Just don’t get any ideas that I’m going to do that again just because you were too freaked out to even acknowledge that it was actually happening and couldn’t enjoy it.”

Julian turned to him in shock.  “How did you—?!”

Will smiled cheekily at him.  “I know you, Julian.  And if you’d had even the slightest inkling of what was going on I’d probably be on the kitchen table having a second pressing of my man-flesh.”

“No fair, no fair!  I demand a do-over!”

“Nope.  Sorry.”

“Willllll!”

Will left the kitchen and Julian crushed the meat patties in his hands.  Not only did he barely remember the kiss, but he hadn’t even been able to hold him because he’d had his fingers dug into a dead cow’s ground up shoulder.  Why was he such a spaz?

“How are those patties coming?”

Julian frowned and faced the meat under his knuckles.  He started beating it into a mushy mash and ignored Mr. Harder.

“Hunh.  You really look like your father.”

Julian froze.  It had been a while since someone had said that to him.  And that had been a bad day.  He cleared his throat and began reforming the patties.

“I do not.”

Mr. Harder grabbed him under the chin and turned his head so he could look at him straight on.  Talk about adding insult to injury: after that encounter with Will and now he had to look into his face some more.  An older version notwithstanding, this was Will’s face.

“Hmm, you’re right,” Mr. Harder mused.  “From straight on you don’t.”  The man forced his head sideways again.  “But in profile…it’s uncanny.”

“Mr. Harder.  I do not look like my father.”

“David.  Come here.”

“What?” Mr. Ramsey asked as he walked into the kitchen from the hall entrance.  Mr. Harder turned Julian’s head so that Mr. Ramsey could see it from the side.

“Oh wow.  He looks just like Nik.”

Mr. Harder let go of his face.  “See?”

“Hmph.”

Julian worked on his patties, trying a little harder to get them right since he knew the food Nazi was still in the room.  Then he became aware that he was surrounded.  Kind of.  He looked up at the wall in front of him and then he glanced from side to side.  Mr. Harder and Mr. Ramsey were leaning against the counter on either side of him.  Mr. Ramsey was sipping from a bottle of beer.  He could tell they were looking at the same thing.  Thankfully, not him, but he had a feeling they were about to ask him about something.

“So, Julian…” Mr. Harder began.

“Do you know anything about Laney?” Mr. Ramsey asked.

Julian turned his head in the direction they were looking.  Laney was out on the patio helping Will hold a watermelon still while Mrs. Harder attempted to cut the fruit—and not her helpers.  He could have sworn there was a better way to do that.  And then he wondered where they had gotten a watermelon at the end of winter anyway.  Then it occurred to him what the two men had asked him.  He focused on the meat again.

“What do you mean?” he asked, hoping he sounded normal.

“I mean,” Mr. Ramsey said, “is she…in a family way?”

“Heh.  W-what makes you ask that?”

“Well, she’s…”

“Glowing,” Mr. Harder finished.

“That’s it.  That’s it exactly.  Now I can see it.”

“You can?” Julian asked and turned to look at Laney again.  She was standing sideways, but she had changed out of her school uniform before coming over.  She wearing a pretty typical Laney outfit, but it was one of her loose, flow-y shirts.  Julian kind of knew she was starting to show a little bit, but it wasn’t completely obvious in the sweater vest yet and not at all noticeable in this outfit.  “I don’t see anything.”

“But you know there’s something to see?” Mr. Harder asked and both he and Mr. Ramsey turned toward him so they could loom over him.  Which was strange that they could because neither of them was taller than him.  Still, Julian suddenly felt like a young boy again.

“Um.”  He wasn’t sure what to do.  Laney had told them they didn’t need to deny it if anybody asked, but these were _parents_.  It was kind of instinctual to hide things from them—and he’d grown up never hiding anything from his own parents.  He wondered if they were alive now if he would have told them about Laney.  Or felt the same hesitation if they asked him about it.  Possibly.  It was someone else’s business.  Julian could feel the weight of the two men’s expectation.  Along with the piercing of their beady little eyes.

“Look,” he muttered softly, “it’s not public knowledge yet, so don’t say anything or do anything weird.  Okay?”

“Us?  Do something weird?” Mr. Ramsey asked.

“ _He_ might say something weird,” Mr. Harder said, “but we’re totally gentlemen.  So.  Who knocked her up?”

Julian looked at the ceiling as the two _gentlemen_ crowded closer to hear the answer.

“No, wait,” Mr. Ramsey said, “let us guess.”

“It was probably yours,” Mr. Harder said with a smile.  “Because it definitely wasn’t mine.”

“Mine’s dating a Victoria’s Secret model.  Why would he need Laney?”

“Good point.”

“Well, it’s not me,” Julian said before they could start expanding their hypotheses.

“That leaves Chris,” Mr. Harder said.

“I don’t see it,” Mr. Ramsey said.

“Me neither.”

They loomed over Julian again.

“Who is it?”

“Honestly?” Julian said, thankful that his answer would be honest, “I don’t know.  I just know that it’s not one of us.”

“Hmm.”

Julian tried not to look at either of them.  Maybe if he stayed really still they’d forget he was there.

“How’d you know?” Mr. Harder asked.

“Know what?” Mr. Ramsey replied.

“How’d you suspect?  You said you didn’t notice the ‘glowing’ until I mentioned it.”

“Oh.  Well.  She’s got that look about her.  It’s not like she’s the first pregnant teenaged girl I’ve ever seen before.”

“Mr. Ramsey!”

Mr. Ramsey laughed and patted Julian on the shoulder.  “I meant when I was a teenager.  It’s not like I knock them up now.”

“You just did then?” Mr. Harder laughed.

“Only once.  And I’m 75% sure it wasn’t mine.”

“Why would you sleep with a girl who was sleeping with three other guys?”

“Well, I didn’t know that, now did I?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Well.  Eventually.”

“You know,” Julian interrupted, “I’m not entirely sure _Scott_ is yours.  He’s too good.”

“I know what you mean.  Sometimes I wonder myself.”

“He is a bad man,” Mr. Harder said.

Julian turned on him.  “Oh, don’t you even start.”

He put his hands in the air and backed away.  “Okay, okay.  Come on, David.  Julian has a lot of work to do.  We shouldn’t bother him.”

Not that Julian particularly wanted them to stay and start teasing him, but he admitted, “Actually I’m done.  These were the last two.”

“Great.  I’ll take them out to the grill.  You can start julienning the potatoes Chris peeled.”

“W-what?!”

“He’s such a hard worker,” Mr. Ramsey said as he ruffled Julian’s hair.

“Just like his father,” the two men laughed together and left the kitchen.

Julian raised a hand in his ire and smoothed out his hair.  Then he realized he’d just smeared beef fat in it.

“Damn it.”

 

Chris

 

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

 

Chris sat his book bag on his desk and used it as cover while he watched his three friends get ready to leave English class.  He needed the cover so that Will wouldn’t see him smiling.  And it was impossible for him not to, what with Will’s face crumbling every time he got cut off.  It was especially amusing now as both Julian and Scott cut him off to shout at each other excitedly about something they’d seen on TV last night.  Honestly, both of them suddenly barking at each other like that was a little suspicious, but Will was not catching on.  And it served him right to experience some dejection.  Well, just a little bit.  Chris shouldered his bag and followed behind Will as he trudged from the emptying classroom, having been left behind by the other two.

“Hey, Will.”  Will turned toward him.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?” he responded, not sounding okay at all.

“Well, you look a little down.  And you _never_ let yourself show what you’re really feeling unless something is _seriously_ wrong.”

To the outside observer that may have been the opening Will needed to gush his problems and therefore force Chris into acknowledging his birthday and partially ruining the surprise.  However, Chris knew Will better than that.  He immediately straightened and schooled his features so that he looked like business as usual.

“No, seriously, I’m fine.  Nothing’s wrong.  I don’t know what expression I had, but it didn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, okay.”

He slumped down a little.  “It’s just.  You know.”

Chris kept his smile back.  Poor Will.  He really was feeling this for him to have already slipped.  Well, he couldn’t be around him much longer because his despondent friend was well on his way to giving in to his self pity and bringing up his birthday.

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay then.”  He gave him a slap on the shoulder hard enough to make him pitch forward a little.  “See ya around.”

Chris walked away, finally allowing himself to smile.  He would feel worse about making Will feel so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the little brat should know better.  If he was willing to believe that they had forgotten his birthday, then deep down he was secretly craving that drama.

Chris paused at the hallway that led to the lunch room.  Ordinarily it wouldn’t be impossible for a kid to finish the homework for his next class during lunch.  But that would only be if that kid didn’t have a demanding girlfriend.  Karen had definitely gotten better than she used to be, but she was still an attention hog.  He’d tried to get homework done with her around before, and she just couldn’t leave him alone.  Even when he pointed out that he had to get it done by the end of lunch and it was really important, she just kept “wanting his opinion.”  Even if he tried to sit at a different table and told her to just talk to her friends, inevitably she would show up beside him and ask him if he was mad or trying to punish her.  It did sometimes amaze him that a person could be _that_ self-involved.  Like he had purposefully not done his homework the night before so that he would have an excuse not to talk to her.  That obviously didn’t work even if that was his reasoning.  He’d learned that in the first three months they’d dated.

He decided hiding was a better and safer option.  Chris left the secondary school wing and walked through the primary school wing until he came out the backdoor on the playground.  He knew none of the elementary classes should be out there during this lunch period because it was still too early in the day for recess.  At least that’s what he hoped.  Thirty minutes should be more than enough time to finish his government homework—so long as he didn’t get distracted.  And an empty playground seemed pretty distraction free.  He walked over to a piece of equipment that looked kind of like a bridge.  It was fun for kids to crawl and play on, but the step was also the perfect height for a teenager to sit on and comfortably use the slightly curved bridge as a desk.  His feet crunched over the cedar chips and that was the only sound aside from the occasional distant hum of a passing car.  Chris gave the hot pink plastic turtle a long stare as he sat down at the bridge.  He didn’t like the idea of turning his back on it.  He always felt like it was watching him.

Chris pulled out his government textbook and flipped it open to the page that was bookmarked with the worksheet he’d stuck in there Monday and hadn’t looked at since.  He started to get out a pencil, but noticed his cell phone was flashing.  He pulled it out instead and wondered what it would be like to go to a public school that didn’t allow cell phones versus a private school that didn’t allow cell phones but did nothing to enforce that rule.  He pushed the button to listen to his voicemail.

“Chris, it’s your father.  Sorry I didn’t contact you for a while.  It took me a little while to get settled.  And to finally get a phone line.  And then I had actually lost your cell phone number and was a little—hesitant to call the house.  Fortunately my old lawyer still had it on file.  So, when you get a chance, call me anytime.  Bye, _mijo_.”

Chris smiled to himself as he looked at the display for the phone number.  His father hadn’t actually given him his new number.  Either it hadn’t occurred to him, or he was tech savvy enough to realize he didn’t need to with a cell phone.  He doubted his mother would have figured that out.  He saved the number to his contacts list and then decided to go ahead and call even though it was the middle of the day.  He was so grateful Mr. Richardson had come through for him.  He should send him an e-mail and thank him.

“Hello?”

Chris started slightly at the voice in his ear.  He hadn’t been expecting anyone to actually pick up.

“D-Dad?”

“Chris, is that you?”

“Yeah.  Hi.  How are you?”

“Good.  Are you skipping school?”

“No, no.  I’m at lunch.”

“Hn.”

“Really.  It’s fine.  What about you?  You’re at home?”

“Yeah, I work Saturdays, so I get one day of the week off.  This week it’s Tuesday.”

“So…you’ve got a job?”

“Yep.  An old friend of mine helped me get a job at a garage.  I used to work with cars back in Miami.  Surprisingly little has changed about them in twenty years.”

“That’s good.  And you’ve got a place to stay?”

“That one was a bit harder to arrange, but I found a landlord who’s willing to take a chance on me.  But, it took a while.  That’s why I didn’t have an address or phone number for a while.  I just got the service hooked up a few days ago.  And it’s a nice—well, it’s a decent place to live.  The neighborhood is a little shady.  But not so much that you couldn’t visit,” he added quickly.

Chris smiled.  “Really?  You want me to visit?”

“Of course.  Any time.  I can get off work and show you around Chicago.”

“That sounds great!  Oh!  I’m actually going to be up there in April.  It’s my spring break and I was planning a trip up there to visit Northwestern University.”

“Great.  That’s really great, Chris.  I’m so glad you’re going to go to college.  So, you want to stay with me?”

“Uh, well, I definitely want to see you everyday I’m there if I can, but Mr. Richardson offered to let me stay with him because he’s an alum.  He’s going to show me around the campus.”

Chris waited for his father’s response.  He checked the screen to make sure the call was still connected and then put the phone back to his ear.

“Dad?”

“Mr. Richardson?” his father questioned.  “As in Dean Richardson?  My lawyer?”

“Ah, yeah,” Chris said a little uneasily and feeling the same way.  “It’s kind of weird, I know.  But we kind of got to know each other at Thanksgiving when he was _kind_ enough to help me see you.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.  And when he found out I was interested in Northwestern he got all excited.  You know how alumni are.”

“Right.”  Chris was nearly choking on the amount of weirded out suspicion in his father’s voice.  “And your mother is okay with this?”

“Well…I wouldn’t _exactly_ say that.  But she’s not saying no.  Anymore.”

“Unh-hunh.  Well.  Why don’t you stay with me instead?  He can pick you up one day and take you on a tour of the campus or something.”

Chris fumbled over what consonant to start with.  Finally he settled with, “Look.  It’s not that I don’t want to visit you or stay with you.  It’s just that Mr. Richardson and I worked this out a few weeks ago.  And he’s got a lot planned for us to do.  And I won’t be up there for the full week and he’s rearranged his schedule so that I can stay with him.  Plus, he’s paying to fly me out there, so I would feel really bad if—”

“He’s paying to fly you out there?” His father interrupted sharply.

“U-uh.  Y-yeah.”  Chris was getting that ishy feeling like he’d done something wrong.  But…he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Why?” his father demanded, his displeasure coming through quite clearly over the phone line.  “Why would he do that for you?  Has he ever explained why he’s shelling out so much money on an ex-con’s kid?”

“Well.  N-not exactly.  I mean.  It’s not like I’m some _complete_ stranger to him.  Besides.  He _has_ money to shell out.  This plane ticket is just a drop in the bucket for him, you know?  It’s not a big deal to spend, what to him, is a little bit of money on some kid he kind of feels sorry for.”

“Feels _sorry_ for.  And you’re accepting his pity?”

“Dad, it’s not like that.”

“No.”

Chris waited.  Was there some context to that statement?  “No, what?”

“No, you can’t go.”

Chris felt his jaw drop a little.  “ _Excuse me_?”

“You can come up here and visit _me_.  And see him for a couple of hours on a campus tour.  Use your own money and pay your own way.  That’s why I got it for you.  Call him up and tell him that you’ve changed your plans and can’t stay with him or accept his _charity_.”

“But, Dad!  It’s really not like that!  I’m not some pro bono project or anything.”

“It’s doesn’t matter.  It’s strange that he’s doing this for you.  It’s _strange_ that a grown man is flying a teenaged boy up to see him.”

“Oh, gross, Dad.  It’s so not like _that_.  You don’t even know him.”

“And you do?”

“Well, better than you.”

“And why is that, Chris?  Where is this relationship coming from?  He was _my lawyer_ for Christ’s sake.  Where does he get off making _friends_ with a young boy?  Why would he even want to?  Has he said anything?”

“About what?”

“About anything!”  Chris heard his father thump something on his end.  He took in a deep breath.  “Look, I’m sorry, but you can’t let him do this.  You pay to come here yourself and stay with me, or don’t come at all.”

Chris had been feeling a little upset during this conversation, but suddenly he felt angry.  No, he was furious.  No…fucking pissed was more like it.

“Where do _you_ get off telling me what to do?!” he shouted.

 “ _I’m_ your father.”

“Since _when_?” Chris threw back at him.

His father said something in Spanish, but Chris was too rusty with the language to understand what he said.  The man continued in English.  “Since always, Christophe.  Making one mistake doesn’t—”

“One mistake?” Chris cried, unable to calm down.  “That ‘one mistake’ took you out of my life for nine years!”

“No, your mother did that.”

“ _No_.  _You_ did.”  Chris inhaled sharply and held it for a few seconds.  Fortunately his father didn’t try to respond right away.  Chris let the air out slowly so that his father wouldn’t be able to hear it, and then he spoke quickly.  “Look.  I’ve already made my plans.  The plane ticket has already been bought.  I’m going.  And I’m staying with Mr. Richardson.  I’ll call you when I’m there and if you want to see me we can get together.”

“Chris.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Dad.”

Chris pulled the phone away from his ear and ended the call.  He felt queasy.  He’d never stood up that much to an authority figure before in his life.  But seriously—where _did_ he get off telling him what he can and can’t do?  That ship had sailed a long time ago.  At best his father had the right to be a _part_ of his life now.  He certainly didn’t have a say in it.  Not unless Chris let him.

Chris slumped forward a little and sighed.  He felt like crap and the feeling wasn’t going away.  He really felt like he’d done something wrong now.  Why wouldn’t the feeling pass?  He _hadn’t_ done anything wrong.  He’d refused Mr. Richardson’s offer to pay for a long time.  Finally the man just told him he’d already bought the ticket.  What was he supposed to do?  Of course, maybe he wasn’t feeling guilty about accepting the money.  Maybe it was the fact that he’d been so excited to go on the trip and to see the campus— and Mr. Richardson—that he hadn’t even thought about visiting his dad while he would be up there.  Did he feel guilty that he was glad he had someone respectable in his life like Mr. Richardson?  Someone better off than his father?  But, did that make him the better man?  No, not necessarily.  After all, his father had merely been looking out for his best interests.  It _was_ a bit of a sketchy relationship—Chris knew that.  His father was just concerned.  And he’d been mean to him.  Should he call him back and apologize?  He didn’t think that would really help since he wasn’t going to change his mind about staying with Mr. Richardson.  Besides, he really needed to get his government homework done.

Scott’s tutoring had been helpful, but he’d started relying on him too much.  Well, maybe “taking advantage of” was a more accurate description.  Scott’s idea of tutoring someone was cheerfully doing their homework for them if they asked him to.  Chris had never outright asked Scott to do his homework for him, but over the past several weeks he’d done remarkably little of it himself.  He decided he shouldn’t be ignorant of his country’s governing system.  He leaned over his worksheet, ready to buckle down and get cracking.

Someone covered his eyes with their hand and he sat up straight.  He waited for the person to say “Guess who?” but they never did.  She (he could tell it was a she) kept his eyes covered and sat down in his lap.  Ah.  So, Karen had found him after all.  Then she leaned forward and kissed him.  Ah.  So, Sophia had found him.  Well…he couldn’t be _positive_ …so, around the kiss he said, “Hey, Karen.”  The girl didn’t correct him, so he continued to kiss her.  He put his hands to her waist and spread her lips with his tongue.  If the slightly timid way in which the kiss was being returned wasn’t enough of a clue, this girl’s lips weren’t as full as Karen’s.  Nor were her breasts as large where they pressed against his chest.  Plus, she smelled different.  And it wasn’t just that she didn’t smell like Karen, he recognized the off-brand perfume Sophia wore.  God, he was such a dick.  But he didn’t stop kissing her.  It was good.  She’d gotten better.  He wondered who she’d been practicing with.  Then it guiltily dawned on him that the only person she’d been practicing with had probably been him.

Unfortunately that guilt wasn’t enough just yet to get him to stop.  Not when she was starting to explore his mouth with her warm, delicate tongue.  He dropped a hand to her leg and ran it over her smooth hose, and just a little under her skirt.  She turned slightly to ease the tension on her torso, and that sat her squarely in his lap.  Chris’ reaction was immediate.

_Crap.  I can’t do this.  Well…I could…_

Chris groaned inwardly and started to pull back, readying his performance.

“Hey, sugar,” he murmured with one last kiss.  “Before we—” he pulled back and opened his eyes.  He let out a little shout upon seeing Sophia’s face and jerked backward.  Unfortunately his performance was a little too good and he wrenched himself off the step, bringing Sophia crashing down onto him on the hard, uneven cedar chips.  He made a face as the fairly sharp pieces of wood bit into his back and shoulders.  His feet were still stuck in the opening to the step, which made his legs stick straight up, which made Sophia smoosh into his chest with her butt sticking up in the air.  And with her skirt obeying gravity, her panties were on display—somewhat obscured by her tights.  And he just couldn’t help himself.

“Nice view,” he commented.

She rose up partially on one arm, and then became aware of exactly what he meant by that.  She yelped and used her hands to whip her skirt back down as she sat up.  This still left her straddling his lap, but she was covered now.  Chris pulled his feet out of the hole and let them fall to the ground, leaving his knees bent.  He didn’t do anything to encourage Sophia to move off of him, but he gave her a disapproving look.  She gave him a slightly embarrassed smile back.

“That was so corny,” she said.

He let out a small laugh, and then tried to look stern again.  “Hey.  What do you think you’re doing?”

She shrugged.  “Sorry.  You just looked so cute: sitting at the little kiddie bridge.  I couldn’t help myself.”

He wagged a finger at her.  “That was very devious, Sophia.”

“I know,” she said, looking playfully contrite.  “I’m sorry.”  No she wasn’t.  “For some reason…I just can’t think rationally around you.”

“Well.  Try.  Okay?”

She shrugged again.  “Okay.  I’ll try.”

Chris shook his head with another small laugh.  “I don’t believe you.”

Sophia leaned down and put her hands on his chest, bringing their faces closer together.  “And you know what I don’t believe?  That you didn’t know _exactly_ who you were kissing.”  She kissed him, but this time Chris behaved himself and pushed her back immediately.

“Sophia.  Please.  I have a girlfriend.  And I’m not going to cheat on her.”

“Then dump her,” Sophia responded without delay.  “That’s a rational thought.”

Chris scratched his temple and was forced to smile.  “True, it is.  But seriously, if nothing else, I have homework I have to finish so I can’t do this right now.”

Sophia sat up and settled herself in his lap again.  He wondered if she could tell that he was a little on the happy side.  She didn’t seem to notice and pouted as she pulled gently on his tie and played with it.

“Seriously, Chris…if nothing else…don’t date her exclusively.”

Chris groaned outwardly this time.  Apparently they _were_ going to do this now.

“Okay.  Say I did that.  Say I date both you and Karen.  Would you really still want me?  Some guy who could forget you at the drop of hat when some cute girl bends over to pick it up?”

She frowned, but stayed focused on his tie and not his face.

“Look, I like Karen.  I’m trying to see where our relationship will go.  And I think you know by now that we will go around, over, and through you to do that.”

“You like her,” she said, “but you don’t love her.”

“I’m 17.  I don’t know what I feel.”

She looked at him now.  “You love your friends, right?  You know what that feels like.”

“Yes, I suppose I do.  So, I do know that I don’t feel that for you.”

“You don’t feel that for her either.”

“Sophia,” Chris moaned and rolled his eyes.  “That’s not the point.”

“It is the _only_ point, Chris.  You’re with her out of guilt.  Or apathy.  Or horniness.  I don’t know.  So, why do you stay with her if you don’t have any real feelings for her?”

“Horniness is a real feeling,” he said dryly.  “You ready to take over Karen’s duties there?”

Sophia’s brow creased in a little hurt, and Chris saw his opening.  He really didn’t want to be an asshole, but he knew that this would finally be the thing that would drive her away.  In the long run it would be the best thing for everyone.

“Okay,” he said.  “I’ll do it.  I’ll dump Karen.”

Sophia dropped his tie and her eyes widened a little.  Before she could say anything, he continued.

“The sex with her has gotten a little mundane, so it’ll be nice to try something new.”

The effect was immediate, the slight joy that had lit her eyes a moment ago was snuffed out, and her body went a little rigid.  Chris sat up and slid his hands up her thighs, using one of his legs to shift her body slightly so that she could feel precisely how vulnerable her position was.

“And while I have had sex with a virgin before,” he said, pitching his voice to that of an arrogant playboy, “I was a virgin myself then.  Now that I’m more experienced, it’ll be whole different ballgame.”  He slid his hands higher, turning his fingers in toward her inner thighs.  “Now that I understand the concept of foreplay.”

Sophia made a move like she might get up, but Chris forced her to stay down on his lap.

“It’ll be so hot,” he said in a low voice, close to her lips.  “Watching you squirm and writhe and whimper underneath me.”  He leaned forward so he could whisper in her ear.  “Popping your cherry will be amazing.”

Chris was startled by Sophia’s sudden display of strength as she shoved him away and jumped to her feet.  He leaned back on his hands and gave her an amused smile.  She was shaking, her face was turning red, and she was very near tears.  Her jaw quivered for a moment, and then she managed to get out, “You’re a jerk.”

Chris shrugged one shoulder.  “Well, maybe you ought to know what you’re asking for before you ask for it.”

She balled her hands into fists and looked like she might try to say something else, but she turned away from him before two big fat tears could fall from her eyes.  She walked/ran away from him, wiping her cheeks.  Chris flopped back onto the cedar chips and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars.

“Damn.”

“Well.  That was harsh.”

Chris moved his hands and tilted his head back to see who had spoken.  A beautiful face with long dark hair was peering down at him.  One of the lesbians was leaning partially out of one of the holes in the pink turtle’s shell.  He couldn’t even muster the energy to be surprised by her presence or embarrassed that she had overheard what had just happened.  He just frowned at her.

“No wonder I always feel like that turtle is watching me.”

The girl—Layla if he remembered correctly after going to school with her for five years—pulled herself out of the opening and leaned against the shell.  He wondered if she knew that she had angled herself in such a way that he was having a second nice view that day—this one not obscured by tights or panty hose.  He turned his head so that he could look at her face.

“I thought you were the nice one,” she said.

“That’s Scott.  And I wasn’t being mean.  That was tough love.”

“Oh.  So that was for her own good?”

“Yep.”

“How so?”

“Because.”  Chris looked away from her.  “Because I do want to have sex with her.  I just don’t want to date her.”

“Oh.”

Chris heaved a sigh and sat up.  He brushed some of the cedar chips off his back.

“So…have sex with her,” Layla said, “and date Karen.”

Chris turned around to make a face at her.

“It’s a good plan,” she continued.  “That little freshman is so far gone on you that she’d agree to keep it a secret.”

“Okay.  One: she’s a sophomore.  Two: yes, she definitely would flaunt it to Karen.  And three: this thing with her has nothing to do with Karen.  I’m not interested in Sophia in a romantic sense, so I’m not just going to bang her for fun when I’m horny.  And even if I could do something like that, I would never hurt Karen like that.”

“Goodness,” Layla put a hand to her chest in faux shock.  “You’re actually a good guy?”

“Was there ever any doubt?” he griped.

“Well, for a second there…And you _did_ make out with her before you dumped her.  And some people might say that making out with a girl who wasn’t your girlfriend is…oh, what’s the word?  Cheating?”

“So, I’m getting a lecture from the girl who starts humping the closest male to her when she’s pissed at her girlfriend?”

“It’s not a lecture.  I’m just teasing you.  It’s fun.”

Chris stood up, muttering, “Blow me.”

“Mmm.  No thank you.  But.  Speaking of that…does Julian have a crush on Anna?”

Chris froze as he let those words process.  And then he turned slowly to face her with an incredulous expression on his face.  “Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me.”

“Why?” Layla asked, stepping forward, “because it’s so obvious he does or so obvious he doesn’t?”

“No,” Chris laughed.  “It’s because _you_ have a crush on Julian.”

Layla straightened and crossed her arms.  “I could have a crush on Anna,” she retorted.

“Oh.  True.  Well.  You obviously have a huge swinging pair—why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“I can’t at school.  Everyone will freak.”  She demonstrated by waving her hands in the air.  “If I’m seen asking a boy a ‘serious’ question, everyone is going to be all like, ‘Ooo~oo.’  Annoying.”

“Then ask Anna.”

“How would she know if Julian has a crush on her?”

“Aren’t girls intuitive or something?”

Layla smiled.  “Would even _you_ claim to know what was going on inside Julian March’s head?”

Chris returned her smile.  “No, I wouldn’t.  But.  I _do_ know that even if he doesn’t have a crush on Anna, he’s still in love with Will.  So, it would be a moot point.”

“Huh.”  Layla crossed her arms and frowned at the ground.  “I forgot about that little worm.”

Chris held back his laugh.  Someone had called Will Harder a worm.  Beautiful.  “Look, seriously, just ask him to his face.  He won’t mind and being blunt is really the only way to deal with him.”

“I can’t at school.”

Chris thought that she was so hesitant to do it at school not so much because everyone else would see so much as maybe her girlfriend might see.  “Okay.  Could you do it in a smaller setting?”

“Maybe.  But it would depend on the situation.”

“Tomorrow we’re having a birthday party for your little worm.  You should come over.  It’s at Will’s house after school.”

“Will’s birthday is tomorrow?”

“Well, kind of.  I’m never sure how it actually works out.  He was born on Leap Day.”

“Of course he was.”

From inside the school the faint tones of the bell could be heard.  Chris made a face.

“Damn it.  I didn’t even _start_ my homework.”

“Well, that’s what you get for playing with young girls’ hearts.”

“Shush.”

Chris gathered his textbook and backpack and Layla waited for him so they could walk in together.

“Oh, by the way,” she said, “your dad is right.  “Some guy who’s not a ‘ _complete’_ stranger paying to fly you out to stay with him—that’s a little sketch.”

He gave her a look as he held open the school door for her.

“You know what else is sketch?”

“What?” she asked with a flirty smile.

“Hanging out in a plastic turtle on a children’s playground pretending to be a lesbian.”

“Tch!”  She put her nose in the air and marched away from him.

Chris smiled and shook his head.  Then he became alarmed as he was surrounded by a sea of tiny people, most of whose heads didn’t reach his chest.  Then one of those heads bobbed closer and something hugged the lower part of his arm.

“Hi, Chris!”

Chris looked down at one of Scott’s adorable little brothers.  He rarely could tell them apart, but he did know that Ferris was the more affectionate of the two, so he took a gamble.

“Hi, Ferris.”

“Why are you here?”

“I got lost.  Do you know where the big kids’ wing is?”

Ferris shook Chris’ arm.  “I _am_ a big kid.”

“I meant taller.”

“Oh.”  The little boy took him by the hand.  “This way.”

Chris allowed himself to be pulled through the stream of kids.  He tried to remember how old the twins were now.  He was pretty certain they weren’t ten yet, but they had to be at least eight if not nine.  They weren’t really “little boys” anymore.  But Ferris had that same sweet, innocent quality about him that Scott did.  It made him seem younger.

“Here you go,” Ferris said.

“Thanks.  Where are you going?”

The boy sighed and Chris bit his lip it was so cute.  “Math Lab.”

Chris ruffled his hair.  “At least you still get recess.”

“Yeah.  Kay.  Bye!”

Ferris took off and Chris tried to tone down his grin as he entered the high school hallways.  They were even more crowded.  Unlike public schools, the class sizes at Calverton increased over the grades.  Probably because a lot of parents didn’t start their kids in private school until they were at least middle school aged.  Another difference was that everyone here had lost that simplicity to their expressions that the younger kids had had.  Everyone here had more complex things to think about.  Chris came crashing back down from his momentary Ramsey induced happiness.  Some people here had things to think about like jerks talking about using them as a sex toy.  He started to trudge slowly toward government class.  He was so glad there were only three and a half months left of school.  He didn’t think he’d be able to survive longer than that if he was going to have to see that hurt, betrayed expression on Sophia’s face every day.

But what really bothered him about that whole situation wasn’t that he felt bad for what he had done…he felt bad _for_ _her_.  Did that mean he had feelings for her?  Like, real, actual feelings other than lust?  Well, if that was indeed the case, it was definitely a good thing that he had chased her off.  Now those feelings would dissipate before they could morph into anything dicier.  And speaking of dicey…he didn’t have the energy to deal with any more drama today.  The easiest way to avoid seeing Sophia, listening to Karen, and ignoring Will was to simply not be here.  So, he walked past his government class and down the vocational hall to the student parking lot.  He never ever cut school, so he figured doing it once wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  After all, the basketball team skipped three classes a week during game season and no one said anything about it.

On the drive home Chris found out that the Universe was very displeased with him.  Even though it was the middle of the day and there should have been no traffic, an accident had caused a backup on the exact stretch of two miles on the only two lane highway he had to get on.  He was literally parked for half an hour before he finally got to inch forward.  It took him nearly an hour to go to those two miles.  And when he passed by the accident, he saw that it had been due to a tractor trailer that had overturned.  There were a couple of cars nearby that had been affected, but they still looked like cars.  He had only seen a couple of photos of the accident that had killed Julian’s parents, and this scene looked nothing like that, but a cold chill still crawled down his spine as he passed it.

By the time he finally got home all he wanted to do was flop on his couch and eat a Ding-Dong.  And maybe play Atari.  He got out of his car and dropped his keys as he shut the door.  He bent over dramatically to pick them up and then noticed that his car door wasn’t all the way closed because it had caught on the seatbelt.  He tried to open it, but it had managed to catch enough of the lock that it stayed put.  He had to fight with his key and the lock in order to get the door open and pinched the skin on his fingers in the process.  He was grumbling out loud, but he wasn’t sure what he was saying.  He just knew that whatever he was maligning deserved it.  Greh.  What a crap day.  And all because he was finally trying to be the good guy.  Well had that been what he was really doing?  How much truth had been in his “playacting” to get Sophia to back off?  While he’d had no intention of actually doing it, what he’d said had more or less been truthful.  Chris took the stairs up to his door and stuck his key in the lock.  It probably would be really hot to—

“Hi, Chris,”

Chris turned from opening his door, startled and instinctively alarmed by the deep voice that had said his name.  Before he could get all the way around he was pushed inside his house and two large men followed him in, shutting and locking the door behind them.  One of them grabbed his arm and then planted a huge hand in the middle of his back to shove him down the hall.  His brain couldn’t process what was happening because it was all happening so fast.  One second he was opening his door and now he was stumbling across the kitchen and being forced into one of the chairs at the breakfast table.  He gripped the edge of the table and tensed his leg muscles, ready to spring from the chair and run out the back door.  He looked up and recognized Meaty.  It didn’t make him feel much better, but he hesitated before running out the door since he recognized one of them.

Meaty was so named probably based on appearance.  His thighs and arms looked like huge shanks of beef and his neck was as thick as his head.  He looked like one of the henchmen of a super villain in a James Bond movie.  The other guy was big and muscular too, but he looked more like a body builder.  He kind of looked Hispanic, but like one that hadn’t been out in the sun in a long time.  He had a scar that started at his cheek and ran over his chin, down his neck, across a collarbone and disappeared beneath his black muscle shirt.  The thought occurred to Chris that both of these men were more than likely murderers.  He tried not to let that thought override his cognitive thinking.  The last thing he wanted to do was wet himself in terror right before he died.  But so far, aside from being pushed from the front door, they hadn’t actually hurt him or pulled out any weapons.  Maybe they just wanted to talk.

Chris looked back and forth between them.  The muscle builder had his arms crossed and a blank expression.  Meaty was smiling brightly.

“Why, hello, Chris.  It’s been awhile, huh?”

Chris half-shrugged in acknowledgement.  He didn’t trust his voice, but he decided to test the waters—extremely carefully—to try to work out how much danger he was really in.

“H-hey, Meaty.”  He let out a nervous laugh.  “You scared me there.”

Meaty’s smile grew into a grin.  “That was the idea.”

Ah.  A lot of danger.

“See, here’s the thing,” Meaty started in a very congenial tone.  He pulled out the chair next to Chris and straddled it, resting his arms on the back so he could lean in toward the already sweating teenager.  “I kind of got myself into some trouble.  You know when luck isn’t so much a lady as a whore.  And I got into a little bit of a bind.  The kind that can only be undone with money.  And then I got to thinking about the cut your dear old dad gave me for helping you two out.  And, it was…” Meaty waffled a hand in the air…“okay.  But you know, I really went through a lot of trouble.  Broke several laws.  Plus, what if your dad pinched that money from someone?  Someone who could get _very_ cranky if he found out his money was missing.  Why, then I could be in a lot of trouble for being an accomplice.  I figured I was owed a little insurance money for that.  That seems fair to me.  Does it seem fair to you?”

Chris swallowed and then glanced over at the other thug.  He hadn’t moved or spoken a word.  Chris looked back at Meaty.  He was smiling pleasantly, but Chris knew that could change in an instant.  Like if he reminded him that the money was now completely in Chris’ name and there was nothing Meaty could do to get it because even killing him wouldn’t get him the money.  Of course, he was sure those two could probably find a way to persuade him to _want_ to give the money to Meaty.  And maybe Meaty thought it would be that easy.  The first time they’d met Chris had been a nervous wreck around him.  Not that much had changed the second time around, but he had completely been at the behemoth’s mercy because his father had been in jail.  Maybe Meaty didn’t know he was out.  Did he work for his father?  If so he might rethink his plan to bully his boss’ son now that he could retaliate.

Chris swallowed again, grateful that his mouth hadn’t gone completely dry.  Even still when he spoke his voice came out soft and a little scratchy.  “You know.  My father’s out of jail now.”

Meaty stood up abruptly and Chris slid his chair back across the floor, the scraping of the legs sending grating vibrations from his ear drums down his spine.  Meaty wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Are you threatening me?” he asked softly.

Chris barely managed to get his head to shake no.

“Are you saying your dad is?”

Chris shook his head more this time.

“Because if he has a problem with this we can call him up right now and explain the situation to him.”

Chris was feeling sick to his stomach.  He knew what the situation would be.  He’d be a hostage.  Chris took in a couple deep breaths to try to calm his body down.

“What do I need to do?”

Meaty laughed and slapped Chris on the back.  Chris flinched.

“Good boy,” Meaty mocked him.  “It’s actually very simple.  The money is still under my name as an executor.  Meaning you can’t do anything with it unless you have my permission.  Until you’re 18.  And since you’re still a minor all you have to do is sign the money over to your executor and bing bang boom—”

Chris started violently as Meaty clapped his hands in front of his face.

“The money transfers to me and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.  The best part is—we don’t even have to go into the bank.  You just sign this form right here and we’re done.”

Meaty snapped at the silent thug.  He pulled a twice folded packet of forms from his back pocket and handed them to Meaty along with a black ink pen.

“I even brought a witness along so the whole thing is completely legit.”

Chris was staring at the linoleum floor and trying hard not to cry.  Just put the pen in his hand and let him sign so they would just go away.  He held out his hand for the pen.

“How much do you want?” he mumbled.

The soft chuckle made him look up.  Meaty was smiling patronizingly at him.

“Oh.  All of it.”

“Yeah.”  Meaty unfolded the papers and put them on the table.  There were several colored tabs sticking out from the sides.  “Sign on the green tabs and initial on the yellow ones.”

Chris clicked the top on the pen and began signing.

“Sorry kid,” Meaty said sounding somewhat sincere.  “The world and its inhabitants are opportunistic by nature.  I just can’t let this opportunity pass.”

Chris crossed his last set of t’s and slapped the pen down on the forms.  “Then why didn’t you just take it all to begin with,” he snapped.

Meaty lunged forward and grabbed Chris by the knot of his tie.  Chris gasped in fear and shock and then grimaced as he was slammed into the refrigerator.

“I don’t have to explain my life to a little bastard like you!” Meaty roared.  Chris put his hands to Meaty’s to keep some of the pressure off his throat.  “You’ve got bad blood in you,” Meaty snarled.  “It’s one thing to be born to a slut, but another to come from a liar.”

All Chris could do was whimper a little and draw in a shallow, shuddering breath.  Meaty released him and he slid to the floor, taking several of the magnets on the refrigerator’s surface with him.  He huddled on the floor and gripped the stretched out fabric of his tie, only capable of thinking that the man in his kitchen was completely unhinged.  He was vaguely aware that Meaty and the silent thug signed the forms, and then Meaty folded them up and handed them to his cohort.  As the man tucked the forms into his back pocket Meaty closed his eyes and gave a shake of his head hard enough to crack something.  Chris shrank back against the cold metal at his back.  Meaty opened his eyes and smiled.

“Thank you, Mr. Pelletier.  You’ve been more than generous.”

Chris didn’t respond.  He just listened to the men’s heavy footsteps clod out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and finally out his front door.  He sighed in relief, but didn’t move from his crouch on the floor.  He was still too shaken up to even think about trusting his legs yet.  He considered himself extremely lucky that he didn’t need to change his shorts because he’d come awfully close to it.

After about five minutes the shaking wore off and he managed to stretch out his limbs a little and drop his head back against the refrigerator.  He wondered what he was going to do now.  And strangely enough that thought was in reference to what he was going to do about college.  He’d never be able to afford a private school now.  Unless he racked up a huge debt in student loans.  He supposed he technically wasn’t any worse off than he had been a year ago.  He was just going to have to go to a public, in-state school.

Chris sighed.  He didn’t want to go to a different school.  He hadn’t even visited the campus yet and he was already looking forward to going to Northwestern.  He was finally allowing himself to admit that he’d been excited ever since Mr. Richardson had put it into his head that he was a shoe-in for acceptance.  So technically it was his fault and his responsibility.  Maybe he’d help him out by paying for some of it.  Chris shook his head.  No.  He couldn’t ask him to do that.  Mostly because he was pretty certain Mr. Richardson would say yes and shell out the cash.

Chris frowned and slumped closer to the floor.  Well, didn’t he deserve it?  He’d had enough crap in his life that it would be about time something good came his way.  After all, he was the son of a slut and a liar.  His brow creased.  He wondered what Meaty had meant by that.  It had sounded like he meant that being a liar was the worse of the two offenses.  Which was nice coming from an extorting murderer.  And had he been referring to his father?  It was odd to call a man a slut.  So, he must have been talking about his mother.  Chris felt anger rise in him.  That dick.  How dare he talk about his mama?  And did that mean that both insults were directed at her?  Or was his father the liar?  The anger quickly leaked out of him and he ran a hand over his face.  Who cared?  It was over now.  The money had made him uneasy all along that something like this might happen.  Now that it had, he no longer had to worry about it.  Unless someone else came looking for it.  And he had no money to give them.  What would they do if he couldn’t give them what they wanted?  He stopped that train of thought right there and refused to let it run its course.  He was already freaked out as it was; he didn’t need to add to it.  He wished he had someone to help…comfort him for lack of a better word.  And didn’t he?  He had three best friends, a mother, technically a girlfriend.  And a girl that thought he walked on water.  Surely one of them could make him feel better.  Except, he couldn’t tell them why he was upset.  The only one who knew was his father.  And while he knew he was going to have to tell him about it eventually, he didn’t want to upset him.  Plus, they’d had a fight today.  Had that counted as a fight?  Well, yeah.  Maybe he could tell Mr. Richardson about it.  He wouldn’t be able to tell because of client privileged information or something.  Well, he wasn’t Chris’ lawyer, but he was…what?  His friend?  Not exactly.  His patron?  That was weird.

Chris shook himself and struggled to his feet.  Enough.  He was not going to obsess about this.  That money had been an albatross around his neck and now it was gone.  He just had to hope that no one else would come looking for it.  He really didn’t mind being poor.  He’d been poor most of his life.  Just as long as he wasn’t going to have to get beaten within an inch of his life in order for someone to believe he wasn’t lying about his poorness.  Chris half laughed and half groaned as he buried his face in his arms on the counter.  Yeah, like he was going to be able to stop thinking about this.

 

 

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

 

                Chris used the walk from the student parking lot to the school to try to shake off the jittery feeling he still had.  Not unexpectedly he hadn’t slept well the night before.  If at all.  Every creak of the house had been footsteps on the stairs.  And he wasn’t just afraid for himself.  His mother was at home.  What if Meaty had had some sort of real grudge against her and decided to do something to her?  He’d never be able to protect her.  Chris flung open the vocational hallway door.  The stiff hinge prevented it front slamming into the outer wall, but it had helped dispel some of his anger.  And that anger was the result of helplessness.  Now that was one shit feeling.

His first period computer programming class did help him shake it off a little.  He’d been able to think more clearly while staring at the lines of code.  In theory the only ones who knew about the money were him, his father, and Meaty…and whomever Meaty had brought with him yesterday.  No one would come looking for the money because nobody else knew about it.  And even if they did, all he had to do was point them in Meaty’s direction.  Or would that make matters worse?  If he snitched?

Chris stuck his lower lip out in a fierce frown.  He had just started to feel better and now he’d gone and freaked himself out again.  Well, he had to pull himself together before he got to Will’s locker.  He was meeting Scott and Julian there for another attempt at silly-stringing the birthday boy and he couldn’t let them see how shaken he was.  Scott and Julian had beaten him there.  They practically attacked him in their excitement and haste to get the silly string out of his book bag.  Scott was hopping back and forth from foot to foot and Julian was caressing his can of pink goo.  Chris was standing behind them as they peeked around the corner.  He was sorely tempted to drop his head on their shoulders and take comfort in their presence.  But he didn’t need to be that much of a baby about this.  Besides, being this close to them was already making him feel a lot better.  And nailing Will with silly string would probably be enough to help him momentarily forget about all of it.

“Chris?”

Chris stood up straight.  That had been a girl’s voice.  Oh.  This wasn’t going to be good.  He turned around and saw Sophia standing a couple feet away, nervously twisting her fingers.  Chris had expected to feel a stab of guilt the next time he saw her, but it was remarkably weaker than he expected.  He wondered if he should say something, but he didn’t have anything to say.  She’d addressed him, so he’d just wait for her.

She took in a breath and let it out quickly.  “I’ve thought about what you said,” she said in a matter of fact tone.

Chris wondered which part she was referring to.

“You promise you’ll dump Karen?”

Chris blinked.  “What?”

“What?” he heard his two friends say.  They turned away from watching the locker and joined in the scene that Chris was certain was about to take place.

“I’ll sleep with you,” she said very calmly.  Too calmly.  “I want to.  But you have to break up with Karen.  You don’t have to date me—you just can’t date her.”

Chris stared at the little fifteen year old and the words coming out of her mouth.  He could feel his friends looking at him.  And he knew they were trying to keep the smirks off their faces.

“Sophia!” he burst out, actually being the one to cause the scene.  “I wasn’t being serious!  I just said that so that—well, so that you would hate me!  And stay away from me!”

“But—”

“Are you bothering _my_ boyfriend, _again_?”

Chris looked up and Sophia turned to see Karen striding toward them with two friends in tow.  His own two friends repressed snickers.

“This should be entertaining,” Scott murmured softly.  Chris would have kicked him, but he was probably right.

Sophia balled her hands into fists at her sides and stiffened her shoulders as she faced Karen.

“Well, your _boyfriend_ said that he’d dump you so that he could sleep with me.”

Karen’s friends gasped softly.  Karen merely raised her eyebrows and shifted her gaze to Chris.  He struggled for a few seconds with what to say, and then he figured he should just go with the truth.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said to Karen first.  Then he turned to Sophia.  “I didn’t mean it, Sophia.  I was just—I was trying to do what was best for you.  I mean, trust me.  You don’t want me.”

“But I do!  I really do!”

Scott and Julian were snorting back giggles again.  Chris looked at the ceiling and counted to three so he wouldn’t turn around and hurt them.  He counted to three again to steel himself for what he was about to say.  He really hadn’t wanted it to come to this.  He looked Sophia in the eyes.  Her determined, anxious blue eyes.

“Okay, but _I_ don’t want _you_ , Sophia,” Chris said softly.  He was trying to make this private, but he was sure his friends, Karen, and her friends could all hear him.  In fact he was pretty certain the twenty or so people eavesdropping nearby could hear him.  “Do I have to publically humiliate you to make you understand that?  I really tried to avoid that, but…here we are.”

The hallway was awfully quiet as they waited to hear Sophia response.  She just shook her head with a callous smile on her face.

“I cannot believe you are actually that afraid of your girlfriend.  Or that worried about what other people think.”  She faced him fully.  “I _know_ you want me.”

He felt his friends shift their weight behind him.  They really wanted to hear his response to that especially after months of denying that he had any real interest in the sophomore.  Again, Chris figured the truth was the only way to deal with this.

“Wanting to have sex with someone and wanting to date someone are two different things.”

“I know that!”  She shrugged.  “And I’m fine with that.”

Chris felt his jaw drop a little.  Was she serious?  He turned to his friends, biting his knuckles.  What was he supposed to do? he implored with his eyes.  They kind of shrugged and Chris deflated as he turned slowly back around.  Before he could say something, Julian put a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward.

“Um,” he said to Sophia, “would you be willing to forget Chris if I slept with you?”

Sophia crossed her arms over her chest and gave Julian a little glare.

“So…no?”

“I cannot believe how pathetic you are,” Karen finally stepped in.  Chris wondered why she’d waited so long.  “Look at yourself!  Throwing yourself at him like a cheap whore.”  She continued, cutting Sophia off.  “Look, I get it, okay?  I really do get where you’re coming from.  I love him.  I understand why you want him.  But…you had your chance.  All summer.  And all fall semester.  We both tried to get him.  And look who _he_ chose.  And even now you’re offering every guy’s fantasy—no strings attached sex.  And he’s _still_ turning you down.  Take a hint and stop embarrassing yourself.  I mean, you are cute.  You can get a cute boyfriend.”  A cold sneer spread over Karen’s features.  “That is if you can get a guy after this gets around school.  By tomorrow you’re going to be the laughing stock.”

“Probably by the end of today,” one of Karen’s friends added.

“Maybe you should start looking for a guy outside of Calverton,” her other friend suggested.

The three of them laughed.  As did some of the other spectators.  Chris could tell Sophia was trying really hard not to cry.  She turned to him and attempted to say something, but her voice gave out on her.  Before she could recover, Karen spoke again.

“Seriously, sweetie.  You’ve got to stop.”

The hall giggled loudly.  Chris could tell Sophia really wanted to say something, but she gave up and pushed her way from the group to run down the hall.  Chris felt something like a weight hit his chest.

“Oh, God,” he breathed.  This little scene had practically been social suicide.  Or homicide depending on how you looked at it.  Chris took a step to go after, but Karen got directly in his path.

“What are you doing?” she asked, with a hand to his chest to keep him from moving.

“Karen, this is too harsh.  This is like scarred for life kind of stuff.”

“So?  The damage has been done.”

“I know, but maybe it won’t be so bad if I—”

“Chris, if you go after her, I swear to God we are so finished.”

She locked her eyes with his and let him know exactly how not okay she was with the situation or whatever had transpired between him and Sophia to put the idea in her head that Chris wanted to sleep with her.  Chris looked around the hall.  Everyone was staring at them.  And Karen looked genuinely upset.  The bell rang and people slowly and disappointedly began to shut their lockers and head off to class.  Chris rubbed his forehead.  He didn’t know what to do.  He didn’t want to hurt Karen, but he was worried about Sophia.  Then again, if he went after her, what could he possibly say to her?  So, he just looked up at Karen and nodded.  A look of relief passed over her features.  Had she actually been worried that he might have chosen Sophia?

“Well, we’d better get to class,” he heard Julian say.

Then Scott and Julian grabbed his arms and dragged him away.  He hung his head as they walked away together.  Scott had an arm around his shoulders, which was a perfectly platonic guy gesture.  Julian had his arm wrapped around his waist.  Which was not.  Of course, it’s not like they could both put their arms around his shoulders at the same time—so he was willing to let it slide.  Especially since it felt good to have them both near him.

“Hey,” Scott said, “this is not your fault.  We’ve seen you with her.  You’ve been very firm with her.  Well, not so much in December, but ever since you and Karen got back together you have been, right?  Right?” Scott prompted again when Chris didn’t answer right away.

“Well, we kind of made out on New Year’s.”

“What?!  Really?!”

“How is she by the way?” Julian inquired.

“Dude,” Chris said.

Julian turned away, a little miffed.  “Sorry,” he muttered insincerely.

“Look, there were extenuating circumstances!  And the next day I made sure that I went and talked to her and explained very clearly—well, I at least finally got around to the point that I wasn’t interested in her.  And she was all like, ‘Oh, I understand.  But a little harmless flirting won’t kill you.’  And it _was_ harmless.  Until yesterday.  And yesterday I really did try to scare her off.  But it didn’t work!”

“Obviously,” Julian said with a teasing smile.

“Chris,” Scott said, “don’t stress about this, okay?  I mean, we’re still kids, you know?  No matter what we’ve been through, we’re still learning.  It’s not like you’ve done anything malicious.”

“I know,” Chris sighed.  “But I’ve hardly been the model boyfriend.  Or human being for that matter.”

“So?” Julian said a little harshly.  “You are just a human being, right?  We make mistakes.  And give in to temptations.”

“For real, right?” Scott chimed in.  “I mean, I banged some other dude’s girlfriend.”

“And I flirted with my shrink to the point that she had to dump me off on someone else.”

“See?  Wait, what?” Scott looked at Julian over Chris’ bowed head.

“Oh, yeah,” Julian murmured.  “That wasn’t public knowledge.”

“Really?  That shrink lady?  Like, the same one we met?”

“Trust me.  Under the bad clothes, schoolmarm hair, and glasses…she is _sooo_ hot.”

“Really.  The mean one, right?  The one that made me cry?”

Julian gave him a naughty smile.  “Yep.”

“Huh.  I am perversely intrigued.”

“I’ll just bet you are you submissive little masochist.”

The noise that came out of Scott’s mouth was several octaves above his normal range.

“Ju-just shut-up!  We’re trying to cheer up Chris here!”

“Actually, I do feel a little better now,” Chris said with a small smile.

Julian laughed and Scott flicked his ear, which required him to reach over Chris to do it and they veered off course a little and nearly ran into a wall.

“The point is,” Scott shouted loudly, and then lowered his volume a little, “We all do stupid stuff.  And we all make mistakes.  It’s only bad if we don’t learn from them.”

“But I feel like I’m past the point of learning from my mistakes with Sophia.”

“I don’t think so,” Julian said.  “I don’t think any of us would have acted much differently.  Hell, Will has strung along four girls at once at his worst.”

“Unh-uh,” Scott said.  “It was five.  Remember when he set the record sophomore year?”

“Oh, yeah.  You’re right.  Anyway.  None of us—not even Will—has had a stalker before.  So, I say you handled it just fine.”

“But…I just feel so bad for her.”

“Well, she kind of brought it on herself, didn’t she?”

“But I _did_ say that I would dump Karen if she let me sleep with her.  I just thought that would freak her out so much that she’d never want to see me again.  I never thought she’d take me seriously.  Or would seriously take me up on it.”

“So, that wasn’t your intention, right” asked Scott.

“No, but—”

“Road to hell and all that, man.  That’s just how it goes sometimes.”

“I know.  But.”

Chris didn’t know what to say.  He didn’t know what to do with himself.  The way he’d treated Karen and Sophia…the way he’d treated his father…the way he’d weakly caved into Meaty…he was just a…

“Hey.”

Julian stopped them all from walking and turned Chris to face him.  He raised his chin with a hand, but Chris couldn’t get his eyes above the knot of Julian’s tie.

“What’s really wrong?  You look seriously shook up.  And not just from silly girl trouble.  Did something else happen?”

Chris shook his head.  “No, I’m fine.”

“You’re also lying.”

Chris shook his head again.  He couldn’t tell them about Meaty and the money.  But they had to know something was wrong.  Chris almost never let them hang on him this much. Scott still had an arm on one shoulder and Julian had pulled them close enough together that he was practically hiding his face in his neck.  But he couldn’t move away from them.  It made him feel safe.  It also made him wonder when Julian had gotten so tall.  He could tell Scott and Julian were having some sort of silent conversation with each other.  Finally Scott rubbed his back.

“Hey, you don’t need to worry about Sophia, okay?  I’ll get Antoinette to talk to Natalie.  She’ll make sure Sophia is okay and doesn’t do anything drastic.  That way you know she’s okay and Karen won’t know about it.”

Chris nodded.  “Thanks.”

“Besides,” Julian said, “this whole thing wasn’t necessarily life scarring.  I mean, remember that time when Scott got turned down flat by Missy Vale in the lunch room?”

“Oh yeah!” Scott moaned and laughed at the same time.  “That was humiliating!”

“And he turned out okay.  Sort of.”

Chris laughed softly and stepped away from his two friends.  That was enough touchy-feely stuff for one decade.  “Yeah, but that was also in the fifth grade.”

“It was still embarrassing,” Scott pointed out.

“Yeah, and how long did it take you to get over it?”

“I guess right up until Antoinette made me a popular stud.”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” Julian said, “Sophia has more to recommend herself with.  For starters she’s not a giant goober.”

Scott punched Julian in the arm.  He laughed, but then grimaced and rubbed his shoulder.  “Ow.”

“Ramsey!”

All three of them started and turned.  Mr. Hayden was marching up to them, the fluorescent lights flashing quickly on his bald head as he made his way toward the tardy trio.

“Making your friends late too.  What is wrong with you, boy?”

“Gah!”  Scott panicked and bolted.  Chris and Julian looked at each other and then ran off in opposite directions.  Mr. Hayden was going to have to choose which one he really wanted to go after.  Chris was pretty certain he’d choose Scott or Julian.  They were much better targets.  Chris could feel himself start to laugh as he ran away, listening to Mr. Hayden’s irritated voice echo through the empty halls.  He didn’t know why, but he felt better.  Of course the whole Sophia thing was still messed up, but he really had done his best to try to get her to give up on him.  If she was a glutton for punishment, there was nothing he could do about it.  And for some reason he felt better about the Meaty situation.  The feeling of safety he had gotten from his two friends stayed with him.  Now that the money was gone, he was no longer in his father’s world.  He could stay in his own world where his friends supported and loved him.  Not that he would ever admit that he was okay with that.

 

That feeling of safety stayed with him when he joined his friends in surprising Will at his house.  Will’s mom was definitely the scariest person he’d ever met and he had little doubt even Meaty would tremble before her.  Fortunately those thoughts were long gone from his head since the party was in full swing.  Fall Out Boy’s “Dance, Dance” was blaring from the speakers mounted inside and outside the house and there were a lot of people dancing to it.  They had told a lot of people about the party, but told them all it started later so that they could have a private get together for the first couple hours.  Now the outdoor was patio was flooded with people.  Will really was a popular guy.  Whether or not these people were actually friends with him was questionable, but they all wanted to pretend to be.

Chris was sitting next to the food table and kept eating watermelon directly from the bowl with his fingers.  He was probably going to get busted soon, but until then, he was having a good time.  He’d had to leave the kitchen since his mother was in there.  He couldn’t believe she’d actually shown up.  He hadn’t wanted to be on his best behavior tonight, so the only way to accomplish that was to not be anywhere near her.  Not that he was being particularly bad.  Picking food out of the serving bowl with your fingers wasn’t exactly a capital offense.

“Hey, Chris!”

Chris put out his arms to catch Will as he fell onto the picnic bench beside him.  He tried to get his friend to sit up straight, but he continued to lean against him, almost hugging him.

“Man.  I’m so glad you guys did this for me.  It’s so awesome.”

“Ye-ah…are you drunk?”

“What?!”  Will sat up and grabbed his shoulders to look at him.  He wobbled forward and then back before holding himself still.  “No.  At least, I don’t think so.  I mean, I did get into the margaritas…and I think Scott’s dad makes them with a lot of alcohol.  But I only had like…one.  Or four.  In an hour.”

“And your parents aren’t worried about getting busted for serving alcohol to minors?”  Of course what Chris was really thinking was where was the alcohol and would he be able to get some without his mom knowing.

“No.  Cause, see?  They’re serving it to adults.  If the kids get into it, it’s not ‘ _serving’_ it to them.  It’s a loophole.  They know all kinds of loopholes.”

“Unh-huh.  So, why are you drinking?  Are you unhappy?”

“Wha~~?!  No way!  I am so happy right now.”  Will suddenly because very serious and leaned close.  Chris wanted to back up, but the table at his back stopped him.  “I love you, Chris.”

Chris started.  And blushed.  “What?”

“I love you.  And Scott.  And Julian.  And Mommy and Daddy.  And Joyce Greene.  And K—”

“Who’s Joyce Greene?”

“My cat.”

“You have a cat?”

“Yeah.  But she doesn’t live with me.  She lives in the utility room.  And likes the fish tank.”

“Unh-huh.”  Chris patted his shoulder.  “Okay.  Well, I think it’s time we cut you off.”

“Yeah.  Dad said the same thing.  That’s why he said to go hang out with you.  He said you were such a wet towel you’d sober me right up.”

Chris scowled.  Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say.  Chris started yet again as Will grabbed his face with his hands.

“I don’t think you’re a wet towel.  I think you’re fun.  Shhhh.  Don’t tell the others…but you’re my favorite.”

Chris laughed.  “No, I’m not.”

“You are!  You’re my Chris favorite!  No one is a better Chris than you.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Yeah.”  Will slumped forward and rested his head on Chris’ chest.  “What cologne are you wearing?” came Will’s muffled voice.

“I don’t know.  Karen bought it for me.  I think it’s from the Gap or something.”

Will shook his head.  “It’s Banana Republic.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

Chris stiffened as Will’s arms circled him and put his face to his neck.  Was it his imagination or was Will kissing his throat?

“Okay!” Chris shouted, too loudly.  He pushed back on Will and stood up.  “Well.  I need…some ice.  Yeah.  Will you be okay here by yourself?”

Will smiled and nodded at him.  Chris walked away, wiping away the spot that still tingled from the touch of Will’s lips.  Holy crap that had been weird.  He was never going to be around Will when he was drunk again.  He was not going to give in to his friends’ deteriorating sense of personal boundaries.  He was _not_.  At least, he really hoped not because if they’d been alone it might have taken him longer to push Will away.

Chris entered the kitchen and found that this was where most of the adults were congregating.  He turned abruptly and tried to escape to the living room.

“Oh, Chris,” Mrs. Harder called out.

He froze and turned toward her in partial fear.

“Could you get the door, darling?”

“Um.  Sure.”

Chris left, thankful that was all she wanted but was very curious if she’d been drinking too.  He hadn’t heard the doorbell or a knock and he’d never heard her call any of Will’s friends “darling” before.  But, he obediently answered the door, half-expecting there to be no one there.  But who was standing on the stoop was the absolute last person he expected.  He leaned on the door and grinned.

“Well, hello there.”

Layla looked away, suppressing irritation he wagered, and then looked back at him.  “Hey,” she muttered.

“So, you came.”

“Yeah.  To wish Julian a happy birthday.  That’s all.”

Chris’ grin widened.  “You mean Will.”

“Yeah.  That’s what I said.”

“Uh-huh.”  Chris stepped back.  “Come on in.”

She looked like she might actually turn and run for a moment, but then she stepped inside.  Chris closed the door and said nonchalantly, “Julian is out back hanging up some donuts for a game.”

“Yeah, well maybe I want to help Anna set something up,” she retorted.

“Ah, of course.  Well.  Anna is putting the candles on the cake I believe.  You made it just in time for the singing part.”

“Great.”

He smiled at her.  “Cake is that way,” he said pointing to the study that would lead around to the living room.  “And games are that way,” he indicated the hallway that led to the kitchen and eventually outside to the patio.

Layla stood at her metaphorical crossroads.  Finally she gave Chris a glare and groused, “Don’t you say a word.”  Then she started in the direction of the games.  Very interesting.  He had to tell someone.  Will was too drunk to truly appreciate it.  And he might still be a little handsy.  He needed to find Scott.  Chris wandered into the living room and saw Anna, Riley, and Laney discussing the best way to arrange the candles on the cake.  It was a large cake, but they were going to try to get eighteen candles on it.  The room was also full of people talking and laughing and eating.  Mostly teenagers.  The adults kind of stood out in the room.  Mostly because they were the two attractive men leaning against the bar holding highball glasses with what was probably Scotch in them.  That was when Chris noticed most of the occupants in the room were female.  He should have found the situation ridiculously funny because the two men clearly had no interest in the hopeful young girls, but he just found it sad.  It was kind of a familiar sight.  Whenever their families would get together at parties or other occasions, the fathers would always line up together and talk to each other as they watched the room.  But there were only two of them.  One was missing.

The two men smiled at him when he walked up to them.  He had a feeling they were going to say something embarrassing and/or pervy to see if they could get him to blush.  He decided to preempt that attempt.

“You know, you two look really sketchy standing over here.  It’s like you’re plotting something evil.  Mr. March always used to balance you two out.”

“Ha!” Mr. Ramsey laughed.  “He was the most devious of all.”

“For sure,” Mr. Harder agreed.

Chris scoffed.  “I do _not_ believe you.”

“He was!” Mr. Ramsey declared.

“He was a witch, you know,” Mr. Harder smiled conspiratorially.

Chris made a face at them.

“But you know, he’s right,” Mr. Harder mused.  “We are a little unbalanced now.  We should find another third.”

“What are you saying?!  No one could ever replace Nik!”

Chris was a little surprised by Mr. Ramsey’s vehemence.

“Well, of course no one can replace him.  I just said we need another third.  We really could use a wingman.”

“Ah.  You’re right.”

“Maybe we could lure Norwood to the dark side,” Mr. Harder suggested.

Mr. Ramsey made a face.  “He doesn’t like me.  How about Mayfield?”

“Mayfield?  He’s a pussy.”

Chris gasped.  Adults shouldn’t talk like that.  The two men looked at him, like they’d forgotten he was there.

“Are you still here?” Mr. Harder asked.

“Go hang out with people your own age,” Mr. Ramsey shooed him away with a hand like he was a fly.

“Geh.”  Chris stomped away and headed back out to the patio.  Will was still on the picnic table bench, but he was no longer alone.  Scott was beside him and Antoinette was on the other side of him.  It looked like Will and Antoinette were having a competition to see who could make Scott explode first.  One of his hands was preoccupied with pushing his girlfriend’s hand away from his groin while the other was trying to keep Will from messing with something under his shirt.  Chris refused to imagine what that might be.  Of course, that still left one hand apiece for his molesters to find some way to tease him.  Chris would have gone over to stop them, but honestly, Scott didn’t seem _that_ put out by it.  Nor did he seem in much danger since Will and Antoinette seemed more focused on each other than Scott—not in a sexual cheating sort of way—but in an extremely competitive see who could win sort of way.  And he was definitely not putting himself in the middle of that.

He saw some people from the computer club sitting in a secluded section of the backyard near the beginning of the walkthrough garden.  The Harders’ backyard was huge.  He wondered how they had gotten an invite, but decided he’d go join them anyway.  On the way he saw Layla helping Julian string donuts on a wire.  They were talking and laughing.  And poor Layla.  Julian had that same happy-go-lucky, _clueless_ expression on his face he used to have when he talked with Laney.  Well, at least he was pretty certain Layla wouldn’t get herself knocked up as a result.  He gave her a smile as he passed them.  She scowled back at him.

Chris laughed and sat down next to Ulla on a stone bench.  She was a tall, skinny, acne-ridden freshman who had joined the computer club in order to make friends.  He supposed she _had_ made some friends.  Whether they were popular or not wasn’t really the point.

“Hey, Ulla.  Are you enjoying the party?”

“Yeah.”

She was silent after that and Chris thought that was the end of the conversation.  Then she turned to him. “You know.  I don’t think those virgin daiquiris were actually virgins.”

Chris glanced at her.  “No?”

“Nope.  In fact…I think they were really slutty.”

Chris laughed.  “Just let me know if you feel like puking.  Because then you—ahh!”

Chris screamed as Ulla launched herself into his lap.  They fell off the bench and onto the grass with Ulla trying her best to kiss him.  His screaming had attracted a lot of attention.

“Man, Pelletier,” laughed one kid he never would have known went to Calverton if it weren’t for the uniform, “can’t keep away from the jailbait, can you?”

The crowd around him laughed and no one attempted to help him get the crazed computer enthusiast off of him.  Chris groaned in despair.  He could just imagine the rumors that would be going around school tomorrow.


	27. Chapter 27

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

 

Ken

 

Ken pretended to be working at his computer so that he could pretend not to be watching his father pretending to mill aimlessly around his office.  What was he inspecting it for?  What minute imperfections did he see?  The layout?  The colors?  Was it not clean enough?  Not organized correctly?  Maybe he just didn’t like the owner of the office.  What was wrong?  What had he done wrong to warrant this kind of scrutiny?

Ken kept a wary eye on his father and tapped random keys on the keyboard.  The man stood in front of a wall with hands clasped behind his back—and he was just staring at it.  His grey Armani suit hadn’t wrinkled a bit even though it was more than halfway through the day.  How did he manage to do that?  _And_ keep every single strand of his grey flecked dark hair in place?  Without hair gel.  It wasn’t fair that such a perfect man who accomplished everything he set out to do with ease have such high expectations of everyone else.  Like what was wrong with his office?  There was no other reason for him to linger after their meeting unless it was to find _something_ wrong with him or his space or something he did.

Ken stabbed a key sharply in his irritation and looked at the monitor.  He’d destroyed his carefully crafted spreadsheet.  He made a face at it and clicked the “x” in the top right corner.  When it asked him if he wanted to save the changes, he clicked “no.”  When the document closed he sat back in his chair and looked at his father.  He was still staring at the same damn wall.  Ken couldn’t take it anymore.

“What is it?” he burst out, trying to sound normal as he did so.

His father turned to look at him and seemed a little startled, but certainly not ruffled.  Never Kenneth West.  The man smiled a little.

“I was admiring your sister’s art.”

“Ah.”  Ken nodded in understanding, but what he was thinking was, _Yeah right.  He hates something.  I know it._

Ken strummed his fingers on his desk and watched his father walk to another wall to “admire” another piece of art.  The phone on his desk rang and he wasn’t sure if he was happy for the distraction or not.  He picked it up and placed one arm on his desk casually, as he had often seen his father do.  It was a position of nonchalant control and one his father had taught him was the trademark of a captivating and powerful man.

“Yes, Marnie?”  He spoke with cool confidence.  Another trait of the successful businessman.

“Ken West!”

Ken was startled out of his pose and composure by that incensed shout.  Not even his parents had ever yelled at him like that.  If he didn’t know his voice so well he would have sworn it was Rylan.  As it was his best guess was a very irate David Ramsey.

“Y-yes?”

“I’ll admit it, I’m a little stupid so feel free to explain this to me like I’m a four year old.  But, usually, when profits go up…that’s a good thing, right?”

“Yes.”  He scowled to himself.  Why was he playing along with this menace?

“Then why are you cutting back my department?!” the man actually yelled at his boss.

“Why are you doing this over the phone?” Ken replied sharply.  “My secretary’s phone at that?”

“Because she won’t let me up.  Back up, woman.”

“Did she tell you it was because I’m in the middle of a meeting?”

“Well, she did mention your daddy is up there.”

Ken bit back his retort and countered calmly, “Well, then you should realize that now isn’t a good time.”

“Well, you let me know when it _is_ a good time and you and I will finish this discussion.  In person.”

“And when we do I trust you will conduct yourself in a more appropriate manner.”

“Don’t worry, Ken.  My behavior will most definitely be appropriate to the situation.”

Then the bitch hung up on him.  Ken pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it with disgust.

“Uh!”

“Who was that?”

Ken looked up.  Of course.  His father had finally wandered away from the walls only to come stand in front of his desk in enough time to witness him being disrespected by one of his subordinates and his inability to handle the situation.

Ken slumped back into his chair and averted his eyes.  “David Ramsey,” he groused.

His father laughed.  “I like him.”

“Yeah?” Ken grumbled.  Of course his father would like the bane of his existence.

“Yes.  And I feel a little sorry for him.”

“ _Him_?” Ken sat up straight and tried not to gape at his father.  “What on earth for?”

“Well, because if you had shown no interest in business and had, say, opened an art gallery like your sister, he would most likely be running this company.”

“Well, he is difficult to manage, but he doesn’t run—”

“No, I mean he would have your position.”

Ken could feel he was gaping now.  “Are you serious?  David Ramsey?  CEO of K&K Consulting?  But—but he’s too unpredictable!  Too unfocused.  I mean, he is good at what he does, but you have to get him to actually do it.  If he didn’t have a boss telling him what to do—he’d never get anything done.”

“So you’re saying you don’t have a boss?”

“No, I—!”

His father laughed again and smiled at him.  Ken slumped down again.  He hated being teased.

“I think,” his father said, “that if David was in your position he would really excel here.  He’s like one of those high energy dogs that people keep in small apartments and never exercise and then wonder why they tear everything up.  He needs to be properly stimulated.”

Ken sat back in a huff and crossed his arms.  “So then why don’t you give him my job?”

“Do you want me to?”

Ken started and uncrossed his arms.  That was it?  He showed one sign of dissention and he was getting kicked out?  Why did his father only see his flaws?

“I mean, you know, you’ve worked so hard here.  I would understand if you want to take a break.  Have a personal life.  It wouldn’t have to be permanent.  Just a sabbatical.”

“No.”  Ken stood up.  “No, sir.  I am very happy with my job and want to stay right where I am.  Unless you’re displeased with my work.”

“No, of course not.  I just thought _you_ might want—well, anyway.  I just think he would be a good executive.”

Ken sat back down, feeling sulky again.  “Well, then make him the president of one of your other companies and get him away from me.”

“No,” his father said smiling, “I think he’s good for you.”

“Feh.”

Ken watched his father pick up a green glass paperweight from his desk and hold it up to the light.

“So, are you in town this weekend?” the man asked, watching the swirled glass reflect the light.

“Um, I think so, but let me check my schedule.”

Ken pulled up his calendar on the computer and was distracted from looking up the answer to his father’s question as he put the paperweight back down in the wrong place.

“Um…”

His father looked at him expectantly.  He quickly glanced at the planner.

“Yeah.  I’m here all week.”

“Great.  Your mother and I…”  he paused as he watched Ken move the paperweight back where it was supposed to be.  “Um.  We’re having a dinner so that your sister can introduce us to her new _beau_.”

Ken smiled.  “Oh, yes.  _Stanislav_.”

“Yes.  Him.  We’d like you to come too.”

“Sure.  I’d love to.  If only to watch Mom’s face as she tries to understand him through his accent.”

His father chuckled.  “It should be an entertaining evening.”  He tapped his finger on the paperweight, but was careful not to move it again.  “And, um, you know.  You could bring…whoever it is that you’re dating right now.  It’d be nice to be able to meet the person who’s finally getting you to cut back at work.”

“But I’m not really cutting back!” Ken protested quickly.  The last thing he needed was his father to think he was doing a bad job because he wasn’t trying.

His father waved a placating hand.  “I meant that in a _good_ way.”

“Ah.”  Ken didn’t believe him.  “Well, you have met her.  At the office Christmas party.  Remember?  Angela Moreno?”  Even as he said it, his stomach dropped out and sent a wave of unpleasant nausea to his head.  No, he couldn’t do this to Will.  He couldn’t even say that he was dating her even if he knew Will would never find out.  He’d promised him he wouldn’t do that to him again.  So, what did that mean?  Could he never again say he was dating a woman?  Could he never again present a woman as physical evidence?  He would have to be a confirmed bachelor.  And wasn’t that just another way of saying gay?  Should he just come out already?  Well, even if he did, he certainly couldn’t tell his parents he was dating a high schooler.  He cleared his throat.  “Well, actually…I guess we’re not…seeing each other anymore.”

“No,” his father said.  And if Ken wasn’t mistaken, that had been mildly sarcastic.  “I wonder why it didn’t work out between you two.”

Ken’s brow creased a little.  “Well.  I guess we just wanted different things.”

“I bet.  So, do you want to bring your friend, Rylan?”

Ken let out a short laugh.  “ _No_.”

“You know how much your mother hates asymmetry.”

“Well, I’m so sorry my void of a social life is throwing off her place settings.”

His father sighed, like he was already preparing himself for breaking the news to his wife.  “Well, that’s fine.  Just, I want you to know that your mother and I have come a long way since the Kelly Digarmo incident.”

Ken half-groaned and half-laughed as he brought a hand to his face.  “I thought we all agreed never to mention that name again.”

They both laughed.  His father tapped the paperweight again.

“What I’m saying is that we would be more open to your choice of date.  I mean, especially with some of the guys Kennedy has brought home, we have learned to be very open minded.”

“Oh, yes.  You were quite open minded with ‘Sunchase.’”

“Well.  You can hardly blame us for that one.  But, seriously.  We would both love to meet your someone special.  So…don’t ever think that you can’t bring someone over because you think we would disapprove.  We will be open minded to whomever it is you bring over.”

His father was looking at him pretty intently.  Geez, was his mother that desperate for grandchildren that they just wanted him to pick someone out already and get it done?  Ken nodded vaguely.

“Okay.”

His father let out a little sigh that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been paying so close attention.  The man gave one more tap to the paperweight and then smiled.

“Okay then.  I’ll see you this weekend.  Good luck with David.”

Ken frowned.  He’d almost forgotten about him.  His father walked over to the elevator and stepped through the already open doors.

“And son?”

Ken looked up from worrying his lip over David Ramsey.

“You’re doing a great job.”

The elevator doors closed and Ken was left alone in his office with those parting words.

“What the hell did that mean?!”

Great.  Now he was going to have to re-re-go over the project he’d just finished.  His father had reviewed it earlier in the week.  He must have found something wrong with it.  He needed to get it fixed before it was brought before the board at Q*West.  He checked his watch.  It was only 1:30, but he needed to leave early today.  Will had insisted that he cook dinner for him tonight and he definitely needed adult supervision.  Cooking was too close to chemistry for Ken to trust his kitchen to his explosion prone boyfriend.  Well, if he turned off his phone and ignored his e-mail for the rest of the day he should have time to review the project and finish up the new proposal he’d started.

The buzzer on his intercom went off.  He reflexively reached for it, but then hesitated.  He was supposed to be ignoring calls.  Well, this was Marnie, so he couldn’t ignore her.  He could just tell her to take messages for any calls that came in for the rest of the day.  Then he snatched his hand back.  What if it was David Ramsey again?  Ken let out a noise of aggravation.  Dammit.  He was not going to be afraid of him.  He pushed the “talk” button.

“Yes, Marnie?”

“Oh, Mr. West!  I’m so sorry for earlier!  Mr. Ramsey just grabbed the phone!”

Ken smiled.  “It’s quite all right.  I don’t hold you responsible for his actions.  Though please block out my morning tomorrow for a meeting with him.  And be sure to tell him it starts at 7:00 a.m. or it doesn’t start at all.”

“Yes, sir.”

Was it his imagination or did she have a touch of delighted malice in her tone?

“Okay, thank you, Marnie.  Can you take messages for any other calls I get this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir.  Though, um.  I was buzzing because there is a call waiting.  It’s Mr. Treviño.”

“Oh.  Line one, right?”

“No, three, sir.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Ken clicked off the intercom and picked up his phone.  Rylan must be on his cell phone if he was getting routed through line three.  He wondered where he was.

“Hello!” Ken answered the phone, knowing he was going to be razzed for sounding happy to hear from Rylan.  Rylan took complements worse than he did.

“Did you know that Alexander the Great died when he was 33?”

Ken made a face.  What a jerk.  “Yeah?  So did Jesus.  What’s your point?”

Rylan chuckled.  “Are you having a good day?”

“A normal one.  Though my dad did come over and took me out to lunch.  And then he scanned my office looking for everything wrong with it.”

“Unh-huh,” Rylan replied dryly.

“He did!”

“Ken, I don’t deny your neurosis, but I won’t encourage it.”

“Whatever.  Fine.  My day’s been great!  My dad took me out to lunch.”

“How nice!”

“Yes.”  Ken scowled and rubbed a smudge on his desk.  “But then it got worse when David Ramsey had to pitch a hissy fit to which my dad was partial witness.”  Rylan didn’t reply right away, so Ken took that to mean he wasn’t interested in that topic.  “So, anyway—”

“What is it with that guy?”

“What’s up with whom?  What do you mean?”

“This David Ramsey guy.  What’s your deal with him?”

“Huh?” Ken laughed, hoping his nervousness didn’t come through.  Rylan could pick up on the slightest changes in his tone.  “I have no ‘deal’ with him.  He’s just one of my employees.  One of my more annoying employees…but…”

“No.  This one is different.  Normally when you refer to your employees you’ll use just a first or last name.  Or you’ll use a nickname.  Or that one guy that you say represents all that is unholy in the world.  But David Ramsey…you always use his full name.  I remember his name for that reason.”

“I don’t know what you mean.  I just use his last name because David is a common name.”

“Maybe when you first mention him, but for the rest of the conversation (or rant) you use his full name.  Every time.”

“Rylan, I don’t know what to tell you.  I’ve never noticed I did that.”

“Mm-hmm.  You denied it.  So it does mean something.”

Ken laughed.  “Rylan, you’re crazy!  Just because I use—”

“A complex.”

“What?”

“You have some sort of complex about this guy.  Why?”

“I do—”  What was he doing?  About to deny something that was eventually going to be pulled out of him anyway?  This was Rylan he was dealing with after all.  Ken let out a dramatic sigh.  “Yes, fine, you’re right.  But it’s not my fault!”

“So what he’d do to you?  Rearrange your filing system?”

“That’s not funny, Rylan.”

Rylan laughed.  “Sorry, sorry.”

“You said you wouldn’t joke about that anymore.”

“I’m sorry!” he laughed harder.  “God, you are a freak.  So, what happened?”

“It’s stupid really.  I interned here when I was in high school.  And there was a minor incident.  It essentially boils down to the fact that he was the first man to give me a hard on through actual physical contact.”

Rylan burst out laughing.  And then quickly apologized to someone on his end of the line.  He chuckled some more.  “I understand now.  I remember my own first physical stimulation,” he sighed nostalgically.  “It was my Little League coach: Coach Burgundy.”

“What?!  Gross!”  Ken didn’t know if he should laugh or gag.  “That is so disgustingly cliché.  No wonder you’re messed up if you were molested so young.”

“It wasn’t like that!  He was just showing me how to swing a bat.”

“I’ll bet he was.”

“Blow me, West.”

“Not anymore.  You’ve lost privileges.”

“Privilege?” Rylan grumbled.  “It was more like a punishment with you.”

“Is that why you asked for it so often?”

There was more grumbling but Ken couldn’t make it out.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I was just saying that I’m calling to let you know that I can’t see you tonight.”

Ken creased his brows in thought as he flicked the cord of the phone.  “Did we have plans?”

He could actually hear Rylan’s eyebrow tick in annoyance over the phone line.

“No, we didn’t.  You said you were spending the evening with your irritating little ass polyp.”

Ken repressed his laughter.  He didn’t want to encourage the name calling.  “I just really don’t know why you two can’t get along.”

“You can’t?”

“Well, if it was anyone else I would say it was jealousy…but you don’t get jealous.  Right, Rylan?”

“No, I don’t.”

“So, then it’s a mystery.  I mean, I know the proximal cause of your problems because you two are always picking at each other.  But I’m not sure why it started in the first place.”

“As I recall he called me a faggot and a pimp to my face.”

“Oh, yeah.  Well, he was having a bad day.  But since then, you two have had ample opportunity to smooth things over—and you both refuse to even try.”

“Neither of us like to share.”

“Well, that’s true I suppose.”  Ken played with the cord again.  But what did they have to share?  They had two different relationships with him.  “Regardless.  You should still be nice to him.”

“ _Wha—?!_ ”  Ken pulled the earpiece back after that screech.  “Why?”

“For my sake.”

Rylan growled.  “That’s a cheap shot.”

“But effective.”

“Well, I would try but he’s completely unreasonable!”

“ _He_ is?”

“Yes, him.”

“But he’s really not.  When he doesn’t let his temper get the best of him he’s actually very rational and thoughtful.  He’s very intelligent.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Well, if he’s such a great and _reasonable_ guy, would he be willing to do something for someone he doesn’t even like?”

“You want him to do something for you?”

“Not for me exactly.  For one of my employees.”

“Um…”  Where was Rylan going with this?  “One of your employees?”  The one thing Will couldn’t seem to be reasonable about was Rylan and his business.  That more than likely extended to his employees.

“Yeah.  Do you remember the day you met the little spore?  You were supposed to be meeting one of my boys.”  Rylan sighed regretfully.  “If you’d met him like you were supposed to that _weed_ would have never come into our lives.”

Ken knew that was probably true, but a part of him felt like he would have met Will Harder one way or another.

“Anyway, the reason my employee wasn’t there to meet you was because he collapsed.”

“Yes, I recall you telling me something to that effect the next day.  You said he was okay.  I hope that’s true?”

“Oh, yes, he’s fine now.  But that day he says he remembers someone taking care of him while he was having his episode.  That someone called the ambulance and stayed with him until it came.  But there was a whole crowd there.  It could have been anyone.  But then he mentioned that he remembers he felt a little better because the person had cool hands and kept combing back his hair.  Then I knew it had to be that popsicle of yours.”

Ken chuckled.  “So, what’s the favor?”

“Tyler wants to meet him.  To thank him.  I told him it wasn’t necessary because it’s not like he actually did anything, but he insists that since he does have some way of knowing who the stranger is and meeting him, that he wants to express his gratitude.”

“That’s very gracious of him.”

“Whatever.  So do you think your intelligent, rational little brat would be willing to be civil enough to meet with one of my whores?”

“Yes, I believe he would,” Ken said without hesitation though he was wondering if he was going to have to do some finagling.

Rylan harrumphed disbelievingly.

“You don’t understand, Rylan.  He’s only that way around you.”  Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but like hell if he was going to admit that.  And truthfully he didn’t have much experience seeing what Will was like around other people.  He and Will had never spent much time in the presence of third parties.

“Okay then,” Rylan said, a touch smarmily.  “Set up a meeting.”

“Fine.  Not at Blue Boy.”

“Your place then.”

“Sure.”  Ken wanted to move off the subject of Will while Rylan was still in a decent mood.  “So, why are you cancelling on my birthday?”

“You’re the one who already had plans.”

“So?  You’re still cancelling on me.”

“I’m going to Vermont.”

“Oh…”  Ken sat up and leaned on his desk.  He put a hand to his head.  They were both quiet for several seconds.  “How is…what…”  Ken sighed.  “How is she?”

Ken listened carefully to try to hear his friend’s reaction over the phone.  There was murmuring in the background.  He must be in a public place.

“Not well,” Rylan finally admitted.

“I’m sorry, Rylan.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet again.  There wasn’t anything to say.

“Well,” Rylan said, “I’m at the airport.  My flight’s boarding.”

“Okay.  Give my love to Arralyn.”

“Will do.”

“And Rylan…I love you too.”

“Yeah?”

Ken waited for his smartass comment.

“Thanks.”

Then Rylan hung up.  Ken pulled the phone back from his ear and tapped the receiver against his lips.  That was unusual, which meant something was really wrong.  Well, there was nothing he could do unless Rylan let him.  He’d learned that lesson the hard way more than once.  He put the phone back in place and decided he would just try to put it at the back of his mind and get some work done.  He knew that would only work for a couple of hours though.  But that was all right.  He would go home then and Will would make him forget about everything.  Ken fingered his sports car shaped mouse, but he wasn’t looking at his computer screen.  He was imagining his lover frowning at a cookbook that dare use the term “pinch” to describe a measurement.

Ken started as the intercom buzzed.  He scowled at it.  What part of “take messages” didn’t Marnie get?  He pushed the intercom button.

“Yes, Marnie?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. West, but you have a visitor if your schedule permits.  A Mr. William Harder is here to see you.”

Ken, quite involuntarily, broke into a grin.  “Oh…th-that’s.”  Ken closed his mouth and shook his head.  He cleared his throat quietly.  “I can see him.  Please send him up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ken hopped out of his chair and wondered what sort of story Will had come up with in order to pay him a visit.  It was risky.  They were getting careless.  They were so going to get caught.  Or at least, arouse suspicions.  And so what?  There wasn’t anything illegal about their relationship.  Technically.  But what about the embarrassment?  The scandal?  The disowning?  Like his parents would really be that “open-minded?”  Wait, had that been what his father had been getting at?  Of course not.  Ken stopped right in front of the elevator and waited for it to arrive.  He heard the soft whoosh of the car and considered just jumping on him as soon as the doors opened.  When the doors did open they revealed one William Harder.  William Richmond Harder.

Ken had already been moving forward.  Seeing the stranger had made him pull up short and choke back his greeting.  His secret boyfriend’s father allowed a small smile to slide up one side of his face.

“Were you expecting someone else?”

Ken tried to hold back his nervous breath of air.  It came out as a soft, guilty laugh.  Ken didn’t know what to do.  So, he just stared at the man.  He seemed to have no qualms about staring back.  At length, he let the smile drop and gave him a typical new business acquaintance polite look.

“Is it all right if I intrude upon your work?  I know I don’t have an appointment…”

“Oh.”  Ken shook himself.  The expression, the phrasing...it triggered in him his years of careful and patient practice of handling a wide variety of business partners.  “No, sir, that’s quite all right.  I am free at present.  Please come into my office.”

Ken stepped aside and watched Rich Harder step into the room.  He usually liked to watch people’s first reactions to his “office,” but he was currently too nervous to enjoy the arched eyebrow that hitched up over his right eye.  Ken started to lead him toward the grouping of furniture toward the middle of the room.

“Would you like to have a seat?”

The man wandered over toward his desk.  “I’d rather stand.”

“O-kay.”  Ken followed him and watched him carefully as he stopped in front of his desk and appeared to be looking out the large wall of windows.  Ken put his hands in his pockets.  “Is there something I can help you with?”

Rich Harder slowly turned around and placed his hands behind him on the desk.  His long, thin fingers slid out from his body across the warm colored wood as he leaned back against the desk.  Ken pulled his eyes away from those hands and looked at his face.  The man seemed content to stare at him, so he stared right back.  To back down would be a sign of weakness, and as far as he knew, this meeting was business related.  Though he couldn’t imagine what business that might be.  To the best of his knowledge Rich Harder was involved in intellectual property rights and copyright infringement.  That had very little to do with the legal practices of an investment firm.  Of course, he had heard rumors that The Ball Beaker sometimes sent scouts to meet with the competition so that she could gain as much advantage as possible.  Would she send her own husband?  If she had that was a very interesting maneuver.  What exactly was this little meeting about?  The man hadn’t moved a muscle.  Barely even blinked.

At least he was pleasant to look at.  He’d noticed when he’d met him at the Christmas party, but he really was quite young.  Much younger than a woman Marilyn Harder’s age husband should be.  Though he was handsome enough to explain away the age gap.  It was a little strange to look at him.  He definitely had an older version of Will’s face.  Ken remembered what Will had said about aging as well as his father—that he would have nothing to worry about.  Well, neither did Will.  Rich Harder was still as beautiful as he’d been in that picture he’d seen of him at Will’s house despite the number of years that had passed since it was taken.  However, Will wasn’t an exact replica: for one thing, he was about four inches shorter than his father.  And the older Harder had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes.  The expression in them was the same though.  Ken also noticed the shape of their mouths were different, but probably only because he paid such close attention to Will’s.  Yes, Will had definitely gotten his personality and attitude from his mother, but his looks were all from his father.  And such good looks too.  It was kind of ridiculous to point it out to himself, but Rich Harder was his type.  He just got the newer model.

Now the silence had gone on too long.  It was putting power in the opponent’s hands.  Ken removed one hand from his pocket and casually looked at his watch, though it was partially covered by his sleeve, so he couldn’t actually see the time.  The move was carefully executed so that his adversary could see that he was intentionally letting him know that he didn’t care what time it was, he was just letting him know that he was taking up his time.  He returned the hand to his pocket.

“Is there something you wanted to discuss?”

Rich pressed his fingertips against the wood and his hands arched slightly.  Ken’s eyes were drawn to the movement.  He was too well educated in manipulative body language to not recognize the movement for what it was—but he couldn’t figure out what its purpose was.

“My son is very immature.”

Ken focused on the man’s face again, his voice getting his attention.  And then he processed his words.

“Huh?”  He was too startled to play it off.

“He’s selfish and controlling and with three special exceptions rarely thinks about how his actions affect others.”

Ken swallowed discreetly, but didn’t speak.  Even if he could admit to knowing Will, he couldn’t really disagree with his father’s assessment.  Rich cast his eyes down.

“He’s also essentially been an adult and independent since he was about seven.  He’s very smart, _very_ stubborn, and very self-aware.”

“Unh-huh.”  Ken hoped his reply sounded like a confused man who was wondering why a stranger was talking about his son to him in his office in the middle of the day.

“You see?  It’s my knowledge of my son and my trust and faith in his ability to take care of himself and make his own decisions that’s keeping me from going to the police.”

Rich raised his eyes and nailed Ken to the floor with them.  Ken was pretty sure he stopped breathing, but he didn’t pass out, so his lungs must be functioning without his consent.

“Of course,” Rich gave an elegant, nonchalant shrug, “he is 18 now, and I have no proof that anything illicit was going on when he was a minor—and he would never rat you out—so even if I did threaten to go to the police, it’s a hollow threat.”  He tilted his head slightly.  “But I think you already knew that.”

Ken closed his eyes for a moment.  He was dreaming.  When he opened them again he’d be alone in his office.  Or standing in front of the elevators doors—only when they opened it would be the William Harder he’d been expecting.  Hell, at this point he’d take David Ramsey.  He swallowed again.  Then he opened his eyes.  Rich Harder was still leaning on his desk.

Rich let out a small laugh and hopped up onto the desk.  “It’s funny, you know?  The debate of nature versus nurture wages on, and I think I somehow influenced him in both ways.”

Ken was feeling a little lightheaded, so he didn’t trust himself to move or speak.  Fortunately Rich didn’t mind carrying the conversation.

“You know, my wife is eleven years older than me.”

“Only eleven?”

Rich raised his eyebrows a little.  Now out of all the times he could have spoken and words he could have used—why did that come out?

“I mean—your wife is a lovely woman.  Beautiful, actually.  It’s just that you—look so young.  I was starting to suspect you were my age.  Or possibly younger.”

Rich laughed and leaned back on his hands, drawing an emphasis on the slim physique underneath his designer dress shirt.   Had Ken not known it to be impossible, he would have thought the man was being flirtatious.

“Now, now, Mr. West—or, Ken.  May I call you Ken?  I’m a 38 year old man.  I’m starting to get to an age where flattery appears to be genuine complement.”  He smiled and Ken could see one of the sources from which Will had drawn his “super-sexy-give-me-what-I-want” smile.  His father’s was better.

Ken closed his eyes for a second and gave himself a little shake.  That allowed him to think of something very disturbing.  He opened his eyes.

“Wait a minute.  Will said that you two got married when you were in law school…but you would have been around thirteen or fourteen if that were true.”  He realized he had pretty much just admitted to being very well acquainted with Will, but there was no need to insult Rich by pretending he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“We got married when _Marilyn_ was in law school.  After she graduated from Williams, she did a two year MBA program at Princeton.  Then she worked for a couple of years doing management before deciding to go back to school.  She went to Harvard Law School, and I met her there when I was a freshman undergrad.  Just before winter exams.”  The man sighed wistfully and tilted his head to one shoulder.  “We made love the day we met.  It was that obvious.  That magnetic.  And we knew that that was it.  We’d found one another.”  He smiled and raised his head.  “We waited until March and then got married on my 18 th birthday.  My parents would have never approved.  Still don’t, actually.  Maybe because there was this whole thing about how she was dating someone and kind of forgot to break up with him.  It was a little awkward when he found out his girlfriend had gotten married to someone else.  But it was really his fault for being so forgettable.”

Ken tried to keep the mildly shocked expression off his face.  This man was a little…off.

He chuckled.  “So, I guess you can see why I’m not surprised that my son has a thing for older lovers.  He comes by it honestly.  Though you are _quite_ a bit older than him.”

Ken clenched his hands in his pockets.  Was he supposed to reply to that?  Defend himself?  Promise to surrender Will?  Then Rich gave him a wry smile.

“Then again, who am I to toss stones?  My first tryst with an older lover involved an even bigger age gap.”

He couldn’t help himself.  He was too curious.  “How much?”

“34.”

“Oh.  W-well, that’s not so much different from Will and me.  I guess, depending on how old you were.”

“Oh, no.  Not 34 years old—there was a 34 year age difference.”

“Holy begeezus.”

“Yep.  I was a sophomore at an all boys boarding school—and I was sleeping with the headmaster.”

Ken looked at the plant in the corner of his office.  Then he looked back at Rich Harder.  “I’m sorry…did you say head— _master_?”

A slow smile spread over the man’s lips.  “Unh-huh.  I guess you can understand how shocking my love for Marilyn was to me.  And why I’m not really flipping out that my son is sleeping with an older man.”

Ken blinked at the man.  No wonder Will was so weird.  He had weird genes.

“Anyway,” Rich slid off the desk and approached Ken, “I didn’t mean to divulge my entire love life to you.  Or my sexual history.”

Ken had a feeling they hadn’t even scratched the surface of his sexual history.

“I really just came by to ask you not to break my son’s heart.”

“I would never—”

“You never know,” Rich cut him off.  “You may get tired of him one day or fall in love with someone else.  Or you may decide that you’re holding him back from achieving his full potential.”  Here he gave Ken a pointed look and he was forced to deflate a little in acknowledgement of that accusation.  “I’m just saying that _if_ that does happen, be honest with him and tell him up front and to his face.  Don’t try to hurt him so badly that he’ll _want_ to stay away.  Okay?”

Ken nodded dumbly.  And then forced himself to say, “Okay.”

Rich laughed again, and the switch from serious, protective father to mind game playing cavalier was a little creepy.  “Of course that’s only a request.  I can’t actually do anything to threaten you.  I’m not—by nature—a violent man.  But my wife and I are powerful attorneys.  I did take the liberty of going through your company’s records before I came here.  Pretty squeaky if you know what I mean, but there are definitely some things I could work with.”

He smiled and Ken realized that Will did get a little bit of his personality from his father after all.

“Well, I’ll be on my way now,” Rich said as he patted Ken on the shoulder.  Ken started slightly from the contact.  Knowing his deepest darkest secret notwithstanding, Rich Harder was a very disconcerting man.  “I’ll try to stay out of you two’s way,” the man continued as he headed for the elevator.  “Oh,” he looked over his shoulder.  “Marilyn doesn’t know.  And Will doesn’t know I know.  I think it should stay that way for a while.”

Ken finally managed to get his body to respond to commands from his brain.  He turned and followed Rich to the elevator.  Before stepping on, he turned back to look at Ken again.  And by look, it was more like being sized up at a stag auction.  The smile he gave him was more inviting than it should have been because Ken was slightly tempted.

“My son does have good taste in men.  If the circumstances were different…another time, another place…it probably could have been us.”

Ken let out a humorless laugh.  “Probably should have been us.”

“Mm.  But Marilyn made that impossible.  I could never love another.  So, you had to settle for the son.”

“I didn’t settle for anything.”

“No, I rather imagine you did get the better end of the deal.”  Rich made that switch again and was suddenly serious.  “Take care of him.”

“I love him.”  Those words just came blurting out of him with no regard to his present situation.

Rich smiled softly.  “I never doubted you did.  Otherwise I would have come in here with guns a-blazing.”  He pantomimed shooting guns and smiled saucily.  “Literally.”

Ken tried to remember if Will had ever told him if his father owned guns.  He made a mental note to ask.

Rich stepped onto the elevator and started to reach for the button that would take him back down.

“Wait,” Ken said, stilling his movement with his words.  “How—how did you find out?  Did Will say something?  Or did you see that picture?  Or find something of mine with him?”

“No.  I actually suspected something—I wasn’t sure what—was going on when we met at the Christmas party.”

“But—!  We talked for like five minutes!”

Rich Harder smiled.  “I know my son.”

He pushed the button for the lobby and the doors started to slide shut.

“Plus, I saw you running half-naked from our house on his birthday.”


	28. Chapter 28

Saturday, April 1, 2006

 

Riley

 

Peeking around the corner of the main cross-hallways at Calverton Preparatory Academy, Riley Mayfield saw two long rows of blue lockers stretching to the adjoining front hallway.  There were several students milling about, murmuring quietly to each other.  The soft snick of a locker being shut was occasionally punctuated by the jarring ring of a door slammed shut in extreme annoyance.  Riley didn’t blame the owners of those lockers; who wanted to be at school on a Saturday morning?  Once a semester Calverton required all the students to attend a Saturday session that they called “Awareness is the Key.”  The half-day consisted of three lectures, each focusing on a different topic and tailored to the age group being addressed.  The topics changed every year until they hit tenth grade.  Then for the next three years they were oh so fortunate to sit through “Sex,” “Drugs and Alcohol,” and “Financial Responsibility.”  The first Saturday session was usually held soon after classes started so that the boys and girls separated over the summer wouldn’t go all wild and crazy once they were thrust back together again.  The second session was held right before spring break began.  And as bad luck would have it, that Saturday fell on April 1st this year.  Riley examined the hallways around herself again.  She didn’t see anyone she knew, but she didn’t exhale in relief.  It was still early.  It was only a matter of time.

Up until she’d been about twelve, she hadn’t had a fear of April Fool’s Day.  Her mother would occasionally pull a “made you look” gag, but that was it.  Up until she was twelve years old, she’d gone to a public school and thoroughly enjoyed wearing jeans and corduroys every day.  When she was eight, a skinny boy with big brown eyes and a slightly funny way of talking joined her Little League team.  It had taken her nearly three years to beat the other boys into submission regarding her status as both a player and a girl, but eventually she won them over.  Through both excelling on the field and bloodying two-thirds of their noses.  She was afraid the new boy would be ornery and she’d have to put him in his place before he got the other boys all riled up for mutiny again.  But the boy had turned out to be Chris—who couldn’t give a sniff whether she was a boy or a girl.  He was quiet and withdrawn, but always as friendly as he could muster.  Riley, never being one to beat about the bush, had asked him outright all the things she wanted to know about him.  Like, why was he quiet?  How come his father never showed up to games?  Did he know the difference between a changeup and a slider?  Why did he talk funny?  He never refused to answer her questions, but not all of his answers actually told her anything.  Except the accent.  It was the way they talked in Chicago.

Four years of three afternoons a week practices and weekend baseball games was enough to cement him as one of her “worth keeping around friends.”  And having him to cling to when she’d been forced to enter Calverton in seventh grade was the only thing that got her through the first year.  He’d been the one to introduce her to the boys, and subsequently through them, the girls.  She didn’t have much in common with any of them, but they were all friendly and funny and seemed to have no problem with her tomboy persona.  Her friends at her old school had grown out of sports and started worrying about clothes and boys.  They’d kept complaining the last half of sixth grade year that Riley wasn’t any fun and should stop trying to be a boy.  One had even asked if she was a lesbian.  Riley hadn’t known what the word meant, so she’d socked the girl in the jaw.  She spent the last two months of school without any friends.  It was why her parents had decided to send her to Calverton.  The public school system had thought her parents’ request to have her accepted into a different school district was without warrant, so their only option was to send her to a private school since Riley had flat out refused to return to the school of the bra-stuffing, back-stabbing pigeons.  Even now Riley wasn’t entirely sure why she’d used the word “pigeons,” but it was the worst thing she could think of at the time.

Of course now, thanks to her acquaintance with her new group of friends, she knew a lot of worse things than fat, disease-ridden, flying pests.  And what a lesbian was.  She probably still would have socked Carol Ann even if she’d known back then.  One other result of her friendship with them: she now feared April Fool’s day.  The boys, just like everything they did in life, took things way too far.  They’d pull a prank or two on the girls or other friends, but they were mostly harmless.  The problem was when they went after each other—and innocents got caught in the crossfire.  Riley had spent one afternoon throwing up in the bathroom after partaking of an ipecac-laced pudding cup that hadn’t been meant for her.  She couldn’t even remember now who had planned the prank and who the intended victim had been.  She just remembered the aftermath.  And her stomach cramped a little just remembering it.  She considered cutting Awareness Day altogether.

Riley turned to look back down the hallway she had come from.  It would lead her back to the vocational hallway and then out the back entrance.  Before she could consider committing her first act of quasi-truancy, she saw Laney at her locker.  Laney was little and always wore clothes in a size small or even x-small, but she could have easily gone to the uniform store downtown and picked up a size medium sweater vest.  Then it wouldn’t be quite so obvious that there was a hallmark bulge in her abdomen.  Didn’t she want to hide it even just a little bit?  It had only been within the last week that it had been this obvious, and the school had been nothing but hushed whispers around her ever since.  Riley hated all the whispering.  And not for Laney’s sake, but for her own.  She was embarrassed to be seen with Laney now.  Did that make her a bad person?  Maybe.

She tempered her guilt by reminding herself that she and Laney weren’t all that close to begin with.  In fact, she’d always felt that Laney was a little trashy…and that wasn’t the type of person she wanted to be friends with anyway.  And it didn’t really matter if she distanced herself from Laney.  No one would notice.  And that wasn’t her being dreary and self-pitying.  They were all growing apart.  Ever since whatever went down after the back to school dance, Liz had been spending less time with them.  Scott and Anna were a right mess despite their best efforts to pretend like they weren’t.  And Riley just didn’t have anything to talk to them about anymore.  She spent more time with her field hockey friends; they at least had some common ground.  Riley had no place with the likes of Will and Julian—talk about people from a different world.  She was definitely going to lose touch with them once they all scattered to different colleges.  It was kind of sad, but it was in inevitable.  She’d never really been a part of the group after all.  She’d just tagged along after Chris and became friends with his friends because she was too lazy (scared) to make more friends.  Now she had those friends, and while she didn’t regret the years she’d had with the gang, she’d always known it would come to an end.  Perhaps she’d keep in touch with Chris.  They at least had a running argument that they could keep up until the end of baseball.

Riley cocked her head in thought.  Her reminiscing had reminded her that Chris was from Chicago…so why was he an Evil Spawn aka Yankees fan?  Her father was from Boston and had passed on the Red Sox love to her, so it made sense for her to be a fan of a non-local team.  She wondered why she’d never asked him.  Maybe she should.  And she better do it soon.  There was only two months and one week left of school.  After that they’d all be working summer jobs and getting ready for college.  And then her relationship with Chris would probably boil down to an e-mail every one to two months.  The sudden realization of the immediacy of the end of her high school life made Riley even sadder.  She was going to miss Chris.  He was so easy-going and thoughtful and relaxing to be around.  Relaxing for her anyway.  He was the only guy she truly felt comfortable around.  She wondered why she’d never developed a crush on him.  Maybe the foul stench of a Yankees fan was just too much to overcome.

Riley was startled out of her thoughts by the approach of another person.  She knew better than to drop her guard on April Fool’s Day, but fortunately it was only Laney.  She must just be coming up to say hi.  It would be too obvious if she turned and walked away now.  Maybe she could just say hi and act like she was in a hurry.  But then, Laney had probably seen her standing there for several minutes now.  Man.  What was she going to do?

Before Laney could even get her greeting out, two passing girls whispered to each other.  Well, it was that loud whispering people do when they want to be heard.  Riley didn’t hear all of the comment but it did include the words “pathetic,” “preggers,” and “probably doesn’t even know who.”  Riley didn’t even think.  She stepped directly in front of the two juniors.

“Like you’re one to talk, Marissa.  Everyone knows that you’re such a slut that the only reason you’re not pregnant is because you’re not pregnant _yet_.”

Marissa and her friend’s face registered outraged shock, which was what Riley had been going for.  Marissa recovered quicker than she expected.  Her features hardened and a vengeful sneer curled her lips.

“Well, at least I can keep a man’s attention.  I mean, I practically _trip_ over them.”

Her friend sniggered.

“Oh, yeah?” Laney stepped up.  “So, I suppose when you made out with Alex behind Lindsay’s back it was because he just happened to be under your feet?”

“I did not—” Marissa began.

“I _knew_ it!” Lindsay screeched.  “You backstabbing ho!”

Marissa’s protests were lost in Lindsay’s screeching and the laughing murmuring of the students near enough to hear the catfight, which was everyone within a thirty yard radius.  Riley and Laney took the opportunity to sneak around the corner.  They laughed as one of the two girl’s screech got so high pitched that a couple of nearby grade schoolers clapped their hands over their ears.  Riley walked slowly beside Laney, not sure where they were heading, but she felt like she couldn’t just walk away now.

“Um,” Riley started.  “Thank you.”

“No, I should be the one thanking you,” Laney smiled up at her.  “I—I was kind of afraid that you felt the same way.”

Riley felt guilty.  She _was_ a bad person.  Might as well ‘fess up to it.

“I do,” she said.  “I mean, I did.  Or…”  Riley groaned softly and stopped walking.  Laney stopped too and turned to face her.  She looked up at her with cute little blinking puppy eyes.  How could anyone have sex with that?  It was too cutely innocent.  Then again…she’d seen Laney on the dance floor, and there was nothing innocent about the way she moved.  “It’s just…weird for me.  And I know it’s not happening to me, but I can’t really help the way it makes me feel.  Maybe it is prejudice and peer pressure, but it’s not a situation I feel comfortable dealing with.  And I feel like that’s just even more crap being put on you.  But, I mean, even if I don’t know all the details, I do know that you’re not a bad person.”

“Um, thanks, I guess.”

“I’m sorry.  That came out really bad, didn’t it?”

“No.  I understand.  But now, I’m not going to name her after you.”

“You were going to—”

Riley caught herself, but Laney grinned up at her.

“April Fool.”

They stood smiling at each other for a moment.  And then they began to rock on their heels as the silence became a little awkward.  Riley wondered how long they had to stand there before it was acceptable to just smile and walk away.

“So, are you still hung up on Nick Tripp?” Laney asked.

Riley blushed.  Like she did every time someone talked to her about something other than sports.  She shrugged and looked away from Laney.

“I don’t know.   I mean, he was the first—and only—guy who ever showed interest in me.  And it really sucks that it took so little to sway him.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, it’s not like it was ‘so little.’  I mean, Samantha Deale is really hot.”

Riley glowered at the spot on the floor she’d been staring at and then turned the look on Laney.

“And…I’m not helping.  Sorry.  Ooo!  You want me to spread a rumor that he’s the baby daddy?”  Laney smiled and rubbed her bump.

Riley gasped.  “No!  Of course not!  Well…”  Riley thought about it seriously for a second.  Then she shook her head.  “No, no.  That’s okay.”

“You know, you should date Chris.”

“What?” Riley tried to laugh but it came out like a squeak.  “Left field much?”

“Well, maybe the sudden switch in topics of conversation, but not the idea itself.  Seriously, you two get along so well and have a lot in common.  And he’s hot and stuff.  And then you could save him from his evil girlfriend and psychotic stalker.”

“Yeah, right, like I’m going to get in the middle of _that_.  More than likely the two of them would make a temporary truce so they could team up and get rid of any outside competition.”

“Probably.”

“But, I will say one thing for that sophomore.  She’s got some cojones on her.  Publically humiliated and she still thinks she has a shot.”

“At least she’s stopped jumping on him.”

“I guess.  But it would be better if she would stop talking to him too.”

“Which might be easier if maybe _he_ would stop talking back, you know?”

“Yeah, but he can’t be that rude.  Just like Scott can’t not be nice.”

Laney giggled.  “I know right?  Remember when Amber Lively got him to do her homework for a year?”

“Oh, yeah!” Riley laughed.  “Heh.  Good times.”

“Oh, look!  There goes Sophia.”

Riley turned to look where Laney was discreetly pointing.  She wasn’t sure who ‘Sophia’ was, but it must be something entertaining.  Then she saw Chris’ sophomore stalking him through the hallways.

“Come on,” Laney tugged on her arm.  “We gotta intercept!”

“Intercept?  Whoa!”  Riley stumbled after Laney as the small force of nature propelled her toward Chris.  They came to a jarring halt in front of Chris, startling him but also causing Sophia to change her course and head elsewhere.  Chris pressed against his locker as discreetly as possible.

“Ladies.  Can I help you?”

Riley didn’t say anything.  It hadn’t been her idea to come over after all.  Then Laney nudged her.  She looked at her.

“What?”

“Go on.  Tell him.”

“What?”

“You know,” Laney nudged her again and was giving her a “catch on” look.  Then she nodded toward Chris.  “You can tell him _today_.”

Chris smiled.  “Tell me what?”

Riley wasn’t entirely sure what Laney meant, but she had an idea—and it probably correlated with Laney’s.

“Um.  Well, you see, Chris,” she started softly.  She kept her eyes down.  If she looked at him she might start laughing.  “We’ve been friends a long time.”

“Yeah.  You were my first friend here.”

“Yeah.  And that’s because we have a lot of stuff in common, you know?”

“Um.  Yes.  That is—kinda true.”

“And we like each other.”

“Definitely.  Um, Riley, are—”

“And what it really is,” she cut him off, looking up to meet his eyes.  She liked the color of his eyes—a bright, clear brown as opposed to a darker, warmer color.  “It’s Valentine’s Day.  That kiss we shared—I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Riley had to look away again, like she was blushing, which she kind of was.  Even if it was fake, it was still embarrassing.  And Chris hadn’t caught on yet because the look on his face was priceless.

“It was kind of steamy,” Riley said and lightly dragged her teeth over her lower lip.

Laney stifled a laugh.  She wanted to give her a warning look not to spoil it, but she was afraid if she turned toward her, Chris would notice.  But then again, maybe he wouldn’t.  He appeared pretty focused on Riley, and seemed more than a little uncomfortable.

“Um…”  Chris loosened his tie just a little.

“I just…never saw you that way before.  And then…BAM!”

Riley reached out and grabbed his arms.  Chris jumped in alarm and then returned her gesture by grabbing her arms.  He said her name, but it came out as a tiny squeak.  He looked at the ceiling, like he couldn’t look at her looking at him like that.

“Chris.”

He wouldn’t look down.

“ _Chris_.”

He looked at her and she smiled.

“April Fool,” she said quietly.

He blinked, not quite processing her words yet.  Then Laney started cackling and Riley took a step back and laughed too.  Chris groaned and covered his face with a hand.  Then he flung that hand out and nailed Riley in the shoulder.

“Ow,” she laughed.

“I can _not_ believe I fell for that!  I mean, I know exactly what day it is!”

“Well, ego is stronger than reason,” Laney teased him.

Chris made a face at her, but he laughed.  He turned toward his locker and mumbled, “Whatever.”

“And geez,” Riley huffed, “would you really be that freaked out if I meant it?”

Chris was more attentive than most males and actually picked up on the displeasure in her voice.  He turned toward her.

“Riley.  It’s not like that.  It’s just that it came from out of nowhere, you know?  We’ve been friends for years and you have never, _ever_ expressed any sort of interest in me.”

“No, that wasn’t the look you gave me.  You gave me a ‘God, what did I do to draw the attention of a non-girl like that?’ look.”

“I did not!” Chris laughed.  “Riley, you are so far off.  It’s just that our friendship has never been like that.  But, could I be attracted to you?”

Laney sucked her lips in to hide a smirk as she looked back and forth between them.  Riley didn’t say anything.  Was she supposed to answer?  She didn’t like the way Chris was smiling at her.

“Do you remember Halloween?”

Riley went rigid and Chris slid an arm around her waist.

“I was so ready to live out that fantasy.”

“Kyah!  Chris!”  Riley squealed and slapped his chest, but he didn’t move away from her.  He just grinned.  And Laney burst out laughing again.

“Omigod, Riley, what was that?”

“What was what?” Riley growled, knowing she was blushing furiously, hating it, and trying to get away from Chris.

“That girly reaction!” Laney was laughing so hard she was about cry.  “Oh, crap!  Ha, ha!  I can’t stop!  And this stupid baby!  I’m gonna seriously pee my pants!”

Chris laughed at her. “Serves you right!”

“Chris!  Lemme go!” Riley pushed against him.

“Riley!”  Laney cried as she crossed her legs, “You’re such a girl!”

“You take that back!”

“No, no,” Chris said.  “I like you as a girl.”

He kissed her cheek and then turned to open his locker.  Riley’s face was on fire and it was even more insulting because Chris’ innocent little kiss had made her feel—well, like a girl.

Chris got his locker open and then all three of them jumped back in alarm—Laney squealed—as hundreds of plastic spiders and bugs spilled out onto the floor.  Laney took off screaming down the hall.

“Laney!” Chris called after her.  “Relax!  They’re fake!  Geez.  This is so stupid.  It’s not even worth sneaking into school to do.  Whoever pulled my name this year was being lazy.”

“You mean you guys actually have a lottery to see who—ahhh—Chris!”

“What?”

“Some of them are moving!”

Chris looked down at the floor.  Several of the plastic pieces there and inside his locker were indeed squirming around.  They both yelped and jumped back.

“Damn it!  I knew I should have stayed home today!  Why do I always get caught in the middle of you guys’ stupid shit?!”

“You?!  I’ve got spiders in my locker!  Ewyeah!”  Chris did a little unhappy dance.  “They’re on my books!  Riley!  Get ‘em!”

“What?  Forget it!  You just said you liked me as a girl!”

“Geh.”  Chris nudged the pile of plastic in front of his locker with his toe and several things skittered away.

“Ahh!”  They both screamed and jumped again.

“Ohhh.  This had to be Julian,” Chris griped.

“Okay.  Well, you’re on your own.  I’m not dealing with you guys today.”

“All right, fine.  Run off, you traitor.”

“Traitor?  That’s not even—ah!”

Chris slapped her butt.  A surefire way to shut her up.  Riley turned on her heel and stomped away.  This was so not right.  A boy had just kissed her and touched her personal areas and now she had to go learn about the horrible consequences of sex.  Poor Laney.  She hoped people wouldn’t look at her and snicker the whole time.  It’s not like it was such a big deal.  And couldn’t people be a little more mature?  Who was she lecturing anyway, herself?  Riley felt something on her arm and brushed at it wildly and looked over her shoulder.  Nothing was there.  She shuddered.  She wasn’t usually bothered by creepy-crawlies, but that was just gross.  She definitely had to stay away from the boys today.

She thought that would be easy.  They never sought her out, so she was more than a little surprised when Scott plopped down next to her during their snack break.  High school seniors and they were having snack time.  She wasn’t even hungry after learning all about sex and drugs and alcohol.  At least her rotation had her going to financial responsibility last.  Having the sex lecture last sucked.  She was usually still blushing by the time she got home.  Though this year hadn’t been so bad.  Maybe she had grown up some.  She’d technically had a real boyfriend—no matter how short the duration—and she had had more quasi-sexual contact this year too as her friends had gotten her to actually dance at the school dances this year.  Were these good things or bad things?

“What do you want?” she asked suspiciously.  It still was April Fool’s Day after all and any out of the ordinary behavior was suspect.

“What?” he asked, tilting his blond head to one side.  He used a teeny straw to suck some liquid out of his juice box.  “What I’d do?”

Riley had been shocked the first time she’d seen his new look…but it did make him look damn fine.  Riley shook her head.  She wasn’t into puppies.

“Why are you sitting with me?  Where are the others?”

“Uh…Will and Chris still have the sex lecture…that one always runs long, you know.  And Julian…I don’t know.  I haven’t seen him since this morning.  He started off with drugs and alcohol.”

“Unh-hunh.  Where’s your girlfriend?”

“She cut.”

“Ah.  So it turns out she is the smartest of us all.”

Scott smiled and sipped some more juice through the straw.

“Where’d you get that?  I didn’t see juice boxes as an option up there.”

“Will gave it to me.”

“And you’re drinking it?” Riley exclaimed incredulously.  “On today of all days?”

“It was totally sealed.  And, they did this to me last year and two years before that.  They would skip it this year.  Plus, it’s so obvious that they know I would think of it and be suspicious, so why bother?”

“Unless they took all that into account and realized that you’d think they wouldn’t try it so you would come full circle and drink the juice.”

Scott pulled the box away from his mouth and looked at it.

“But.  It was sealed,” he said weakly.

“Did you check the sides of the box?  It’s just thin cardboard.  Needles can get through that.”

Scott chewed on his lip as he looked at the box.  “You don’t think they would—it’s so painful!  I told them it’s not right!”

“Which is why I’m sure they would do it.”

“But.  But maybe—”  Scott cut off abruptly.  “Oh, God.  Do I feel sick from thinking about it?  Or do I actually feel sick?”

“Well, you are very sensitive.   It could just be in your head.  I mean, they could have known that you might suspect it after the fact and then you would try to make yourself throw up just to get it out of your system when there was nothing in it to begin with.”

Scott looked horrified.   “That’s awful!”  He smiled.  “And devious.  You should join us next year.”

“Oh, I would, but we won’t be together next year.  Darn.”

“But that’s what’s going to make it more fun.”

“You guys aren’t seriously—”

“Ohh…no.”

“What?”

“It’s not in my head.”

Scott bolted from the table and ran for the closest bathroom.  Riley shook her head in disgust.  Those boys were crazy.  And this kind of prank was dangerous.  Poor Scott.  Well, he had probably done something just as heinous to one of the others, so maybe he had it coming.

“Hey,” Julian said as he attempted to fit his large frame onto the tiny school lunch table benches.  “Why’d Scott run off so fast?”

“Why do you think?”

Julian snickered softly.

“Why do you guys always make him throw up?”

“I can’t believe he fell for that.  Again,” Julian snickered some more.  “Will was right.  It came full circle.”

“That’s what I said.”  Riley looked at Julian’s handsome, smiling face.  “So, did they get you yet?”

“Nope.  Free and clear.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yep.”

Apparently Julian hadn’t looked into a mirror this morning.  The words “Douche Bag, Inc.” were printed in beautiful calligraphy on his forehead with permanent black marker.  The only way he wouldn’t be aware of it yet was because they must have snuck into his house at night and drugged him.  It wasn’t a stretch to think that.  They had done it before.  She had no idea where or how they got the drugs or how they knew how much to use so that they wouldn’t kill each other…but they _were_ stupid enough to go that far.

“Okay,” Riley said.  It was not her place to get involved in their pranks.  Besides, he’d already gone two hours today without anyone telling him, why should she ruin it for everyone?

“Ha!  Hey March!” a passing student called out to him.  “You must be looking forward to summer vacation, huh?”

Julian’s brow creased in confusion.  Probably not so much from the comment as that the kid would talk to him at all.  “Um, yeah, I guess.”

“Yeah, I hear those ‘eves’ are your busiest time of year!”

The boy howled with laughter as did the other nearby kids.  Riley covered her mouth and tried not to let on she was laughing.  Julian looked at her, the eyebrow with the bar through it not rising as high as the other.

“I don’t get it.”

Riley shrugged.  “Me neither.”

Julian narrowed an eye at her, clearly suspicious.  She patted his shoulder.

“Well, you have a good day.”

“Oh, no,” he said, looking behind her.

Riley froze.  “What is it?”

“It’s Nick.”

Riley relaxed.  But only a little.  “So?”

“He’s with Stephanie Deale.”

“What?!” she hissed and started to turn around.

“Don’t look!” Julian said and grabbed her arm.  “Don’t let him know you’ve seen him.”

“I can’t believe this!” Riley said, clenching her hands into fists.  “When I dumped him he said he wasn’t interested in her and wasn’t going to do anything with her anymore!  He actually asked me to give him another chance!”

“Scumbag,” Julian validated her feelings.

Riley frowned and could feel her skin flushing with anger.  “I guess he doesn’t really care after all.”  She really wished Julian, and any nearby students, weren’t witness to this.

“So, get back at him.”

“What’s the point?”

Julian gave her a look.

“Okay, I know the point.  But, how?”

Julian smiled and pulled her closer.  Riley’s eyes went wide.  He didn’t seriously mean—

“You don’t mean—”

Julian nodded.

“Oh, hell,” she murmured, and closed her eyes.

Julian kissed her.  It was weird with the lip ring, but not at all unpleasant.  She didn’t really know what to do when it came to kissing, her experience was very limited.  But because she was kissing Julian, she actually didn’t feel uncomfortable because she knew he wasn’t going to judge her or score her or rate her against other girls he’d kissed.  It was a little liberating, which is perhaps why she ran her hand through his hair—it was completely grown out from his faux-hawk and streaked with orange.  Not a prank, his choice.  He opened his mouth just a little, and her lips stayed on his—giving him an opening to sweep his tongue into her mouth.  She started back, but he had a hand at the back of her head, and they remained joined.  Riley was surprised, and embarrassed.  She’d only let Nick try this once, and it hadn’t gone very well.  Julian was a little better at it.  Either that or she trusted him more.  She felt a strange friction on her tongue—that was his tongue piercing!  It wasn’t on the tip of his tongue at all.  That meant he was really in there.  No, not ‘there’—in her!  She chomped down on his tongue.  He let out a noise and stopped moving.  She eased up and they pulled slowly apart.  She looked in his brown, mischievous eyes.  And a thought occurred to her.

“Nick is on the student council.  He has to help the teachers run the lectures.  They don’t come to snack time.”

Julian smiled.  “April Fool.”

Riley blushed and stood up straight.  “Julian!”

She could tell the kids around them were watching and smiling and laughing and some of the grade schoolers—since they were all mixed together today—were making “aww” (you’re in trouble) and kissing sounds.

“You know, I was thinking about being nice and telling you what the boys have done to you, but now I’m not!”

“You can’t fool me, Riley.  I know I’m still good.”

“Unh-huh.”

Riley turned to leave and tensed up again as yet another dirty, stupid boy slapped her butt.  Rather than give Julian the satisfaction of seeing her get angry, she took in a deep breath and kept walking.  She didn’t know where she was going, but she would rather hang outside in the halls until the final lecture than stay in the cafeteria where everyone would look at her and watch her skin change shades of red.

“Riley!”

Riley started and turned to see one of her field hockey teammates—friends?—run up to her.  She was a solidly built girl with short brown hair that she kept perpetually pulled back in a ponytail.  She wasn’t very cute, but she was great at field hockey, which was more important.

“What?” Riley asked as they left the cafeteria together.

“Um, that’s my question.  What was _that_?”

“What was what?”

“Um, I think you _know_.  Are you, like, dating Julian March?”

“No.  It was just a joke.  Like, April Fool’s Day?”

“Oh.  Oh, right!  Thank goodness.  Heh.  I should have known better.”

Riley stopped walking.  “Why?”

Katherine turned around when she realized Riley wasn’t with her anymore.

“Because no one would ever want to date me?”

“What?  No, no, of course not.”  Katherine smiled and stepped closer.  “I didn’t mean _you_.  Well, I mean, you would never date _him_.”

Riley crossed her arms.  “Why not?”

“Because he’s weird.  And freaky.  And, like, totally damaged.”

“You do realize you’re talking about one my _friends_ , right?”

“I—”

“And he is _not_ damaged.  I’d like to see how well adjusted you’d be if you had to witness your parents’ gruesome deaths less than a year ago!”

“I didn’t mean that.  I’m not that mean.  He was weird before that.  Look,” Katherine cut her off before she could speak.  “I know you’re ‘friends’ with him and that whole crew, but—”

“Why did you put ‘friends’ in quotes?”

“Because you’re not really one of them.  I mean, come on.  You know.”

“No.  I don’t.

“Well.  Julian March?  He’s—he’s just—”

Riley couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so horribly hurt and upset.  She’d gotten angry before and had even felt a touch of betrayal from Carol Ann and the other public school pigeons.  But she’d never felt like this before.  Julian was the kindest person she’d ever met in her life.  Sure, Scott was sweeter because he was clueless about his endearing qualities, but Julian made a point never to put other people down.  To always help out a friend no matter what the situation.  How dare people think the worst of him because he wore a little make-up and had unconventional parents?  It was just wrong.

“Go on, Katherine.  He’s what?”

“Okay, chill.”

“No, you’re seriously insulting my friend.”

“Okay.  Sorry.”

Katherine looked away and raised her eyebrows a little.

“Oh, so what?  Now there’s something wrong with me?”

“Look, I said I was sorry, okay?  I don’t know how anyone would ever think you’re not a girl because you are seriously PMS-ing right now.”

Katherine turned and walked away.  Riley groaned softly and slouched down.  This sucked.  She just chased off one of the friends she actually hung out with in defense of one of the friends she was preparing herself to never see again after high school.  Maybe that was an indication of who her real friends were.  Or maybe that just meant she didn’t have any.  Well.  Damn.

Riley didn’t hear a word of the financial responsibility lecture.  She sat next to a queasy Scott and patted his hand while he moaned softly and cursed his dearest friends.  After the lecture she offered to help him get home, but he said his father was coming to pick him and his brothers up.  His father had said it was to take the twins out for pizza since they’d had to go to school on a Saturday, but Scott suspected it was to take them out to pizza with their soon to be stepfamily so that they would associate something positive with them.  Either that or he was worried that Scott might need help getting home, as he had on other April firsts of past.

Riley waved goodbye to Scott and made her way to her locker.  She had intentionally left her books there on Friday because she knew she wasn’t going to do any homework last night.  But now she had to get her stupid physics book because her stupid physics teacher was piling on the stupid homework the last week before spring break.  She spotted Will hanging out in the hallway.  Maybe she could trick him into doing her homework for her by challenging him to see how fast he could do it.  She could always re-write it in her handwriting.  But, of course, he probably wouldn’t write down the stupid formulas because he could do it in his stupid head.  Then she noticed that Will was hanging around not doing much.  By her locker.  More suspicious behavior.  Should she abort and run for cover?  Too late.  She’d been spotted.

Riley put her head up high and marched over to the overly-pretty smarty pants.

“Will Harder—if there are bugs in my locker I will cut that pretty face of yours.”

He laughed.  “That was Julian.  I had Scott this year.”

Riley tilted her head.  She’d seen Will in a baseball cap before—but never a non-adjustable cap worn backwards with the back of it pushed up almost to his hairline.

“What’d they do to you?”

He looked like he was about to try to play it off—but then sighed resignedly.  He slowly reached up and took the hat off.

“Oh my gosh!”

If Riley had been holding anything she would have dropped it.  Will’s hair was blue.  Shockingly, vibrant Windex-Mountain Berry Blast Powerade blue.  She put her hands to her mouth.

“Holy crap!  How did they do that?!  Your hair is so dark!”

Will shook his head.  “It had to be two steps.  They must have bleached it and then dyed it.”

“Oh, God.  More drugs.”

Will nodded.

“That’s not right.  You guys could seriously hurt each other.”

“Nah,” he nonchalantly dismissed their reckless game as he put the hat back on.  “But oh, hey, so I heard you’re a horribly mean person.”

Riley was shocked speechless.  “W-w—”

“Yeah.  I heard about your spit swap meet with Julian in the cafeteria.”

“And he blamed me?!”

“No, it’s not about that at all.  Do not think I’m going to forget about this, Riley Mayfield.”

Riley was lost.  “What are you talking about?”

“Um?  You flat out _refused_ to kiss _me_.  _On my birthday_.”  Will crossed his arms.  “But you kiss Julian for a joke.  That hurts.”  He continued before she could defend herself.  “And you totally made out with Chris on the hood of his car.  And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you _and_ Scott’s first kiss ever was with each other at Ginger Fugger’s 13 th birthday party—our first girl-boy party.”  Will’s face crumbled into beautiful agony.  “Why don’t you want to kiss me?  Every other girl in school does,” he muttered.

Riley shrugged.  “You’re not my type.”

“I’m everybody’s type!”

“No offense, Will,” she smiled cheekily at him, “but I like for my men—to be men.”

“What?!”

“All big and full of muscles.”

“I’ve got muscles!  Feel that!”  Will raised an arm and flexed.  “Go on!  Feel!”

Riley reached out a hand and rolled her eyes.  “Just because you—” Riley squeezed his bicep and stopped talking.  She really wrapped her hand around the muscle.  Muscle?  More like a band of frickin’ iron.

“Oh, my.”

“Exactly.  And here…”

He reached out a hand and took her wrist.  Then he pulled her hand not only under his sweater vest, but under his dress shirt as well.  He put her fingers on his abdomen.  “I’ve got abs too.”

Riley was scandalized that she was touching Will’s naked flesh, but her fingers curled against him of their own accord and she trailed them lightly down his ripped body.

“Nice, huh?”

Riley snatched her hand back and tried to maintain her dignity even though her face was the color of their neckties.

“Yes.  It’s all very nice.  But you’re still shorter than me.”

“Feh.  You’re tall for a girl.”

Riley shrugged again.  Then she noticed Katherine standing a little ways a way, pretending to mess with her locker, but watching them.  She knew Katherine had a thing for Will.  Will was right: every girl in the school did.  But Katherine’s was probably more like a real crush as opposed to just youthful lusting.  So, she didn’t like her freak friends?  Well, maybe she’d show her what kinds of perks came with being friends with them.

“Okay then.  Fair is fair.”

Riley bent over just a little—she was only an inch taller after all—and kissed Will lightly on the lips.  She stayed close and opened her eyes to look at him.  He was looking at her.  She wondered if he’d even closed his eyes.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“You _want_ more?” she asked skeptically.

Will slid his hands over her waist, a deceptive ruse to hide his intention to sweep down and grab her butt.  Riley couldn’t get out her full yelp because Will covered her mouth with his.  And then she couldn’t think anymore.  All she knew was that this was the best damn kiss she’d ever had in her life.  It didn’t feel weird or awkward at all to have his wet lips moving over hers or his tongue pulsing against hers in her mouth.  His hat fell to the floor as she buried her fingers in his soft hair.  They were pressed fully together and his hands held her close while his mouth taught her what exactly her prudish nature had been keeping from her all this time.  When he pulled back, she snapped back to herself and knew that whatever had temporarily come over her was gone.  But could possibly come back if he suggested they continue.  Will lightly kissed her still stunned lips.  He chuckled softly.

“What?” she frowned.

“I knew it.  You taste like cinnamon.”

“Oh, hush,” she pushed away from him.  “I chew cinnamon gum a lot.”

“So,” Will said, a small smile on lips, “what made you decide to kiss me?  You had to have a reason, and being fair to me is not it.”

“I wanted to make someone jealous.”

“Is Nick around?”

“No.  Katherine.”

Will grinned.  “Are you switch hitting now?”

Riley punched him lightly in the shoulder.  “No.  She has a thing for you and I…”

Will raised his eyebrows slightly.  “You wanted to hurt her?”

“She said some mean things about—”  She better not tell Will Katherine had trashed Julian because he certainly wouldn’t take it as well as she had.  “She said some really mean things.”

“Hmm.  And she really deserves it?”

“I think so.”

“Is she still around?”

Riley flicked her eyes toward where Katherine had been standing.

“Yes.”

Will grabbed her again and kissed her tongue first.  Riley almost wanted to laugh because it was so weird to be kissing Will—but damn was he good.  She raised a hand to push him away, and then left it on his shoulder for another few seconds.  Finally she pulled back, with just a touch of reluctance.  She smiled and shook her head at him.

“Okay, okay.  Enough.  Don’t you have some mystery girlfriend anyway?”

“Something like that.”  He scowled.  “Though I have to admit I’m not used to being pushed away.”

Riley shrugged.  “I told you: you’re not my type.”

“Feh.”

Riley bent over and picked up his hat.  She stuck it on his head with a sympathetic smile.  “See you around Brainy Smurf.”

“Oh, ha ha.  Very funny.  Actually.  That is kind of clever.”

“Bye, Will.”

Riley walked away, feeling like she was smiling in a way she never had before.  At least this boy hadn’t slapped her butt.  No, he’d only grabbed it and molested it.  She laughed softly to herself and then looked up as she passed Katherine.  She was glaring at her.  Riley gave her a little smirk and kept walking.  Man, talk about burning bridges.  She didn’t think Katherine would ever be friendly with her again, though she doubted she’d try to turn the field hockey team against her.  Then she’d have to admit that she was one of Will Harder’s fan girls.  The other girls on the team acknowledged that he was hot, but they shunned the girls that worshipped him.  But then again, maybe defending Julian would be enough for them to think of her the way that Katherine did.  And what was that exactly?  A defender of freaks or a real friend?  Maybe if she stopped thinking about how different she was from the others all the time she could just enjoy being with them.  After all, they’d never _treated_ her differently.

Riley was outside and heading toward the student parking lot when she realized she’d never gotten her physics book out of her locker.  She whined and stomped her feet a little.  Screw it.  She wasn’t going back for it.  She had time to work on it in the morning in her other classes.  And one incomplete homework wouldn’t tank her grade.

“Riley!”

Riley turned around in some alarm—whoever had called her name had done so quite loudly.  Then she saw it was Nick.  Her lip curled up on one side.  She turned around and kept walking.  She knew that Julian hadn’t actually seen Nick and Stephanie together in the cafeteria, but the image was still in her head and it pissed her off.

“Riley, stop!”

She made another face.  Normally people would say “wait up.”  How dare he tell her to stop?

“Riley!”

He finally caught up to her and grabbed her arm.  She spun out of his grip and stepped right up into his face.  “Don’t touch me!”  He backed off immediately.

Riley chewed on the inside of her lip and tried not to make her nostrils flare as she breathed.  He _was_ cute.  In that lanky, awkward sort of way—emphasized even more by the fact that he’d outgrown his senior uniform by two inches already.  His tan skin never betrayed his emotions like hers, so she never really knew what he was feeling.  Though his dark eyes were expressive—which is why she’d almost believed him when he’d said that Stephanie meant nothing and he wanted her back.

Nick hadn’t spoken yet and Riley gave him an impatient look.

“What?  I don’t want you chasing me all over the parking lot.  Spit it out.”

His brows creased in anger, whether from her words or from the reason he was originally chasing her she wasn’t sure, but whatever calm he’d felt from her flash of anger was gone.

“Why the hell are you kissing other guys?” he exclaimed.  “Just to show me what I’m missing?  Or to let me know that you really don’t care anymore?!”

Riley rolled her eyes.  Guys were stupid and egotistical.  Of course all her actions had to do with _him_.

“Look, not that it’s _any_ of your business, but the reason I kissed Will is because he—”

“Wait, what?  You kissed Will Harder?”

“Oh.  You were talking about Julian?”

Nick gave an incredulous shake of his head.  “You kissed Julian?”

Riley cocked her head in confusion.  “Who are you talking about?”

“Chris!”

“Oh.  You just heard about that?  That was, like, over a month ago.”

Riley turned and started walking away again.  She was tired of looking at his stupid face.

“Why did you do it?” he demanded and walked quickly to catch up with her.

“Well, I had a different reason for all three of them,” she said in a tone that she recognized as one of Laney’s.

“Oh, so you can just go around kissing all the guys you want, huh?  Then why were you so mad at me?  I only kissed _one_ girl!”

“Um…when I kissed them, we weren’t going out.  Remind me, would you?  When you kissed that _one_ girl…were we going out?”

“It was December!  It was the flipping mistletoe!  Geez!”

“Yeah, but you know what?  I didn’t kiss anybody under the mistletoe.  I didn’t kiss anybody while we were going out!”

“Including me,” he muttered.

They had reached the end of the parking lot and were now on the sidewalk next to Hastings St.  It made sense to whirl on him now and push him.  He stumbled back a couple steps.

“Oh my God!  You are such a jerk!  If I’m _so_ disappointing, why are you bothering me?!  Go date Stephanie Deale or whoever will put out!”

“I don’t want that!”

“Yes, you do!  You want kissing and touching and sex, but sorry, I can’t give you that!  And it’s not like I’m not curious or don’t want to—I just _can’t_.  I don’t feel comfortable doing that!”

Nick took a step closer.  “I know that,” he said gently.

“But that’s not enough for you.  Go get some somewhere else and leave me alone.”

“I don’t want to,” he said stupidly.

“Why not?”

“Because, Riley, I _like_ you.  I like _you_.”

“Well, you have a weird way of showing it.”

“Riley, God damn it,” Nick groaned.

“What, _what_?!” she cried, hating herself for getting so worked up over someone stupid like him.  For letting her emotions go in a very public place.  “You humiliated me in front of the entire school!  People already think I’m a total tomboy prude.  That is when they’re not calling me a lesbian.  And when I finally get a boyfriend—not just to have one but because I _like_ him—he cheats on me.  Because obviously I can’t keep a boy’s attention.”

“Riley—”

“Get a clue, you jerk!  We’re in high school!  Of course something as mundane as getting cheated on is going to be scarring!”

“Riley—”

“Shut-up!  Stop saying my name!  Stop looking at me like you give a damn!”

Riley turned to run away.

“Riley, look out!”

Nick grabbed her arm, but they were both in the middle of the road and staring dumbly at the expensive black car barreling toward them.  There was a squeal of tires and Riley turned toward Nick.  She waited for the crunch of bones and the awful pain, but it didn’t come.  She slowly opened one eye, and then the other.  She looked at the BMW—it was stopped about three inches from her shins.  The passenger side door opened and a huge man with a very displeased look on his face got out.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he bellowed.

Riley shrank against Nick; this guy was frightening.

“Umm…” Nick was trying to form a coherent sentence.

Then the driver got out.  “Are you two okay?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned for them and not his car or insurance premiums.

Riley looked at him, and then stood up straight.  He was a tall, manly man with styled hair, light sunglasses, and a sexy Matthew Fox growth of beard, i.e. crazy hot.  Now _he_ was her type.  And he had asked her a question.

“Um.  Yeah.  I’m fine.”  She’d completely forgotten about Nick.

A car behind the BMW honked.  The scary guy turned around and yelled at the honker to fuck off.  Then he turned back to her.  “Get out of the middle of the road, kid.”

“Ryan, settle down,” the driver admonished him.  He smiled at her and Riley felt herself blush.  “That was close, huh?  Are you sure you’re okay?”

Riley nodded dumbly.

“Good.  Be careful in the future, okay?”

She nodded again and gazed at the man dreamily as something tugged on her arm and got her to move out of the street.  The car behind the two men honked again and the scary man flicked them off while the driver muttered, “Yeah, yeah.”  They both got in the BMW and drove off.  Riley watched them go and had never felt like a girl more in her life.

“He was so cool.”

“Say what?”

 

Rylan

 

                “What the fuck is wrong with kids?” Rylan groused and tried to stretch out his legs.  His feet met up with the front of the car and he squirmed in the bucket seat, trying to get more comfortable.

Ken smiled as he shifted gears and slid through the traffic of the city with ease.  “It was an accident.”

“No it wasn’t!  She was having a fight with her boyfriend!  And, being a girl, had to have a hissy fit and make a dramatic exit.  Well, she would have had a _really_ dramatic accident if you hadn’t stopped in time.”

“I know.  That’s the closest I’ve ever come to hitting anything.  Well, alive anyway.  But, it’s good to know that these antilock brakes work as advertised.”

“Shit.”  Rylan didn’t know why he was so irritated.  “Kids are so dumb.  And those in particular were irritating.  Beyond belief.”

“Why?” Ken asked, leaving one hand on the gearshift even though he wasn’t changing gears anymore.  Stick drivers really were a bunch of pretentious pricks.

“I don’t know.  They seemed familiar for some reason.”  Rylan narrowed his eyes.  “Why is that?  I’m sure I’ve never seen either of them before.”

Ken opened his mouth, and then closed it.  Rylan refused to roll his eyes.  He hadn’t done that since he was nine years old.  He would wait him out.  He didn’t know why Ken hesitated to tell him anything; he always wound up telling him anyway.  He was taking an unusually long time to spit it out though, which meant it was something that he thought would piss Rylan off.  A little prompting would get him to talk.

“What is it?”

“They were wearing the same uniform Will does.”

Now why would that upset him?  Merely the mention of the spore’s name?  No, he was getting better about that.  A reminder of his existence wasn’t enough to irritate him.  That much.

“I don’t think that’s it.  I mean, do I even see him in it enough to recognize it?  He’s usually half naked around you.”

“It’s the same uniform Julian wears.”

Rylan stretched out his leg as it clicked for him.  Of course, there was nowhere for his leg to go, so that made him angrier.

“That’s it!  That little bastard shows up at my damn _illegal_ prostitution ring in a freaking high school uniform!  I always knew I would get caught one day, but I never thought it would be because of some hippie goth-wannabe breeder _orphan_.”  Rylan tsked at his own bad luck.

“Is it ironic that it’s your good heart and kind intentions that are going to be your downfall?”

“Yeah, for real.  Wait, my what heart and what kind of intentions?”

Ken just grinned.

“Take it back.”

Ken ignored him and instinctively downshifted and then sped up again as he swerved through a tight gap in traffic, leaving the other cars behind before the drivers even realized they wanted to honk at him.  Ken could pretty much be summed up as an anal-retentive dweeb, but when he was driving he was cool, calm, and in control.  It was the only time he was sexy.  Rylan stretched again, and again, got nowhere.  He reached down to see if the seat would go back any farther.  It wouldn’t.  He kicked the front end of the car and hit his knee on the underside of the glove box.

“Fuck.”

“Quit kicking my car!  I swear you’re as bad as—”

Rylan ignored how the sentence wasn’t finished.  “Then don’t stick me in these stupid, tiny cars of yours.”

“They are perfectly fine as long as you’re not freakishly tall.”

“I am not freakishly tall.  Yao Ming is freakishly tall.  I am evolutionarily superior.”

Ken laughed.  “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”

Rylan dropped his head back on the headrest.  “Actually, four solid hours of fucking an adorable blond helps me sleep at night.”

“Hn.  That’s not what I heard.”

Rylan picked his head up.  “Heard what from whom?”

“All of your employees that I’ve ever spoken with have said the same thing: that you don’t do quality control yourself.”

“Of course I don’t fuck my employees.  Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘don’t shit where you eat?’”

Ken smiled.  “Yes.  Though it was worded differently.  So, what blond are you talking about?”

“The one from Cozumel.”

Ken whipped his head around to look at him.  “Are you serious?”

“Yes.  Road.”

Ken looked back to his driving and had to make a quick maneuver so they wouldn’t plow into some old lady’s Cadillac.  Rylan was still gripping the door handle when Ken made a sharp left in front of two cars to enter the driveway of the parking garage of his building.

“Ken, it is not my goal in life to die with you.”

“How’d you get him a visa?”

Rylan relaxed as they stayed still long enough to wait for the heavy metal door to slowly rise up.

“As it turns out, he’s Portuguese.”

“Really.”

“Yep.”

“Nice.”

“Very.”

Ken pulled into one of the six spaces he paid a hundred bucks a pop for each month.

“How was he?”

Rylan laughed.  “Tight.”

Ken smiled and pulled the keys out of the ignition.  “Nice.”

“How’s Will?”

“He’s—Rylan.”  They got out of the car.  “You saw how he reacted when I told you he’s good at math.”

“So, is that code for he’s not very good?”

“You think I’d risk jail time if he wasn’t any good?”

“I thought it was all legal now,” Rylan intoned impertinently.

“It is.”

“Mores the pity.”

“Like you would turn me in.”

Rylan didn’t reply as they stepped onto the elevator.  No, he wouldn’t turn him into the police, but he was still seriously considering dropping him off at a mental institution.  He looked at his friend.  He deserved so much better than that little snot.  And he certainly didn’t include himself in the category of “someone better.”  Rylan reached out a hand toward him.

“Don’t,” Ken said sharply.

Rylan’s hand flinched at his tone.  He felt an odd sensation prick at his chest at being rebuffed.

“They installed cameras,” Ken said quietly.

Rylan frowned.  Not because of Ken’s stupidity, but because he had reacted to it.  He reached out again and finished his original intention of turning Ken’s upturned collar back down.

“Don’t be so paranoid,” he admonished.

Rylan’s phone vibrated in his coat pocket.  He pulled it out and checked the text message that had just come through.

“Hit the lobby,” Rylan ordered.

Ken obeyed immediately, and then asked, “Why?”

“Tyler’s here.  He’s out front.”

“Ah.  The infamous Tyler.”

“Why infamous?” Rylan asked, analyzing Ken’s meaning in his head.  They both chose their words very carefully.

Ken smiled as they approached the outer door.  “Let’s just say he’s your David Ramsey.”

Rylan sliced a hard look in his direction, but he ignored it.  Did he talk about Tyler a lot?  Unlikely.  He didn’t talk much about anything at all.  Especially not with Chatty Cathy Ken using up all the air.  So, did he give him special treatment?  Well, if he did it was probably only because Tyler deserved it.

“So, which one is he?”

“Can you tell?”

Ken looked around the sidewalk.  It wasn’t packed, but there were a lot of people because Ken’s building was right in the heart of downtown near a major metro station.  Ken scanned the sidewalk for a few seconds, and then raised a hand to point.  He stopped, and the pointed toward a young man standing by a light pole.

“That one.  The skinny one.”

Rylan smiled.  “Tyler,” he called out over the din of the street.  The man Ken had pointed to looked up.  He smiled and jogged over to them.  As he walked up the stairs to the building, his eyes flicked back and forth between Rylan and Ken.

“Well, aren’t you two just a waking wet dream.”

He grinned, and Rylan smiled.  Not in reaction to Tyler, but because Ken stiffened, didn’t seem to know what to say, and just turned on his heel and walked away.

Tyler ran a hand through his soft, longish hair.  “Was it something I said?”

“Come on.”

They walked through the lobby and Rylan watched Tyler take in the lobby.  He liked to pass himself off as an airhead, but he was very smart and devastatingly observant.  Only Julian seemed to pick up on more than him.  And Julian didn’t really gain that insight from being observant, but Rylan refused to use the words “psychic” or “vibe-picker-upper.”  He and Tyler stepped onto the elevator with Ken.  They faced out into the lobby and the two guards had turned away from their TV long enough to watch them.  Tyler waggled his fingers at them.  Before he could blow them a kiss—because he knew that was coming next—Rylan discreetly stepped on his heel.  The doors shut without Ken being any more embarrassed than he already was.  Like having a high schooler who wasn’t related to him by blood or marriage show up everyday wasn’t suspicious enough.

The elevator arrived on the 17th floor and Rylan gave a brief prayer to a god he didn’t believe in that Ken’s annoying, nosy neighbor wouldn’t be about.  Spending one evening in her company when Ken had escorted her to a charity event had been pure hell.  If he hadn’t had Kennedy with him to mercilessly shred the woman to bits behind her back—and slyly to her face—he wouldn’t have survived.  Thankfully the hallway was clear and by the time they were safely inside the condo, Ken seemed to have recovered from his Tyler-Shock.

Once again, Tyler took his time to observe the furnishings and decorations of the apartment, checking out the view from the window and examining the fish in the salt water tank by the back wall.  Rylan had stepped into the kitchen to be away from the white bit of fluff that had run up to Ken upon arriving home.

“This is a really nice place,” Tyler finally spoke, turning to look at Ken.  “Is there where you would have brought me?”

Ken cleared his throat.  “Um, no.  I had reserved a room at the Marriott.”

“The one downtown?”

“Yes.”

Tyler smiled and bobbed his head in appreciation.  “Swanky.”

Rylan could see Tyler give Ken’s body another look as he opened the refrigerator to get out a bottle of water.

“Man I really wish I’d made that appointment.”

“You and me both,” Rylan grumbled.

“So, Tyler,” Ken started in a tone he didn’t like, “how’s your relationship with Rylan?”

Rylan scowled to himself as he dug farther into the fridge to find some water that didn’t have some sort of fruity flavoring to it.  Ken was a dick, but he knew Tyler wouldn’t play along.

“Well, it’s very frustrating, Ken.”

Rylan stood up straight and glared at the two men on the couch.  They were both sitting primly with their legs crossed toward each other like a talk show host and his dysfunctional guest.  What a queen; Ken could probably pull off Oprah.  Though he had more in common with Ellen.  They were both gay and in a relationship with someone who was too young and way too pretty for them.

“I mean, balancing his natural dislike of everyone and everything in the world with his occasional flashes of humanity is of course a work in progress, but it’s manageable.  The frustration comes in when he pins me against a wall and tongues me and rubs me and humps me until I’m about to explode and then sends me home with the bluest balls you’ve ever seen.  We’re talking purple here.  Almost black.”

“Oh, how cruel!” Ken faux-exclaimed.  He turned to look at him in the kitchen.  “Rylan, really.”

Rylan took a step forward and then hesitated as he saw the white fluffball sitting on the kitchen island, watching him.  He edged around it and walked over to the couch.

“Did he ever do that to you?” Tyler asked.

Ken’s lips curved up just a little as he locked eyes with Rylan.  “Never.”

Rylan smiled too.  They both knew that it had been Ken chasing after Rylan, but when it came to sex it had been Rylan who had done the begging.

Tyler looked back and forth between them.  “Interesting,” he said.

“Interesting nothing, boy,” Rylan said.  “Just sit there and be quiet until the parasite shows up.”

Tyler made a face.  “I get it now,” he said grumpily.  “He didn’t let you go; you dropped his emotionally retarded ass.”

Rylan frowned at him and Ken laughed.

“Now, now.  He’s not emotionally retarded.  He’s emotionally vacant.”

“Ha!” Tyler laughed.

“Move.”

Tyler scooted over and Rylan sat down beside him.

“Oh, God,” his employee half-moaned, “This is too much.  I’m way too hypersexualized to sit between you two and not have an inappropriate reaction.”

Rylan’s gaze fell to Tyler’s lap.

“Don’t you get vacation?” Ken asked.  “There are labor laws, you know.”

Rylan looked up at Ken.  He was frowning at him.  Like he cared about labor laws when nothing about his business was legal.

“Well, after I had my little episode and missed my appointment with you, I took a trip to Tahiti.”

Rylan was rarely surprised in life because he was used to be people being too afraid of him to lie to him.  He turned to completely face Tyler.  “You did what?!  You said you stayed in your apartment and followed the doctor’s orders!”

“Oh, right.  Yee-aah.  I went to Tahiti.”

“Did you have sex?”  Rylan was aware that Ken might interpret that as jealousy, but that certainly wasn’t the case—he arranged appointments for him to have sex with multiple men after all.

“It’s not sex that sets it off—”

“Tyler!”

“Jesus.  One BJ that’s all.”  Tyler half-laughed.  “From a girl.”

“Did you go swimming?”

“Well, I was at the beach…”

“Tyler, what part of you ‘nearly died’ that day don’t you get?  Strenuous exertions—”

“I know, Rylan!  I know what my condition is and what triggers it.  I’m an adult and can manage my own affairs, medications, and life!  That day—was just unique.  I was stressed about something.  Look, can we just go back to sexually charged banter?”

Tyler sat back into the couch.  Rylan looked at Ken.  He was wisely keeping his features neutral and not jumping in to help or defend Tyler.  After a few seconds of silence, Ken reached out a hand and combed some of Tyler’s hair behind his ear.

“I’m surprised he’s so taken with you,” Ken said.  “You’re not his type.”

Tyler looked at Ken.  He was shorter than Ken, thinner, less muscular, and definitely pretty instead of handsome.

“Apparently not,” Tyler replied with a touch of gloom.  Then he switched into seduction mode.  Boy was he ever barking up the wrong tree.  “But I guess I’m yours, huh?”

“Not really,” Ken shot him down flatly.  Tyler deflated and sat back into the couch again.  “For years it was more akin to Rylan.  It’s only recently that my tastes have changed.”

“For the worse,” Rylan made sure Tyler knew.

Ken let out a little impatient snort and glared at Rylan.

“Tell me, Tyler, how do you work for this curmudgeon?”

“Hey, he’s just my boss.  You _choose_ to stay friends with him.”

“True,” Ken acknowledged.

Rylan grabbed Tyler under the chin and forced him to look at him.  “You chose me too.”

“My choices were you or the streets.”

“Not so bad after all, am I?”

“No.”

Uh-oh.  The banter had gotten too serious.  Tyler leaned forward and kissed him.  He let him.  He did like him—more than his other employees anyway.  Maybe the next time he used him for a make out session he’d let him get off.  Rylan opened his eyes and looked at Ken as Tyler put a hand to his face and deepened the kiss.  Ken didn’t look upset or jealous.  Not that he wanted him to be, but he wouldn’t mind if he was.

Something nearby let out a series of beeps.  Tyler sat back and pulled his cell phone out of his back jeans pocket.

“Oh.  I need to take this.”  He turned to Ken.  “Would you mind if I took this out in the hall?”

“You can use the bedroom,” Ken pointed to the closed door.

“Thanks.”

Tyler hopped off the couch and disappeared inside the bedroom.  Rylan slid closer to Ken and kept a wary eye on the fluffball as it walked around the coffee table.  He’d fling it off if it tried to jump up onto the couch.  He slumped down into the deceptively comfortable couch and reached into his inner lapel pocket for his cigarettes.  They weren’t there.  Rylan groaned and Ken patted his leg comfortingly.  Rylan grabbed his wrist and flung it off.

“You’re the one who made me stop.  If you’re gonna comfort me you better be on your knees.”

Ken chuckled.  Then he was quiet.  Rylan had nothing to say, so he remained quiet too and didn’t mind the silence.  Then Ken spoke.

“Rylan…do you have feelings for him?”

“I have very strong feelings for him in my penis.”  He hoped that would be enough of a hint for Ken to drop this thread of conversation.

“Rylan, if you have real feelings for him, you need to—”

“Ken, you know I’m not in a place right now to deal with someone else’s shit.”

“But, he could help you—”  Ken stopped.  “No.  You’re right.  Now’s not a good time for you.”

Rylan turned his head and found Ken regarding him closely.  Ken reached out a tentative hand and threaded his fingers through Rylan’s hair.  Then he ran that hand down his cheek, the line of his jaw, and settled it under his chin so that his thumb could play lightly along Rylan’s lower lip.  Then Ken let out the breath in his lungs and dropped his hand.  He gave Rylan a tight smile.

“Don’t do it for you anymore, huh?”

Ken looked away.  “Not in the same way.”

“Why?” Rylan kicked his leg out and hit the coffee table causing it to shake and the fluffball to run away.  “I really don’t get it.  He’s just so…”  A thousand adjectives ran through his head but all he could manage was to put his hands out and pantomime popping the twit’s head off his shoulders.

Ken laughed.  “You don’t understand because you’re not in love.”  He said it flippantly, knowing it would irritate him.  Which it did.

“Thank God for that.  I’ve never been so happy to be a morally bankrupt emotional black hole God-forsaken promiscuous slut fag in all my life.”

Ken made a face.  “How do you still remember that word for word after all these years?!”

“Because you were so cute when you said it!  Recently popped cherry…panting in ecstasy…” Rylan reminisced wistfully.

“Shut-up.  I never panted.”

“Oh, you panted all the time.  You were a gasper.”

“Shut-up.”

“Too embarrassed to let it show how much you enjoyed it.  Clenched teeth, hands curled tightly into the sheets, fighting to hold back your sexy voice.”

“Shut-up!” Ken laughed.

“I bet that’s what Will’s like,” Rylan mused.

Ken gave him a look, but then he turned up his nose and said, “Actually he’s quite vocal.”

Rylan grinned.  “Screamer?”

“Not as much as I’d like.”

Rylan laughed.  “So, what…he talks dirty?”

Ken laughed softly and rubbed his ear—and didn’t answer.

“Mmm-hmm,” Rylan hummed in interest.

They both turned their heads as the door to the condo opened.  The twerp had arrived.  Will stopped half-way in when he saw them sitting on the couch.  Then he cracked his neck and shut the door behind him.  Rylan kept the smile off his face, but he was very amused by the runt’s attempt at self-control.  The brat dropped his bag off by the dining table—Ken had housebroken him pretty quickly—and then walked over to sit in front of them on the coffee table.  The white fluffy thing jumped up beside him and rubbed against him.  Will petted its head and looked at Ken.

“Hey, baby,” his friend said.

Rylan felt himself throw up just a little bit in the back of his throat.

“Hey,” Will responded with a small smile.  Then he reached out a hand and caressed Ken’s cheek.  “What’s with the scruff?”

“I decided to take a little vacation from work.”

“Your dad kicked you out of the office?”

Ken frowned.  “Yes.  So why are you in your uniform?”

“Oh, we had a stupid thing at school.  One of the joys of privatized education.”

“What does the word opprobrium mean?” Rylan asked.

“Disgrace arising from shameful conduct.”  Will gave him a bored, unhappy look.  “Is this like, going to be a thing with us?”

Rylan gave him a small smirk.

“And why do you always choose negative words?”

“Why are you wearing a hat?”

Will didn’t react, not really.  But Rylan saw something that made him think something interesting was about to happen.

Will shrugged.  “Sometimes I wear a hat.”

Rylan turned to Ken for verification.

“He does.”  Ken looked back at Will.  “Though not when he comes from school and never backwards.”

“What’s wrong with your head?” Rylan asked.

“Wha—?  Nothing.”

“Then take the hat off.”

Will smiled.  “Come on.  You know that if _you_ ask me to do it, I’m not going to.”

“You hiding something?”

“No.”

“Will, is something wrong?” Ken asked, sounding worried.  Rylan didn’t know what for.  What could possibly be seriously wrong with him?  And who cared if there was?

Will sighed.  “No.  It was just an April Fool’s Day prank.”

“Oh, is it gum?  Then don’t use peanut butter.  That does nothing but make your hair gross.  What you need to do is get some ice water.  Now, your hair’s short, so you might need to get part of your head in there.  Or maybe we can just wrap some ice in a towel—”

“Oh, for f—”  Will sighed again, and then pulled the hat off his head.

Ken actually started at the sight of Will’s head.

“Honey, what—”

“That is some blue hair,” Rylan observed.

Will looked like he might react with his trademark short temper, but then he just shook his head with a small laugh.  “Too bad it’s not green, huh?”

He looked up at Ken and gently bit the smile on his lips.  Ken smiled back at him.  Rylan gave in and rolled his eyes.  It would really take some hacking to dig this tick out of his friend.  Then Ken shook his head.

“How did—did you agree to this?”

“Nope.  Just woke up like this.”

Rylan raised an eyebrow.  Ken seemed just as confused.

“Um, I know you’re a heavy sleeper, but how do you not wake up when someone is dyeing your hair?”

“And bleach it,” Rylan said.

“What?”

“To get hair as dark as his that blue they would have to bleach it first.”

Ken turned back to Will, jaw dropped.  “What happened?”

Will shrugged one shoulder.  “They must have drugged me.”

Rylan laughed and Ken let out a squawk of alarm.

“D-drugged you?”

“Yeah.”

“With what?!”

“Well, Julian’s parents were a little doctor-shy—including for the dog.  So, they had some ketamine locked up in the basement.  I don’t know if _they_ acquired it legally, but it’s there now.”

“And you guys use it on each other?!”

“What were they?” Rylan jumped in.

Will looked at him.  “What were who?”

“The kid’s parents.”  He would have remembered the name Will had used regardless of it being someone he knew or not, but there was no need to plant any seeds of suspicion in the twit’s brain.  “Were they Christian Scientist?”  Why did he care?  Was he curious for the sake of the story—or was he curious about Julian?

“Oh, no.  They were Wiccan.”

“Wiccan.  Like…witches?”

Will nodded.

Well, that explained the septagram tattoo on his back.

“So, how did he wind up with a name like Julian?  Don’t they have names like Silver Moon and Elven Horeseblade?”

Will laughed.  “His middle name is Yaholo.”

That explained the Y initial on all his paperwork.  He’d wondered about that; there weren’t many names that started with Y.

“Then I guess I’m only surprised it’s not his first name.”

“Well, his parents weren’t crazy weirdos…well…his mom kinda was.  But his dad was a lot more down to earth.  I wonder now if he really believed in all the witch stuff or he just wanted to piss off his parents.  Or maybe that’s how much he loved his wife.”

“Hmm.  Doing _strange_ things for the one you love.  A relatable story for you.”

Will tilted his head a little and didn’t seem to know what to think or how to respond to Rylan’s statement.

“Oh,” Ken said, pretending to be choked up, “this is so unexpected.  You two—are having a conversation.”

Rylan put a fist in his gut.  “Can it.”

Will just sat back on his hands and laughed at his lover’s pain.  Ken rubbed his stomach and shoved Rylan in the shoulder.

“Alright, never mind that.  Can we get back to the fact that you were drugged by your friends?”

Ken and the spore went back to that topic, but Rylan tuned them out.  He sat back into the couch and looked at Will.  The blue hair really highlighted his green eyes.  Most people who had “green” eyes had such a washed out color that you had to be really close in order to vaguely see some flash of pale ugly greenish color.  But Will had a real, true green.  That pale perfect skin, dark silky hair, bright green eyes—unearthly beauty in a well-maintained body.  Rylan bit his lip.  He could make so much money off of him.  Even with the attitude.  Some crazy people—like Ken—were into that sort of thing.

“Oh, enough already,” Rylan grumped, interrupting their conversation.  “He’s fine, he’s fine.  Let it go.”

“If you’re so bored you can leave,” Will snapped and put the hat back on.  “No one asked you to be here.”

“Tyler asked me to be here.”

Will huffed.  “So, when is the—”

Ken cleared his throat.

“He going to get here?” Will finished.

“He’s already here,” Ken said.

“He’s finishing up in the bedroom,” Rylan smirked at him.

Will’s reaction to that was a little more visible, as was his attempt to calm himself down.  He stretched his neck out to both sides, closed his eyes, and let out a deep breath.  He opened his eyes with a fake smile.

“I will not read into that.”

“Smart boy,” Ken said dryly.

“Besides, I’m in no position to toss stones.  I kissed one of my friends today.”

Ken smiled.  “The cute blond?”

“What?  No way!  I told you I’m staying away from her.  Well, more like she’s avoiding me.”

“No, not your ex-girlfriend, the adorable platinum blond who came to K&K for the shadow a professional thing.”

“Oh.  Scott?  What!  No!  Why would I kiss him?!”

Ken shrugged.  “I would.”

Will made a face.  “I bet you would: he’s still seventeen.”

Rylan sniggered.  Ken tossed him a glare.  He returned his attention to Will, but his glare had only softened a little.

“So, who’d you kiss?”

“My friend, Riley.”

“Boy or girl?” Rylan asked.

Will gave him a look that told him to stay out of it.  “Girl.”

“Does it bother you more if he kisses a boy or a girl?” Rylan asked Ken.

Ken tilted his head in thought.  “That’s hard to say.  A boy is, in theory, direct competition, but he is technically straight, so…”

“He is not straight.”

“Yes, I am,” Will protested.  Then he winced a little and looked at Ken out of the corner of his eye.

“Do you see how fucked up this ‘relationship’ is?” Rylan asked of Ken.

Ken rubbed his forehead and then leaned his elbow on the armrest of the couch.  “Rylan, what our relationship is isn’t really any of your business.”

“Yeah, we’ll see if you still feel that way when you come crying to me after this thing crashes and tears you to shreds.”

“Fuck you,” Will said.

“He probably will,” Rylan replied.

Will twitched like he was about to jump forward, Ken sat up quickly, but he didn’t need to intervene.  Will stayed put but the look in his eyes was murderous—and they’d gone brown.  Rylan sat forward.

“Weird.  Your eyes totally changed color.”

It was kind of like watching Will crash into a brick wall; his anger forced out of him by Rylan’s indifference to it.

“Rylan, Will—can you two—not do this—to me?”

They both looked at Ken—the one person they couldn’t stand to hurt or disappoint.  Rylan sat back.

“Sorry,” Will murmured softly.

Rylan wasn’t going to apologize for speaking the truth.  Just because they didn’t want to hear it wasn’t his fault.

“So…what is this ‘Tyler’ doing in the bedroom?”

“He was on the phone.  Though it has been awhile since he went in there,” Ken answered.

“He’s probably going through your medicine cabinet and closet.”

Ken darted upright.  “Are you serious?  Is he touching my clothes?”

“And probably putting them all out of order.”

Ken started to get up and both Rylan and Will put hands on his shoulders to push him back down.

“Relax,” Rylan said.

“He’s teasing you,” Will informed him—though he should have known.

Ken didn’t settle down.  “Look—that is the one thing I do not like to be teased about!”

“What’s that?” asked Tyler, coming out of the bedroom.  “Does it involve nipple clamps?”

Rylan held back a smile and noticed that Will rolled his eyes.  But, he schooled his features to be calm and neutral and stood up to meet Tyler.  Both Rylan and Ken watched with interest as the two pretty boys approached each other.  Rylan leaned close to Ken and whispered in his ear.

“If we can get them drunk enough, we could make a fortune off the video.”

Ken reached a hand back to slap his thigh, but he was holding back a laugh.

Tyler smiled brightly at Will; the brat didn’t respond.

“Hi, you’re Will I take it?”

Will nodded and accepted Tyler’s handshake.

“I—wow, it’s kind of weird now to see you.  But, I really wanted to thank you.  For helping me that day.  I remember you.  And those cold hands.”

Will finally cracked a smile.  “Yeah.  Really, it’s awful to say, but I should be thanking you.  Meeting Ken is—” he had to take in a breath and steady his nerves before he admitted out loud, “the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Well, that’s great.  I’m glad I could play my part.  Though it’s a shame my part couldn’t have been as your third.  Ha.”

Will raised an eyebrow and tried to keep himself from making a face.  “Um.  Trust me.  Things were awkward enough without that.”

“Were things awkward?” Rylan whispered.

“Not until the morning,” Ken whispered back.

“I mean, really,” Tyler said, leaning forward a little bit, his hair brushing his high cheekbones.  He touched the tip of his index finger to Will’s jaw and ran it slowly down the soft curve.  “You’re really hot,” Tyler said with more than a touch of sex in his voice.

Will started slightly—but it didn’t seem to be out of disgust or anger.

“I—I think I know you.”

“Do you?”

“We’ve met before.  I remember it now.  I remember you.  You were with—Julian.”

Rylan went rigid.

Tyler stared at Will’s face for a second, and then recognition came over his features.  “Oh, yeah.  That’s right.  At the New Year’s party.  You’re Julian’s friend.”

“Yeah—and you said…that you were Julian’s—”

Something changed in Will.  A palpable change in mood that all three of them picked up on.  Will turned slowly to look at Rylan.

“You said you were his co-worker.”

Rylan’s eyes were locked with Will’s.  He stood up very slowly, afraid of what Will might do.  Of what he was capable of.  With anyone else it might not have mattered, but he knew what Julian had been through and he knew how powerful Will’s emotions were.

Neither Ken nor Tyler could possibly react fast enough to Will’s feral lunge.  Had Will been even just a little bit bigger, Rylan would have been in some real danger.  But he outweighed the kid by a good 80 pounds at least and all he had to do was avoid his hands and fall on him.  They crashed to the floor and Rylan could easily restrain his body, but he was screaming louder than he thought humanly possible.  Very few words were recognizable as English, but the pain and fury and helplessness in his voice were unmistakable.  Rylan had heard it many times before—mostly recently from Julian March.

“Will!  Will!”  He waited for him to draw a ragged breath so he might hear him.  And he said the only thing that Will would hear.  “I didn’t hurt him!”  Will’s pupils contracted slightly and he stopped struggling.  His body was still tense but he stopped screaming.  It would only last for a moment, so Rylan had to get him to understand fast.  “I didn’t hurt him, Will.  I swear to you.”

Will closed his eyes and forced back a sob.  He opened his eyes again—the green completely gone to a muddy, hate-filled hazel.

“You fucking bastard.  You wouldn’t even know if you’ve hurt him.  You don’t know.”

“I do know, Will.”

Will tried to push against him again and screamed, “You don’t know anything!”

“Shut-up!” Rylan yelled.  It startled Will for a moment, but that’s all he needed.  “I was with him on Thanksgiving.”

Rylan didn’t know the particulars of that day or what if anything Julian had told his friends about their encounter that night, but he was certain Will knew something about it.  His hunch was confirmed when Will went completely limp beneath him.  The kid stared up into his face, a different being than he had been only moments before.  His eyes were still that muddy color.  Then he averted those eyes.

“Did he say what he did that day?”

Rylan thought that was a strange first question to ask, but he knew better than to bring that up now.  He filed the comment away in his head for future evaluation.

“Not in any detail.”

“What did you do?”

“I gave him what he needed.”

Will’s eyes snapped back to his face.  “Which was what?”

Rylan kept the smile off his face, but just barely.  “Not sex if that’s what you’re thinking.  But anything beyond that is not my place to say.  If he wants you to know he’ll tell you.”

Will was looking angry again, but still his body remained wilted.  “So say you helped him.  Gave him what he needed.  Helped him repair the damage he’d done with his friends.  How can you say you didn’t hurt him?  He’s not a fucking tool for you to use to make money!  Who the hell takes advantage of someone’s pain like that!  You are a sick fucking bastard!”

“Will, he’s not a god damned escort.  Nobody’s touched him.”  Well, someone had molested him and if been given the opportunity would have raped him, but that bit of information wouldn’t help his cause at the moment.  “Look.  I met Julian— _by chance_ —months before November.  He wandered into Blue Boy to get out of the rain, and I talked to him for a minute and thought I’d never see him again.  Then we met again—by chance—when he nearly got himself killed by falling off a curb.  I put an ice pack on his ankle.  We talked, and if you know him at all I’m sure you can believe that he was curious about my business.  He asked me for a job.”

Will started to say something, but Rylan cut him off.

“ _He_ asked me, Will.  Not for an escort position, but just some other job.  I told him to fuck off.  He persisted.  So, I called him on his eighteenth birthday—and he was still interested.  Yes, he works at Blue Boy, but he’s not an escort and nobody hurts him.  He comes of his own volition.”

“It’s true,” Tyler said softly.

Rylan didn’t know if it was a good thing or not for him to join the conversation.  Will’s eyes flicked toward the voice.  Then he looked back at Rylan.

“Get off me,” he ordered.

Rylan hesitated.

Will gave him a look to let him he wasn’t going to do anything to him.  “Get off.”

Rylan stood up.  Tyler was still on the other side of the couch, twisting his hands together.  Ken stood a few feet away, a hand over his mouth, tears pouring from his eyes.  Will stood up and pulled his sweater vest down.  He looked at Ken.

“You knew,” he said quietly.

Ken gave a slight shake of his head and took a step forward.  Will retreated.

“Stay away from me,” he snapped.  “Don’t come near me.  Not right now.”

Rylan was finally angry with Will.  He wouldn’t stand for the little shit to take it out on Ken.  Julian had acted on his own free will.

“I have to go.  I have to see him.”

Will started for the door, walking around the couch so he wouldn’t have to pass Ken.

“He won’t see you now.”

Will stopped walking and turned to face Rylan with an extremely pissed off look and arms over his chest.  “And why is that?”

“He’ll lie and make up some excuse.”

“Why!”

“He’s scheduled to work today.  He won’t tell you where he is.”

“Then I’ll go to _him_.”  He turned to leave again.

“Will—”

“What the fuck do you want, Rylan?!”

“What will you say to him?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“Well, actually, it is.”  Rylan advanced on him.  “Julian is my responsibility now.”  Will’s eyes went wide.  “It’s my job to keep his mental health on the right side of crazy.  And I will not let you go down there and berate him for making a choice about his own life just because you don’t like me.”

“This has _nothing_ to do with you!  He lied to me!  He’s keeping things from me.  Important things!  We don’t do that to each other!”

“Have you told him about Ken?”

Will swallowed hard.

“I didn’t think so.  Maybe it would be best for everyone to keep their secrets.”

Will dragged a hand down his face, and it appeared he was close to tears again.  “I can’t pretend I don’t know.  Not this.”

“Then wait till you’ve calmed down.”

“No.”

Rylan held back his heavy exhalation because it would have come off as impatient and angry, which he was, but he needed Will to work with him.

“Okay.”  He walked toward the door.  “Talk to him today.  But I’m going with you.”

Will shook his head with a grim smile.  “I don’t fucking think so.”

Let the brat think whatever he wanted, he wasn’t going anywhere near Julian alone and riled up like he was.

“I’ll drive you,” Ken said, walking toward the kitchen to get his keys.

“No,” Will said, grabbing his bag and walking to the door.  “You and Tyler should stay here.  Get to know each other.  Maybe you’ll discover a whore is better than a bratty teenager after all.”

Will got the door open and Rylan slammed him against the frame, shoving his forearm above his clavicles and putting the slightest pressure on his throat.  Will’s face was sheer anger, but his eyes shone with fear.  The exact response he had been going for.  He leaned close and lowered his voice to less than a whisper.

“Do not take this out on him.”

Will’s face changed to shame and guilt.

“And don’t say anything you are going to regret.  If you lose him…it’s forever.”  Rylan dropped his eyes.  “Trust me.”

“Bullshit,” Will said.

Rylan looked at him.

“He doesn’t mean that much to you.  He never did.”

“Does that make you feel better?”

“Let go.”  Rylan raised an eyebrow.  “Let’s go,” Will amended.

Rylan let him go.

“Come on, Ken,” Will snapped.  “Get the keys to the Lexus.”

Will stomped out into the hallway.  Rylan supposed that was the closest thing to an apology Ken was going to get.  He turned and watched his friend walk slowly toward the door.  His eyes were red, his face blotchy, and his shoulders slumped low.  He walked up to Rylan and put his forehead on his shoulder.

“Shit,” he whispered.

Rylan put a hand to the back of his head.  “You couldn’t have told him.  He’ll forgive you.”

Ken walked away from him.  Tyler appeared beside him.

“I feel like this is my fault,” Tyler said.

“It is,” Rylan said.

“What?!”

“I’m joking.”

“Not really a good time for jokes.”

“No, I guess not.”  Rylan reached for his cigarettes.  They weren’t there.  “Fuck.”  He put a hand behind Tyler’s neck and pulled him out into the hall.  “Come on.  Least we can do is give you a ride back to Blue Boy after all the drama.”

To say the ride to Blue Boy was tense would be like saying space was a little chilly.  Will had sat in the back passenger seat and stared out the window.  Tyler sat in the back too, scrunched into the car door in order to stay out of Will’s peripheral vision.  Ken’s knuckles were permanently white as they drove through the city streets.  Rylan was happier to be in the slightly bigger Lexus SUV, but he was still annoyed by the whole situation.  He should have known the orphan with anger-management issues would be a bad idea…but he’d had worse ones.

They parked in the garage that was a block and a half from the Blue Boy building.  The number one complaint he got from his clients was that there was no onsite parking.  It was a complaint he would never acknowledge.  The last thing he needed was what essentially amounted to a client list parked outside his business.

Rylan got out of the car and stretched.  Geez.  He was all for not shitting on the planet, but did that mean he could never fit inside a car again?  Tyler got out and mouthed something to him.  He wasn’t sure what he said but his expression let him know that he was probably regretting his inclination to show anyone in the world gratitude—as usual it just led to trouble.  Rylan turned around and saw that Ken hadn’t gotten out yet.  Will crawled to the front seat and sat with his back against the dashboard and his feet over the center console into the backseat.  Ken was leaning his elbow on the door and rubbing his forehead with a hand.  He didn’t think the two of them were talking yet.  He crossed his arms over his chest and could feel his face slip into a comfortable scowl.  Most people said that if they scowled or frowned too much it hurt their faces—he rather liked it.

Tyler tugged on his arm.  “Come on.  Let’s give them a minute.”

He responded the way many of his employees did to things they didn’t want to do.  “Um…no.”

“Rylan!”

Rylan growled and only put up a little resistance to being pushed toward the exit to the street.

“I don’t want to leave him alone with the little spore.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Unless he says something else stupid.”

“That’s pretty likely, but they’ve got to work this out on their own.”

“It would be so much better if they didn’t.”

“What do you have against him?”

“Did you see the way he reacted to Julian working for me?  He’s unstable!”

“Well, if he knows you at all it’s possible that reaction is justified.”

Rylan gave him a sidelong glare.  Tyler smiled nervously and gave him a little wave.

“Besides, it might be a good thing to give Julian a head’s up that this is coming.”

Rylan considered that.  He wasn’t sure if it would help or make things worse.  Since he was still ticked off at him, he let Tyler struggle to get one of the giant doors to Blue Boy open.  Rather than hearing the sweet silence of his lobby, his ears were accosted with ringing, echoing, irritating voices.  They weren’t shouting, they were just talking, but it’s not what he liked to hear when he came to work.  And he was even more irked by the fact that the people making the noise were Julian and two boys he didn’t know.  Two more boys in frickin’ high school uniforms.

“Jesus Christ, Julian!”

They had been walking toward the trio and Rylan’s shout made Tyler skirt to the side just a bit.  The two strangers jumped and backed into Julian.  Julian stepped forward, waving his hands in the air.

“I didn’t bring them here!  They followed me!”  He turned on them.  “And I’m still trying to figure out why.”

The two boys started giving hushed explanations to Julian and Rylan sized them up.  They were too happy and well-adjusted to be useful to him, which was a pity because they were both attractive.  The blond was cute in a “I want to tie this little puppy up and make him scream (in pleasure)” kind of way, and the other had good coloring—just a touch of ethnicity to him, but not enough to scare even his most racist of clients off.  And he had a good shape to his body.  He let his eyes travel up and down his body again—he actually kind of liked this one.  Then he looked up and met the kid’s eyes.  He immediately blushed under the olive tones of his skin and his eyes widened—in recognition?—and then he scooted behind Julian again.  Rylan had a genuine moment of confusion.  Had he met the kid before and done something to him?  That’s the way he was reacting, but he didn’t really remember him.

“Guys,” Julian said, putting a hand to each of their backs and giving them encouraging pushes forward, “don’t you think it’s time you were on your way?”

“But we just wanted to see where you worked,” the blond whined.

Hmm.  In addition to being tied up, he would also need a ball gag.

“Yeah, what is this place anyway?” asked the blushing one.

The blond did a double take as he passed Tyler.  Then he let out a shout and pointed with an outstretched arm.

“It’s a sex club!”

Rylan was proud of Julian.  He didn’t react to the statement at all.  He just looked like he thought his friend was saying stupid things.

“Dude, that’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking!  It’s a sex club!”

Rylan turned a glare on Tyler.  How many kids did this brat know?  Tyler laughed nervously.

“Why would you say that and look at _me_?”

“Because!  You’re…um.”  The blond glanced at his two friends.

“What?” asked the one that wasn’t the blond or Julian.

“Oh, yeah!” Tyler suddenly burst out.  “I remember you.”  He advanced on the blond and he stumbled against Julian, so he couldn’t get far.  Tyler walked right into his personal space and put them nose to nose.  He had on his predatory smile—the one he used when he actually wanted sex and not money.  It was a rare smile for him.  “You’re my sexy little submissive.”

The blond looked like he might try to play it off and the other two were watching to see if he could.  Then Tyler dug in the last nail.

“Scott.”

The blond sucked in a breath and Julian and the other one started squawking out questions and asking for details.  Rylan could feel a headache coming on.  This is why his office was on the 19th floor and the boys and clients were way down near the bottom.

“Quiet!” he bellowed.  His voice echoed off the cavernous walls long after the other three shut-up.  “Tyler, why the fuck are you soliciting minors?!”

“I didn’t know!  He wasn’t wearing a uniform _and_ he was in a sex shop!”

“You were in sex a shop?” Julian asked.

“You took me there!”

“I took you there?”

“It was the magic store!  I didn’t know what was back there!”

Julian laughed.  “Is that what’s behind that curtain?”

“So, wait,” the third one interjected, “he runs a sex shop?” he indicated Tyler.

“No, he was buying supplies.  He’s…he’s a boy-whore,” the blond whispered.

“Wha?” Tyler seemed a little offended.  Rylan didn’t know why.  It was accurate.

“You can’t say that just because he was in a sex shop,” said the third one.  Rylan was going to call him Practical.

“It’s not just because of that.  He showed me…”

Julian held back a laugh.  “Showed you what?”

“Uh!  Nothing gross!”

Tyler stepped forward again and Blondie simultaneously squeaked and jumped as the escort reached into his back jeans pocket and produced a wallet.  Tyler draped an arm around his shoulders and started going through the wallet.  The blond tried to snatch it back, but Tyler kept it out of his reach.

“Let’s see…driver’s license.  School ID.  Dunkin’ Donuts punch card.  Gift certificate to Abercrombie and Fitch…”

“You haven’t used that yet?” Practical asked.

“Library card…and…ah-ha!”  Tyler produced one of the nondescript business cards Blue Boy employees used.  “My card, I believe?”  Tyler looked the kid over and pulled his teeth over his bottom lip.  The blond went pink.  “It’s good to know you’re keeping your options open.”

The kid’s reaction was priceless.  Rylan could see why Tyler liked him—he was adorably vulnerable to attack.

“Tyler,” Julian murmured softly.

Tyler frowned a little, but he put the card in the wallet, the wallet in the kid’s pants, and backed off.

Practical seemed a little annoyed by the lack of sense taking place.  Rylan liked him even more.

“Okay, can we just get to the real point?  Julian, why are you here?”

“Geez, guys!  I’m a courier.”

“A what?” asked Blondie.

“I deliver stuff—”

“I know what a courier is!”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I don’t know.  It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, it does.  I pick up stuff from one place, and I deliver it to another.  They’re just addresses.  I don’t ask who they are or what’s in the envelope or who it’s going to.  I just deliver stuff.”

“What if you deliver drugs?” Blondie whispered.

Practical hit him behind the head.  “Don’t be stupid.”

“What?!” he grabbed his head.  “I’m not!  He’s not wearing a uniform!  Very unofficial!”

“I’m a frickin’ street courier.  They don’t give us uniforms.”

“You don’t ride a bike, do you?” asked Practical.  “Because you can’t.”

Julian smiled.  “No, I don’t ride a bike.  But, thanks to you guys, now I get to feel awkward every time I come in here.”

“Sorry,” Blondie murmured.

The door to the lobby opened.  _What fresh hell is this?_ Rylan wondered.  It was Ken and Will.  Impeccable timing.  As they neared, Will and Julian caught sight of each other.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” they exclaimed together.

Rylan was sure Julian couldn’t believe that all his friends had shown up at his sketchy place of employment and Will must be thinking that Rylan had ensnared even more of his friends.

“What—” Will started, but he was cut off by Blondie laughing.

“Man, I still can’t get over your hair.”

Will tossed him a glare.

“So, you followed Julian too?” Blondie asked.

“Out!  Everyone out!” Julian hollered.  “I’ve got work to do.  Things to deliver!  Guys, seriously!  I don’t come to where you work and try to get you fired!”

“I don’t work,” Blondie said.

“And you did dress up in women’s clothes and parade around the store once,” Practical said.

“Touché.  But get out anyway!”

“Fine, fine,” they muttered and started to leave.

“You coming, Will?” Blondie asked.

“Um.  Yeah.  Just give me a second.  I need to talk to Julian about something.”

“Okay.”

Practical looked at his watch.  “Is your thing over?”

“Huh?  Oh.  Yeah.  Well, the thing was following Julian.”  He gave them a poor excuse for a smile.  “Great minds, huh?”

“Why didn’t you tell us and ask us to come?” Blondie whined again.

Seriously, a ball gag would solve that problem.

“Because you’re not stealthy at all.”

“Whatevs!  We totally followed him here without him noticing!”

“True.  Sorry.”

“No prob,” Blondie dismissed his unhappiness quicker than Rylan had ever seen one of his boys switch from tired to ready to rock some old man’s world for money.  “Meet us at Artie’s.”

Will wrinkled his nose.  “Okay.  Not that I can eat anything there.”

“Don’t be a priss.”

Will snarled at him, but it didn’t seem to disturb Blondie a whit.

“You should go to Giovanni’s on 32nd,” Rylan heard himself saying.  “They’ll give you good food if you bring an actual Italian with you.”

“And where are we supposed to find a real Italian?” Blondie asked.

“You’ve already got one,” he nodded toward Practical.

“What do you mean?” Practical asked.

“I can tell by your coloring.  One Italian can always recognize another.”

Practical gave a somewhat awkward half-smile.  He still was uncomfortable around him.  He must have done something to him in the past.

“Well, actually, it’s Latino coloring.  My father was Colombian.”

“Mm-hmm.  Is your mother  Italian?”

“She’s Irish.”

“Well, then I don’t know what she told you about your father, but he ain’t Colombian.”

Practical went a little pale.

“Whatever,” Blondie said, “can we get fries now?”  He started to push Practical towards the door.  “Don’t take too long, Will.  And if you finish your delivery soon, come join us, Julian.”

“Okay,” Julian said.

The five remaining people waited in silence as the other two left—carrying on one of the top ten strangest conversations Rylan had ever heard in his life.

“How can you want fries after pizza?”

“I didn’t eat the pizza.  I was still feeling queasy thanks to you guys drugging me.  Plus my future stepsister smelled like grapes—and I nearly puked for the seventh time today.  My dad excused me to play spy with you after that.”

“Ah.  But don’t you think Artie’s fries are going to make you puke for sure?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“You are a strange child.”

The big door swung shut with a soft thunk after they disappeared on the other side.

Rylan looked back at the remaining group.  Will had his arms crossed over his chest and was looking at the floor.  Tyler was looking around at everyone, trying to determine if he should leave or not.  Ken had barely blinked since they stopped walking.

“Hey, look,” Julian said with a laugh, “Scott is going to tell you something weird, but you should know, I’m a courier.  _Just_ a courier.  This is just one business that’s a go between.”

Utter nonsense.  He would never allow outsiders to do anything for his company.  And Julian was making things worse for himself by lying.  But there was no way he could know that Will knew he was lying.

“A courier?”

“Yep.  Just a courier.”

Will was still looking at the floor.  “Then why is Rylan your boss?”

“What?” Julian let out an anxious laugh.

“I know who he is.  I know what Blue Boy is.”

“H…how?”

“That’s not the issue right now.”  Will finally looked at him.  “ _What_ are you doing here?  What do you _do_ here?  Why didn’t you tell me that…are you still having problems?”

Rylan was surprised by the hurt and distress that came to Will’s face and voice.  Julian looked startled too.  He took a step forward.

“No!  No, no, no, no, no!  It’s not like that at all!  I’m fine!  I’m better.  So much better.  It’s just a job.  I mean…I don’t…I’m not…I just interview people.”

“For what?”

“Look.  It’s not that big of a deal.  I just didn’t tell you because, well, it is a little embarrassing.  But, you know me.  I find this kind of thing fascinating.”

Will took that in, and then kind of nodded his head in acknowledgement that this business was something Julian would find interesting.

“But _him_?” Will said with all the incredulity and disgust he could muster.  “Why _him_?”

“What’s wrong with him?  Okay, there’s a lot wrong with him, but how do you even know him?”

“Um…I…don’t…”

Rylan watched Will stumble over the answer.  He didn’t think it was because he couldn’t think of a lie, but because he didn’t want to lie.

“It’s my fault,” Tyler said suddenly, drawing everyone’s attention.  “Um.  Yeah.  We ran into each other on the street.  He recognized me…from the New Year’s Eve party, you know?  And he remembered that I said that we were co-workers.  So, you know.”

Julian looked at him like he was expecting more of an explanation.  “Yeah, so?  Do you just announce to random people on the street what your occupation is?”

Tyler looked at Rylan.  He didn’t know why.  It’s not like he could help him.

“W-well.  He’s hot.  I hit on him.  Just like your friend, Scott.  And then once things started clicking one thing led to another and he got all worried and he asked me to bring him down here to see you.  It was a whole thing.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll buy that,” Julian said, clearly not buying it, “but that still doesn’t explain how he knows Rylan.  I will accept that he had an immediate snap judgment dislike of him, but when did they meet?”

“Well, we bumped into each other on the way in.  And Rylan was his typical Rylan self and was all like ‘Rawr!  Who are you and why are you here?’  Well, you know how he can be.  So, it was the whole instant dislike thing.  Like you said.”

Tyler kind of nodded and smiled in an unnatural way.  Rylan held back his amused sigh.  Julian was way too intuitive not to find his behavior if not his explanation fishy.  Which was evident by the way Julian just kind of stared at him.  Tyler was a smart boy, but like everyone else on the planet, he didn’t know when to shut-up.  Finally Julian gave a little shake of his head and said, “But, he didn’t come in here with you.  He came in here…”  Julian turned to look at the Ken-shaped statue.  “With him.”

What followed was a pretty awkward silence.  Rylan was certain he could get this train wreck going and over with in a matter of seconds, but it wasn’t really his place to say or do anything.  So, he held his tongue.  And people said he didn’t have any manners.

“But why would a closeted businessman bring his cat sitter to a gay escort club?”

Rylan could hear the dust settling in the room.  Julian let out a soft, humorless laugh.

“Cat sitter,” he said again.

He looked at Will.  Will looked at the floor.

“Will…are…what…”  His voice had gone a little hoarse.  He cleared his throat.  “I…Will?” he made his friend’s name a desperate question.

Will swallowed and tried to look up.  He didn’t quite get his eyes all the way up.  “What do you want me to say?” he said feebly.

Julian was quiet while he thought about that.  He put a hand to his face.  “Nothing.  Actually.”

There was even more silence.  Rylan was getting bored.  This was wasting time.  And money.  Julian had an interview scheduled in five minutes, but he had a feeling if he mentioned that Will might knee him the balls.

“Go catch up with Chris and Scott,” Julian said.  “I should be off work in a couple of hours and then I’ll give you guys a call and we can meet at the square.”

Will barely got his head to nod.  “So,” his voice was still weak, “are they still going to think you’re a courier?”

“Are they still going to think you’re a cat sitter?”

Will kind of bobbed his head.  “Courier it is.”

Will turned to leave.

“Hey, Will?”

He turned back.  “Yeah?”

“Just for the record…I’m still going to think you’re a cat sitter too.”

Will’s eyes flicked toward Ken’s feet.  Then he nodded and started to leave again.

“Hey, Will,” Tyler said, taking a step after him.

Will held back a sigh and looked at him.

“Um, thank you.  For what you did that day.

Will didn’t smile, but he said, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks.”

Will walked out of the lobby.  Tyler let out a rush of air and turned to look at the other three.

“Well.  Today has been sufficiently awkward.  I think I’m going to go see what the guys are up to.”

He headed for the elevators in a quick trot, leaving the other three to stand near each other, arms crossed, and once again silence enveloping everything.  Well, Rylan wasn’t about to let Will’s temper tantrum cost him any money.

“Julian, you have an interview in three minutes.”

His eyes were focused on the floor, but he nodded in acknowledgement.  Then he moved with sudden speed and surprising violence, and slugged Ken in the jaw.  Ken let out a shocked cry of pain and fell into Rylan.  Rylan caught him and had to help him stay on his feet—he was pretty out of it after the blow.  Julian was shaking his hand and hopping around, his mouth open in silent pain.  Rylan laughed at his inexperience.

“You’re not supposed to punch a man closed fist.  You wind up hurting yourself just as much as the guy you hit.”

“I really disagree,” Ken mumbled, putting a hand to his throbbing jaw.

Rylan smiled and patted his shoulder.  “You did have that one coming.”

Ken blinked, like he was trying to clear his mind, and then he looked at his attacker.  “Julian…I didn’t know how you felt about him until very recently.”

Rylan started.  “What?  You _too_?  What is wrong with you two?  What on Earth do you see in that little twerp?”

“Everything,” Julian breathed and crossed his arms over his eyes as he tilted his head back.

Rylan made a face.  He was the only sane person left on the planet.  Well, maybe him and Practical.  Though he couldn’t be too practical if he was friends with hyperactive, masochistic Blondie, egomaniacal, self-proclaimed genius Will, and love the world but with a touch of I hate everything Julian.  Rylan started to move, but Ken clutched at him with a hand.

“Oh, God.  Don’t move.”

Rylan stopped moving and he put his arm completely behind Ken’s back.

“Hey,” he said softly, getting Julian’s attention.  “Get to work.”

Julian dropped his arms and looked at him.  Rylan gave a little nod toward the elevators.  Julian obeyed without a word.  Rylan turned his head toward Ken who was still slumped against him pretty heavily.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I feel woozy.  I think I might faint.”

“Oh, he didn’t hit you that hard.”

“He really did.”

Slowly, Rylan walked Ken over to the bench against the back wall of the lobby; there were two flanking the reception desk.  Adam the Receptionist was watching them, and probably had been for quite some time, with a slack jaw.  Rylan and Ken fell down onto the bench with a thump.

“Adam,” Rylan gave him a mild warning.

The receptionist immediately turned around and pretended to work.

“Ugh,” Ken moaned softly.

“You are a total wimp.”

Ken put his head on Rylan’s shoulder.  “Do you think they’ll get over this?  Or work it out?  Or do you think they’ll just ignore it forever?”

“I really don’t give a damn.  It would do them both good to be apart and learn how to be normal human beings.”

“You don’t get it, do you, Rylan?  After his parents died—he was left with a family he didn’t know and peers who reject him because of his religious background and differentness.  Will, and those other two boys, are his whole world.”

“And that’s the problem right there.  He needs to learn to be self-sufficient.”

“Oh, like your boys are?  Because they clearly have a world outside of you.”

Rylan frowned.  “I’m a better influence than Will.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Ken made a face.  “Ow.”

Rylan gently turned Ken’s head a little and looked at his jaw.  He touched the spot carefully.

“Hmm.  That’s probably going to bruise.  You should keep the beard for a few days.”

“Oh, God,” Ken closed his eyes in pain.

“It cannot hurt that much!”

“It does.”

Rylan realized he was talking about Will.  He didn’t want to do anything to encourage this sickness, and he certainly didn’t want to do anything that would benefit the brat, but he did want to make his friend feel better.

“He’s not mad at you.  Not really.  He’s probably angrier with himself than anybody else.  Well, except maybe for me.”

“Heh.  Ow.”  Ken took Rylan’s hand in his.  “I’m sorry, Rylan.”

Rylan’s brow creased in confusion.  “For what?”

Ken opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped.  He thought for a moment.  “I don’t know.”

Rylan smiled.  “You have got some serious issues, my friend.”

“Hnn.”

“But I still love you.”

Adam turned around in his seat to gape at him.  Rylan put an index finger in the air and signaled for the receptionist to turn back around.  He obeyed.

“Honestly, I don’t know why everything was so tense.”

“You don’t?” Ken asked dryly.

“No.  How could anyone take him seriously with that blue hair?”

Ken laughed softly.

“Ow.”


	29. Chapter 29

Monday, April 10, 2006

Chris

 

Chris breathed in, his panic increasing as his lungs didn’t quite fill all the way.  He gripped the armrests tighter, and bit down on his lip hard enough to painfully stun him out of his fear for a moment.  When his eyes popped open it reminded him that he was indeed on an airplane.  It was his second time flying; he didn’t know why this time was so much worse than the first.  He supposed that now since he knew what was coming, he actually knew to be afraid.  Last time everyone on the plane had seemed calm, but he knew better.  They’d been one bad tower instruction away from crashing and burning.  And while he was thinking about burning, what would happen if a fire broke out when they were at altitude?  There was obviously nowhere to go.  You couldn’t open the emergency doors even if you wanted to.  Everyone would have that sickening horror of falling out of the sky combined with the searing torture of having their flesh burn off while it happened.  Why was he on this plane?  He was pretty sure trains went to Chicago.

He just needed to take his mind off the situation.  The reason he was going should certainly distract him a little bit.  He hadn’t even heard yet if he’d gotten in, but he was taking Mr. Richardson up on his offer to visit Northwestern University.  In a way it could be a bad thing.  He could go there, fall in love with the place, and get home to find a rejection letter in the mail.  That would suck hugely.  But even if that were to happen, it would be worth it just to take a temporary break from his life.  A break from his mom: she had already started freaking over the paperwork for the student loans and where she could buy size X-Long twin sheets when he hadn’t even heard from one school yet.  And since he hadn’t even heard from his back-up college yet, it was nice to take a break from school since he was still actually working hard and hadn’t allowed himself to be infected with senioritis…yet.  A break from Karen: they’d had an awkward conversation out of the blue about three days ago and he was 85% sure that they were “on a break.”  Whatever that meant.  He assumed he was free to hookup with a sexy, older co-ed if he was so inclined this week, but he probably wouldn’t be so inclined.  He was also taking a break from Sophia: she practically turned and ran when she saw him in the halls at school, and yet twice she’d somehow found him alone in the hall and the parking lot and come right up to him and acted as if everything was fine.  And he suspected those two meetings hadn’t been accidental.  She really was turning into a stalker now.

And if everything he was taking a break from wasn’t distracting enough, he was technically also making this trip to see his father.  He’d spoken with him a couple of times after their fight on the phone, but Chris knew it was just going to be awkward.  He no longer saw his father through his eight-year old eyes; he was kind of like a stranger who felt like he had a right to make choices concerning Chris’ life.  He guessed most fathers did have that right, but Chris was growing more and more distrustful when it came to authority.  He really wasn’t interested in even hearing people’s opinions anymore.  Like after he’d told his father that he was definitely letting Mr. Richardson pay for his flight, he had to listen to a lecture from his father about the importance of earning one’s own way through life.  Yeah.  Like his father knew anything about an honest day’s work.  At least his father was a lot more chill about the whole situation since he was no longer going to be staying at Mr. Richardson’s condo.  And the reason he was no longer staying with Mr. Richardson?

Chris turned to look at the passenger next to him in the window seat.  He was sliding the shade up and down, playing with the air vent, the light, the tray table.  If he was going to fidget this much through the whole flight, Chris just might set him on fire and toss him out the door.

“Scott!  Knock it off!”

The blond started at his sudden outburst, and slowly lowered his hands to his lap.  “What?” he asked innocently.

“I thought you’d flown before,” Chris growled.

“I have.  Lots of times.”

“Is that a crack in the wing?”

Chris whipped his head across the aisle to where Julian and Will were looking out their window.

“That’s not funny,” Chris whispered hoarsely.

“No, it’s not,” Will said solemnly, both he and Julian still focused intently on their view out the window.

Chris choked on his next breath of air.  Surprisingly, Will cracked first as his lips twitched up at one corner.  Chris clenched the armrests so tightly he could hear the ligaments in his fingers creaking.

“I hate you guys.”

All three just laughed at him.  Yes, the reason he was no longer staying with Mr. Richardson was because his three “best friends” had decided they needed to go on vacay for Spring Break with him to Chicago.  They were all going to split the cost of a hotel room.  Well, three of them were because Chris pointed out that before they announced they were coming he wasn’t going to have to pay anything.  They agreed to split the cost three ways because they absolutely couldn’t let him celebrate his 18th birthday without them.  Chris thought there might be some truth to that, but they probably just wanted to go on a non-chaperoned field trip.  Obviously Julian could go since he had no parents to tell him no, Will had been doing whatever he wanted since he was three, and Scott was now being given anything he asked for out of a desperate fear on his father’s part that he would hate him.  So, sure, why not send four almost adult boys on a weeklong trip to a major city with the only adults even remotely overseeing them being an uber rich lawyer whose motives were still unclear, and an ex-con.  Now that he thought about it, how on earth was _he_ on this trip?  Maybe his mother hadn’t thought it all the way through yet.

Regardless of how it happened, he was now trapped on a plane with a goober and two jerks.  And trapped was right.  The flight attendant had just banged the door shut and sealed them in with a twist of a large, possibly flimsy lever.  Chris closed his eyes again and tried to swallow.  His throat wouldn’t—couldn’t—cooperate.  Scott leaned in close and whispered, “You want to hold my hand?”

“No,” Chris hissed.  He actually really, really wanted to take him up on his offer.

The plane began to taxi away from the jet way.

“Distract him, Scott,” Will said.

“With what?”

“Tell him about your ‘personal assistant,’” Julian suggested.

Will snickered, but Scott just cocked his head to one side.

“My what?” he asked in confusion.

“You _know_ ,” Will intoned playfully, “your _right hand_ man.”

Scott tilted his head to the other side, still completely clueless.  “What are you guys talking about?”

“The prostitute!” Chris shouted.

Everyone around them turned to look at him.  The flight attendant gave him a sharp look as she folded up her demo life preserver.  She apparently didn’t like having her safety briefing being interrupted any more than she liked giving it.

Julian and Will both had one hand over their mouths, their eyes clenched tightly shut as they attempted to control their laughter.  Scott, having finally caught on, was looking very annoyed.

“It’s not like that at all,” he whisper-shouted over Chris, “and you both know it!  Besides!  What about you?  You probably deliver porno movies and extra textured condoms!”

“I do not!” Julian whisper-shouted over Will.  “I’m just a courier!”

“You admitted yourself you have no idea what’s in those packages!”

“Well, it’s not that!”

“You don’t know!”

Julian looked down at where Will was leaning on the arm rest closest to the aisle so as not to be smooshed during the “what’s in the package” debate.

“ _You_ ,” Julian said peevishly, “need to stop smiling.”

Will rolled his lips in and looked to Chris.  Chris was too focused on the increasing noise from the engines to notice if he was trying to tell him something.  Julian looked back at Scott.

“Where were we?  Ah, yes, Scott’s deviant homosexual behavior.”

Scott let out a high pitched squeal of dismay right in Chris’ ear.

“Shut-up!” Chris bellowed.

“Sir!” the flight attendant admonished just as she was sitting into her fold down seat.  “I’m going to ask you to keep yourself under control.  It’s not too late to return to the terminal.”

Now he got some real death glares from the passengers around him.  Chris shrank down into his seat and wondered why only he was getting yelled at.  Then the plane lurched forward.  Chris gasped and gripped the armrests again.  The plan accelerated, and kept accelerating.  Weren’t they going to take off?  Surely they would run out of runway soon.  Then there was lift, and the nose of the plane pointed almost straight up.  Chris made the mistake of glancing out the window.  Things looked normal, until he saw the crawling object far, far below.  It was a car and it was already that tiny?  How had they gotten so high so fast?  Chris faced front and closed his eyes.  His hand whipped to his right and grabbed Scott’s.  His friend turned his hand slightly so that they were actually holding hands as opposed to Chris simply clawing at Scott’s appendage.

Scott leaned in close again.  “Don’t worry.  I won’t tease you about this…too much.”

Chris was too scared to care.

 

Chris didn’t stop being scared until not only was the plane landed and taxied to the terminal, but he was off the jet way and on the solid construction of a metal and glass building.  Being crushed to death was not one of his phobias.  Julian , Will, and Scott were sniggering over the hand holding, though Scott was getting razzed a bit too, so why he was participating was a small mystery.  They were conducting this sniggering amongst themselves and giving Chris funny looks from the small circle they’d formed.  That was fine with him; if he couldn’t actually understand what they were saying, it couldn’t really bother him.  He just kept an eye on the rotating baggage carousel for the one mutual bag they’d checked that was full of their toiletries.  He couldn’t wait until he was in a college level class and could have a debate about the dumbness of the three ounce liquid rule.  That’s what they did in college, right?  Had pointless debates about “deep and philosophical” topics?

Chris’ cell phone rang and he didn’t even have to check the screen to know that it was his mother.  He answered with a dry greeting, preparing himself for her panicky voice.

“Chris!  Are you there?  Have you landed?”

“Obviously if my phone is on.”

She sighed relief.  “Good.  Is Dean there?  Let me talk to him.”

“We haven’t met up with him yet.”

“What?!  He promised me he’d be there when you got there!”

“Mom, we’re still waiting on our bag.  We haven’t even left the terminal yet.  He said he would pick us up outside.”

“He should come in!  That airport is so big!”

“Exactly.  So, it makes sense for us to meet him at the specifically numbered pick-up section he told us he would.”

“I’m calling him.  I’m telling him to go in.”

“Mom, don’t.  We are semi-adults here.  I’m sure we can—hello?  Mom?”

Chris made a face.  His mother had hung up on him.  Poor Mr. Richardson.  Chris considered calling him to give him a heads up, but then he spotted their bag.  He squeezed in between the fifteen people crowding around the dump zone and snatched the small bag before it slithered away from him.  He wiggled his way back out of the crowd and walked over to his friends, hopeful that they had worked their amusement out of their systems.  Then he spotted Mr. Richardson by one of the many entrances.  He was wearing a suit and looking around the terminal.  He also had a cell phone to his ear.  Apparently his mother had gotten a hold of him after all.  Instead of the annoyed or perhaps even bemused expression he expected the man to be wearing, he was grinning.  And then he laughed, though he didn’t open his mouth very wide.  Maybe he wasn’t on the phone with his mother.

Chris waited for him to turn partially in their direction, and then he gave a small wave.  Mr. Richardson spotted him and started in their direction.  He seemed taller than Chris remembered, and even more clean-cut and upper-crusty.  Not in a New York kind of way, but in an old money kind of way.  Chris wasn’t sure what gave him that exact impression, but refinement seemed bred into him.  And did Chris find that…appealing?  He felt bad that he was more impressed with Mr. Richardson than his father, but Dean Richardson was in control of his life.  And Chris found that very appealing.

Mr. Richardson said a few more words into the cell phone and then hung up.  He smiled at the group of boys.

“Hello, Christo—”  Mr. Richardson cleared his throat.  “It’s good to see you again.  These are you friends?”

Chris nodded and introduced them, and Mr. Richardson took the time to shake each of their hands.  Chris watched Julian for any sort of reaction.  He wanted to talk to him later after he’d spent some time with the man to see what he thought about him.  Chris didn’t believe in the other-worldly vibes stuff, but it was hard to ignore Julian’s track record.  And Chris needed to know if Mr. Richardson was a good guy.  He wanted to like him so badly that he knew he needed a third party opinion before he could make up his mind.

“How was your flight?” the man asked.

Chris let the others field that one so that he wouldn’t sound like a lunatic.

“Fine,” said Scott.  “Though I had to sit next to this total nut job.”

Will and Julian repressed smiles.

“Well,” Mr. Richardson said sympathetically, “we’ve all been there.  It really is a crap shoot when you fly coach.”

“So why didn’t you book me first class?” Chris muttered.

“Because you wouldn’t let me,” Mr. Richardson said cheerfully.

Chris flushed hot with mortification; he couldn’t believe Mr. Richardson had heard him.

“So, what hotel are you staying at again?  I can drive you all there to check in, and then maybe give you a little driving tour of Chicago before we go to dinner.  I made the reservation for 8:00 in case your flight was late.  Or are you hungry right now?”

The three boys not melting into a pool of humiliation looked at each other and nodded.

“No, we’re good,” Scott said, apparently the designated spokesperson for the group.  “Let me just check the reservation for the hotel.  I think it’s a Sheraton.  Or a Hilton.  Or Hyatt.  Or Marriott.  Or something like that.”

Will shook his head with a small laugh.  “Yes, odds are it is something like that.”

Scott gave him a frown as he pulled the print out from their reservation from his bag.  Then he began to examine it closely.  He turned it over a couple of times, and then flipped through the pages stapled together.

“Remind me again why we let Scott be in charge of the reservation?” Will mused.

“Because his dad agreed to let us put it on his credit card,” Julian replied.

Chris smiled uneasily at Mr. Richardson.  The last thing he wanted was to cause him trouble, or be embarrassed in front of him.  And he wasn’t sure why he was embarrassed.  Normally Scott being a bonehead was pretty typical, so why did it matter so much what Mr. Richardson thought of him and his friends?  Chris felt a strange feeling in his stomach.  Why did it matter so much?

“Oh, I’ve got it!” Scott said proudly.  “It’s a Marriott.”  He looked at Mr. Richardson.  “Is there more than one Marriott in Chicago?”

Mr. Richardson didn’t seem to know how to respond, ie: he didn’t know if Scott was joking or not.

“Give me that!” Will snatched the papers from Scott.

He frowned, but didn’t start whining.  That was an improvement in his usual reactions.

“It’s the J.W. Marriott downtown,” Will read.

Mr. Richardson nodded.  “Swanky.  And I know how to get there.  Shall we?”

“Oh, Scott,” Will sighed with half irritation and half amusement.  Chris suddenly got a bad feeling.  “You messed up the reservation, dude.”

“I did not!  How?”

“You didn’t make the reservation until tomorrow.”

“I made it for the days that we’re here.”

“We’re here now.”

“Yeah, but this is the arrival day.  You don’t make a reservation for your arrival or departure because you’re not there that day.”

“That’s only true for the departure, Scotty.”

“No, we were on the plane today.”

“Right.  But where are we going to sleep tonight?”

Scott started to speak, and then stopped.  They could all see the wheels turning.  “Oh.”

They all groaned softly and Mr. Richardson bit back a smile.

“Well, no big deal,” Scott said.  “We’ll just ask them to extend the reservation to tonight.  I’m sure they have a room available.  And if they don’t we can stay someplace else.  There has to be some other hotel in the city that has a room available.”

“And pay how?  We don’t have your dad’s credit card with us.”

“We can pay cash.”

“You have to give a credit card for them to hold in case you trash the room.  The only hotel that would not require one would be hourly.”

“And four guys checking into an hourly hotel room is pretty sketch,” Julian said.

“And it would be skuzzy and nasty.”  Will shuddered.

“You can stay with me tonight,” Mr. Richardson said, obviously trying not to laugh.

“No,” Chris said quickly.  “No.  We couldn’t impose.  It won’t be that difficult to change our reservation.  You can just drop us off at the hotel and we’ll get it straightened out and meet you for dinner later.”

“But, it might actually work better for you to come with me now.  I’ll be able to take you on that driving tour and we’ll already be together so we can make it to dinner.”

“But, you only have one spare room.  We won’t fit.”

“It’s just for one night,” he shrugged.  “We can pick up an air mattress.  Or I could sleep on the couch, if you guys don’t mind sharing a bed.”

“We don’t—” Julian started.

“No!” Chris interrupted.  “There is no way I’m making you sleep on the couch in your own home!”

Mr. Richardson tilted his head slightly; he seemed perplexed.  “You wouldn’t be forcing me.  And there’s a department store just past the airport.  I’m sure they sell air mattresses.  Really, it’s no imposition at all.”

“But, what about…Versace?  Will has a dog allergy.”

“I d—”

Chris stepped on the back of his heel, and he shut up.

“Chris, I insist you stay with me tonight.  It’ll be easier for everyone, trust me.  And Versace is…staying elsewhere.  Do you have all your luggage?” he addressed the other three.

“Yes,” Scott said, perfectly happy to go stay in some stranger’s home for the night.

Scott, Will, and Julian started picking up their luggage and following Mr. Richardson out of the airport.  Chris trudged slowly after them.  Something was going to happen.  He didn’t know what, but it was probably not going to be good.  The four of them always caused trouble wherever they went.  It was like some kind of unwritten rule of the universe.  But maybe they could at least avoid a scene with Victoria.  Perhaps the fact that Versace was staying elsewhere meant that Mr. Richardson was taking a break from her and she wouldn’t show up in his condo half-naked and accusing him of child molestation.

Chris enjoyed the driving tour of Chicago, though he was a little nervous to be sitting in the passenger seat beside Mr. Richardson.  He would have preferred to be scrunched in the back and have one of the others up front, but he was technically the one who knew the man.  Maybe the nervousness was also excitement.  He could be living here in September.  Well, probably outside the city proper and closer to Northwestern, but he could still say he was living in Chicago.

Dinner was both good and bad.  The restaurant was beautiful and the food was delicious, but it was so expensive…and Mr. Richardson paid not only for him, but for his three friends as well.  Chris had been upset when they’d all agreed so readily to let him pay.  Their parents had given them a lot of money for this trip; they shouldn’t take advantage of Mr. Richardson like that.  Or be able to talk with him so easily.  The three of them told him stories and laughed at his and questioned him endlessly about his job and about Chicago.  Chris wondered if Mr. Richardson picked up on it, but they asked a lot of questions about the safety of Chicago and whether or not it was college student friendly.  They were trying to make sure it would be okay for him to move here.  Chris appreciated that, but he couldn’t understand why they weren’t nervous around him.  Maybe that was only him.  But why?  He assumed it was because he was an adult he didn’t know very well, but that didn’t seem to matter to his friends.  Did that mean that he was socially awkward in that respect?  Or was his unease specific to Mr. Richardson?  Either way his friends’ presence both helped and made it a little bit worse.  He could honestly say he had no idea how this week would turn out.

He was a given a clue as to how it might go when the five of them returned to Mr. Richardson’s building.  Mr. Richardson had parked underground in a nearby garage, and they were walking—and his friends talking a little loudly for Chris’ taste—toward the front door.  Then a woman suddenly stepped out of the shadows and shoved Mr. Richardson.  He fell back into Julian, who easily steadied him, not having been thrown off balance at all.  Just how big was Julian now?  Then Chris saw that Victoria had made an appearance after all.

“Is that how you really wanted to end things, Dean?  I mean, after all we’ve been through?”

Chris felt Will lean close to him.  “Dude…who’s the crazy?” he asked out of the side of his mouth.

“I think she’s his ex?” he replied in the same way.

Victoria continued on complaining about the way Mr. Richardson had broken up with her.  Then she bent down and picked up the black fluffball he hadn’t noticed dancing at her feet.  She tossed it to Mr. Richardson, who thankfully caught it or Scott might have actually started crying.

“And you can keep that!  I don’t want any presents from you!”

“I didn’t give you the dog, Victoria.”

She looked confused for a moment.  Then she was melodramatically angry again.  “It doesn’t matter!  It loves you more anyway!  More than you ever loved me!”

“Victoria.  Can we do this later?”

“No!  There is no ‘later.’  Now is all there is.  Don’t you understand that, Dean?  You can’t just keep putting me off.  Because one day you’ll look for me…and I won’t be there,” she said dramatically.  Then she turned and ran off, crying hysterically.

Mr. Richardson waited until she had rounded a corner and seemed to definitely be going away.  He turned back to the teenagers, trying to muster some dignity.  Will had the balls to laugh.  And then he mortified Chris by saying, “She must be awesome in bed.”

The comment startled Mr. Richardson into a real laugh, but he still managed to keep his mouth mostly closed.  He shifted Versace to his other arm.

“Well, I wonder what I’m going to do about this?”

“Can I see?” Scott asked holding out his arms.  Mr. Richardson dumped Versace into them and the black Pomeranian began to lick Scott into a giggling fit.

“I wonder if there are any shelters open this late.”

“You’re going to put her in a shelter?” Scott asked, appalled and hugging the dog tightly to his chest.

“It’s a he.  And I don’t want your friend’s allergies to act up.”

Everyone looked at Will.  He looked back, and then remembered.

“Oh, right.  My allergy.  Um…I have medication with me.  I’ll be fine.”

Mr. Richardson looked like he was sorry his excuse for getting rid of the dog was going away.  “Are you sure?  Because I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“Nah, I’ll be fine.  Plus, I don’t think Scott will give it up.”

“It’s a he,” Scott frowned at him.

Will smiled back.  “In most romance languages there is a third third person pronoun that is unisex and the common convention is to refer to animals with that ambiguous pronoun so as not to elevate them to the status of human.  In English, you should use the neuter pronouns to refer to unnamed animals.  However, masculine and feminine pronouns can be used for named animals.”

Chris and Julian exchanged looks while Scott glared at Will.

“You’re making that up.”

“Possibly.  But you’ll never know unless you waste the time to Google it.”

Scott growled softly to him and turned to Mr. Richardson.

“What’s _it’s_ name?”

Mr. Richardson cleared his throat.  “Versace.”

“There,” Scott glowered at Will.  “Now _he_ has a name.”

“This is my building, gentleman.  Why don’t we go inside?”

Mr. Richardson must be getting a kick out of his friends.  Chris supposed that was a good thing, but did it have to be at the expense of his dignity?  Ah, who was he kidding?  He’d lost his dignity a long time ago.  To his mother, his girlfriend, his teachers, his stalker…his friends had very little to do with it.

Chris didn’t quite gasp in surprise, but he let out a soft noise when Julian hugged him from behind to haul him onto the elevator ahead of everyone else.

“Relax,” Julian whispered in his ear.  “It’s mostly in your head.  He’s not thinking less of you or regretting inviting you.  And he’s a good man.  I can feel it.”

Chris relaxed, but wished Julian still didn’t have to hold him while the others got on behind them.

“He does have some nervous energy though,” Julian said hurriedly.  “It’s nothing bad, but he is hiding something.”

Chris looked at Julian after he let him go, but he had turned to Scott to scratch the dog under its chin.  Or the spot where it’s chin probably was.  He seemed a lot fluffier than the last time Chris had seen him.  Neglect?  Maybe Versace loved Mr. Richardson more because he took better care of him.

The elevator started up and Chris pressed himself against the wall thinking that might help him feel the sudden lurch upward less.  He was thankful Julian had given him his impression of Mr. Richardson without making him have to ask for it, and it was good that Julian seemed to like him.  But what would the man be hiding?  Julian had said it was nothing bad; it was also possible it had nothing to do with Chris at all.  Maybe he should stop stressing about every little thing and enjoy his time in Chicago.  It was supposed to be a vacation after all.

Chris was the last one in the apartment because he’d been the last one to peel himself off the back of the elevator wall.  When he stepped in his friends were all (loudly) voicing their surprise and amazement of the view out of the wall of windows.

“Oh, wow!”  Scott said, pressing his nose (and inadvertently Versace’s nose) against the glass to look down.  “We’re like really high up.”

“The point is to enjoy the view out,” Julian observed dryly.

“Yeah, that’s cool too.  I’ve never seen a wall that was nothing but windows before.  You think it’s safe?”

“Of course.  As long as you don’t push against it too hard.”

Scott immediately stepped back and Julian sniggered.

“Relax, Scotty,” Will said.  “These windows are as solid as any real wall.  They’re extra thick.  They don’t move.  Trust me.”

“How do you know?”

“Mr. West’s office has a wall like this.”

“Who?”

“The guy I shadowed on shadow a professional day.”

“Oh.”

Julian let out an exhausted groan of disgust and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.  Chris understood how he felt.  He didn’t remember that day fondly either.  He couldn’t believe he’d been so desperate to please Karen that he’d spent the day with her psychotic father.  Will was frowning, but Chris wasn’t sure why.  He was distracted from pondering why when his cell phone rang.  He looked at the caller ID: his mother.  Of course.

“Hey, Mom,” Chris said into the phone.

She started complaining about him not calling her back after meeting up with Mr. Richardson.  She then continued on with demands that he call her after visiting the campus to tell her about it, to call her when he got to his father’s, to call her when he got back from his father’s, to call her when he was heading for the airport…at least he was pretty sure those were her requests.  He was only half listening because the other ear was listening to Mr. Richardson tell the other three that they could keep their bags in the spare room and asking where they thought putting the new air mattress would be best since it would be pretty brightly lit in the main room.  He managed to piece together that his mother was worried for his safety and that he had better be on his best behavior, and that Julian had to be one of the ones on the real bed because he was too big for the air mattress and Will could sleep through anything so he could be in the main room with the lights.

“Chris, what is all that racket?” his mother asked.

“Well, Will is upset that Scott said he needed to sleep on the air mattress since he’s the smallest.”

“Well, why would that upset him?  He is the smallest.  But that doesn’t mean he’s small.”

“Yeah, well, here’s proof that the perfect Will Harder has some insecurity issues.”

His mother laughed.  “Wait.  Why is he sleeping on an air mattress?  Can’t you boys share two beds?  And since when do hotels offer air mattresses?  Is that new?”

“Ah, yeah, about that.  Scott kind of messed up the reservation so we’re staying with Mr. Richardson for one night.”

His mother was silent for a moment.  And then she said, “All of you?”

“Yes.”

“In his condo?”

“Yes.”

“Chris!  He’s already doing so much for you!  How can you just push all your friends on him too!  Goodness!  Those three are more than a handful.  Especially when they’ve had sugar.”

“I know, Mom, but it was Mr. Richardson’s idea.  He said he didn’t mind.”

“Well, of course he didn’t.  He’s too polite.”

“But, Mom—”

He was cut off and went back to his half listening mode.  Even so he was startled when Mr. Richardson put a hand on his shoulder.  He looked at the man and he gestured asking for the phone with his fingers.

“Mom…Mom!  Hang on.”

He handed off the phone.  If Mr. Richardson wanted to deal with her, more power to him.

“Hello, Gillian.”  Pause.  “This is Dean.”  He smiled and held back a laugh as he started for his bedroom.  “I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder before shutting the door behind him.

“Hn,” Scott said thoughtfully as he came to stand beside Chris.  “It’s a little late for a stepfather, isn’t it?”

Chris elbowed him.  “It’s not like that.  At all.  Trust me.  My mom doesn’t really like him that much.  And who are you to talk?  _You_ have a stepmother now.”

Scott sighed.  “Yeah.  But she’s nice.  And she cooks.  And she’s kind of the perfect balance of shock and dismay to my dad’s complete frat boy egging on to catching me and Antoinette doing not quite PG-13 things with each other.”

Chris grinned.  “Like what?”

“Like she was like I know I’m not your mother but—”

Chris sighed.  “No.  What kind of things were you and…you know what?  Never mind.  Where are Julian and Will?”

“They took our bags into the spare room.”

Chris looked at the door: it was shut.  Well, all the better.  He needed to talk to Scott.  Well, he needed to talk to someone and Scott was probably his best choice.  Maybe.

“Hey, Scott?”

“Yeah?”  Scott looked up from rubbing Versace’s belly where he now sat on the couch.

Chris walked over and plopped down beside them.  Versace wagged his tail, and then went back to lolling euphorically with his tongue hanging out as Scott’s hand made slow circles on his fat little tummy.

“Is something wrong?” Scott asked.  “I know how we can be, but we’re not going to do anything to make Mr. Richardson hate you.”

Chris laughed softly.  “I know.  And I’m not mad or anything.  A little embarrassed, but not mad.”

“Well, that’s understandable.  So, what’s up then?”

Chris leaned his head back on the couch.  “Well, it’s kind of stupid.”

When he didn’t get a response to that, he turned his head to look at Scott.  He was giving him a “Hey, it’s me” look.  Chris nodded.

“Right.  Well, remember when we were in that building with the huge white marble lobby and we met your special friend?”

“Hey!  He’s not special to me, let alone a friend.  But, yes, I remember.”

“What was that building anyway?”

Scott shrugged.  “I never saw a sign.”

“Yeah, me either.  But anyway, you remember that big scary looking guy?”

“Uh, yeah.  I swear I almost peed my pants when he looked at me.”

Chris smiled.  “Yeah.  He made me feel uncomfortable too.  But anyway, he said something about…well.  I mean when he told us to go to an Italian restaurant.  And he said…”

“He said that your mother lied about your father being a Colombian?”

Chris looked at Scott again.  This time he was giving him a “Hey, it’s me, and I know your hang-ups just as well as you know mine” look.

“Yeah,” Chris said quietly.

Scott nodded.  “That was kind of a weird thing to say.  But I mean, do you really think he can tell just by looking at someone?  You don’t have any kind of stereotypical features that would make someone say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s Italian or he’s Latino.’  No offense, but you look kind of generic to me.  And even if you do believe he somehow magically knows that your father had to be Italian, it’s obviously not Mr. Richardson.  Last time I checked, Richardson was not an Italian surname.”

Chris couldn’t look at Scott now.  He felt a little embarrassed that he’d figured out that he was suspecting Mr. Richardson of possibly being his father.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Plus, there’s always the possibility that your biological mother is Italian and you were adopted by your mom.”

“Not a possibility.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I’ve seen the video.”

Scott made a face.  “Oh, ew.  Like…you being born?”

“Yup.”

“I wanna see that video.”

“No!”

His shout startled the dog.  It hopped onto its feet and then sneezed twice in quick succession.  Scott laughed and ruffled its fur.

“He’s really cute.  Not as cute as Coco of course, but I can see why people like little dogs.”

“So, you don’t think I’m crazy for listening to some super scary giant and doubting my mom?”

“No.”

“But that’s awful.”

“Well…I don’t think you’re doubting your mom.”

“Then, what is it?”

Scott looked at Versace and brushed his doggy bangs out of his eyes.

“Scott?”

Scott sighed, but didn’t look up.  “I think that you’re willing to believe some total stranger because you _want_ someone else to be your father.  Because you’re embarrassed by him.  Or kind of wish that you came from…I don’t know…better stock?”

Chris contemplated that for several moments.  “God.  That makes it better and worse.  One: that would mean more than likely that I’m being paranoid and I have no reasonable foundation to doubt who my father is.  But two: I am horribly ashamed of my own father.  What’s wrong with me?”

“Dude, my dad has been screwing women half his age since his wife’s second pregnancy and just married someone almost ten years older than himself so that he doesn’t have to worry about taking care of his own children while he’s working and continuing to screw women half his age.  And I’m _not_ ashamed of him.  What’s wrong with _me_?”

Chris laughed and reached out a hand to ruffle Scott’s hair, but wound up petting him instead.  “Your dad is kind of like Will’s dad.  They’re kind of selfish assholes, but they’re not bad people.  And way more likable than they should be.”

Scott nodded, but only slightly so that he didn’t move too far away from Chris’ petting.  The door to the main bedroom opened and Chris snatched his hand back as Mr. Richardson came out.  He tossed Chris’ cell phone to him.

“How wonderful it must be to have such a caring mother.”

Scott laughed and Chris gave him a small frown.

“So, did you boys work out the sleeping arrangements?”

“Not yet,” Scott said.

“Oh.  Are you guys kind of iffy about sharing beds?  Maybe we could buy a couple more air mattresses.”

“That is not necessary,” Chris said firmly.

“Plus,” Scott said, “our problem is kind of the opposite.”

Mr. Richardson looked puzzled.  “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we,” Scott sighed.

Chris shook his head before Mr. Richardson could ask another question, and the man seemed to understand that he probably didn’t want to know.

“Do you have any dog treats?” Scott asked.

“Um, there might still be some in the pantry.”

Scott hopped off the couch and Versace followed having heard one of three words he recognized: treat.

“There’s also some ice cream in the freezer if you want a treat too.”

“Sweet.”

Chris stood up and intercepted Mr. Richardson before he got to the kitchen.

“Um, could I have a word with you really quick?  In private?”

“Sure.  Sure.”

He led Chris to the bedroom and then shut the door.  He stood a few feet away from him and kept his hands clasped loosely together in front of his person.  Chris wondered if this was more body language he learned in his bettering communication with your partner classes.  Now that he was alone with the man who wore an expectant and carefully thoughtful expression on his face, Chris was having doubts.  But wasn’t that the point?  He had doubts about everything.  He might as well ask his questions of the one person who he wouldn’t hurt by asking if his parents were liars.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Chris started.  “I know we’ve covered this before, but I never really asked you outright.  So, I think maybe I should.  And also, what we covered was your relationship with my mother nine years ago.  Not eighteen.  So.  I know it’s ridiculous.  And I’m crazy.  But, there’s just this thing…in my head that won’t go away.  And I have to know that—”

“That I’m not your father?”

Chris looked up.  “What?”

“That’s what you need to know, right?  That I’m not your father.”

Chris was silent for a moment and then let out the breath he’d been holding.  “Or that you are.  I’m not necessarily looking for a denial.  But the truth.”

Mr. Richardson looked him straight in the eyes.  He looked so serious.  Chris held his breath, feeling even more anxious because he didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be.

“I’m not your father, Chris.  I met your mother for the first time when I was assigned to your father’s case.  That was the first time I ever saw her or you.”

Chris took that in.  He felt relief.  And was that something akin to disappoint in the back of his mind?  He shook his head.

“All right then.  I have to have a reason.”

“A reason for what?”

“Why you’re doing all this for me.  It really doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Especially after meeting Victoria.”

Mr. Richardson looked confused, and then he laughed that closed mouth laugh of his.

“No, I’m not interested in you in any sort of illicit or untoward way.  Cute as you are.”

Chris scoffed and looked away with crossed arms.  Mr. Richardson chuckled.

“Chris.  I wish I could give you a better answer, but all I have is this.  I just turned 40.  And all I have to show for my life is money.  I have no wife, girlfriend, or children.  My parents died years ago and I haven’t seen my brother in over five years.  Hell, the closest thing I have to a family is that dog out there.  When you came along, I guess I just kind of saw you as a project.  Or, that’s not right.  More like, an investment.  That would give me a return of something more than money.  I felt like if I could help you make the most of your life that I would be…I don’t know.  Doing something meaningful with my life.  Leaving a mark on the world.”  Mr. Richardson clenched his hands together.  “But I guess you may just view that as me taking on a charity case.”

Chris searched Mr. Richardson’s face.  Whatever the actual reason may be, he believed him when he said that he was now invested in his life.

“Maybe I do feel a little like a charity case, but it doesn’t bother me.  I think a lot of people let their pride stand in the way of things that would help them.  I don’t really have that problem.”

“That’s a very mature approach to life.”

“Or a desperate one.”  Chris smiled wryly.  “Thanks for putting up with my accusations.”

“Well, you’ve never actually accused me of anything.  Just made some very strong implications.”

He smiled and started to head for the bedroom door and Chris followed.

“Yeah.  Sorry.”  Chris laughed mostly to himself.  “Richardson’s not even an Italian name, is it?”

Mr. Richardson opened the door for Chris to pass through.  “No,” he answered, obviously curious about the question.  “I’m pretty sure it’s English.  But Colonna is.”

“What’s Colonna?”

“My mother’s maiden name.”

Chris stopped walking and watched Mr. Richardson walk over to the counter to watch Scott let all the cold air out of his freezer as he contemplated his ice cream selection.  Chris shook his head.  _Don’t even go there he_ told himself.

“Where are Julian and Will?” Chris asked.

Scott shrugged, not looking away from the freezer.  “Still in the bedroom I guess.”

Chris looked in the freezer over Scott’s shoulder.  He looked at Mr. Richardson.

“That’s a lot of ice cream.”

He smiled sheepishly.  “I didn’t know what kind you guys might like.  I’ll go get the other two.”

“So,” Scott said after Mr. Richardson had walked away.  “Is he your mom’s baby daddy?”

“That’s not what—”

Scott finally looked away from the ice cream to look at him.

“No,” Chris groused.

Scott smiled gently.  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s good.  It’s good,” he said again, trying to sound more convincing.  “Now I get to keep my dad as my real dad and still get some perks from knowing a rich alum from the school I want to go to.”

“Okay.”

Chris turned as the other three joined them at the kitchen.  He tilted his head.  Julian and Will had strange looks on their faces, and like they were trying not to laugh.  Sort of.  And Mr. Richardson just looked…blank.  He had a very controlled neutral expression on his face.  Hunh.  He walked over to a cabinet and started to get some bowls out.  Julian and Will hopped onto the stools on the living room side of the kitchen counter.

“So, what kind of ice cream do you want?” Scott asked.  “He’s got mint chocolate chip.  You like that, right, Will?”

“Yeah.  That sounds good.”

“What, you’re back on dairy?” Julian asked with exaggerated astonishment.

“Ice cream doesn’t count,” Will griped.

“So, who’s going to sleep where?” Chris asked.

“Well, Julian’s going to be on the bed and I’ll be on the air mattress,” Will said.  “So I guess it’s up to you and Scott where you’d prefer.  Personally I’ll pass on Scott.”

Scott made a noise of offense and stopped scooping ice cream.  “What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re a cuddler.”

Scott made a face at him.  “I am not.”

“Yes, you are,” Chris said.

“I wouldn’t mind him,” Julian smiled at the blond.

“Whatever!  You just wanna play with my hair!”

“Ha.”

“I think I would prefer Will, too,” Chris said.  “He’s the only heterosexual left.”

Julian let out a bark of laughter and Mr. Richardson almost dropped a bowl of Turtle Tracks as he passed it to Chris.

“I am _not_ gay,” Scott pouted.  “That guy came on to me.  Not the other way around, okay?”

“But you kept his card!” Julian laughed.

“Because it was funny!  Ridiculous!  Who the hell gets propositioned by a professional boy whore who actually carries around business cards?”

The other three teenagers started laughing.  Mr. Richardson looked concerned.  “I’m sorry, what happened?”

“Nothing,” Scott said.  “They’re just a bunch of jerks.”

The shrill ringing of the phone managed to cut through their laughter.  Julian was closest to the handset so he reached for it and asked Mr. Richardson if he should answer it.  Mr. Richardson nodded consent, and then suddenly stood up straight and reached out a hand.

“No wait!”

“Hello?”

Julian’s eyes widened in surprise.  And there was silence for a long minute before Julian managed to get out, “Um, ma’am.  Ma’am?  I’m not Dean.”  Julian’s brows creased together.  “Um, no.”  He listened some more, making rather comical faces as he did.  Then he said, “Um, he’s not available.  He’s in the bathroom.  Yes, alone.”

Mr. Richardson sighed and walked around the kitchen counter, holding out his hand for the phone.  Julian handed it over without telling the person on the other end that he was doing so.

“Sorry,” Julian whispered.

Mr. Richardson shook his head and put the phone to his ear as he headed for the bedroom.

“Victoria.  Victoria!  Can you act like a rational human being for one second?”

The door to the bedroom closed and Chris shushed his friends as they started laughing.

“Leave the poor guy alone.”

They all bit on their smiles and tried to eat their ice cream around giggles.  Chris sucked on his spoonful of ice cream until only the chocolate turtle was left behind.  Then he crunched on it.

“Hey guys?”

All three of them turned to look at him.

“Do you guys notice anything…strange about Mr. Richardson?”

“Where should we start?” Will asked.

“Why don’t you call him Dean?” Scott asked.  “He told us to.”

“Because I can’t.  And what do you mean, where do you start?”

“Well,” said Will, “I think he’s very nice and generous and there’s nothing sketchy about him…but there’s gotta be something not screwed in right if he’s seeing that crazy woman.”

“Was.  He may not have realized she was crazy until later.  Kind of like how people think you’re normal when they first meet you.”

“Geh.”

“I think he’s weird for being so calm about having his bachelor pad invaded by four slightly bizarre teenage boys,” Scott said.  “That takes a lot of patience.  Like a naturally chill temperament.  Kind of like you.”

Scott’s eyes widened and he looked up at Chris.  Chris almost rolled his eyes.  Scott was not one with whom to share secrets.  Chris gave a little shake of his head and Scott stuck a large spoonful of ice cream in his mouth to shut himself up.  Then he whimpered as the cold hit a filling or something.

“I think he’s a perfectly normal adult,” Julian said.  “Except for his taste in socks.”

The other three looked at him.  And then shook their heads.

“Look, I didn’t mean that,” Chris said.

“Then why don’t you tell us what you do mean rather than talking around it?” Will suggested.

“All right.  Fine.  Have you noticed that he…laughs weird?”

Chris looked at his friends.  They ate their ice cream and looked at him.  And they all shook their heads and said no.  Chris cut short a sigh.

“I mean, not like it sounds funny.  But, like how he never opens his mouth all the way?”

“Do you open your mouth all the way when you laugh?” Scott asked, thinking hard.

“Well.  I just mean like when you find something really funny, you don’t keep your lips close together.  Is this in my head?”

“Yes,” Scott and Will said.

“Not necessarily,” Julian supported him.  “You’ve talked with him more than we have.  So, it’s more likely for you to notice it.  So, he laughs with his mouth closed?”

“Not closed all the way, but like, he won’t open it wide.  To like.  Laugh.”

“Maybe he grew up with strict parents and wasn’t allowed to laugh,” Scott suggested.

“Yeah, I thought of that.  But it’s not like he doesn’t want to laugh or is trying to suppress his laughter.  It’s like he’s…I don’t know.”

“Hiding something?” Will asked.

Chris made a face.  “But what do you hide by not laughing?”

“Well, there is one thing,” Julian said.

The others waited expectantly.  Julian didn’t continue.

“What?” Chris finally asked.

He looked up and stuck out his tongue, showing off the metal ball about an inch and a half back from the tip.  Then he took another bite of his ice cream.  Scott let out a small laugh.

“No way.  An elite lawyer man like him?  Has a pierced tongue?”

“That could explain why he’s trying to hide it,” Will said.

Chris rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “A tongue piercing?  That just seems…out of place.”

Julian shrugged.  “I’ve seen people with tongue rings laugh the way you’re describing to try to hide them.  In fact, I did the same thing when my relatives were here.  Not that I laughed much when they were, but I did try to save my grandmothers from one heart palpitation or two.”

“Hunh.  Well, that certainly makes him a little more interesting,” Will said.

“If it’s true,” Chris said.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Julian said with a laugh.

“No way,” Chris snapped.  “Forget it.  You’re not asking him that.”

“Oh.”  Julian let a small smirk form on his lips.  “I guess there are two ways.”

Chris gasped quite loudly and balled up his napkin to throw it at Julian.  “Don’t even think about something like that!”

Will just laughed and Scott looked confused.  He leaned toward Will.

“So what’s the other way?”

Will gave him a bemused smile before kissing the air in his direction.  Scott blinked, and then sat up straight.

“Oh!  Julian!  You can’t go around tonguing older men!”

“Why not?” he replied dryly.  “Apparently it’s not that uncommon.”

Will snorted.

“All right, all right!” Chris interjected firmly.  “Nobody’s tonguing anybody and definitely nobody’s asking anybody weird questions, all right?  Will you all promise me that you’ll behave?”

They all raised their hands in the three finger symbol of scout’s honor.  That would have made Chris feel better if they’d ever actually been boy scouts.

 

Scott

 

Scott felt his jaw go slack as he drew in a slow, deep breath, his eyelids fluttering.  Then as quickly as he was relaxed, he was tense again, every muscle tightening almost painfully.  God she was good at this.

“Scott, do you have a—oh my goodness!”

Scott sat up quickly and grabbed a pillow to cover his groin as Antoinette tried not make it so apparent that she’d been on her knees.  In between his legs.  Sucking his…

“Scott!” his stepmother said again.  Then she turned around and marched back up the basement stairs.

Antoinette turned to look at him, a thumb wiping the corner of her smile.

“Whoops.”

Scott groaned and flopped back onto the bed.  Antoinette tugged at the pillow over his groin.

“Want me to finish?”

“What?!  No!  I mean—ah, hell.  Go ahead.”

 

Antoinette lazed on her side on Scott’s bed and watched him pack his suitcase.

“What time is your flight?”

Scott checked his watch.  “Damn.  Like, in one and a half hours.  Grr.  I’m going to be late.  Again!”

He hurriedly began to throw random clothes into his suitcase.  This was easily accomplished due to the fact that most of his clothing was still in the boxes he’d thrown it in to move it downstairs.  Antoinette watched as he ran into the bathroom and started tossing toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and conditioner into a grocery bag.

“You know,” she said, “you might not be so late if you planned things in advance.  For instance, had you packed last night, you wouldn’t be rushing around now.”

“I know, I know.  But I was busy last night.”

“Doing what?”

Scott paused and thought for a moment.  “I can’t remember.  But I know it was important.”

“Mm-hmm.  Honey, you know that your liquids and gels have to be in a quart size bag, right?”

“Oh, the four of us are going to put all our stuff in one bag and just check it.”

“Mm-hmm.  Are you wearing flip-flops?”

“Yeah.  You have to take your shoes off.  Flip-flops are super easy to take on and off.”

“Yeah, but then you have to walk barefoot on that nasty floor.”

Scott shrugged.  “That doesn’t bother me.”

“Well, it should!  It’s gross.”

“Well, when you develop a foot fetish and need me to start keeping my toes squeaky clean for you to suck on, I might start caring.”

Antoinette laughed.

“You know what?  Not even then because I don’t want you sucking my toes.  That’s just weird.”

“Says the boy who likes it when I practically twist his nipples off.”

He made a face at her.  “Shush.”  He threw his suitcase onto the bed and then sat on top of it in order to zip it closed.  Then he sigh-groaned.

“God.  I cannot believe Linda saw us like that.”

“I thought your dad said he was going to finish the basement and give you like walls and a door and stuff.”

“He is.  But since it’s going to take some serious construction, we decided to wait until after I’ve left for school so that I could move down here now and not have to share with my two new stepbrothers.”

“Why don’t you just share with the twins?”

“Yeah, right.  Like my dad would force them to move or give up their room.”

“Ooo.  Is that finally resentment and hostility toward your brothers?”

“What?  No way.  They’re too cute and sweet and perfect.  I wouldn’t want to displace them either.”

“Good grief, Scott.”

“What?”

“They will be monsters when they grow up if you guys keep spoiling them like that.  It almost makes me hope that our own children won’t end up that cute because you would ruin them!”

Scott smiled and slid off the back of his suitcase to sit next to Antoinette.  “Is that how you imagine your children?  As being mine?”

She smiled softly back.  “Well, yeah.”

They continued to smile at each other.  They didn’t really need to talk about it and make it more definitive now, but it was quite interesting that they were both totally okay with several aspects of their futures already being decided.  Scott caressed the side of her face and leaned toward her.  She moved forward to meet him and they shared a kiss with a quite a bit of feeling behind it.

“Scott!”

Scott pulled back and looked at the basement entrance.  His father must be yelling at him from the top of the stairs.

“Hurry up.  If you miss this flight you’re not going.  And it’s only going to be for a week.  You can have sex when you get back.”

Scott’s jaw dropped.  “Dad!” he hissed.  The man probably didn’t hear him, unlike everyone else in the house who must have heard that.  Antoinette chuckled.

“Your dad is kind of awesome.”

Scott made a face and hopped off the bed.  He picked up his suitcase and grunted at how heavy it was.  Antoinette picked up his grocery bag full of toiletries.

“You want me to drive you to the airport?  I’m sure I could get you there in plenty of time.”

“Ummm.  You know, that’s okay.”

“I’ve gotten better!  I promise!”

“Yeah, well, we’ll test it again when it’s not so imperative that I get somewhere alive.”

Antoinette frowned.  “You’re so mean.”

Scott kissed her on the cheek and started up the stairs, letting his suitcase bang each step on the way up.  When he reached the top he pulled out the handle so he could roll it across the kitchen floor.  He froze when he saw Linda at the stove, checking on something in a crock pot.

“Scott, can you move?”

Scott started and moved so Antoinette could step off the stairs.  This, of course, made Linda turn around.  Scott couldn’t meet her eyes and he didn’t know if he should apologize or just try to pretend what happened had not happened.

“Well, Scott,” she said.  “I hope you have a nice flight and a good time with your friends.”

Scott kept his head down.  “Thanks, Linda.”  He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just walked out of the kitchen.

“Bye, Mrs. Ramsey,” Antoinette called out.

Scott groaned and trudged toward the garage door.  He kind of missed the days when it was just him and his dad in the house.

“Scotty!”

Scott stopped and got his arms up in just enough time to catch the twins as they barreled into him.

“Don’t be gone too long!” Drake said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back on Friday.”

“An-t-nette will you stay while he’s gone?” Ferris asked.

Antoinette laughed and ruffled his hair.  “I can’t.  I’m going to the beach.”

“You are?” Scott asked.

“Oh, yeah.  I didn’t tell you?  My family is taking a trip to Puerto Vallarta.”

“Oh.  You’re going with your family.  That’s cool.”

Antoinette slapped his shoulder.  “Don’t give me that non-trusting boyfriend crap.”

Ferris gasped.

“Bad word,” Drake whispered.

Antoinette leaned close to Scott.  “Crap is a bad word?”

“It is after six months with my grandmother.”

“Hmm.  I probably never want to meet her, do I?”

“No, definitely not.”

Scott shot his father a look for answering for him.  He didn’t think his grandmother was a bad person.  And he was probably going to have to invite her to the wedding.  So, maybe it would be good if she didn’t meet Antoinette before that.  Even if Antoinette was on her best behavior and wore very conservative clothing, his grandmother would probably assume she was a tramp because she was beautiful and had big breasts.

His father was still talking.  “I think you’ll enjoy Puerto Vallarta.  It’s still pretty heavily populated by tourists, but not as many college idiots.”

“Yeah, I still don’t know why my dad picked it though.  I don’t think it’s very kid friendly.”

“Ah, it’s not too bad.  There are a lot of activities like jet skiing and snorkeling and most of the resorts down there have planned activities for kids.”

“How do you know?” Scott asked as he lugged his suitcase down the three garage stairs and toward his father’s Maserati.

“I’ve been there before.  Plus, I looked into it a couple years ago to go on a family vacation.  Your mother vetoed my pick and took us all to the Grand Canyon instead.”

Scott made a face.  “Oh, God I remember that.  It was so frickin’ hot.”

“I told her if she wanted to go we should go during winter vacation, but she insisted.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Scott mumbled, not wanting to hear anymore about how he’d completely missed that his parents’ marriage had been a mess all along.

Once his suitcase was in the trunk he turned back to the twins for another hug.  His father asked if Antoinette wanted to ride with them to the airport, but she politely, and somewhat reluctantly, declined.

“Our flight is tomorrow.  So, I need to go home and you know, pack in advance.”

Scott scowled at her and she gave him a quick peck on the lips.  The twins alternated between giggling and saying “ewwwwwwww.”  Antoinette waved her hands at them to get them to go away.

“So, where’s your sister?”

“Oh, her school has a different spring break from Calverton.  She and my step-siblings should still be in class.”

“Hmm.  Well.  Have a safe flight.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

She rocked on her heels as she looked at him, and then she turned to look at his father.  “Would you mind turning around for a second?”

The man grinned.  “Do you really care if I see?”

“No, but Scott does.”

“Greh.”

His father laughed, but turned around to open the driver’s side door.  Antoinette wrapped her arms around Scott’s neck and pressed their lips together.  Scott gave in and kissed her back for a few seconds, and then he quickly let her go.  He knew his father would only be good for five seconds at most.

“See you this weekend,” she said.  “Call me if you have time.”

“Will your phone work in Mexico?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe I can ask my dad to activate the international calling.”

“Well, just don’t tell him the reason is because you want to call me.”

“Aww, I don’t think he would be that spiteful.  Besides.  I think he likes you.”

“Really?” Scott asked doubtfully.

“Well, he likes you better than Jake anyway.”

“Who’s Jake?” his father asked.

“My ex-boyfriend.”

“Well, if it makes you happy, I like you better than his last girlfriend too.”

“I’ve never had an actual girlfriend before, Dad.”

“I know.  I like that Antoinette is actual.  And not in your head.”

Antoinette laughed and actually reached out a hand so that she and his father could give each other a low five.  Scott huffed at both of them.  He turned on his heel and stomped over to the passenger side of the car.

“Can we go before I miss my flight, please?”

 

The Maserati screeched to halt in front of one of the set of doors for Area 3 of the airport.  The cop who was shooing off someone who had been parked in front of the terminal too long gave them a displeased look, but did nothing more.  Scott got out of the car and wondered why when his girlfriend drove like a maniac he thought he was going to die, but when his dad did he felt fine.  At least his father’s erratic driving had gotten him to the airport before it would be too late to check his toiletries with the others’ stuff.  He walked to the back of the car and pulled his suitcase and grocery bag out of the trunk.

“David?!  Oh my gosh!”

Scott couldn’t see who was talking, but it sounded female and his luck wasn’t good enough that there were two Davids nearby, no matter how common a name it was.

“Hi!  How are you doing?” the woman said, still sounding super excited.

Scott peeked around the open trunk and saw his father smiling at a woman who was too hot to be that excited about seeing his dad.  He couldn’t tell how old she was, but she was probably closer in age to himself than to his father.  She had light brown skin and light brown eyes; she looked a little like Anna in that regard and was probably mixed race as well.  But her hair was too straight and unmoving for it to be natural.  It was probably a weave, but she still looked beautiful.  His father was smiling back, but there was a touch of concern in his features.  Scott realized he either didn’t know or couldn’t remember the woman’s name.

“Ah, hi.  I’m fine.  Uh.  How are you…?”

“Bethany!”

“Right, right.  Bethany.  I’m sorry.  I’m getting on in years, you know.”

The woman giggled loudly and slapped his father’s arm, and then slowly ran her hand down to his wrist.  His father was still smiling at her, but the concern was gone because obviously she didn’t care that he’d forgotten her name.

“So,” the woman said, smiling teasingly and putting her hands on her hips to emphasize her girlish figure.  “What are you doing back in town?  Tired of sunny Cali again?”

Scott blinked his eyes several times.  Sunny Cali?  Back in town?  Good God.  His father had slept with this woman while pretending to be an out of town businessman.

“Ah, not so much.  Are you still with…?”

“American Airlines?  Yep.”

Scott rolled his eyes.  For God’s sake.  A flight attendant.  His dad had banged a flight attendant.

“So, how long are you in town for this time?  I have a three day _lay_ over.”

His father let out a soft, nervous laugh.  “Well, I uh…”

Scott slammed the trunk shut and the two adults turned to look at him.  The woman blinked in surprise as he walked over to them.  He didn’t bother to give the slutty flight attendant an acknowledgement, but glared at his slutty father.

“Well, thanks for the ride to the airport, _Dad_.  Don’t forget your daughter’s band concert is on Tuesday and the twins’ have dentist appointments on Wednesday.  Oh, and your wife asked you to pick up some toilet paper on the way home.”

His father smiled at him.  “Thanks for the reminders.”

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t need them.”

His father just laughed.  Did the man have no shame?  Or did he just not care anymore?  Either way, Scott still didn’t pull away when his father hugged him.

“Have fun, but be good, okay?  This trip is important to Chris.  Don’t make him stress out too much.  That poor kid is wound tighter than a mattress spring.  And whatever you do, do not like that school.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you going far away.”

“I won’t.”

His father pulled back first and put a hand under his chin to make their eyes meet.

“You can relax.  I’m going home alone,” he said quietly.

“After screwing her in a hotel?” Scott mumbled back.

His father smiled.  “No.  She’s not that good of a lay.”

Scott groaned embarrassedly and turned away from his father.  The man laughed and grabbed him, pulling him back.

“I’m joking.  Relax.  And have fun.”

“All right.  But don’t you dare.”

His father laughed again and kissed him on the forehead.  Scott rubbed the spot and grabbed his suitcase by the handle to haul it behind him as he entered the airport.  He only glanced back once when he was inside.  Even though “Bethany” must have heard most of that conversation, she was still smiling and flirting with his father.  Fortunately the cop came up to them and told his father to move the car.  Scott watched to see if Bethany got in it with him, but his father gave her a perfunctory handshake and drove off.  Maybe his father was going to behave, but who knew if he hadn’t slipped his phone number to her in the handshake.

He was still frowning by the time he found the counter for Northwest Airlines where his three friends were standing with crossed arms and annoyed expressions.  He made a face at them.

“What?  I’m obviously here in enough time, otherwise you three would have checked the bag and left me behind.”

“No,” Chris said, “Will was barely here in enough time.  You’re late.  Fortunately, our plane was delayed by half an hour, so we’ll just squeak this bag in with enough time to get to our gate.”

“Look, there were extenuating circumstances.”

“Like what?” Julian asked around a lollipop.

“Like…”  _Like I didn’t pack the night before and agreed to let my girlfriend give me a going away blow job._   “Stuff,” he said lamely.

“You had sex, didn’t you,” Julian accused.

“I did not.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.  We didn’t have sex.”

“But you did something else,” Will said.

“Look, can I put my stuff in the bag already?  We don’t want to miss our precious half an hour window.”

“If only I’d known I’d had an extra twenty minutes,” Will sighed.  “Well, that probably wouldn’t have been enough time anyway.”

“For what?” Chris asked.

“Nothing that can’t wait until Friday.”

“Alright then, let’s go.  Scott, put your stuff in here.  You guys head for the security line, and I’ll catch up.”

“Yeah, like we’re going to hold a place for you in line,” Julian scoffed.  “We’ll get beaten up for letting you cut.”

“Julian, do not mess with me today.  I’m stressed about this trip and I hate flying.  So, just.  Be nice, okay?”

“All right, all right.  Unkink your nut sac.”

Will and Scott coughed over their laughs and quickly headed for the security check point line.  Julian meandered behind them.  Will and Scott were waved through after showing their boarding passes and IDs to a TSA agent.  They left Julian behind since he had to stop and dig out his boarding pass from his suitcase, earning several annoyed looks from other passengers and airport employees.

“So, what were you doing?” Will asked, smiling at Scott with a sidelong glance.

“When?” Scott asked.

Will made a noise of disgust.  “You really have a nonexistent attention span, don’t you?”

“My attention span is not the problem.  People just change topics too fast.”

“Unh-huh.  What were you doing with Antoinette that made you late?”

“Nothing.”

Will bent over to pick up a plastic tray to put his shoes and belt in, and when he stood back up he gave Scott a look.

“All right, fine.  So, we were doing something.  But it’s none of your beeswax.  Besides, I could ask the same thing about you.”

“Me?  I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah?  Then why were you late?”

“The cab was late getting to my house.”

“Unh-huh.  And you didn’t make any stops on the way here?”

“No.”

“Well, that hickey on your neck says otherwise.”

Will slapped a hand to the side of his neck and stood stock still as Scott put his suitcase on the counter and pushed his and Will’s bags onto the roller bars leading to the X-ray machine.  Scott walked through the metal detector after the TSA agent waved him through.  While he waited for his bag to come through on the other side, he saw Will still rubbing his neck as he walked through the detector.  Julian was about three people back in line, and Chris about five behind him.  Scott wondered why the lines were so short.

Scott sat down on one of the benches provided for people to put their shoes back on and smiled sweetly at Will as he walked over to him, sliding his belt back into his pants loops.  Will frowned at him.

“It’s not that funny.”

“Never said it was funny.  Aggressive girlfriends can be a bit of problem.  What you have to do is just suck it up and buy some make-up.”

Will sat down beside him and started to put his shoes back on.  He glanced at the security check point.  Julian had slowed down the line by setting off the metal detector with all of his hardware.

“Make-up?” Will questioned.

“Sure.  I’m wearing some right now.  Not on my face or anything like that, but I’ve got a little concealer on the other side of my neck.  Same problem as you.”

“Do you have any with you?”

“Yeah, but you can’t use it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re like five shades lighter than I am.  It’ll just look like you’ve got a big tan spot on your neck.  And now that I think about it, I don’t know if make-up will work on you.  You might be too pale.”

“Meh.”

“It’s worth it though, isn’t it?”

“Huh?”

Will looked at him and Scott grinned back.  Will’s cheeks turned pink.

“I am _not_ answering that.”

Scott laughed.  He looked back at the security check point.  Chris was just putting his suitcase on the counter and Julian was still in the screening area, raising his shirt up and showing the TSA agent his nipple ring.  Scott shook his head.

“Can you imagine what would happen if he got his penis pierced?”

Will chuckled.  “I can.  He would drop his pants in a heartbeat because he doesn’t care.  I can’t believe he set it off anyway.  He doesn’t have that much jewelry on.”

“Well, there’s what, seven earrings?”

“Eight.  He added one to his left ear.”

“Eight earrings.  One ring and one bar in his eyebrows.  One lip ring, one tongue piercing.  A nipple ring.  Anything else?”

Will thought for a moment.  “No, that should be it.”

“Is that enough to set off a metal detector?”

Will shook his head.  “No.  The dumbass just forgot to take off his belt.”

Scott watched as Julian was sent back to the other side to take off his belt, and then walk through the detector again, this time not setting it off.

“Hn.”  Scott picked at his thumbnail.  “Hey, Will?”

“Yeah.”

“Is your girlfriend…rough…in bed?”

Will looked at him, but Scott stayed focused on his thumb.

“Are we really going to have this conversation, Scotty?”

“We don’t have to.”

“No, it’s fine,” Will sighed bemusedly.  “What did you want to know again?”

“Is your girlfriend…rough?”

“Can you describe rough for me?”

“Nope.”

Will laughed.  “Okay.  Then, yes, sometimes.  By my definition.”

“But not by hers?”

“Well, I think I mean ‘hard’ where you mean ‘rough.’  Does Antoinette hit you?”

“What?” Scott laughed.  “No!”  He laughed harder at Will’s anxious face.  “Oh, my God, Will.”

“What?  I’m concerned.”

“No.  I just mean.  Antoinette and I don’t necessarily have missionary style vanilla sex.  And I want to know if that’s…unusual.”

Will scratched the side of his head.  “Again, depending on your definition, there’s no way to say.  But, no, I don’t think sex in a non-missionary position is unusual.  Maybe you should ask Chris.”

“He doesn’t like talking about sex.”

“What made you think I did?”

Scott shrugged.  “Because nothing bothers you.”

“Stuff bothers me.”

“Yeah, but.  Not stuff you’re good at.”

Will let out a squawking sound that may have been a laugh.

“And how do you know I’m any good at all?”

“Well, you’re good at everything.”

Will put a hand to his face to hide his embarrassed smile.

“Plus, that hickey is serious, dude.  You must do something to get her all riled up.”

“Or maybe he’s just a pervert.”

Scott tilted his head and then looked at Will.

“What did you say?”

“I said…maybe she’s just perverted.”

Scott nodded.  “Yeah.  I think Antoinette is a little bit too.”

“But you don’t mind.”

“Oh, not at all.”

They laughed and Julian plopped down beside them to tug on his boots.

“What’s funny?” Julian asked with a small grunt and tug.

“Nothing,” Will said and self-consciously rubbed his neck even though the hickey was on Scott’s side.

Chris joined them a couple minutes later, and Scott could tell he was already more nervous than he had been at the check in counter.  And he looked even more nervous on the short ride on the air train to their terminal.  He was looking sweaty and pale by the time they reached the waiting area at their gate.  He kept swallowing and taking in deep breaths that wound up sounding awfully shallow.

“You want some water?” Scott asked him.

Chris nodded.

“I’ll go get some.”

“No.  I’ll go.  I want to walk.”

Chris got up and Scott called after him not to faint.  Then he looked at Will and Julian.

“Are you guys going to mess with him?” he asked disapprovingly.

“Only a little,” Will said.

“But he’s totally freaked out guys.”

“We have to,” Julian said.

“That’s not nice.”

“Oh, come on.  What kind of friends would we be if we didn’t screw with each other while suffering through our worst fears?”

Will nodded solemnly.

Scott’s mouth dropped open.  He was never, ever telling them that he hated haunted houses.

 

Scott loved Chicago.  It was different from the city he was used to; it was bigger and busier and yet not as dirty as a lot of other major cities.  He’d been on family trips to both New York and London, and he found that Chicago was a perfect blend of gritty city without the black booger inducing level of pollution.  And Mr. Richardson was a good tour guide.  Scott wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting of the man, but he found him to be very friendly and eager to please if perhaps a little shy.  Though he definitively wasn’t shy about spending his money.  He obviously was a fan of the “spare no expense” philosophy.  And that was quite evident in the restaurant he took them to for dinner.

Scott had been to fine dining restaurants a couple of times before with his parents, and they had always made him wear nice pants and a necktie.  Right now he was in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans from the flight, and the other three didn’t look much better.  Only Mr. Richardson fit in since he was wearing a suit.  They didn’t get condescending looks from the Maitre ’D or anything, but Scott felt they were only half a star away from having to put on the spare coats kept for such instances when classless louts showed up underdressed to the really high end restaurants.  They were seated at a round table and Scott was in between Chris and Will, so he could look at Mr. Richardson (who sat next to Chris and Julian) without making it seem obvious he was looking.  He told himself he just wanted to get a sense of the guy, to see if he gave off any weird vibes.  Because if _he_ could feel them, they must be really bad.  But truthfully, he was looking to see if he and Chris had any common features.  Scott wasn’t an idiot…well, okay, he was a little bit, but not when it came to his friends.  He knew Chris had some issue with the man though he wouldn’t talk about it, but he didn’t try to stay away from him so it couldn’t be that he was creeped out by him.  And the look on his face when the scary man in the marble foyer had said that his mother had lied about his father had given Scott the final piece of the puzzle.  Chris really had a suspicion that Mr. Richardson was his father.

And now Scott was intrigued by this mystery man.  As far as potential long lost fathers went, he wasn’t that bad.  He was rich, generous, and apparently pretty easy-going since he didn’t mind being invaded by his son’s three best friends.  Well, possible son.  Then Scott wondered, if Chris only thought he was his father, did Mr. Richardson know or only wonder?  Scott refused to believe that the man didn’t at least think it was possible he was Chris’ father.  It was really the only thing that explained his behavior and generosity toward a total stranger.  So now, Scott was trying to discreetly look back and forth between their faces.  Mr. Richardson’s eyes were brown, but they were a very different color from Chris’ honey brown.  Where Chris had a high brow and long, straight nose, Mr. Richardson had brows close to his eyelids and an unremarkable nose.  Mr. Richardson’s chin was kind of square and Chris’ was more pointed.  They really didn’t look alike at all.  Except when they smiled.  They had the same kind of smile, but Scott didn’t think that was genetics so much as there are really only so many ways a person can smile.

“Would you gentleman mind if I had a glass of wine with dinner?” Mr. Richardson asked the boys.

They all looked at each other and then Julian asked, “Why would we?”

Scott could tell Chris didn’t like the way Julian phrased the question.

“Well, I will be driving us all back to my condo later and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“It’s just one glass, right?” asked Julian.  “That should be within the legal limit.”

“Well, it’s not a matter of legality, it’s—”

“You don’t need to tiptoe around us,” Will laughed as he examined the menu.  “We aren’t going to give a report back to Ms. Pelletier at the end of the week.”

Scott and Julian sniggered while Chris hissed Will’s name.  Mr. Richardson smiled.

“For that I am grateful.”

“What kind were you going to get?” Will asked.  “This Sauvignon Blanc looks interesting.  It’s from Veritain Vineyard, which is really known more for their reds, but I bet this would be pretty good.”

Will looked up.  Everyone was staring at him.

“You drink a lot of wine?” Scott asked.

“Um.  No.  My…dad likes wine.  So, he talks about it a lot.  He likes to cook with it you know.  And he refuses to cook with anything he wouldn’t drink, and what he’s willing to drink is pretty high end, you know?”

They all stared at him some more.

“What?!  I’m not a wino!”

Mr. Richardson laughed.  “Maybe I will try a glass of this.  And then I’ll let you know how it is so you can report it back to your dad.”  He gave him a little wink.

Will half-smiled in moderate embarrassment.  “Heh.  Thanks.”

Julian was eyeing Will.  “Your dad, huh?”

Will glared at him.  “Oh, shut-up.”

Scott wondered if Julian knew something they didn’t.  Like maybe Will was turning into an alcoholic.  Scott wondered what Will was like when he was drunk.  The only times he’d been around Will when he was drunk, was when he’d been drunk as well.  And he didn’t remember those times too well.  He bet Will was a sappy drunk.

After they ordered and handed back the social buffers that were their menus, Scott was worried it might be awkwardly silent.  But Julian and Will had other ideas.  They were grilling Mr. Richardson about Chicago and the surrounding areas.  Scott wasn’t sure if they were trying to determine if it would be a good place for Chris to live, or if they were trying to tease out all the bad stuff about it so that it would spook Chris and make him stay closer to home for school.  To help mitigate some of the interrogation like feel to the conversation, Scott would jump in every now and then and ask Mr. Richardson something about his life or job.  He thought it might be interesting for Chris to hear about it, but the man didn’t volunteer much personal information.  He talked a great deal about Chicago and Northwestern University, but never really about what _he_ did there or why he personally thought it was such a great area and school.  Scott didn’t think that was too strange.  There were a lot of people in the world who didn’t like to talk about themselves.  They were greatly outnumbered by the other kind, of course, but they existed.

Scott was just bringing a forkful of creamed spinach (which he was very surprised to discover that he found delicious) to his mouth when his cell phone rang.  He started so violently some of the green goop wound up on the table cloth.  Mr. Richardson looked perplexed.  Scott felt like the man had been giving him that look a lot today.

“Sorry,” he said, lowering his fork and digging into his pocket for his phone.  “I’ll turn it off.”

“It’s fine,” Mr. Richardson said.  “Is it your parents?  Did all of you call your parents to let them know you got here okay?”

Julian and Will exchanged looks and then laughed softly.  Mr. Richardson looked to Chris for an explanation but he just waved a dismissive hand.  Scott was about to push the ignore button and turn it off, but he saw it was Antoinette.  They weren’t going to be able to talk for a week, so maybe his friends wouldn’t mind if he just said hi really quickly.  He started to get up to leave the table and said, “I just want to take this really quickly.”

“Hello?” he answered the phone, and then was pulled back into his seat by Will.

“Hi, honey!”

“Who is it?”

Scott was distracted by the two conversations.  “Um.  Hi.  It’s Antoinette.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Is something wrong, Scott?”

“No, no.  I was just talking to Will.”

“Oh, is it a bad time?”

“Kind of.  I can call you later tonight.”

“Okay.  I don’t care how late, call me.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now hang on,” Will said.  “You don’t have to hang up on our account.”  He snatched the phone from Scott’s hand and put it to the ear on the opposite side from Scott.  He didn’t even attempt to get it back.

“Hello, Antoinette.  Yes, this is Will.  So, why’d you call Scotty?  Mm-hm.  Mm-hm.  Mm-hmm.  Oh, I see.  Would you want me to do that for you?”

The entire table could hear the displeased female squealing coming from the receiver.  Chris and Julian were highly amused, and now Scott did try to get the phone back.

“What are you doing?!”

“Sit down,” Will ordered.  “No, not you.  Scott.  Of course he obeyed.  If nothing else, the boy is obedient.”

Will listened and then laughed.  Scott was slumped down in his chair, arms crossed, and a scowl deeply furrowed on his brow.  Will continued to listen for another minute, a smile on his lips, his eyes sliding over to Scott every now and then.

“Really?  I think so too.  Oh, no.  Not me.  Most likely Julian.  Hm?  Oh, hold on.”

Will lowered the phone and Scott held out his hand, but he passed the phone to Julian.  Julian wiped his mouth with a napkin and took the phone.

“Hello?  Hi, Antoinette.”  He listened for a moment and then practically giggled as he put a hand over his eyes.  “Okay, I promise.  No, I mean it.  But you have to promise the same thing too.  Well, over the phone of course.  Yeah, maybe.  Well, other times it might be, but I could finish what you started.  Nah.  He wouldn’t mind.  Well, that is always a possibility.  Yeah, hang on a minute.”

Scott reached out his hand again, but Julian passed the phone to Chris.  Chris glanced at Mr. Richardson—who just looked like he was enjoying his free show with dinner—and gave the three of them a warning look as he took the phone.  Scott didn’t know why _he_ was getting a warning glare.  He hadn’t done anything.

“Hello?  Hi, Antoinette.  What are you guys talking about?  Oh, is that all.”  Scott would have been relieved by the comment if it hadn’t been so sarcastic.  “Well, thank you for the compliment.  But now’s not a good time.  We’re at dinner with our host.”  Chris listened for a moment and then shot a nasty look at Scott, who consequently squirmed in his seat.  “Yes, with him.  Um, no.  Because I said so.  Yes, I do.   Okay, hang on.”

Scott held out his hand, but Chris closed his eyes in defeat and embarrassment and handed the phone to Mr. Richardson.  The man looked delightedly surprised to be involved in the game.

“Hello?  Well, hello Ms. Bixby.  My name is Dean Richardson.  Mm-hm.  Mm-hm.  I see.  I understand.  Oh, there’s no need to fret.  They’re not being too bad.  Oh, I see.  Well, in that case…Mm-hm.  Okay.  Will do.  It was a pleasure talking with you, Ms. Bixby.  Okay, take care now.”

Mr. Richardson held the phone out to Scott.  He sat up and took it back, not daring to look at anybody as he spoke.

“Antoinette.”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“What was that all about?”

“Just protecting my babykins.  I think you should be able to sleep safely tonight.”

“Now, I really doubt that.”

Antoinette giggled.  “Be sure to take video with your phone then.  I’ll post it on YouTube.”

“You know that site is going to fade away and die, you know.  No one is interested in watching other people’s stupid home videos.”

“Okay.  Well, call me later tonight so we can… _talk_ some more.”

Scott glanced around the table.  As he suspected everyone was listening carefully.

“Okay,” was all he said, even though he wanted to inform her that since he would be a guest in some stranger’s house he wasn’t doing anything naughty with her.  “Bye.”

“I love you.”

Scott turned his head away from the group.  “I love you too,” he murmured.  He hung up the phone and stuck it back in his pocket.  When he faced the group, Chris and Julian were holding hands across the table, gazing dreamily into each other’s eyes.

“Oh, Scott,” Julian sighed.  “You are the shining dew of love on my sweet rosebud.”

“Antoinette,” Chris responded.  “You are the love cherry on my sundae of happiness.”

“Very funny,” Scott said in a tone that suggested the opposite.

“Rosebud?  Cherry?” Will questioned.  “Seriously, guys.  That’s more than stretching it.”

Scott punched Will hard in the arm.  “Watch it.”

Will rubbed his arm.  “Sorry.”

“It’s not fair we don’t know who you’re dating so we can make fun of how promiscuous _she_ is.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply that Antoinette is—”

“Just because we don’t know who Will’s special someone is doesn’t mean we can’t have fun at his expense,” said Julian.  “For instance, we could make thinly veiled references to prostitutes.”

Will turned another glare on Julian.   “Oh, shut- _up_!  You don’t know anything about it!”

“None of us do, Will,” Scott said.  “That’s the point.”

“Guys, please, just eat your dinner,” Chris said.

Mr. Richardson beamed at them.  “Wow.  You guys are really such great friends.  It’s nice to know that Chris has such a great support system.”

“Support?!” Chris squawked.

The other three laughed and declared that they were indeed the greatest friends a person could have.

 

Julian

           

Julian dragged his suitcase over the marble floor of the Blue Boy lobby.  He did not have a fancy suitcase with spinning, gliding wheels.  Heck, he didn’t have a non-fancy suitcase with wheels period.  The metal feet underneath the old rectangle box screeched along the floor and echoed loudly in the open space.  Had there been any clients, Julian would have carried the bag (it was easier than dragging it after all) but watching Adam the Receptionist’s eyebrow tick in annoyance was worth the effort.  Julian parked the suitcase on one of the benches behind his desk.

“Can you watch this for me?  I just need to run in to drop off my leave request.”

“You’re submitting your leave request the day you’re leaving?”

“I didn’t know the policy applied to my position.”

“Is there a reason why you think you’re so special?”

“My mother always said so.”

Julian grinned.  Adam frowned.  Then he turned back to his computer with an air of disinterest.

“Leave it here.  Can’t promise you I won’t go through it.”

“Just don’t sniff my underwear or anything.”

“Julian March.  You are _not_ that hot.  And I am completely uninterested.”

“Unh-huh.  So, Adam.”

“What.”

“You’re not from the streets, are you.”

Adam whirled in his chair, his eyes flashing more real emotion than Julian had ever seen in him.

“What the hell do you mean by that?!”

“N-nothing.  I just.  Everyone else here was somehow saved by Rylan.  I assume you were too.  But, you don’t seem like you have that same sad, defeated look in your eyes as the ones from the streets do.  You’ve got anger…and resentment.  Like you have this need to prove to the world that…well, that you don’t need anyone or anything in it.”

Adam clenched his jaw, his eyes searching Julian’s face.  Then he relaxed a little.

“Do we really want to have a bonding moment?”

“Why not?”

“Because.”  Adam stared at him some more, and then shook his head.  “Why not indeed.  Let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole.  Rylan did find me on the streets.”

“But you weren’t a prostitute.”

Adam looked away for a moment.  “No, I wasn’t.”

“Is that why you’re the receptionist?”

“No.  Even if I wanted to be an escort, which I don’t, Rylan wouldn’t let me.”

“Why not?”

Adam let out a little huff.  “Because.”  He licked his lips and looked down.  He shook his head, and seemed to be smiling sardonically to himself.  Then he looked up with a strong expression on his face and met Julian’s eyes with a steady gaze.

“Because I have HIV.”

Julian nodded.  “But, you’re healthy, right?  All things considered.”

Adam seemed a little confused by the nonchalant response.  “Well.  Yes, technically I don’t have AIDS.  The regimen of drugs I take keeps my immune system at levels that are near normal.”

Julian smiled.  “That’s good.”  He patted his shoulder.  “So I can keep razzing you and not worry that the stress may hurt you, right?”

Adam’s jaw dropped.  “No!  I’m sick!  _Really_ sick!  You should tiptoe in your socks around me and never speak a word!”

Julian laughed.  “I’ll be right back.”

He walked around the corner to the hallway and could hear Adam grumbling to himself.  He got into the elevator and hopped off on the second floor.  Since it was a Monday morning, the main hall was virtually deserted.  He saw a very well dressed businessman sitting on a settee and rubbing the knee of a very provocatively dressed escort, but that was it other than Leo at the bar.  As he passed the couple on the couch, the businessman’s hand slid higher and the escort said, “Hey, Julian.”

“Hi, Elliot.  Did you ever find your wallet?”

“Oh, yeah.  I left it in the laundry room when I was washing my jeans.”

“Good, glad you found it.”

Julian continued on, kind of amused and slightly disturbed by the fact that the businessman hadn’t really seemed to have been aware of the conversation.  He also didn’t want to think about why an escort company had to have a Laundromat on site or why someone might need to use those services in the middle of the day.

Julian walked up to the bar, wondering what Leo was doing.  He was standing sideways, leaning against the bar on his elbow, and looking down at the floor.  Julian hopped onto a stool.

“Hey, Leo.”

Leo turned his grey eyes on him.  “Hey, Jules.”

Julian didn’t know why, but he’d gone 18 years without ever once being called Jules, and now that’s what most of the escorts called him.  Quite possibly they were calling him “Jewels.”

“What are you doing?”

Suddenly Russell popped up from behind the bar.  He was a mix of about six different races and didn’t look like any of them.  And he was very, very handsome.  A deep gene pool had most definitely worked in his favor.  Even making a face of disgust like he was right now didn’t make him less attractive.  He held a towel in his hand and tsked at Leo.

“Damn man, you got it everywhere.”

Julian took a couple of seconds to process what he was seeing and hearing, and then he jumped off his stool.

“I can come back later!” he shouted and turned to leave.  He was pulled up short as Leo stretched over the bar to grab his arm.

“I dropped a jar of cherries on the floor.  He’s wiping up the juice.”

Julian turned back and saw Russell open the hand with the towel; it was stained with red cherry juice.

“Oh.”

Russell tsked at him.  “Pervert.”

“Sorry.”

Julian leaned on the bar and asked, “So, how are you guys today?”

Russell banged a hand on the bar.  “I got red flagged!”

Julian blinked.   “What?”

“It’s so unfair.  I wasn’t even due.  God, Rylan is so anal.  And so _not_ in the good way.”

Russell continued to rant as he walked away to go throw the towel away.  Julian looked at Leo.

“What’s he talking about?”

“We’re all required to have an STD panel screening every six weeks.  He got a positive result on one of them.”

“And it’s probably a false positive!” Russell groused as he came back.  “Well, maybe not if the burning sensation when I pee is any indication.  But it’s just the Clap.  Jesus.  Like a round of drugs and I’ll be fine.  But you know what?  For the entire time since I tested positive to the retest to the drug treatment to the test to make sure it’s cleared up and then for the next six weeks until a follow up test…I’m off duty!  Obviously sex with a client is out, but I’m not even allowed to take social appointments.  So, no tips or free dinners or anything.  All I can do is clean and change the sheets and restock the bar and fridge.  God!  Rylan is so unfair!”

“Well, I suppose that’s real incentive not to do anything stupid then,” Julian said.

“I didn’t!  I probably got it from one of the clients anyway!”

“Don’t you guys have to wear condoms for all kinds of physical contact?”

“Well, not all actually,” said Leo.  “Just intercourse.  But you probably got it from that skeezy boyfriend of yours, Russell.”

“What?!”

“I told you the first time I met him, he is not the type to be faithful so you should use protection with him.”

“But he’s my boyfriend.  And he says he doesn’t like the way rubbers feel.”

“Nobody likes the way they feel, buddy.  But that’s not the point.”

Russell frowned.  “You don’t know Treyvon the way I do.”

“I know I don’t.  And that’s why I don’t have gonorrhea.”

Julian stifled a laugh as Russell slapped Leo on the arm.

“Wait a minute,” Julian said, “the Clap is gonorrhea?”

“Yeah,” said Leo, “What’d you think it was?”

“I don’t know.  I just thought it was something relatively harmless.  And gonorrhea, like, makes you crazy, right?”

“You’re thinking of syphilis.  But it is the most common STD.”

“No, herpes is,” Russell said.

“Actually,” came a very deep and unnervingly familiar voice, “HPV is the most common.”

Leo smiled invitingly (in Julian’s opinion) at Rylan.  “Hey, boss.”

“Hi, Rylan,” Russell griped.

“Boss,” Julian said like a yakuza underling.

Rylan looked irritated.  But that was par for the course.

“Why are you here, Julian?  I told you truancy was grounds for termination.”

“Man, boss,” Leo teased.  “You don’t have to kill him.  You could just fire him.”

“Leo, make yourself useful and make me some coffee.”

“Right away, boss.”

Leo left the cocktail bar and walked over to the coffee bar.

“I’m not cutting,” Julian said.  “It’s spring break.”

“Hn.”

“And I came to drop off my leave form.”

Rylan frowned and reached into his lapel pocket for his cigarettes.  “Did you tell Dan that you were leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t need to fill out a leave form.  You only work weekends anyway.”

Julian huffed in annoyance as Rylan lit his cigarette.  “Dan said I had to fill it out and get it signed by my sponsor and turn it back in to him.”

Rylan took a deep drag of his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs as he stared at Julian uncomprehendingly.  Finally, he let the smoke out slowly, and then said, “What kind of sponsor?”

“Like…an experienced employee who could act as my mentor and show me the ropes and answer my questions if and when I had any.”

“And who is your sponsor?”

“Leo,” Julian replied.

Leo, who had just arrived with Rylan’s coffee, heard the tail end of the conversation and promptly turned around to leave.

“Leo,” Rylan said.  His employee came slowly, scuffing his feet.

“Yeah?”

“What is this nonsense you and Dan are doing to Julian?”

Julian turned to Russell in surprise.  “We don’t have sponsors here?”

Russell shook his head and patted Julian’s hand.

“Look, I didn’t really do anything.  If Dan has been telling him weird things, that’s on him.  When Julian came and asked me to be his sponsor, I thought he was talking about AA or something.  But then when I figured out that Dan had put him up to it, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to play along because then if he ever did need anything he could come to me and not feel like he was bothering anyone, you know?  And besides,” Leo reached out with a hand and took Julian by the jaw.  “How could I say no to this face?  Only Hayden has a bigger piercing fetish than me.”

Julian gently pulled his face away.  “Thanks for looking out for me,” he said dryly.

“I was,” Leo said.  “And if it led to you coming to me when you’re finally ready to act on your bicuriosity, well then I view that as a win-win.”

Julian coughed and glared at Rylan.  “Can you blow that somewhere else?”

“I thought you quit anyway,” Leo smirked.

Rylan put the cigarette out on the lacquered bar surface.  Russell sputtered in anger.

“I’m the one who has to clean that up, you know!”

Rylan breathed out the last of the smoke up into the air, well above everyone else’s head.  “Well, Julian, you don’t have to fill out paperwork to leave as long as the scheduling team knows you won’t be here.”  He took a sip of his coffee.  “I think I’m going to speak to Dan about this.  He’s starting to…creep me out.”

“Giving you bad vibes, huh?” Julian asked with a grin.

He frowned at him and then looked at Russell and Leo.  “You two can get back to work now.”

Leo looked around the empty room.  “Yeah, I better stop slouching so the line doesn’t get any longer.”

“Well, you could help me,” Elliot said as he joined them.  “Mr. Blackwell says he just wants to watch this morning.”

Leo made a face.

“What?” Elliot demanded.  “I know I’m not exactly your type, but you can be the top.”

“No, not you, darling.   Mr. Blackwell.  Talk about someone giving off creepy vibes.  Guy just makes my skin crawl.”

“Yeah, so help me out and let me have sex with you rather than him.  Because if I go back there and tell him no one is available, he will decide to just do me himself.”

“Well what’s to say that after he watches us he won’t wind up doing us both anyway?”

Elliot shrugged.  “He might.  But he tips well.”

Leo made another face.

“I thought you guys could say no whenever you wanted,” Julian said.

“And I thought Tyler explained to you what that really means,” Leo said wryly.

“Why don’t you explain to _me_ what that really means?” Rylan said, his voice alarming them all with the menace in it.

“N-nothing,” Leo said.

Rylan’s face was dark with anger, and some of it was for his employees.  “Do you all need higher salaries?  Do we need to do a better job at screening?  Do we need to start revoking some memberships?”

“No.  That’s not.  Rylan.”  Leo stopped talking.

Rylan turned on Julian.  “What did Tyler say to you?”

Julian hesitated and glanced at the escorts.

“Look at me,” Rylan barked.

Julian started and looked back at him.  “I honestly don’t really remember.  Just.  Something about not wanting to piss off the clients.”

Rylan turned suddenly and put his coffee on the bar.  Julian suspected it was so the Styrofoam cup wouldn’t disintegrate when his powerful hand clenched into a fist.

“Fine.  I do the best I can to protect you all.  And if it’s not good enough, you need to tell me.  But if you’re not going to ask for help, then suffer.  The two of you better get over there before Mr. Blackwell decides to submit a complaint about poor customer service.”

All three escorts deflated.  Here was more proof of just how indebted to and in love with Rylan they all thought they were.  Rylan had manipulated them into believing they were letting him down by refusing his protection.  Julian wasn’t sure if it was cruel, or if it would actually shame them into taking better care of themselves for Rylan’s sake.  It was very difficult to classify Rylan’s care.  Well, Machiavellian was probably pretty accurate.

Leo and Elliot started back toward Mr. Blackwell.  For a moment, their shoulders were slumped and they dragged their feet.  Then they flipped their switches and began their act.  Elliot wrapped an arm around Leo’s waist and Leo stuck a hand down Elliot’s back jeans pocket.  From Mr. Blackwell’s perspective, they would just be two dirty whores looking forward to screwing each other in front of an audience.  Julian turned his back on the scene.  He saw Rylan sitting on a stool, leaning onto the bar, a hand covering his face.  Russell had wandered away.  Perhaps Julian should do the same, but he couldn’t stand to see someone he cared about to be so upset.  Now, he knew that asking him what was wrong was going to get him yelled at, but would touching him make him bite off his head?

Julian put an arm on Rylan’s near shoulder and leaned against him.  “You doing all right?”

Rylan lifted his head from his hand and turned partially to look at Julian.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Caring.  I know you’re upset about your employees, but something else is wrong.  I can feel it.  Are you okay?”

“ _I’m_ fine.”

“So, someone else is hurt?  Is it Ken?” he asked with a little too much hope and glee in his voice.

“He’s fine too.  Has the spore fallen through an open manhole yet?”

Julian chuckled.  “No.  But we’re flying to Chicago today.  Maybe our plane will go down.”

“Nah,” Rylan said, looking away.  “No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Julian wondered, _Am I the baby?_

“Well, I guess I’ll head out now.  If you’re okay.”

“Of course I’m okay, Julian.”

“Yeah, I guess so.  But if you’re not, I can—”

“Can what?” Rylan asked, turning in his seat and leaning into Julian’s personal space.  “Comfort me?  There’s only one way I like to be comforted, little boy, and it’s not with a sympathetic ear.”

“What exactly about me do you find little?”

Julian sucked in a breath in abject surprise as Rylan pressed their lips together hard.  The result was of course that he breathed the man in deeply.  He’d been expecting it to be worse; he’d kissed a girl who smoked once and had been grossed out, but Rylan’s brand of cigarettes must be very unique.  There was the acrid taste of smoke, but underneath it was an earthy, almost woody taste.  But the taste was just an afterthought.  Rylan’s energy —hell, Rylan himself—was intense.  And then he pulled back.  When Julian looked back on it later, the kiss probably hadn’t lasted a full second.  It probably couldn’t even be classified as a real kiss.  But it made Julian realize he was as much under Rylan’s spell as the rest of them.

“Scram, brat,” Rylan ordered with a self-satisfied smirk.  “Wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.”

Julian took a couple of steps back, trying to make his head stop spinning.  Then he slowly turned to leave.

“I hope whoever it is gets better,” he said, a little breathless.

“Me too,” he heard Rylan murmur softly.

 

Julian walked into the small spare bedroom of Mr. Richardson’s condo with Will on his heels.  He’d done his best to avoid being alone with him for eight days now.  At school it had been easy, and they had always parted ways as soon as they got to the bus stop in town.  And there’d been enough going on to distract them from thinking about the things they’d learned about each other recently.  (Except when he made snide comments about it.)  So, how had he so easily wound up alone with him?  He’d thought Will was avoiding him too, but he’d deliberately followed him into the bedroom.  Maybe he would just drop off the bags he carried in and leave.  But then what would he do?  It wasn’t like he hadn’t had enough time alone to think about everything.  Or try not to think about it.  Julian dropped the two bags he was carrying in a corner and put his hands on hips as he looked at them.  He needed to work out what his problem was.

Was he upset that Will had kept such a big secret from him?  Was he angry that Ken had kept such a big secret from him?  Was he angry at Rylan?  He must have known too.  Or was he just upset that Ken had gotten what he wanted?  Was he actually angry at all?  The instant he’d put it all together he’d been furious with Ken.  But that was because he was jealous.  Now that he’d had a week to think about it, what was the problem?  Will had admitted to him already that he was in love with someone.  He’d had a hard time believing it because he’d never seen the mystery person, but Will had done his part and told him about it.  The fact that he hadn’t mentioned it was a much older man, well that was understandable.  He himself hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d been fooling around with his much older therapist, and she was a woman.  No, Will hadn’t done anything wrong…except fall in love with someone that wasn’t him.  It could have been a woman and he’d still be upset with him.  And his jealousy of Ken wasn’t going to go away.  It would probably just be easier if they all pretended like nothing had happened.  He was a courier, Will was a cat sitter, and that was that.  Unfortunately, Will had other ideas.

“Julian, come here.”

Julian turned around and found that Will had tossed himself onto the middle of the queen sized bed.  He was looking up at the ceiling.  Julian glanced toward the door.  Will had closed it behind them.  He sighed.  He’d just decided that he was going to ignore this, and now Will was going to force the issue.  Maybe if he gave a sarcastic reply to all of Will’s attempts to talk about it he’d let it go.  What he was trying to decide now is if it would be easier to take the upper hand by being defiant and staying put or pretending to play nice and obeying Will’s command.  It would probably be better if he didn’t piss him off right at the start.

Julian crossed the room and sat on the corner of the bed.  He flopped back onto the mattress and the top of his head touched Will’s side.  They were quiet.  Maybe Will had just wanted him to sit next to him.

“Julian.  Let’s take this one step at a time.”

Julian scrunched his eyes up and held back a groan.  Damn it.

“Okay,” Julian began.  “How did you—”

“No.  Me first.  I brought it up.”

“No one asked you to,” Julian griped.

“Actually, someone did.  But first.  You got a part time job working for a male escort service.  Why didn’t you tell me?  In the past you would always tell me when you did…stupid things out of curiosity.”

“It’s not stupid!”

“Julian, even if you aren’t providing services, you’ll get arrested along with the rest of them.”

Julian grunted.  “I doubt they’ll ever get caught.  Rylan is very careful about how he runs things.”

Julian wasn’t certain, but he thought he heard a small growl come from his friend.

“We’ll talk about Rylan later.  Right now—”

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“Off topic!”

“Just answer it.”

“Well, you’ve met him.  Do _you_ like him?”

Julian tilted his head back and forth.  “Well, I know he’s a moody, sour-faced jerk, but he’s a good person.”

“He’s an asshole douche bag.”

“What’d he do to you?”

“Lots of stuff.”

“Like what?”

“He’s just a jerk!”

“Well, he’s tough and doesn’t take shit from anybody, but I’ve never really seen him be just outright mean to someone unless he didn’t like them.  And had a good reason not to like them.”

“He doesn’t like me any more than I like him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.  He’s a prick!  First time I ever met him he treated me like some kind of annoying bug that had infested his house or something.”

“Or his friend.”

“What?”

“Rylan is very…protective isn’t right.  Possessive is closer.  But he’s…Ken might be the only real friend he has.  And they used to date in college.”

“They did not date.”

“Is that what Ken said?  Maybe he was trying to hide it from you.”

“No.  They never dated.  They may have done stuff together, but they weren’t really in a relationship.  Both of them have said that.”

“Maybe they’re both in denial.”

Julian could hear Will choke back an angry response.  Apparently he’d hit a nerve with Will, which only confirmed his suspicions.

“So that’s why you and Rylan hate each other.  Simple jealousy.”

“That’s not it.”

“Isn’t it?”

“We’re not talking about that now!  One step at a time.  You work for Blue Boy and you didn’t tell me.”

Julian let out a small laugh and continued to stare at the ceiling.  “Was I supposed to?”

“Yes!”

“And how would you have reacted?  Geez, Will.  Honestly, I was a little embarrassed about it.  I mean, I don’t provide any services to the clients or anything; I just interview potential clients to make sure they aren’t sketchy.  I thought it was funny and interesting, but I didn’t want to tell anyone.  Plus, Rylan had pretty much promised me upon pain of death that he’d make me regret telling anyone about it.  I was eighteen, but I was still in high school.  He didn’t need attention being brought to his company like that.  I kind of wonder why he even bothered while I was still in high school.”

“Maybe…”

Will went silent.  Julian waited.  Will rarely started speaking unless he knew what he was going to say.  So, if he stopped, he was just nervous about saying it.  Or rightly assumed that it would be inappropriate.  Julian decided to wait him out.

“Maybe he thought that you needed help.”

Julian was a little surprised by that concession from Will.  He was acknowledging that Rylan might have done something good.

“Maybe.”

“Why do you think he thought you needed help?  Why do you think he noticed?”

Will’s voice was melancholic.  And this was what was really upsetting him Julian realized.  That a stranger had been able to tell something was wrong with him when his best friend couldn’t.

“He’s kind of like me.”

“In what way?” Will practically snapped.

“He’s…very intuitive.  He doesn’t acknowledge that he can sense things or feel things like I can, but I think he does.  It’s why he’s been so successful with his business even though it’s grown so large.  Everyone he hires he knows he can trust.”

“So…he ‘sensed’ you needed help.”

“Yes.  See?  It’s nothing to do with a failing on your part.  He just had an advantage.”

“But he did help you…right?  On Thanksgiving.”

Julian chewed on the inside of his cheek.  He didn’t like to think about that night.  Not only for the things he’d done to his friends, but it was the worst night of his life.  Worse even than the night his parents had died.  He was not going to discuss any details regarding what had happened between him and Rylan, but he could at least admit that it was true.

“Yes,” he finally answered.

“How?”

“I can’t talk about that.”

Will was quiet.  Julian chanced a brief glance at his friend by tilting his head back.  He was chewing his bottom lip and staring at the ceiling.  Was he going to keep pushing?

“Okay.  That’s fine.”

Julian was a little surprised by that, but he’d take it.  He looked back at the ceiling.

“How did _you_ get involved with Ken and Blue Boy?”

“We’re not there yet.”

Julian made a face.  They weren’t?  And that was kind of okay.  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know about Will’s great love affair.  He much preferred it to be vague and possibly a made up story.

“So, you didn’t tell me about your job, only because Rylan said not to?”

“No.  Like I said.  I was a little embarrassed.  I do have some sense of shame.”

“That’s not what I meant.  I mean, you didn’t take the job because you were…unwell?  Because I couldn’t help you?”

“Will.”  Julian reached up and the back of his hand touched Will’s leg.  His friend reached out and took his hand.  “Will, you did nothing wrong.  You did everything you could to help me.  I didn’t want it.  That was my fault.  Because I didn’t want it from someone I was close to.  Especially not you.  Not the most important person in my life.  I know that makes no sense.  But I needed a stranger to help me through it.  To help me see past myself.  To give me sympathy that didn’t feel like it was…an obligation.”

“Julian…”

Julian tightened his hand around Will’s.  His voice had sounded heartbroken.

“That’s awful.”

“I know.  I’m sorry.  It just felt like everyone was feeling sorry for me.  And they didn’t even know why.  Because they had never felt what I was feeling.  I kind of thought if I could make all of you feel just as bad, then maybe your sympathy would be tolerable.  But that was stupid.”

“Yes!”

Julian laughed softly.  “And Rylan pointed that out to me.”

“So, did he suggest working for him as a way to help you?”

“No.  I kind of bullied him into it.”

“You.  Bullied Rylan.”

“Kind of.  Though maybe he only made it seem that way.  He is pretty clever.  He made me _want_ to work for him.  And this happened before Thanksgiving.  I continued to work for him after because I liked having a reason to see him every now and then.  And I’ve made a few friends there.”

“With…with the prostitutes?”

“Yes.  With the whores.”

“I’m not trying to be mean.”

“You are a little bit.  Will.  In a way, they’re all like me.  Well, most of them.  They’ve all lost a great deal and been through very difficult times.  Actually, most of them have had it a lot worse than me.  I met a few at Thanksgiving dinner and their stories put me to shame about the way I was acting.”

“Wait, Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Yeah.  Rylan had some of them over and I ate with them.”

“Before or after the ‘great Rylan healing process?’”

“Before.”

“He had all his employees over?”

“No, just the ones he likes.  Or maybe there’s a lottery.  Who knows?  Anyway.  They’ve all pretty much had shit lives, and he’s saved every single one of them.”

“Saved?”

“Yes.  That is a very accurate word.  I use it too.  He saved me, Will.  And I’m grateful to him every single day because that allowed me to save my relationships with you three.”

Will was quiet again.  He clearly had a problem accepting Rylan as a good guy.  He pulled his hand away.

“Why did you go to him in the first place?”

“I didn’t.  He found me.”

“How?”

“Chance.  Fate.  Whatever you prefer.”

“How did you wind up in the city after you left my house?  You had to have gone there, right?  I can’t imagine Rylan traipsing around our town.”

Julian put his hands together and cracked his knuckles.  He didn’t want to get into that either.  He sighed.  He owed Will an explanation.  He’d hurt him the most after all.

“After I left your house, things actually got worse.  Or.  That’s not right.  Nothing could possibly be worse than what happened there.  It is absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Julian, it wasn’t that bad.”

“Will!”

Julian sat up and turned toward his friend.  Will sat up slowly.

“Don’t do that!”

“Do what?”

“Act like what I did was nothing!”

“But it wasn’t—”

“Will!  I—” Julian quickly lowered his voice, remembering where they were.  “Will.  I almost raped you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Will, you were there, right?  Or did you shut off your mind as a defense mechanism?”

“Julian.  When it was happening, I wasn’t scared.”

Julian made a doubtful face colored with anger.

“I mean, I was.  But I was scared and worried for you.  It never once crossed my mind that you would go through with it.  And you didn’t.”

“But, Will…I was so close…”

“No, you weren’t.  Nowhere near it.  Because you stopped yourself.  I didn’t fight you off.  No one interrupted us.  You stopped yourself.  I knew you would.”

Julian didn’t know how to argue with that.  He _had_ stopped himself, but only after disgusting himself with his thoughts.  He couldn’t possibly tell Will that he’s briefly imagined forcing one of his trophies inside his body.  He preferred to let Will think that it had been a stroke of conscience, not utter self-repulsion.

Will took his hand again.  “Julian.  I need you to know that I wasn’t afraid of you.  That I’ve never felt fear of you.  That after that night I didn’t see you and ever once think that I was looking at my attempted rapist.  I never ever saw you that way.  I wish you wouldn’t see yourself that way.”

Julian put a hand to his mouth and appreciated Will’s words.  He was a long way from accepting them, but it did help to know that Will was totally onboard with the idea that he wasn’t a monster.

“So what happened afterwards?”

Julian stretched out his neck side to side.  He hated this part more than anything.  Even more than what he’d done to Will, he couldn’t stand that he’d been so horribly betrayed by someone he had trusted implicitly his whole life.

“I went to go see Aaliyah for help.”

“Aaliyah.  The High Priestess of your parents’ coven?”

“Yes.  She was…less than helpful.  She kind of…destroyed what little faith I had left.”

“Faith in what?”

“Anything.”

“What she’d do?”

“I…Will I don’t want to talk about it.  Maybe in time.  I guess it wasn’t really that bad…but it made me feel sick.  Mentally, physically…sick to my stomach.”

“Okay.  So, how did you wind up in the city from there?”

“I was speeding away from her house and passed by that random metro stop in the middle of nowhere.  You know the one?”

“Yeah the one that’s there for no reason at all and nobody ever uses?”

“Yeah, that one.  Well, I pulled in there and the idea was that I would go see Dr. Corbin.  At this point I knew I needed help.  But his office was closed.  And Dr. Gorman was out of town.”

“You would have seen her?”

“Well, yeah.  She was my therapist too.”

“Is that why you wanted to see her.  Because she was your therapist?”

“Yes.  Why—” Julian cut off as Will raised an eyebrow at him.  Uh-oh.  How much talking had Ken and Will done?  Ken had seen him visiting Dr. Gorman more than once.  In fact, one time, he’d been humping her into the wall.  He made a small face.  “So, you know about—”

“Yes!  So when we get to the part about my issue, let’s leave age out of it, okay?”

Julian smiled sheepishly.  “Okay.”

Will tried to keep up his scowl for as long as possible.  Then his curiosity got the better of him.

“What on earth is she like?”

“So, hot.  You have no idea.  You saw her legs?”

“Yeah.”

“All of her is that good.”

“Nice.”

“Very.”

“So.  I guess she was, like, your Mrs. Robinson.”

“Well.  Not exactly.  We never actually got…there.”

“No?”

Julian shook his head.

“Bummer.”

“Dude, you have no idea how much.”

“Okay, so no high priestess, no therapist.  You’re in the city.  Then what?”

“I had a hissy fit and smashed my cell phone against a light pole.”

“You told me you dropped it in the sink!”

“Well, it’s not like I could tell you I smashed it into a light pole while having my meltdown.  You would have gotten upset.”

Will huffed, but didn’t reply.  He looked upset now.

“Look, I was a mess.  A cop found me and I wasn’t in a good mood, so I said some things I shouldn’t have.  But so did he.  You know, I hate that it’s acceptable for strangers to call people ‘son.’  Why is that okay?  People don’t go around calling girls, ‘daughter,’ you know?”

Will nodded.

“So…I almost hit him.”

“Hit who?”

“The cop.”

Will’s jaw dropped.  “You almost hit a cop?”

“Had my arm pulled back and hand in a fist.  I would have done it too.  But Rylan was there.  And he stopped me.  Very painfully.”

Will smiled.  And Julian thought it had a touch of unwarranted delight to it.

“And then like I said, we went to his place and had Thanksgiving dinner with some of the other employees.”

“You’ve been to his home?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it look like?”

“Like a rich man’s apartment.  What do you think it looks like?”

“I don’t know.  A black decrepit castle with poor souls chained to the walls and dildos hanging from the ceiling.”

Julian laughed and rolled his eyes.  Jealousy was an ugly emotion.  Then he turned a slightly evil smile on his friend.  “Speaking of dildos...”  Will went rigid.  “Let’s talk about Ken, shall we?”

“Nah, that’s okay.  We’ve established that you’re okay, you’re not a boy-whore, and you’re mature enough to handle your sketchy job and your even sketchier boss.  So, I guess we’re all good.”

Will attempted to jump off the bed, but Julian grabbed him and pushed him down onto the mattress.

“Ah-ah.  How on earth did you wind up dating a thirty-something closeted workaholic?”

“Wow.  You really do know him.”

Julian laughed and sat back.  Will stayed lying down and fidgeted.

“Come on, Will.  Seriously.  How I met Ken and Rylan wasn’t strange at all.  I accidentally wandered into Blue Boy one day and later Rylan kept me from having my head smashed in after I fell off a curb.  And Ken was just one of Rylan’s friends.  The three of us have fairly normal relationships with each other.  How did my straight, girl-crazy friend wind up…good grief…do you have sex with him?”

Will covered his face with his hands.  “We met the day before the accident.”

“How?”

“Remember when Scott was going to set me up with his cousin?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, she never showed.  Only, I didn’t realize it.  ‘Cause there was this guy there who like passed out and had to be taken to the hospital.  And after he left I picked up the stuffed animal he had been holding.  It was a blue bear.  I guess that was a sign that he was from Blue Boy.  But why would they do that?  If they just go to the building.”

“Some of the clients have never stepped foot in the building.  They set up private meetings with Rylan in case Blue Boy ever is busted, then they have no association with it.  And they meet their ‘date’ out in public places.”

“Ah.  I guess Ken didn’t want to leave the building with one of them.”

“Probably not.”

“So, he sees me—”

“Wait…the guy who fainted, was he the one who was with you last week?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I know Tyler has a medical problem.  But I don’t know what it is.  What happened to him?”

Will shrugged, but hadn’t removed his hands from his face.  “I don’t know.  He just fainted.  But he was awake by the time the ambulance picked him up.”

“Hmm.  Okay.  So, Ken sees you holding the bear and thinks you work for Blue Boy.  I’ll buy that.  But what about you?”

“I thought Scott was playing a joke on me.”

Julian’s brow creased and he let out a short laugh.  “What?  Seriously?”

“Yes.  I guess.  I don’t know.  Because I was waiting for a date and the man said that I was his date.  And I just thought that Scott was trying to be funny.  So, I went with him thinking that if Scott was around laughing that I would get the last laugh.  Plus, Ken showed up in a frickin’ cherry red Aston Martin.”

“What?!”

“Yes!  It is an awesome car and I would have gone with him just to take a look at it.  And then he offered me a ride and I figured, you can’t be totally sketchy in a car that flashy because people notice it, you know?  Like, a serial killer won’t go trolling for victims in one.”

“Okay.”

“And he took me to a race track.  Like, go-carts for adults.  And he paid to let me drive one of the cars.  And it was really fun.  Like, really fun.  When Scott turns 18 we should all go there and do it.”

Julian crossed his legs and put his elbow on his knee so that he could rest his head in his hand.  This story was bordering on the ridiculous.  Was Will making it up?

“Well, and then, he asked if I was hungry, and I was.  So I let him take me out to dinner.”

“Where?”

“At the Four Seasons.”

“Whoa.  That’s expensive.”

“I know.  And he paid for my meal.  And we had wine with it.  And we had some drinks at the bar afterwards.”

“No one carded you?”

“Nope.  And I got a little tipsy.  Actually, really tipsy.  I don’t even remember going from the bar to…”

Julian waited.  And waited.  “To where?”

Will muttered something.

“What?”

“The hotel room,” he ground out.

“Hotel room?”  Julian sat up straight.  “You did it that night?!  The night you met him?!”

“I was drunk!  I don’t remember any of it!”

There was an edge to Will’s voice.  Julian suspected Will remembered more about that night than he was admitting to.

“Okay.  So...you…do it?  What the hell happened next?”

“Well, the next morning was truly a surreal experience.  I wake up in a strange room with a strange guy that seems to by implying we…did things together.  And then he tries to pay me for it—”

“Wait, you’re saying that Ken still thought you were from Blue Boy?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe due to the fact the most Blue Boy employees are very good at their jobs.”

“Are you saying you think I’m bad in bed?”

“No, I’m saying that they’re experienced.”

“Well, that’s something he liked.  That I ‘pretended’ to be inexperienced.”

Julian snickered.

“Look, shut-up, okay?  We discussed how he was mistaken.  And how I was only seventeen.”

“Oh, man.  I bet he had a meltdown.”

“He did.  Fell on the floor.”

“Ha!”

“And I was kind of in shock.  And denial.  I just focused on the fact that I was late to the soccer game.”

Julian burst out laughing.  “So that’s it!  The one time Will Harder is late to a soccer game requires that he be mistaken for a male prostitute!  Ha!”

“Shut-up!”

Even though he was yelling and being indignant, Will still wouldn’t show his face.

“Okay.  So, how did you get to the soccer game?”

“He drove me.”

“He did?”

“It was the least he could do, wasn’t it?!  Anyway.  He stayed for the game and afterwards I had him drive me home.”

“Why did he stay?”

“He’s a pervert.  I don’t know.”

“Okay.  Why did you go with him?”

“Because I couldn’t stand to get on the bus and face everyone.  I felt like this was something I could never tell anyone about.  Not even a shrink.  So, this would be my last chance to talk about it and try to deal with it.  But, we didn’t really talk too much.  And after he dropped me off at home, I thought I would never see him again.”

“So, when did you see him again?”

“The very next day.  I don’t know what it was.  Like you said, either chance or fate.  Whichever you want to believe.  I went over to your house to take care of Cornelius, and I was freaking out.  I couldn’t believe what had happened.  I was so scared Julian.”

“Scared?”

“Of losing you.  I kept thinking what would have happened if you’d been killed too.  I kept thinking about what would happen if my own parents died.  I was so messed up.  My brain just couldn’t wrap around what had happened.  I tried to run it out.  I actually ran from your house to the metro station.”

“You did what?  That’s like…miles away.”

“Four.  And I did it in a mad sprint, without stretching first, and in jeans.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.  But I almost didn’t feel it.  And when I got to the city, I just wandered around aimlessly.  And wound up in front of the café that Ken was having breakfast in.  He saw me.  And we spoke a little.  It had been raining that day, and I was pretty wet through.  He offered to let me shower in his condo and dry off my clothes.  So…I went with him.”

“You went with what essentially amounted to a total stranger who had…taken advantage of you in a drunken state?”

“None of it makes sense, Julian.  Every encounter we had after that.  Why I kept going to him.  Why he kept coming to me.  Why we kept…feeling this attraction for each other.  Eventually, I realized I was in love with him.  And that was that.”

Julian waited.  This was all the explanation he was going to get?  “You just ‘realized’ you were in love with some guy?”

“It was after the back to school dance.  After I slept with Liz.  I realized that—”

“Wait!  You slept with Liz?!”

“Oh.”  His face was still covered but Julian could imagine him making a face.  “I didn’t tell you that?”

“No!”

“I thought you’d figured it out.  Anyway, I just realized that after being with her, as good as that felt, it didn’t even compare to the feeling I got just from sitting next to Ken.”

Julian stared at his friend.  Was Will serious when he meant that he was in love with Ken?  He’d said it a dozen times already.  But…it was so hard to believe.  It was so hard to believe it ever got to that point.  Will would never go off with a strange person the day after his friend’s parents died.  He wouldn’t trust a stranger like that.  Why had he gone with Ken?  Why had he gotten in the car with him in the first place?  That’s the part that made no sense.

“Will, I guess I understand that after spending time with him that feelings could eventually develop, but I can’t understand how you ever spent that much time with him!  That’s not like you.  To keep going back to something that makes you uncomfortable.  To trust someone you’d met two days before enough to follow him back to where he lived.  That’s just…kind of stupid.  And you don’t really do stupid things.”

Will didn’t reply right away.  Finally, he removed his hands from his face and put one arm above his head.  He stared at the ceiling.

“I didn’t understand it either.  It took me a long time to realize I was in love with him.  And even longer to realize that I’d always been in love with him.  And that’s why I trusted him.  And went to him again and again.”

“What do you mean ‘always?’”

“I keep going back in my mind…all the times we met.  All the things we said.  Every time I was with him.  And I keep trying to figure out when my feelings for him changed.  But they never did.  The first time he called to me, in the busy square downtown, and I looked up…I looked into his eyes.”  Will swallowed.  “And I was his.”

Julian stared at his friend.  And belatedly remembered to keep breathing.  He coughed on his exhalation of air and sucked in another breath.  He refused to believe what Will was saying.

“You’re saying you fell in love at first sight?”

Will nodded.

Julian clenched his jaw.  He suddenly hated Ken.  And wished he’d hit him harder.  He picked at his sleeve and groused, “So how is your soul mate’s face?”

“What do you mean?”

“Has the bruise faded?”

“What bruise?”

“The one on his jaw where I nailed his stupid, dream-stealing ass.”

Will bolted upright.  “You hit him?!”

“Yeah.  After you left Blue Boy.”  Julian looked at his friend’s astonished face.  “Oh.  You didn’t know.”

“That’s why he grew that beard.  Julian!”  Will punched him in the shoulder.  Really hard.

“Owwwww.  What was that for?”

“You hit my boyfriend!”

Julian was surprised to hear those words come out of Will’s mouth.  Yes, they’d just been talking about it and Will had said he loved him and spent time with him and was attracted to him…but Will Harder had just called someone his _boy_ friend.

Julian’s eyes went a little unfocused as he stared at Will’s Adam’s apple.  “How long have you been together?  Since the back to school dance you said?”

Will swallowed and Julian was mesmerized by the movement.  “That’s when I realized…I loved him.  And told him.”

“So, that’s, what?  Over six months ago?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s…older.  Experienced.  Expecting things from you.”

Will shifted, and Julian could only assume it was out of anxiety because he was still focused on his throat.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have sex with him, Will?”

“That’s a little—”

“You would have told me about Liz.  If you’d never met Ken, and then slept with Liz or whatever girl was your first, you would have told me about that, right?”

Will nodded.

“Do you have sex with Ken?”

Will didn’t answer and fidgeted.  Then Julian heard him whisper, “Yes.”

“So…you don’t mind it…when a man touches you?”

“No,” came the weak answer.

Julian moved forward and knelt between Will’s legs at shin level.  Will started, and put his hands behind him like he might try to pull himself away, but Julian clamped his hands around his ankles.  He looked up and met Will’s eyes.  He was anxious, but not upset.  They were still a clear green.

“What does he do to you?”

“What?” Will half gasped and half-laughed.

“What does he do to make you feel good?  How do you like to be made love to?”

Julian slowly slid his hands up Will’s legs.  His friend squirmed, but still didn’t pull away.

“Julian.  I, um, don’t know how to answer your question.”

“Sure you do.”  Julian reached forward and grabbed Will by the waist.  He hauled him up so they were both on their knees and then he pulled them close together.  Will kept his hands on Julian’s shoulders to keep them a little bit apart, but they were pressed together from chest to knees.  “Just tell me…how I can make you feel good.”

“J-Julian?  You’re freaking me out, dude.”

“Why?  You don’t care if I’m a guy.”

“I care that you’re you!”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re my friend.  My childhood friend.  My best friend.  Someone I’m extremely close to.  But, still just a friend.  We shouldn’t…be like this.”

“But…all this time.  I’ve wanted you…and thought you just didn’t want me because you were straight.  But, you are gay—”

“I’m not gay.”  Julian gave him a look.  “Not technically,” he mumbled.

Julian wrapped his arms tightly around Will’s waist and pressed their bodies together even more.  He put his forehead to Will’s.

“Will, you’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Julian…”

Julian made him stop talking.  He pressed their lips together, slowly working his way into the kiss.  He kissed Will’s stunned lips and slid his hands down his back and over his hips.  He pulled him closer and pushed his erection into Will’s groin.  His pretty friend gasped and Julian took advantage of the opening.  He put his tongue where he’d longed for it to be: deep, deep inside of his friend.  Will accepted him and wrapped his arms around his neck, spreading his legs just a little so that Julian’s manhood pushed completely into him.  Will moaned and the sound vibrated through their lips.  Julian pulled Will close again, forcing their groins to grind together in almost painful pleasure.

“Oh, God, Julian.  I want you.”

Julian pushed him back onto the bed and Will wrapped his legs around his waist.

“Well, you’re going to have me.”

“Oh, Julian.  I love you.  I love you!”

Something kicked Julian’s leg and he woke up.  He looked to his left and saw Scott still squirming in his sleep as he turned over.  Then he settled back into his pillow and went still.  Julian put a hand to his forehead.  Holy crap.  That had been the best fucking dream of his life and Scott Ramsey had to go and ruin it.

Of course, that wasn’t the way their conversation had ended.  Julian had put himself between Will’s legs, and started to run his hands up his friend’s thin, sexy body.  He’d asked him how he liked for a man to make love to him.  And before Will could answer, the door had opened.  Mr. Richardson had stuck his head in announcing that they were all having some ice cream, spotted them on the bed, went quiet, and then slowly backed out.  They’d laughed about it and Will had bonked him on the head for being dirty.

Life had gone on as usual.  They were now back to knowing each other’s deepest, darkest secrets…and not much had changed between them.  It seemed like maybe it should have, but they found themselves feeling more like they had before Julian’s parents died: knowing everything about each other and being as close as two people could be.  As close as two people could be without being lovers.  Julian knew he would envy Ken for the rest of his life, but in some ways he knew Will better.  In some ways Will would always be his.  And he found that he could be content with that.  After all, he had to be.

 

Will

 

Will glanced at his watch for the fifteenth time.  He had to make a decision now.  He would probably have enough time—would definitely have had enough time if he’d gotten up when his alarm had gone off this morning—but now he was running the risk of missing his flight to Chicago.  Was he willing to do that?  Yes.  He could afford to buy another ticket.  It had been a week and a day and he needed to see Ken.

They’d come to a tenuous understanding about the situation when they’d spoken for a couple of minutes in the Lexus after driving to Blue Boy, but they hadn’t reached a resolution.  And they hadn’t talked about the fact that Julian now knew about their relationship.  They had sent a couple of short perfunctory e-mails and texts over the last week; the only phone call had been when Ken needed to ask where the canned cat food was.  It had probably been a ruse (though the canned food did tend to get pushed to the back of the pantry) and Will had wanted to talk to him, but he’d been at dinner with his parents.  He hoped Ken had understood that and not thought that Will had been making up an excuse to avoid him.  Knowing Ken, of course he’d probably assumed the latter.  And _hadn’t_ he been avoiding him?  Maybe.  Yes.  But not out of anger.  Not really.  He did feel irritation that Ken had known about Julian’s employment, but when he thought about it rationally, Ken really couldn’t have handled it any other way.  When he chose to think about it irrationally, he’d get a little angry.  But the anger wasn’t at Ken.  Or even Rylan.  It was at himself and Julian.  And then he felt silly for being angry.  Julian wasn’t a prostitute.  And learning the ins and outs of an escort service is definitely something that would pique Julian’s interest.  And apparently Rylan had been the one to help Julian when no one else could.  Really, the only sketchy part about the whole thing was Will’s relationship with Ken.  The one who had the right to be angry was Julian.  Especially if Ken and Julian knew each other—even if it was only an acquaintanceship—they had known each other and Ken had never once mentioned that he was banging his best friend.  But of course, Ken wouldn’t have told Julian about that regardless of any circumstances, though he must have known Ken was gay if they’d met at Blue Boy.  Then Will got upset thinking about the reasons why Ken would be at Blue Boy in the first place in order for a meeting to occur.  Why was everything so convoluted?  Was anybody in the wrong here?  It was just so much easier to blame Rylan for everything.

“Excuse me,” Will sat forward and rested his arm on the back of the passenger side bucket seat in front of him.  The taxi driver looked at him in the rearview mirror.  “I’m sorry.  Can you turn right up here and stop at the building on the corner of 45th?  I need to make a stop there before going to the airport.”

The driver didn’t respond verbally, but made the turn.  When they reached Ken’s building Will paid him and explained that he didn’t need to wait because he might be a while.  The man didn’t even bother to pretend to get out of the cab to help Will get his bag out of the trunk.  He’d already gotten paid and received his tip.

Will trotted awkwardly up the stairs to the front of the building, holding his suitcase to one side with both hands.  It was a carry-on size, but he’d stuffed it full and it was quite heavy.  Someone was coming out as he reached the door, and he thanked him when he held the door open for him.  Will rolled his suitcase over to the front desk and found LaRon watching an old episode of _A Different World_.

“Hey, LaRon.”

“What’s up, bello?”

LaRon didn’t seem the type to use Italian terms of endearment, but Will didn’t mind; it was accurate after all.  And he’d heard the man call other people worse.

“I’m on my way to the airport, but I need to check on the cat really quickly.  Can I leave my bag here for a few minutes?”

“Sure thing.”

Will started for the elevator.

“Hey, chicco.”

Will turned back.

“I know you’re just Mr. West’s cat sitter…”

Will wondered if he really believed that.  Jeff obviously knew that his and Ken’s relationship was a little more intimate than that, but that didn’t mean anyone else did.

“But do you know if he’s okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well.  He’s been here.”

“And not at work?”

“Exactly.”

Will smiled, but he felt uneasy now.  Ken had missed a week of work?  “I think he was forced to use vacation time.  Or something like that.  I’m going out of town for a week, so I just want to make sure there’s enough food for the cat otherwise I need to leave him a note.  Or I guess it’ll be good if he’s there; then I can make sure he actually knows how to take care of her.”

LaRon laughed.  “Yeah, for real.  Forget the cat, I was surprised when he got the fish.”

Will chuckled and waved as he headed for the elevator.  He turned back just before he got on.

“You said Mr. West has been here all week?”

“From what I’ve noticed.”

“Did he have any visitors?”

“That asshole stopped by almost every day.”

“Hn.”  He didn’t need to ask who the “asshole” was.  “Thanks.”

On the seventeenth floor he got eyed by the suspicious old couple.  He gave a sweet, innocent smile to the old woman.  She smiled back.  He was slowly winning her over.  He considered knocking on the door, but if Ken had his laptop out he didn’t want to make him get up, so he used his key.  Inside the condo it was quiet and still.  It was apparent Ken wasn’t in the main room even without looking around.  He shrugged out of his windbreaker and wondered if LaRon had been mistaken about Ken staying at home.  He checked the utility room for Joyce Greene: she wasn’t there.  Will “hmm-ed” in mild confusion.  Maybe Ken had taken her to the vet.  He stood in the utility room door and looked around the kitchen.  No white fluff ball.  He walked past the bay window toward the fish tank.  Bending over to peer inside the large tank he determined that everything still looked alive.  Then he spotted Joyce Greene sitting outside the closed bedroom door.  She was staring at the doorknob with almost dog-like concentration.  Will picked her up and tossed her aside.  She couldn’t go in the bedroom even if Ken was feeling bad and could use the company.

Will turned the knob gently, trying to be quiet.  But what was the point?  If he was awake then he would easily hear and/or see the door opening.  And if he was asleep, well, Will could announce his entrance with a trumpeting fanfare and still might not get a response out of him.  So why was he trying to be quiet?  Was he afraid of walking in on something?  Maybe the asshole was visiting.  Though LaRon probably would have mentioned that.  Will opened the door, and despite not caring whether or not he made any noise anymore, it didn’t make much noise.  Ken wouldn’t have stood for a sticking or squeaky door.

Ken was alone and asleep on the bed.  He must have just lain down for a nap because he was fully dressed and on top of the duvet.  He hadn’t stirred at all despite the door opening and Will letting the knob go so that it would snap back into place.  Will stood in the doorway with his hand still on the knob and looked at his lover.  He was so…long.  Especially with one hand over his head, curling unknowingly around the headboard.  It made the line of his body follow a beautiful, graceful serpentine curve from fingertips to toes.  His hair was short enough that it could never really look messy, but he hadn’t shaved in a few days.  Possibly over a week.  He had a full beard now.  Not a scraggly homeless guy beard; it was trimmed short and didn’t look half bad on him.

Will was still a little upset and definitely uncomfortable about the situation he was now in with Julian, but he felt nothing but love as he looked at Ken.  How could one person be so much and so many different things to another person?  Will hated to admit it, but Ken was all he needed.  He could leave his family and friends as long as he had Ken.  Of course, the preference was to have them all.

Will used a foot to gently push Joyce Greene back out into the main room.  She mewled unhappily.  Ken turned his head toward the sound, but didn’t wake up.  Typical.  He hears his child but not his lover.  So much for him getting a gentle awakening with a sweet kiss.  Will took a step back and then launched himself into the room.  He jumped high enough to get one foot on the mattress and sprung forward in something like a cross between a swan dive and a belly flop.  The movement of the mattress was enough to make Ken come partially awake, so his brain was functioning just enough that having something crashing down on top of him really scared the bejeezus out of him.  Will laughed at Ken’s frantic shout and held on tight as he was nearly thrown off the bed.  Ken went still and Will pulled himself back on top of him and smiled down at him.

“Hi.”

Ken stared at him and then rubbed his eyes.  He breathed out a sigh of relief and closed his eyes for a second.

“You almost literally scared the shit out of me.”

Will laughed again.  “Sorry.”  He leaned down and kissed him.  He pulled back quicker than he intended because the beard had been a strange sensation on his skin.  Not bad necessarily, just unfamiliar.  Will put a hand to Ken’s face and rubbed his thumb on the soft, but bristly hair on the man’s cheek.

“You skipping work?”

“Taking a vacation.”

“Did your dad make you?”

“No, I just…haven’t felt great this week.”

“Yeah.”

Will had a whole speech prepared to tell him that he understood the situation and didn’t blame him and didn’t consider their relationship changed at all.  But being with him now and looking into his eyes, he knew words wouldn’t be necessary.  They didn’t need words.  Will kissed him, ignoring the mild impression that he was kissing a stranger, and moved his body just a little to settle comfortably on his lover’s large frame.  Ken put a hand to the small of his back and let Will take the lead with the kiss.  After a while, Will started to enjoy the sensation of the beard rubbing his skin as it sent little tingling lines of pleasure down his body.  He bet it would feel weird and really great on other parts of his body.  Did he have time for that?  Will pushed himself away with a small moan.  He did _not_ have time for that.  But straddling his lover and imagining what that beard would feel like on his chest, his stomach, his abdomen, between his legs…was not helping his resolve.  Neither were Ken’s hands rubbing gently up and down on his thighs.  Will cleared his throat and leaned forward, putting his hands on Ken’s shoulders.  He just needed a moment to collect himself.  But then Ken put a hand through his hair and he leaned into it.  He was worse than the damn cat.

“Your hair’s back to normal.”

“Yeah.”

“How long did it take to wash out?”

“It didn’t.  I had to dye it.”

Ken laughed softly.  “Well, I guess now when it starts to grow out we’ll be able to tell if you really have truly black hair.”

Will tried to answer, but he couldn’t think.  He turned his face toward Ken’s hand and kissed his palm.  Then the man pulled his hand away and Will opened his eyes.

“Will, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about Julian.  But that’s how I felt about it.  That I _couldn’t_ tell you.  It wasn’t my place.”

Will nodded, feeling a little less amorous now that he was reminded of their crappy situation.  “I get it.  And really, the issue isn’t you.  Or even Rylan.  It’s between Julian and me and we’re going to have to work things out on our own.”

“Are you going to work it out?  Or ignore it like he said at Blue Boy?”

“Well.  We haven’t spoken about it since then.”

“You haven’t talked to him about it?  At all?  I don’t think it’s a good idea to turn a blind eye to this.”

“I know.  And I think you’re right.  I’m going to talk to him eventually.  Soon,” he amended to mollify the displeased look Ken gave him.

“Will, you trust me, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to Julian.  I wouldn’t have let Rylan do anything that might harm him.  Honestly, I think Rylan helped him.”

Will frowned.  “That’s the most irritating part about it.”

Ken smiled and patted Will’s thigh comfortingly.

“How did you meet Julian?  And how did you find out he’s my Julian?  I feel like you knew before the shadow a professional day.”

“Well, it’s kind of funny.  I think the first time I ever saw him was here on my floor.  I can’t be entirely sure it was him; I was a little.  Well.  Drunk.  At any rate, some cute young boy was with my neighbor.”

“Who?” Will asked, doubting that it could have been Julian.  The old couple was definitely out.  Autumn Rose wouldn’t spend time with someone who couldn’t benefit her in some way.  There were three other neighbors on the hall, and Will had seen at least one of them: a young married couple.

“Um, the one who lives at the end of the hall on the opposite side.  She’s a psychiatrist.”

Will tilted his head.  Why would Julian see his therapist at her home?  Then he stiffened.  “Is this psychiatrist the most fashion retarded person you’ve ever seen in your life?”

“Yes.”

“Gyaw!”

“What?” Ken laughed at his expression.

“That little…he’s in no place to be angry at me about you!  I bet she’s almost forty!”

Ken blinked.  “You don’t think she and he—”

“He had a total crush on her!”

“Really?  _Her_?  That seems—Oh my gosh!  That was _her_!”

“Who was her?”

“On New Year’s Eve.  When I got off the elevator he was there practically doing some woman out in the hallway.”

“ _What_?!” Will screeched.

“I didn’t recognize her because she was wearing, like sleeping shorts and a thin T-shirt and she was like.  Hot.  Of course, I was also drunk at the time.”

“Are you always drunk when you see Julian?”

“No.  But I don’t think they actually did anything.  I think she was telling him to piss off.  Or something.  It’s a little hazy.  And I haven’t seen him over here since then.  Man.  I cannot believe that was _her_.  I’ve spoken with her a few times and she’s not the type of person to have an affair with a high school student.”

“Do you think she would say the same thing about you?”

“Touché.”

Will stewed for a few minutes.  There had been a lot going on with Julian that he hadn’t been aware of.  Did that just mean they had learned to manage their own lives, or did they no longer trust each other?  Now Will knew they had to talk as soon as possible.  He’d been planning on waiting until after they got back from Chicago, but he couldn’t wait that long now.  Will pulled his legs closer to Ken’s body and slumped over a little, putting his hands on the man’s stomach.

“So, when did you know he was working for Blue Boy?”

“I was there the day he had his job interview.  He was late and Rylan made him wait for twenty minutes while we just talked about our own business.  I was pretty impressed with how little he fidgeted.”

“But how did you know he was my friend?  I accused you of knowing about it all along, but just because you knew he was working for Blue Boy didn’t mean you knew he was _my_ Julian.  You couldn’t have known until the shadow day.”

“Well, he apparently visited my neighbor pretty often.  A few days after the interview he showed up on my hall again with her and—”

“With Dr. Gorman again?”

“Well, he certainly wasn’t with Autumn Rose.”

“Hmph.”

“And I recognized his uniform.  How many Julians could possibly go to Calverton?”

“Just one.”

“Exactly.  And the look in his eyes was enough to convince me it was him.  After that I actually told Rylan to let him be.  That he wasn’t someone to play with.  And Rylan told me he knew that.  And that he was letting him work for him because he wanted to keep an eye on him.”

Will felt a sharp pain stab his chest.  He sat back on Ken’s thighs.  Rylan had noticed.  He hadn’t known anything was wrong with Julian and Rylan had been able to tell from a couple short encounters.

“He really helped him on Thanksgiving, Will.  Rylan told me that he had a total breakdown.”  Ken sat up and rubbed Will’s arms.  “Is that why you were so upset that night?”

Will couldn’t answer.  It was taking all of his concentration to keep his face from crumbling and his eyes from weeping.  He took a few moments and swallowed back his sudden sorrow.  He took in several deep breaths and looked in Ken’s eyes.  He felt better seeing the familiar deep blue looking back at him with love, support, concern, and unless he was mistaken, a little bit of lust.  Well, he couldn’t really blame him for that.  He was sitting squarely in his lap.

Will licked his lips and finally answered.  “Yeah, that’s why I was upset.  Though, the breakdown Rylan saw is probably different from the one I did.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t talk about that.”

“Why?”

Will shifted his hips and leaned forward to put his lips close to Ken’s.  “Can I take your mind off it?”

“If you want.  I won’t complain.”

Ken kissed him, wrapped his arms tightly around him, and bent his knees so that he captured him as closely to him as he could.  Will pulled back with the intention of telling Ken he was short on time, but the man moved his head and kissed his neck.  The strange feeling of the beard traveling across his skin made Will jerk involuntarily and let out a very embarrassing noise.  Through the pleasure filled haze in his mind he heard Ken suppress a laugh.  Will would have yelled at him, but he didn’t want to distract him.  Will dropped his head back and moaned again, knowing that he could not let things escalate unless he wanted to miss his flight.  He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock on the nightstand.

“Ah, K-Kennnn.”

“Yes, baby?”

“I have to go.”

“Why?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Like hell you are.”

Ken pushed up and forward and Will found himself under the very comfortable weight of his lover in a matter of milliseconds.  Will pushed his hips up and delighted in the friction generated between their bodies as Ken started sucking on his neck.  Hard.  There was going to be a mark and it wasn’t cold enough to wear a scarf.  God, hickeys were embarrassing.

“Ken, Ken.  I really have to leave.”

Ken let go and sat up enough to look at him.

“Why,” he demanded plaintively.

“I’m going out of town for a week and I have to catch my plane.”

“A week?  Where are you going?”

Will smiled.  “It’s spring break, baby.”

“Mm-hm.  Where are you going?”

“Chicago.  It’s my friend’s birthday.”

“Which one?”

“Chris.”

“Are you all going?”

“Yep.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“No.  I’ll talk to Julian.  I promise.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.  I was thinking about you with three very attractive guys you feel way too close to.”

“Whatever!  They’re all straight!  And two have girlfriends.  Besides.”  Will kissed Ken’s nose.  “You’re the only man I get hot for.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And how many girls do you get hot for?”

“I’ll answer that if you tell me which one of my friends you want to screw.”

Ken laughed.  “I don’t want any of your friends.”

“Hn.”

“Seriously.  Let’s consider Julian.  We’d never be able to figure out who would be on top.  I’ve only seen your friend Chris a couple of times in person and while he is very attractive, he’s probably a little too vanilla for me.  And Scott—well, I’m not sadistic enough to truly enjoy him.”

“But you could,” Will griped.

“Well sure.  In a universe that doesn’t have you in it.  But why would I want any of them when I have you?”

“Aw.  Sweet.”

“I feel like there’s a bit of sarcasm in your voice.”

“Not at all.

Ken sat up and straddled Will, placing a hand on his chest.  “You’re such a brat.”

“Everything you ever wanted, right?”

“And more.”

Will tried to take a deep breath, but Ken’s hand was holding down his chest.  He tried again, and again felt the same resistance.  It caused tension to rise in his body, tension that was hot and directed to the blood flowing mostly toward his groin.

“Oh, stop, stop, stop!  I mean it!  I don’t have time!”

“Time for what?”

“Time for.  For.  You know.”

“For what, Will?  What can’t I do?”

Will closed his eyes and bit his lower lip hard.  If he said it out loud he’d want it.  Hell, he wanted it now.

“When I get back,” he tried to bargain with him.  “I promise.  When I get back.  Whatever you want.”

“Anything?”

“Anything!”  Will knew he was going to regret that promise, but he really had to go.

“Okay.”  Ken sat back on the bed and leaned against the headboard.  Will stayed where he was, still trying to catch his breath.  Ah, who cared about his stupid flight?  He’d get there eventually.  They were going to be there for a week.  What was missing a few hours going to do?  Will sat up and looked at his lover.  He looked placid and innocuous and strangely satisfied.  Will knew there would definitely be no sex now.  The promise of being able to do whatever he wanted with Will later was more than enough to overcome his current lust.

_Great.  I’ve awakened the beast and now am going to make him wait for a week.  I better see him on Friday night because I won’t be able to walk for the next couple of days._

Will rolled off the bed and straightened his clothing.  He looked at Ken and he held out a hand toward him.  Will took it and brought it to his lips for a kiss as he moved to stand closer to him.

“Have fun with your friends,” Ken said.

“I will.  I hope.  It might be weird.  We’re going to meet Chris’ estranged father.  And it’s like a whole thing.”

“Oh really?  A _whole_ thing?” he teased him for his teenaged vernacular.

“Shush.  Be good.  Go to work.”

“I will.”  He put his free hand to his face and rubbed his beard.  “And I’ll shave this off.”

“Well.  You don’t have to.  Right away.  You could leave it.  For a while.  If you like.”

Ken let a small smile ride up the side of his mouth.  “You like the way I look?”

“Eh.  You kind of look like a tree-hugger version of yourself.”

Ken laughed.  “I see.  So, if it’s not the look.  It’s for…the feel?”

Will felt his face grow warm.  It wasn’t fair.  Ken was a total pervert, so why did he always make Will feel embarrassed for liking something?  Will couldn’t even get out a snide comeback.  He just dropped his eyes and stayed still.  Ken gave his hand a little shake.

“Baby.  There’s nothing wrong with liking sex.”

“I’m not…!”  Will raised his eyes slowly.  Ken wasn’t making fun of him.  Not a lot anyway.  “I don’t think it’s wrong to like sex.”

“But you think it’s wrong to like…adventurous sex.”

Will went hot.  Ken had used that term once before, and while he’d never felt such pleasure before in his life, he’d never been more embarrassed by what they’d done together.

“If you feel that way, honey, it’s fine.  But rest assured, liking a bit of texture on your skin does not fall into the category of weird sexual practices.”

“Oh leave me alone,” Will groaned and tried to pull away, but Ken pulled him closer.

“Hey, baby.”

“What.”

“I love you.”

Will turned toward him and leaned close for a kiss.  “I bet I love you more.”

“Ha.  Get out of here.  Go enjoy your youth before you end up a bitter old man like me.”

Will ignored him and kissed him again.  He kissed him again, lingering longer on his lips.

“Suddenly I don’t want to go,” he whispered.

“Yes, you do.  Your friend will be disappointed if you miss his birthday.”

“He didn’t know we were going to go until a couple of days ago.”

“Oh dear.  An ambush birthday present.”

“Something like that.”

Joyce Greene hopped onto Ken’s chest and rubbed against his face, forcing Will to step back to avoid a mouthful of fuzzy tail.  She meowed and rubbed against Ken some more.  He laughed and turned her around to tuck her under one arm.

“I guess it’ll just be the two of us again this week, sweetie.”

“Hmph.  She’ll probably be happy about that.”

“Nah.  She missed you this past week.  She loves on me on the weekends, but she kept staring at the front door all last week.”

“Just wondering where the food dispenser was.”

Ken chuckled.  “Maybe.”  The man got up and kept the cat securely tucked under one arm as he walked Will to the front door.  “You three try to behave yourselves, okay?  If this was your friend’s special trip to see his father, don’t make things difficult.”

“Um, okay, one.  That was a total father-lecture vibe.  So, careful.  And two.  He was already going to have an awkward trip because he’s staying with his father’s old attorney.  Or something.  Or like, he’s suspicious about his mother’s relationship with him.  Or.  I don’t know.  He’s paying for him to go.”

Ken shook his head.  “Who’s paying for whom to go where?”

“The lawyer is paying for Chris to go to Chicago to visit Northwestern University.”

“I thought he was going to see his father.”

“Well, his father is in Chicago, so he’s going to see him while he’s there.”

Ken scratched Joyce Greene’s head, but it looked like he wanted to be scratching his own.  “So.  The lawyer is an old family friend?”

“No, just the guy who was assigned to his father’s case nine years ago.”

“Did he and Chris keep in touch?”

“No, he just met him, like, a few months ago.”

“Will, I’m confused.”

“So am I and I actually know what’s going on.  Well.  Some of it.  There’s a lot Chris won’t tell us.  Like for one thing, we still don’t know what his father went to jail for.”

“His father was in jail?”

“Yeah.  For like, almost nine years.”

“That’s not usually a petty crime.”

“No, right?  It’s all very sketchy.  But we’ll support him.  And hope he’s not doing something stupid.  Like falling into the hands of a pedophilic stalker.”

“Like me.”

“Kind of.”

Will thought Ken would have hit him if he hadn’t been holding the cat.  “Seriously.  Get out.  You’re making me feel like a freak.  A pedophile.  A stalker.  Your _father_.  Though I could see why you wouldn’t mind your father.  He is _unbelievably_ sexy.  And a little scary.”

Will’s jaw dropped.  “No!  No, no, no!  You can’t be around him!”

“Don’t worry.  I’m not going to try to seduce your father.”

“I’m more worried about it going the other way,” Will grumbled.

Will was surprised by the violent start Ken got from his words.  It scared Joyce Greene too.

“Why would you say that?  Is your father…”  He trailed off like he didn’t know how to ask his question.

“He just…can win anybody over, you know?  Like Jedi mind tricks.”

“But do you mean that his charisma is appealing?  And not like.  He like.  Likes…”

Will waited.  “Likes what?”

Ken let out a short laugh.  “Nothing.  I’ll be sure to stay away from him.”  He put a hand under Will’s chin.  “But you can call me ‘Daddy’ if you like.”

Will would have stuck his tongue out at the suggestion, but Ken had kissed him so that would only wind up encouraging him.  Will felt Joyce Greene try to keep from falling to the floor by splaying her back claws into his jeans.  Ken had let her go to grab Will, and she was partially caught between their bodies.  Will was vaguely aware of his back thumping against the door behind him, but he was concentrating too hard on remembering words in English and trying to get them out around Ken’s lips.

“Mm.  Ken.  I mm.  Flight.  Plane.  Mmm.”

“Are you sure you want to go?”

“At the moment?  Mm.”  Will bit Ken’s lip and then opened his mouth to him again.  “Um.  Either I go now.  Ahn.  Or no weird sex when I get back.”

Ken immediately stepped back and grabbed Joyce Greene just before she hit the floor.  “Have a nice trip,” he said cheerfully.

Will frowned at him.  “Pervert.”

“Did you pack a bag?”

“It’s downstairs.  With LaRon.  He’s worried about you, you know.”

“Is he?  Well, I guess I better stop moping.  For some reason…I feel better.”

“Good.”  Will gave him a bright, happy, I love you smile.  Ken blushed.  “Ha!”

Now Ken frowned.  “You are so weird.  Go away.”

Will dropped his head back against the door and smiled.  “I’m trying.  I really am.  But I don’t want to leave you.”

“Go on.  You’ll start having fun once you’re with your friends.  You won’t even think about me.”

“Impossible.”

“Well.  Try.”

 

Fourteen hours later, Will had succeeded in not thinking about Ken.  Not because of the excitement of being with his friends on a half-cross country trip, or dealing with Scott’s blunder and Chris’ ire and working out sleeping arrangements in Mr. Richardson’s condo, or even being slightly freaked out by Julian’s best efforts to discover what he liked sexually.  No, it was dessert with Mr. Richardson that made him forget everything except how funny it was to watch Chris nearly die of mortification as Julian attempted to figure out if his theory about Mr. Richardson’s laughing habits was true.

“So, Mr. Richardson,” Julian began as he gently stabbed his ice cream with his spoon.  “What are your thoughts on self expression through body modification?”

There was a loud clack as Chris put his spoon down in his bowl in annoyance.  Will put a large bite of mint chocolate ice cream in his mouth so he wouldn’t be able to smile.

“Um,” Dean began, and then didn’t seem to know how to answer.  “Do you mean like those Southeast Asians that put the rings on their necks to make them look longer?”

Julian laughed.  “No.  Like, a young rebellious youth getting a tattoo or a nose ring or something.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Will could see Dean look at Julian’s partially metallic face, and then he looked at the other boys.  He looked back to Julian.  “I think that if someone gets something done because they want to and not because they feel like they have to, then it’s fine.”

“But even if it is the ‘have to’ side of it, well that happens right?  And it’s nothing to be ashamed of when you’re older, right?”

“Well, nowadays tattoos can be removed and most piercings can heal.  But, if you feel you might regret it one day, Julian, maybe that’s a sign you shouldn’t do it.”

“No, that’s not what I—”

Will and Scott snickered into their bowls.  Chris picked up Julian’s spoon and put to his lips.

“Eat something, Julian.”

Julian took the spoon and ate the melting ice cream.  Then he said, “Do yu kno n-ee gud pearc-ing par-ers?”

Dean took a moment to process the sentence around Julian’s mumbling and then replied, “You mean some place where you can get your ears pierced?”

Julian swallowed and ignored Chris’ attempt to get him to take another bite.  “Yes.  Well, not like one of those places in the mall.  But one that can do specialty piercings.”

“Oh, um, I’m afraid I don’t know any in the immediate area.  I’m not even sure I remember seeing one around here.  But maybe that’s just because I wasn’t paying attention to it.”

“Oh.  That’s okay.”

“Did you want to…get something pierced?”

“I was thinking about getting my other nipple pierced.  With just one, I feel like a pirate.”

Will and Scott laughed, but kept a close eye on Dean who had laughed too.  They bobbed their heads down to peer into his mouth, but they couldn’t see anything.  Chris stood up and walked into the kitchen and put himself behind Dean.  He stabbed his spoon in the air at all of them.  They ignored him.

“Well.  I’ll keep my eyes open and let you know if I see one.”

“Would that be a problem for you?” Julian continued.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you feel uncomfortable with people with…nonconventional piercings?”

“Not at all,” Dean said dryly.  “I had some friends in college who were heavily into body modification.”

“Really?” Scott asked.  “What kind?”

“Ah, nothing too crazy.  Just those plastic circle things that stretch out your earlobes.  And one of them did have a large bar through the bridge of his nose.  It was kind of gross.”

“So, did you modify anything?” Will asked.

“Ah, I wasn’t as crazy as them.  I think I was just friends with them so that I could vicariously rebel through them.”

Dean chuckled softly at a memory and took a bite of his plain vanilla ice cream.  Will looked at Julian.  He had caught it too.  That answer hadn’t been a “no.”

“So,” Julian started, but Chris jumped in.

“So, Mr. Richardson, what time do we need to be up tomorrow?  I think our tour starts at 9:00am, right?   So we better get the air mattress set up and start thinking about going to sleep.”

“Nine?” Scott whined softly.  “Who picked—”

Chris had walked back around the kitchen to be close to Scott, and Will saw him pinch the blond on his leg.

“Well, I think it’ll take us about twenty minutes driving time and finding a parking place.  So, if we leave at 8:30 we should get there on time.  I was going to cook breakfast in the morning.  Do you guys like standard fare: eggs and sausage and oatmeal and the like?”

“Sounds good,” said Chris.  “But when you say sausage, do you mean like those huge kielbasa things?”

Dean laughed.  “No.  Just regular sausage links.”

“Okay.  Because I do remember those.  My dad made me eat one every weekend when I still lived in Chicago.  You guys better be prepared for when you meet my dad on Wednesday.  He’s going to make you eat one.”

Will made a face.  “Um, I don’t do intestine casing.”

“I do,” Scott sang.

“Mr. Richardson,” Julian got his attention, “did your friends ever convince you to try getting a piercing?”

“Um, I—”

Julian!” Chris huffed.  “Don’t change the subject so abruptly.”

“You changed the subject,” Julian reminded him.

Will put his hand to his mouth and bit down on his finger.   He looked back and forth between Chris and Julian.  They were having a glaring match.  Then he noticed Dean’s eyes on him.  He moved his hand and schooled his features.  He stared back at Dean Richardson: a handsome, workaholic businessman.  Was he attracted to him?  This could be a good test to see if it was just Ken or if he had swung the full 180 degrees to homosexuality.  He didn’t really feel one way or another about the man.  Just a sort of vague longing that he was Ken instead.  Will wondered if he would ever know for sure.  He couldn’t imagine having real feelings or attraction for anyone else on the planet.  Well, that wasn’t entirely true either.  He’d had a sex dream about Antoinette a few nights back.  It hadn’t been his fault.  Scott had been giving very vivid descriptions of what her skin felt like.  But then, weren’t dreams that had sex in them not actually about sex?  Sure, walking a dog in the park meant you wanted to bang your mom, but actual sex meant something else entirely.  Right?

Will was brought back to the current conversation as Dean stood up from his seat and gathered their bowls together to put in the sink.  He was rinsing them out when he finally answered Julian’s question.

“I may have been talked into getting one piercing,” he said softly.

Julian and Scott pawed at each other excitedly, but quietly, for a second.  Then Julian leaned over the counter.  Chris grabbed the back of his shirt, but didn’t try to pull him back.

“Do you still have it?”

All four of them leaned closer to wait for his answer.

“N-no.  I took it out after a couple of months.  It was really uncomfortable.”

All four sat back in disappointment.

“Where was it?” Scott asked.

Dean smiled and looked at them as he dried his hands off with a towel.  “Somewhere uncomfortable.”

Scott tilted his head in thought.

“So, you had more than one.  Do you still have the tongue ring?” Julian finally asked outright.

“Julian!” Chris wailed.

Dean looked surprised, and then he laughed.  “How did you know?”

“What?!” the other three shouted.

“You do have one?” Chris asked.

Dean shrugged.  “Even old people were young once, you know.  But, did you see it?”

“No.  But Chris noticed it actually,” Julian said.  “The way you laugh.”

“Oh.  How ironic.  I do that to hide it and it gave me away.”

“Not really.  The three of us didn’t notice until Chris pointed it out.  He just pays more attention to you, of course.”

Dean smiled and looked at Chris.  “Well, he might not pay so much attention now that we’ve moved past why the creepy middle-aged man is being nice to him.”

“Why are you?” Scott asked.

Chris pushed Scott off the stool to his feet.  “None of your business.   Go get the box with the air mattress so we can set it up.”

“You’re not fun,” Scott griped.

“What kind do you have?” Julian asked Dean.  “A barbell?”

“Mm?  Oh, no, just a stud.  It doesn’t go all the way through.”

“Oh, me too.”

Will shook his head as he walked with Scott to the living room.  Who would get excited over tongue piercings?  Scott leaned close to him.

“So, if he still has the tongue one, where was the uncomfortable one?”

Will shook his head.  “I don’t wanna know actually.”

Scott chuckled and moved to help Chris open the box with the bed in it.  Will sat on the arm of the couch and supervised.  He could hear Dean and Julian still talking back in the kitchen.  It wasn’t far at all and not even in a separate room, but it was probably best that Chris was over here and couldn’t concentrate on what Julian was saying.  Will felt his phone buzz in his pocket.  He pulled it out and saw that he had a text message from Ken: Where is JG’s medicine?  He texted him back that it was in the utility room.  Ken texted back is wasn’t there.  Will sent back a message that it was.  A minute later, he got a phone call.  Will sighed and stood up to leave the room.

“Where you going?” Julian said as he joined them in the living room.  He grabbed his wrist and pulled him onto the couch next him.  “Why don’t you take your call here?”

“Um…”  Will wished he could just ignore the call, but he’d already pushed the answer button on his way out.  Should he hang up?

“Go ahead.  Talk to your mystery girl here.”

Julian smiled at him and Chris and Scott hopped off the floor.  “It’s her?!” they cried excitedly.

Scott reached for the phone and Will turned to keep it away.  “No, it’s just the—”

“No, it’s her,” Julian said.  “I saw the name.”

“What’s her name?” Scott asked, bouncing up and down.

“Um,” Will tried to think as he wrestled with Julian to keep the phone away from him.  Then he realized he didn’t need to lie.  “Kendall.”

“Kendall,” Scott said.  “It’s so cute.”

Will laughed and Julian got a hold of the phone.  “Julian!”

“Hello, Will’s mystery lover.  He’s with his three best friends here and we’re just dying to know more about the person who has our little sociopath wrapped around her finger.  My name is Julian.  Will says yours is Kendall.”  Julian laughed softly and looked at Will.  “Is that really your name?”  Julian laughed again.  “That’s a nice name, Ken.  Dall.”

Will clenched his teeth and let the poison in his eyes inform Julian plainly that he was going to murder him later.

“Huh?  What’s that?” Julian asked.  “Oh, no.  We worked that all out.  Oh, yeah.  Under control.  We had a nice, _detailed_ heart to heart.”  Julian listened for a moment with a shit-eating grin, and then his face fell to horrified shock.  “You wouldn’t dare.”

Will glanced at Chris and Scott.  They were exchanging confused looks.

“Now, there’s no reason to bring him into this,” Julian said, with a touch of real worry in his voice.

Will held back his smirk.  Ken had gone right for the throat and threatened to sic Rylan on him.  That’s why he loved his man: he was a ruthless adversary.

“So, why did you call?” Julian asked.  “Oh.”  He sounded disappointed.  “Hang on.”

He handed the phone toward Will, and Scott and Chris screeched their dismay and tried to grab for it.  Julian held it out of their reach.

“Hang on, hang on.  She can’t find the cat’s medicine.”

“Oh,” they grumbled despondently, but let Will take the phone back.

“Hi,” he said.

“You know,” Ken said, with just a touch of lecture in his voice, “you didn’t have to answer if you were around your friends.”

“I know that.  I was—Never mind.  It’s in the frickin’ utility room.  Above the washer and dryer.”

“Will, I’m standing right here.  Looking at the shelf.  There’s nothing there.”

“Did you try moving stuff around?”

“Yes.”

“Then look around.  I might have left it near the sink since that’s where I was putting it in her ears.  You know she shakes her head and splatters it everywhere.”

“Well, then that wouldn’t be ‘on the shelf’ now would it?”

“Well, the first answer was ‘in the utility room,’ so it’s on you for not looking around well enough.”

“Baby.  Are you sure you want to tick me off when you’ve given me a free pass for when you get back?”

Will blushed.  And if the snickering and snide comments were any indication, his friends noticed.

“I—um.  D-did you find it?”

“Yeah, I got it.  How was your flight?”

“Uneventful.”

“That’s the best kind.”

“Yeah.”

“So…”

Will waited, but he didn’t continue.  “What?  Is there something else?  Do you know how to use—”

“Are you sleeping with Julian?”

“Excuse me?!” Will shouted.

His three friends cocked their heads in question as they looked at him.  Will looked away from them and leaned over the arm of the couch, knowing they could still hear everything.

“How could you ask me that?”

“Not sex, Will.  You’re sharing a hotel room with your friends, right?  Are you sharing a bed with Julian?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Would you want me sharing a bed with Rylan?”

“I keep telling you, that’s not the same!”

“And I keep telling you, that Julian’s feelings for you are more of a threat than my history with Rylan.”

“A th—That’s not the word I would use.”

“I would.  You’d give me up for him, wouldn’t you?”

“No.  Never.  Look.  Now’s not the time for this.  Did you give the cat her ear drops?”

“I will when I hang up.”

“Then hang up.”

“Now, now.  Don’t get snippy.  I thought you liked it when I was jealous.”

Will smiled, but rolled his eyes.  “Anger, jealousy,” he murmured very, _very_ softly.  “I’m really going to get it good when I get back, aren’t I?”

“You’ve no idea, sweet boy.  Behave yourself while you’re away.”

“I’ll try my best.  Bye.”

“Love you.”

“I know.”

Will hung up.

“Hey!” Chris and Scott shouted.

“I wanted to talk to her!” Scott complained.  “That’s only fair after what you did.”

“I know, I know.  But, she’s shy.  And Antoinette is so not.”

“When did you become such a cat person?” Chris asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your girlfriend has one.  And that guy you housesit for has one.”

“Well, I hardly have control over the pets they chose before I ever met them.”

“Where does she live?” Scott asked.

“Exactly how much older is she than you?” Julian chimed in innocently.

“Downtown.  A few years.”

“Oh, he’s being defensive,” Chris said with a nudge to Scott’s side.  “What is it, Will?  Can’t you tell us?  I mean, come on, it’s us.”

Will looked at his friends.  It _was_ them.  He knew that it would be really weird if he told them and would probably take a long time for them to get used to the idea…if they ever did at all.  But he wanted to tell them.  He didn’t want to have two separate lives.  But he couldn’t do that right now.  He had to give Ken some warning.  Had to ask his permission.  It wasn’t Will’s decision to make.  And if Rylan, who clearly thought that staying closeted was the stupidest thing in the world, had enough respect for Ken’s decision to keep his secret, then Will certainly couldn’t be the one to out him.

“I know.  And I’ll talk about it more.  Later.  You know.  When it’s just us.”

“Oh,” Dean said, who had joined them in the room.  “I can leave.”

“No!”  Will jumped to his feet and urged Dean further into the room.  “Like Chris keeps saying, we can’t take over your home and boss you around.  You should stay.  Tell us about your friends in college.  Now I’m worried Chris is going to go to Northwestern and come back at Thanksgiving with a chicken bone through his nose cartilage.”

Dean laughed.  “That was just one group of friends.  And it was just my freshman year.  I was still depressed from being dumped by my high school girlfriend.”

“Oh yeah?” Scott asked with worry in his voice.  “Do they always dump you when you get to college?”

“Scott!” Chris laughed and ruffled his hair.  “Antoinette is in thrall of you!  If that relationship ever ends, it’ll be because _you_ end it.”

“I never will!”

“Well, then.  I guess that means I get to be best man at your wedding.”

Scott grinned.

“Wait a minute,” Julian said.  “Why are _you_ best man?”

“Well, because I’ll be Scott’s and he’ll be mine and you and Will will be each other’s.”

“And what if we never get married?”

“I don’t mean to each other.”

Julian tsked at him.  “That’s not what I meant either!  I love him, but I wouldn’t marry him.  I mean if I did, we’d have to live in Massachusetts or Vermont.  I don’t think either of those places is actually habitable.”

“Well, some states recognize marriages even if they don’t perform them.  And some recognize civil unions.”

“Oh yeah?  I guess I have more options after all.”  He looked at Will.  “Will you marry me?”

“No.”

“Geez.  You’ve could hesitated even a little bit.”

“I’ve no reserve about saying no.”

“Oh, right.  Because Kendall is the love of your life.  Tell me.  You gonna marry _her_?”

Will bit the inside of his cheek and looked Julian in the eyes.  So, they were now being open with each other and had forgiven each other for lying to each other, but clearly Julian was still going to be a little bitchy when it came to Ken.  Will could understand.  He certainly didn’t like Rylan.

“No, probably not,” Will said softly.

“Why not?” Scott asked.

“Not everyone has to be married to be happy.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Dean laughed softly and put his hand on Will’s shoulder.  “People don’t always marry the person they love.”

Everyone looked at the man.  He looked around at them and then smiled uneasily.

“Uh, I wasn’t trying to be philosophical or pathetically melancholy.  Just, joining the conversation.  Heh.  Maybe the old man should move along.”

“No,” Scott said as he unrolled the air mattress.  “I wanna hear about getting dumped by your high school girlfriend.”

“Scott!” Chris wailed.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

 

Chris

 

Northwestern was awesome.  Chris felt like he fit in.  He could see himself going here: walking to classes, sitting in the quad, having that joy of being in a new place with new people…a thousand miles away from his mother.  And the pain of being separated from his friends would be manageable.  At least, he had to make himself believe that or he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.  Codependency wasn’t pretty and the four of them were going to have to rip themselves apart before they completely fused into one grotesque humanoid blob.

Mr. Richardson was clearly having a good time.  After their official tour, he’d taken them around and given them a more realistic tour, ie: all the fun things college students did but the school didn’t want the parents of prospective students to know.  Chris enjoyed every moment of his day in the perfect weather.  He could now see a future ahead of him.  He realized he’d been so unhappy back home because he felt trapped, smothered.  The idea of being some place where nobody knew him or had expectations of him was a potent temptation.  He could be free to feel and act the way he wanted to as an individual as opposed to the way he needed to in order to please everybody around him.  Well, perhaps Mr. Richardson would keep up with him while he was here, but he was looking forward to that.  To have someone who would look forward to hearing about his progress and being excited about whatever topic he chose to study.  He wondered if Mr. Richardson might try to influence him a little bit into going into law.  It was certainly a better choice than being influenced to go into auto repair and mechanics.

And that kind of thought brought him down so hard it almost ruined the whole day.  He was a horrible son.  He’d read into circumstantial evidence and told himself there were “signs” that would make him the son of some other man.  A successful, wealthy, well-educated man.  Because he realized he had no respect for his father.  He wasn’t even sure he cared about him.  What he had felt for him while he’d been in town had been the memories of a little boy missing his father.  But it was so easy to idolize your father when you were seven.  Having to face someone who couldn’t be there for him because he’d gotten busted for dealing drugs…it was harder for a nearly grown man to respect that.  To forgive that.

Chris sat down at a table in the corner of the Norris Center, the main cafeteria on campus.  The others were getting food.  Will finished first because he had only gotten a couple of boiled eggs, some raw spinach, and a few almonds from the salad bar and a glass of water.  Chris shook his head at him.

“What?  You know, there’s a reason I’m so frickin’ hot and it’s not all genetics.”

Chris laughed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh?” he asked, a little startled.

“You laughed weird.  What are you thinking about?”

Chris watched Will pull apart his boiled egg.  He was only going to eat one half of one of the yolks.

“You want one?” Will offered the other yolk.

“Pass.  Um.  What’s wrong…well, your dad is atypical.”

“Chyeah,” Will laughed dryly.  “Wait.  What does my dad’s weirdness have to do with your mood?”

“Nothing.  I’m just making a point.  Your dad is weird, but have you ever been ashamed of him?”

“No.  Embarrassed, yes.  But not ashamed.  Are you ashamed of your dad?”

Chris hesitated.  He hadn’t said it out loud.  “Not…ashamed.  Just…like I don’t respect him.  I’m nervous about seeing him tomorrow.  Like, he’s going to be upset if I talk about Northwestern too much.  And he’ll be able to tell that I’m not all that excited to see him.  At least, not like I was when he first got out.  Now that I know him better, I just don’t have anything to talk to him about.  And I don’t want to hear about how his life is going.  Or what he’s doing.  Because he’s doing nothing.  He’s fixing cars because he can’t get a job doing anything else because no one hires an ex-con.  And then like, what’s wrong with me that I would look down on someone for being a mechanic?  It’s like, it’s because he’s my father that I think it’s pathetic.  But a lot of fathers are mechanics and they make decent money and support their families.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’re angry.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I can understand that.  I mean, your dad chose his job over his family.”

“Will—I never told you guys.  But, he had ties to a drug cartel in Colombia.  It was kind of like being in the mafia.  He couldn’t get out.”

“Then maybe he shouldn’t have had kids.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be a very good option for my existence.”

“Yeah, but it’s something you had no control over, and he did.  He chose to bring a kid into his life.  Whether you were aware of it or not.  And there’s what he did to your mother with the trial and everything.  I don’t think I could forgive my father if he hurt my mother and me like that.”

“Are you sure?  Your own father?  Isn’t there some sort of instinctive affection and loyalty you feel toward your blood family?”

Will slowly turned his glass of water in a circle.  “I don’t know if I can say anything that’s going to make you feel better about the way you feel.  But, I’m not going to blame you.  Or say you’re wrong.  In fact, I’m on your side of things.  From what you’ve told me, I think your father has a good heart and loves you, but love isn’t enough.”  Will’s eyes dropped to the table.  Chris almost reached out a hand to him—he looked so sad.  “Love isn’t enough,” he repeated softly.

Chris sat back in his chair, his brow creased in thought.  And a little concern for his friend.  Then Will looked up and shrugged.

“Sorry man.  That’s the best I got.”

Chris nodded.  “It helps.”

“You guys!”

Chris and Will looked up as Scott skipped over to their table and plunked his tray down.  Broccoli cheese soup splattered onto Will’s spinach.

“Does that count as eating dairy?” Julian asked as he sat next to Will.

Will ignored him.  “What’s going on, Scott?”

“Where’s Mr. Richardson?” Chris asked.

“He’s paying.  So we’re in line—”

“Scott!  Don’t let him pay for everything!”

“What?  He wanted to and he’s rich.  So—”

“So are you!  Pay for yourself.”

“Chris, you’re missing the point.”

“Which is?” Chris frowned, accepting his plate of pizza slices from Julian.

“We were standing in line and this girl—like, a college girl—totally started flirting with me.”

“Uh, she was flirting with me,” Julian corrected him.

“Uh, she just saw you first because you’re so large like a freak.  Then she saw me.”

Will patted Julian’s hand consolingly.

“Okay,” Chris sighed.  “So, some chick flirted with both of you.  Congratulations.”

“That’s not it!  She invited us to a frat party tonight.”  Scott bounced in his seat.  “We should go, right?”

“Is there a cover?” Will asked.

“A what?”

“Sometimes they charge for entry to those things to cover the costs of the kegs.”

“Oh.  I don’t know.  But if they do it can’t be that much.  But we should go.  It’ll be fun.  And you could hook up with someone, Chris.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“So you can get over Karen.”

“But, I’m not sure we’ve actually broken up.”

“Well, let’s just say you did because that would be best the thing for everybody.”

Will and Julian repressed laughs as Chris made a face at Scott’s callousness.

“Look, I think the only reason you keep giving into Karen and putting up with her crap is because you get sex from her.  I kind of wish Sophia had given it up to you because then you’d know you can do it with someone other than Karen.  You go to this party, find a cute girl, and bang!”  All three started as Scott slapped the table.  “You’re over Karen.”

Julian looked at Will.  “Does it work that way?”

Will shrugged a shoulder.  “I’m not sure.  Maybe.  It didn’t work for me though.”

“What do you mean?” Scott asked, peeved that someone was refuting his hypothesis.

“Well, I slept with Liz in order to help me get over Kendall, but it just made me realize that I was in love with h—her.”

“You slept with Liz?!” Chris and Scott shouted.

Will cocked his head slightly.  “I could have sworn I told all of you this.”

“Well, obviously you told Julian,” Scott said snarkily.

“Not until last night,” Julian said.

“Look, it’s unimportant.  My situation was different though.  I was in love and didn’t know it.  Chris just needs to lose his chick.”

Scott and Julian nodded agreement.  Chris’ jaw dropped.

“Are you guys serious?”

“Um, yeah,” Scott said.  “You’re not gonna go the distance with her and you know it.  Why make us suffer too?”

“Geez.  It’s not like she’s around you enough to irritate you to this point.”

“But she hurts you,” Scott said.  “And we can’t abide that.”

Chris sat back in his chair.  “That’s absurd.  She doesn’t hurt me.”  Chris held up a hand to stop Scott’s argument.  “Look.  I know I’m not gonna marry her one day.  But, I do enjoy her company for now.  And we only have two months of school left.  So, why shouldn’t I stay with her?”

“Because…you can have sex tonight.”

“With a stranger.”

“Sure.  Just use a condom.”

“You been getting advice from your dad lately?”

“Ooohhh,” Julian and Will covered their mouths and looked back and forth between the two.

Scott put his hands in the air and sat back.  “Oh my God.  You did _not_ just say that.”

Mr. Richardson joined them.  He looked around the table.  “Did I miss something?”

 

Scott

 

Scott was both excited and a little underwhelmed by his first frat party.  It wasn’t like they showed on TV or in movies, but it was still a party.  He pushed Chris around the room, trying to find a suitable “get over Karen” opportunity.  He’d long ago gotten over Chris’ dig at his father.  It was much more fun to try to find someone for him to sleep with.  He had no interest in any girls other than Antoinette, but when he was looking for someone else, suddenly he could see all their charms again.

“How about that one?” Scott pointed to a cute Asian with pink streaks in her hair.

“Too short.”

“Don’t be racist.”

“I’m not!” Chris laughed.  “But she doesn’t even come up to my shoulders.  It would be awkward.”

“Not if she were on top.”

Chris started to speak, and then nodded.  “True.”

“So?”

“Eh.”

“Chris!  You are not giving this the ‘old college try!’” Scott sniggered at his own joke.

“I feel guilty.”

“So text her and break up with her.”

“That’s mean.”

“So?  You already broke up with her via voicemail.  How is a text really any worse?”

Chris made a face at him.  “All right.  How about I would feel skeezy for having a one night stand.”

“Only if you make a habit of it.  I mean, I was skeezy for banging some guy’s girlfriend.  And that worked out.”

Chris shook his head.  “Your logic is flawed in so many ways.”

“Oh, come on!  You’re practically eighteen!  At a frat party!  And that hottie in the red tube top has been eyeing you all night.  If you don’t go talk to her and keep sticking with me, everyone’s going to think we’re gay.”

“And how is that different from usual?”

“Hush.”

“Which girl in the red tube top?”

“That one.”

Chris looked her over.  “She _is_ hot.”

Scott chuckled and patted his shoulder.  “I show you a dozen gorgeous girls and you don’t show interest in one until her.  I guess it’s true, huh?”

“What?”

“Once you go black you don’t go back.”

Scott laughed and then gasped in pain as Chris punched his arm.

“Geez.  See!  This is what Karen has done to you.  You have no sense of humor anymore.”

“Where are Will and Julian?”

“What, you want to leave?”

“Maybe.  Where are they?”

“Well, last time I saw Will he was in the center of a ten girl hunting party.  And Julian…”  Scott looked around. “Ah.  He’s making out with the Asian you turned down.”

Chris turned to look.  He smiled at the picture they presented.  Julian was sitting on a chair, and the girl still had to stand on her tiptoes to reach his lips.

“His blue hair goes well with her pink streaks,” he observed.

“Leave it to Julian to make a prank on somebody else a fashion statement for him.”

“Hi.”

Scott and Chris started as they were addressed by the hot girl in the red tube top.

“Um…” Scott began.  Then he turned and walked away.

“Some wingman,” Chris mumbled.

The girl laughed.  “Don’t worry, honey.  You don’t need one.”

 

Wednesday, March 12, 2006

 

Chris

 

“Morning!”

Chris grumbled his displeasure at being woken up and tried to turn over, but he couldn’t move because someone was straddling him.  He moved his arm from over his eyes and blinked into the bright sunlight streaming in through the wall of windows of Mr. Richardson’s apartment.  As he’d feared, they’d (read: Scott, Will, and Julian) decided to just stay with him the whole trip rather than find a hotel.  Mr. Richardson, of course, had readily agreed.  So, he’d just spent a second night on an air mattress with Will.  And it was he who was straddling him.  Fully clothed to his great relief, but he still glanced around to make sure they were alone in the room.

“What?”

“Happy birthday.”

“Right.  Birthday.”  Chris started to stretch and then realized that would move him against Will in way too intimate a location, so he froze.  “Can you get off me?”

“I will.  As soon as you tell me about last night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Scott told us he left you with a girl.  And when we found you at midnight to go home, you were coming from upstairs.  So…we decided not to ask about it then, since Scott was tipsy and Julian was still trying to get that girl’s phone number and I was…well, I figured it’d be more fun to pull the details out of you when we were alone.”

“Scott drank last night?”

“We all did.  Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Ooh.  So you don’t even have the ‘I was drunk’ excuse.  My guess is you and Karen are over.”

“God, Will, nothing happened.”

Will smiled and leaned forward, putting their faces very close and pressing their lower halves together in way too pleasing a manner to admit to.

“Don’t lie to me,” Chris.  “You got some last night.  Otherwise you’d have wood this morning.”

“And you’d want to feel that?” Chris tried to change the subject.

“It doesn’t bother me as much as you’d think.”

“Yeah, well, maybe not everyone is as pervy and adolescent as you and still wakes up like that.”

“I don’t wake up like that.  I get plenty of sex.”

“Yeah?  Is Kendall that good?”

“A- _maz_ -ing!” Will said, his voice going up in pitch on the second syllable.

“Fantastic.”

“So…how was it?”

“None of your business.  And besides, why the heck are you guys anxious to know about it?  If anything, shouldn’t you and Scott be more interested in getting Julian laid?  He’s still cherry flavored, isn’t he?”

Will laughed softly.  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

“So.  You did sleep with Liz, but other than that it’s just been Kendall in a completely monogamous sort of way, right?”

“Completely.”

“And Scott did sleep with some other guy’s girlfriend, but Antoinette is the only girl he’s ever slept with and the only one he ever plans to sleep with.”

“As far as I can surmise.”

“And Julian’s a virgin.”

“Yep.”

“So, why are you guys trying to turn me into a slut?”

“We’re not.  I don’t think.  So, are you one?”

“Will.  I can’t think with you on me like this.”

“Ha.  You got a crush on me?”

Chris grabbed his arms and flipped him to the side and off the bed.  The bed bounced around and then settled.  And then bounced some more as Will put his elbows on the mattress.

“Come on, Chris.  How was Shaniqua?”

Chris turned his head to gape at his friend.  “Geez.  I never knew before how racist my friends are.”

“Oh, come on.  Fine.  How was…Kelly?”

“Kenisha.”

“What?”

“Her name was Kenisha.”

“I wasn’t that far off!”

“It’s still racist.”

Will shrugged.  “Eh.”

Chris turned on his side and looked into Will’s eager green eyes.  They were quite bright this morning.

“It was all right.”

“Just all right?  That’s not good.”

“No, I mean.  It was fine.  It was good.  It was just…out of my comfort zone.”

“Why?  Was she into something weird?  Super kinky?  Toe-licking?  Belly button fetish?”

“Huh?  No!”  Chris batted his head.  “Weirdo.  I meant that I didn’t exactly feel comfortable having sex with a total stranger.”

“Why not?”

“Would you?”

Will shrugged in semi-thought, like he had had sex with a total stranger before and hadn’t really felt that uncomfortable with it.  Which, of course, was an absurd notion.

“Well, not at the time.  But, I guess afterward it bothered me a little.”

“Whoa.  Wait.  What?  I thought you said you’ve only ever slept with Liz and Kendall.”

“That is all.  But the first time I slept with Kendall…we hadn’t known each other very long.”

“How long?”

Will thought a second.  “Five hours or so.”

Chris stared at him.  “Will!”

“What?  Shit happens.  Anyway.  You don’t need to feel bad about it.  It was mutual, right?  I don’t think Keshana—”

“Kenisha.”

“Whatever.  Was looking for a lifetime commitment.”

“I know.  But…it doesn’t seem right.”

“Really?  Have you grown up in America and watched our TV shows about teenagers?  They sleep around all the time.  As long as you’re careful…you were careful, right?”

“Yes,” Chris grumbled.  He didn’t like talking about this kind of stuff.

“Well, then whatever.  It’s just a little sex, right?”

Chris tucked his arm under his body put his face against the mattress.  “I guess.”

“Aw.”  Will stroked his hair.  “How cute.  You have principals.”

“Hush up you freak.  It’s not principals.  It’s not like…I feel like it’s wrong exactly.  Just that…”

“It’s not what good boys like you are supposed to do?”

Chris frowned.  “Maybe.”

Will continued to finger comb his hair.  “I hope we didn’t convince you do something that went against what you wanted.”

“No.  I wanted her.”  Chris rolled his lips in and shook his head.  “You know what it is?  I think I feel bad that I don’t care about what I did.  That I don’t think having a one night stand was wrong or slutty.  But I feel like I should.  Because it is, right?”

Will shrugged.  “Depends on your definition I guess.  I am monogamous with Kendall, but we do some pretty…unorthodox things.  Does that make me a slut?”

“No.  I don’t want to know what you do, but I’m sure the answer is no.  Sluttiness is achieved by having multiple partners and not knowing their names.”

“Well, you know Kwanaynay’s—”

“Kenisha.”

“Whatever’s name.  I mean, come on.  Did you enjoy it?”

Chris flopped on his back again.

“None of your business.”

Will crawled on top of him.  “Tell me!”

“Forget it!”

Chris started to tickle him, knowing it would get him to shriek and try to get away, but while Will was shrieking, he couldn’t quite get away and was kicking his feet up in the air.

“What is going on out here?”  Scott demanded from the bathroom door with a foamy toothbrush in his hand.

“Ah!  Stop!  Let me go!”

Julian came out of the spare bedroom, dressed in sweatpants and nothing else, and took a seat on the edge of the air mattress to watch the tickling match.  His weight made it tilt toward him and Chris and Will rolled into him.  So, Julian secured one of Will’s arms and left him vulnerable to Chris’ attacks.  His shrieks got louder.

“Why are you on his side?!” Will screamed.

“Well, I figured you must have done something to deserve it.”

Scott joined them, without the toothbrush, but paused behind Julian.  He ran his fingertips down his back.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen your tattoo.  I’d almost forgotten what it looked like.”

“And we can all think of that as a good thing,” Chris said as he went for Will’s armpits and drew a keening squeal out of him.  “That means it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other naked.”

Scott laughed.  “True dat.”  He moved to sit down on the air mattress on the other side of Chris.

“Do you want to see the other one?” Julian offered.

“No!” Chris and Scott answered.  Will couldn’t answer because he was suffocating on his own shrieks.  Chris stopped tickling Will long enough to assess the tension under his body.

“I think we’re stressing the air mattress too much.”

“Then let me go!” Will cried.

“Morning boys.”

The four of them looked over toward the kitchen area.  Mr. Richardson was dressed in jeans and a button down shirt and looking highly amused.

“You know, I was in my room putting my shoes on, and I could have sworn I had a six year old girls’ slumber party going on out in my living room.”

Chris could feel every drop of blood in his body congregating in his face.  He flopped back onto the mattress and put a pillow over his head.  The others were struggling to roll off the giant raft and get to their feet, the whole time trying to explain away the squealing and tickling.

Chris couldn’t bring himself to face Mr. Richardson yet, so he disappeared into the bathroom to take a quick shower.  As he undressed he looked around the small guest bath: it was completely taken over by his friends.  Men really had no place to complain about all the crap women had to haul everywhere with them because as far as Chris could tell his friends were just as bad.  He supposed their group was a little unique as there was a make-up bag on the counter, but Julian hardly counted as anything usual.

When he was finished he returned to the living room, his mouth watering with the smell of eggs and sausage thick in the air.  To his surprise, Mr. Richardson wasn’t the one cooking.  He was sitting on a bar stool, sipping a cup of coffee, and watching the other three somehow manage to make breakfast without destroying his kitchen.  When Julian saw him, he called dibs on the shower and left Will to handle the eggs.  Chris sat on a stool next to Mr. Richardson and watched Will multi-task quite competently.  Scott was already eating and seemed to find his omelet more than satisfactory.

“Wow, Will, I’m impressed,” Chris said.

“About what?”

“Your cooking skills are way better than they were a couple of years ago.”

All three of the boys laughed to themselves remembering the Casserole Catastrophe of ’04.

“You say that like you don’t know who my father is,” Will said.  “Of course I picked up a few things.  Especially after I figured out that cooking and chemistry aren’t all that different.”

“I categorically disagree with that,” said Scott.

“Is your father a chef?” Mr. Richardson asked.

“No.  But I bet he wishes he was.  That he’d let my mom be the big hotshot lawyer and support him as he opened his own restaurant.  But, it’s probably a good thing he didn’t.  It probably would have failed.”

“Well, does that bright-eyed optimism run in your family?” Mr. Richardson laughed.

“Oh, he’s not being mean,” Scott said.  “His dad is a really good cook, but…”

“He likes to experiment,” Chris said.  “And it doesn’t always work.”

The boys all had a unique memory of one of Mr. Harder’s experiments gone awry and shuddered at the thought.  Mr. Richardson laughed at the faces they all made.

Before Will was allowed to go get dressed himself, Chris made him make pancakes.  Will complained that that was not what he was making, but then Chris pointed out it was his birthday and Will capitulated with better grace than usual.  Probably because he knew he wouldn’t be the one cleaning up the extra dishes.  Julian and Scott were on KP duty since Chris played the birthday card with them as well.  It took them all quite a while to get ready to walk out the door, but Chris didn’t try to hurry them.  He wasn’t looking forward to introducing them to his father.  He wanted to so badly not feel embarrassed about him, but he couldn’t stop the uneasy knot that was settled in his stomach.  He didn’t know what he had to be embarrassed about—his friends’ fathers weren’t typical specimens.  Heck, Julian’s father had been a witch.  And yet, ex-con sounded worse.

At last they were on their (noisy) way out the door, when Mr. Richardson put a hand on Chris’ shoulder to get him to hang back for a moment as the others continued on toward the elevator.

“So, you’re sure you feel comfortable taking the L?  Because I can drive you.”

“No, that’s okay.  I’m sure we’ll be fine.  Plus, my dad isn’t too happy that you paid for me to come here.  So, it might be best if…you’re…not there.”

Mr. Richardson nodded.  “I understand.”

“Also, if we get lost, we can just take a taxi.   My friends have enough money to pay for that.  They’re—well, two of them—are actually rich.  So, you really shouldn’t pay for them.  For anything.”

Mr. Richardson chuckled.  “I’ll try to remember that.”

“Chris!  Are you coming?!” Scott shouted down the hallway.

“Well, I better go before they all start yelling.”

“Oh, just one thing.  I don’t think I can wait until you get back.  It’s your birthday present.”

Chris felt the knot in his stomach get sloshed around.  “Mr. Richardson!  You’ve already done too much!”

“Relax, it didn’t cost me anything.  I just have a friend who works at the admissions office and I stopped by to see her yesterday when we were on campus.  And I know getting this in the mail is the exciting part, but I thought you wouldn’t mind if I gave it to you now.”

Mr. Richardson handed him an envelope.  Chris gaped at him for a second and then grabbed the letter, grinning ear to ear.  He opened it and read the first word, “Congratulations.”  Chris shouted and shook the letter as he stomped his feet.

“Yes!  Yes!  Y-yes!  God, I’m so happy I don’t have words!”  Chris screamed again and flung his arms around Mr. Richardson.  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Mr. Richardson laughed.  “I didn’t do anything.  You earned it.”

“Oh my gosh.”  Chris suddenly realized he was hugging Mr. Richardson and stepped back, a little embarrassed.  “Sorry about that.”

Mr. Richardson just smiled at him.  Then he nodded down the hall.  “Go on.  Now you’ll be in a good mood when you see your dad.”

“Yeah.  Ha!”

Chris took off down the hall and waved the letter at his friends.  When he reached them even their crossed arms and frowns couldn’t shake his grin.

“I take it you got in,” Scott grumped as Will took the letter and examined it carefully.

“I did, Scotty!”  Chris took his face his hands and shook him gently.  “I am so…God, I’m more relieved than happy right now.”

Chris let go of Scott and didn’t do a thing to fight Julian off as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.

“Good job.”

Will handed him the letter back.  “Looks legit,” he said unhappily.

Chris took the letter and finally started to read it all the way through.  “Hey, you of all people have no grounds for complaining.  Where are you going to school?”

Will shrugged and stepped onto the elevator.  Chris fingered the letter and half danced his way onto the elevator.  The other two followed him on.

“He is going to be impossible until one of us actually gets an acceptance letter too,” Scott whispered to Julian.

Chris ignored him.  Mostly because he _was_ going to be impossible until one of them could prove they could also get into college.  Sure Will was a genius, but he didn’t have a _letter_.  Nothing could bring him down today.

 

Julian

 

Julian traced designs in the condensation on his bottle of root beer with his index finger.  He was leaning back into the corner of the worn out, avocado green couch in Chris’ father’s small apartment.  It actually wasn’t too bad of a space: it was well maintained, kept clean, and the neighborhood didn’t look too rough.  At least, not in the daylight.  Chris was still ecstatic about getting into Northwestern, and his good mood had made the day out with his father a lot of fun instead of awkward like it had the potential to be.  His father was a friendly man and seemed genuinely interested in meeting and getting to know his son’s friends.  He took them downtown and they walked along the river to look at the landmark buildings of Chicago.  And they had the dreaded kielbasas Chris had warned them about.  Julian didn’t think they were half bad himself.  Then they had all returned to Mr. Navarro’s apartment and were listening to the man tell stories about Chris when he was little.  It was pretty funny, and amazing, how ingrained those short seven years were in the man’s mind.  Even if he didn’t regret what he’d done, he definitely regretted getting caught and everything it cost him.

Julian was sincerely impressed by the man’s obvious devotion to his son.  But that didn’t shake his feelings of unease when he was around him.  As far as people went, Mr. Navarro was a good enough guy, but he had a darkness in him.  A mean, selfish streak that could allow him to hurt others in order to get what he wanted.  And a self-righteousness that made him feel he was justified in taking those actions.  He certainly didn’t feel like he was in danger around the man, or like he would snap and do something awful.  But Julian couldn’t not feel that other side of him, and it made him uncomfortable.  And while the others leaned forward to laugh at his stories, Julian leaned away.  He’d told Chris how he felt about Mr. Richardson because he knew that he’d wanted to know…and Mr. Richardson was a good man.  He didn’t know if he should tell Chris his impressions of his father.  He hadn’t asked him about it, and telling someone their father gave off a bad vibe wasn’t a very nice thing to do.

Julian carefully watched Chris.  His super good mood changed his interaction with his father.  Though he’d never seen Chris around his father before, he could tell that Chris was more at ease with him than he ordinarily would be.  Which was of some relief to know that Chris was wary of his father.  Or at the very least, not seeing him through a little boy’s eyes.  Since Chris was pretty much grown and would be starting college and his own life soon, he wouldn’t have the same need to gain his father’s approval.  What he still might seek would be that bond and relationship that existed between and often eluded many fathers and sons.  Julian hoped he would find that relationship fulfillment through Mr. Richardson.  So, he would keep his opinions to himself, fairly confident that Chris would know the difference between respecting his father and blindly believing in him.

“So, Julian,” Mr. Navarro said, snapping him out his thoughts, “you’ve been awfully quiet over there.  I must admit you don’t look like the type Chris would be friends with, so you must be pretty extraordinary.”

His friends sniggered at the comment and Chris grumbled softly at his dad.  Julian sat up and put his bottle on the coffee table.  He looked at the man and tried to keep his expression neutral if not pleasant.

“What would you like to know about me?”

“Uh, well, I guess if I’m going to be honest I’d want to know what kind of influence you, all of you in fact, have on Chris.  To make sure it’s positive.  But, usually, one doesn’t just come out and ask something like that.”

“I like that you’re being straightforward.  As for any negative influences, I don’t do drugs.  So, I’ve never pushed that on him.  I do have piercings and tattoos, but he’s never expressed an interest in getting any himself and I’ve never asked.  As for sex, well he knows more on the subject than I do.  Anything else?”

He could see Will give him a questioning look.   Chris’ father just smiled tightly.

“Well, obviously since he’s gotten into a great college, his school work isn’t suffering.  The only thing left would be if he actually gets anything from your friendship.”

“Well, you’d have to ask him that, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you get out of it?”

By this point, even Scott was sensing the strange tension in the room.

“Your son has a strength that I envy.  One I don’t have myself and was foolish enough not to borrow from him when I was going through a difficult time.  I was lucky that I didn’t push him permanently away then, and now I can only hope he’s still willing to support me if I ever need him in the future.  So all I can do, is do and be for him whatever I’m capable of so that he’ll want to keep me in his life.  It is selfish since I do it so that I can keep him, but it’s not forced or false kindness.  We do like each other and enjoy each other’s company.”

“Usually,” Chris murmured.

Julian gave him a small smile and looked back at his father.  The man looked at him for several long seconds, and then he chuckled.

“Gillian did tell me you boys have…unique relationships with each other.”

“What?” Chris asked in annoyance.  “You’ve talked to Mom about us?”

“Well, of course.  I listen to her as much as she’s willing to talk nowadays, you know?  And she called before you came here to let me know I needed to be super nice to all of your friends or else you’d get all riled up and offended.”

Will and Scott laughed as Chris made a face and let out some offended noises.  His father laughed even harder and slapped his shoulder.

“That’s the same face he made first time I made him gut and clean his own fish.”

“How did that go?” Scott laughed.

Julian sat back into the couch as more stories of Chris’ early childhood entertained them all.  Julian still didn’t feel comfortable around his father, but picturing mini Chris crying about murder as he cut open an already dead fish was pretty amusing.  The rest of the afternoon went in this manner, Mr. Navarro telling stories and asking questions about Chris’ life back east.  There was never a lull in conversation and no one seemed to mind that Julian was more taciturn than usual.

As the day turned to night, Julian was thankful that Chris and the others turned down Mr. Navarro’s offer to stay for dinner.  The man didn’t seem offended as he’d only been able to offer them take out from McDonald’s.  Chris hugged his father and then the four of them set off on foot for the nearest L station which was several blocks away.  As they walked, Julian felt Chris put a couple of fingers on his wrist to get him to hang back.  Will and Scott got a few feet ahead of them, happily discussing an upcoming video game release.

Julian glanced over at Chris; he didn’t seem upset, just curious.

“So, what was wrong?” Chris asked softly.

“Nothing.  I’m sorry if I was down today.  Sometimes, I still have those days, you know?”

“Yeah, I do.  But that’s not what this was.  You didn’t…like him.”

“He was very nice.  Very generous considering his situation and obviously very proud of you.  He loves you, Chris.  Not every child gets that from their father.”

“Come on, Julian, don’t make me say it.  You didn’t like the way he… _felt_.  You got ‘bad vibes,’ right?”

Julian vaguely shook his head, but didn’t answer.

“I should know, Julian.”

“What your weird friend says he picked up out of the air?  No.  You only need to know what _you_ feel.  As long as you can separate your feelings from what you know to be truth.”

“Oh because that’s so easy for humans to do.”

Julian smiled.  “Yeah, well.  I didn’t say it was easy, but I trust that you’re capable of it.”

“Oh, come on, Julian.  Throw me a bone.  You want me to be there to support you in the future, right?”

He grinned and nudged his friend’s shoulder as Julian scoffed at him.

“That’s an underhanded way of getting what you want.”

Chris didn’t reply, but met his eyes.  Julian sighed and looked forward, watching Will’s easy saunter.

“Let’s just say that when you enjoy Mr. Richardson’s company and go to him for consul, you shouldn’t feel guilty about it, okay?”

He saw Chris nod in his peripheral vision.

“Yeah.  That’s actually getting easier.”

 

Thursday, March 13, 2006

 

Chris

 

The four of them were seated at Mr. Richardson’s small kitchen table in his “breakfast nook.”  They’d just finished a discussion about whether or not Scott’s negative feelings on the phrase “breakfast nook” were one: valid, and two: worth the time to discuss.  They were considerably well rested since they hadn’t gone out last night as they’d intended and their chaperone had suggested they not, ie: told them no they couldn’t go out and wander the streets of Chicago by themselves until whenever in the morning like they had on Tuesday.  So, Chris’ birthday celebration had consisted of a grocery store birthday cake (which was really good) and a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit.  Will had won even though he’d played by himself and Julian and Scott and Chris and Mr. Richardson had made up the other two teams.

Even with that being his evening, he couldn’t really say it was a low key birthday.  He was in Chicago after all, he’d gone to an actual college frat party the night before and made temporary but very good friends with an attractive co-ed, and he’d spent the whole day with his father—who had given him the pink slip to what amounted to a hunk of junk but would be a decently restored and running ’67 Impala by the time he came back to Chicago for school.   Or very shortly after that.  His father was rebuilding the engine in his down time at the shop he worked at, and was able to get some good deals on new interiors and a paint job.  Chris had been amazed that his father would be able to afford an extra car, even if it was old and he was just fixing it up, but it seemed like his father was doing pretty well with his mechanics gig.  Chris had wondered if there was another reason he had reasonable cash flow, but his father had assured him he was keeping his nose clean.  It was just that nowadays mechanics could charge whatever they liked to fix cars because they had become so complicated that the average Joe couldn’t take care of the little things anymore.

So now they were trying to figure out what they wanted to do on their last full day in Chicago.  They’d visited the Sears Tower after leaving Northwestern on Tuesday, so they were debating if they wanted to do more touristy things or if they just wanted to wander around downtown.  Will was adamantly against anything that didn’t have a plan attached to it.  They’d asked Mr. Richardson if it would be possible to get some cheap seats at either a White Sox or a Cubs game, but the pre-season hadn’t started yet.  Which Chris was kind of thankful for; he didn’t want to be disloyal to the Yankees.  Though if he moved to Chicago, maybe he should think about changing his allegiance.  He’d probably pick the Sox since the National League was a joke.

“So,” said Mr. Richardson, putting his hands on back of Chris’ chair, “Have you guys made a decision yet?”

They all looked at each other and then shook their heads.  Mr. Richardson smiled.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here until you decide.  You have the keys still, I hope.”  Chris nodded confirmation.  “Then I’ll head on out.  I need to take care of that storage unit before the managers sell it off to junk buyers.”

Chris turned to look at Mr. Richardson.  “The one with my mom’s stuff in it?”

“Yep.”

Chris chewed on a corner of his lip.  Then he said, “Would you mind if I went with you?  To see what’s there?”

Mr. Richardson half-shrugged.  “I don’t see why not.  Some of it may be your stuff too.”

“Really?” Scott asked.  “Can we all go?  I want to see if he had a teddy bear after all and his whole ‘I never had stuffed animals as a kid’ thing is complete BS.”

Chris made a face at him, and Julian and Will looked at Mr. Richardson.  He seemed surprised that they all appeared interested in going.

“Well, if you’re sure that’s how you want to spend your day, I have no problem taking you all with me.  It would actually be nice to have some help in clearing it out.”

“Wait…we’re not talking about a warehouse, right?” Scott asked.

Mr. Richardson laughed.  “Not that big.  Don’t worry.”

The storage unit turned out to be a ten by ten foot cube that wasn’t even completely full.  There were still quite a few boxes though, and half an inch thick layer of dust on everything.  They spent the first thirty minutes doing more sneezing than sorting.  Chris found that a lot of the “junk” was his father’s possessions.  Some high school yearbooks and letters from his family.  His fishing gear was in one corner and Chris found the pole that used to be his when he was seven.  Scott found a box that had keepsakes from his parents’ wedding.  Chris wondered if his mother had put all of this in storage before or after the conclusion of the trial.  None of his father’s old clothes were present, so maybe they had been thrown out or given to Good Will, and what was leftover were things that couldn’t be donated.  But then why would his mother keep the man’s fishing pole when her goal was to disappear with her son and never see him again?  He decided he shouldn’t try to figure out what his mother was thinking.  Quite possibly there hadn’t been a whole lot of rational thinking going on right after the trial.

Chris walked over to Mr. Richardson and saw the man looking through an old stack of Cosmo magazines.

“Why on Earth would she keep these?” the man murmured.

Chris smiled.  Apparently he was just as perplexed by Gillian Pelletier’s thought process as her son was.

“Mr. Richardson?”

“Yes?” he looked up.

“You know, I’ve noticed a lot of this stuff is…well.  It’s…”

“Your father’s?”

Chris nodded.

“Yeah, I noticed that too.  I guess I should probably bring him out here so that he can take what he wants.”

“Will that…be a problem?”

“I don’t think so.  We’ve never had a bad relationship.  He did actually call me to ask me about what I was doing, trying to buy you—”

“Buy me?” Chris asked, startled.

“Well, he was just concerned why I was willing to do so much for you.  Just like you were.  So, I told him what I told you.  He said that was a little messed up and I should just go knock up some broad.”

“Oh, gosh,” Chris laughed softly and put a hand to his head in embarrassment.

“I told him I probably should have, but it was too late now.  I don’t think he’s so much upset at me that I do these things for you as he is at himself that he can’t.”

Chris dropped his hand.  “More like he’s angry at me for accepting it.”

Mr. Richardson put a hand on his shoulder.  “You shouldn’t feel bad about accepting something that is offered to you freely and with a good will.  You told me yourself you don’t mind taking charity.  And I don’t consider this to be charity.”

“I know.  It’s not you.  Or me, really.  I just…I don’t want him to feel like I’m rejecting him.  Or disappointed in him for not being able to do the same things for me.  I understand how he must feel, and I don’t want him to think that I’m—”

“Honestly, Chris, I think you’re much too concerned about your father’s feelings.  He’s not innocent in all this.”

Chris was surprised by Mr. Richardson’s words.  He hadn’t said them angrily, but this was the first sign he’d gotten from the man that maybe he had a problem with his client.  He’d gone back to thumbing through the magazines, and then turned away to throw the whole stack into a garbage bag.  Then he continued digging through the box he’d been working on.  Chris tried to think of something to say, but was saved from having to do so when Will called out his name.  He walked away from Mr. Richardson and found Will kneeling in front of a box and digging through its contents.  He pulled out a stack of pictures and handed them to Chris.  He took them, and then sunk to his knees beside Will as he saw the first picture was of himself at about four years of age, dressed in matching Yankees jerseys with his father.

“She didn’t burn them,” Chris said quietly.

“Yeah, looks like,” Will said.  “There’s dozens of them in here.”  He took out a stack for himself and the two of them went through their piles, laughing every now and then and showing a picture to the other.  Chris was amazed at how many pictures there were.  They were all poorly composed and often blurry, so his mother must have been taking them.  There were pictures from trips to the park, outings to Lake Michigan, birthdays, Christmases, visits to his aunt’s house—his father’s sister whom he hadn’t seen since they left Chicago.  He found a picture of himself dressed up as a cowboy one Halloween and started to show it to Will when he noticed his friend staring intently at a photo in his hand.

“What is it?” Chris asked.

Will looked up, somewhat startled.  “Oh.  What?  Do you have something?”

He took the picture from Chris and laughed at the five year old Chris’ sticky grin under his bright red, embroidered cowboy hat.  Chris reached out and took the picture at the top of the pile from Will’s hand.  Will didn’t try to stop him, but just watched him while he looked at it.  Chris fingered the edges of the old photograph, and then stuck it in his back jeans pocket.  He looked at Will.

“So.  What else is in there?”

 

Will

 

Will shoved his dirty underwear into a corner of his suitcase.  He didn’t need to be prissy like Julian and stick it in a plastic bag to separate it from his clothes.  He did wrap up the Chicago style deep dish pizza pan he’d gotten for his father in a T-shirt and hoped it wouldn’t get him pulled out of line at security.

“Hey, Will?”

“Yeah?”

Will looked to the door of the guest bedroom, and Chris was holding a blue sock in his hand.

“Is this yours?  I found it when I was untangling the sheets on the air mattress.”

“Oh, yeah.  That’s mine.  Thanks.”

Will stuffed it in the corner with his underwear.

“I don’t understand why you toss and turn so much.”

“Uh, that’s not me,” Will said.  “When I’m asleep, I’m dead.  You’re the one who squirms around.  My guess is you and I always pair up for sleep so well because even if you tossed me off the bed I probably still wouldn’t wake up.”

Chris seemed to be in thought.  “Maybe that’s why Julian always glares at me the next morning when we share a bed.”

“He is a fairly light sleeper.”

“Hunh.  Oh, well.”

Chris turned to leave, but Will called out to him.  He looked back.

“Um.  About that picture this afternoon…”

Chris walked to the door and closed it, and then pulled the picture out of his back pocket.  He looked at the image and then handed it to Will.  Will didn’t think there was anything obviously scandalous about the photograph.  It was just a man sitting on grass and holding a toddler, both of them grinning at the camera.  The man was clearly Dean Richardson and Will assumed the toddler was Chris.  Will looked at his friend: he looked unperturbed, but there was a tightness around his eyes.  He didn’t say anything.  Just waited for Will to work it out himself.

“This is you, right?” Will started.

Chris nodded.

“So, I, um, I guess I just thought you’d said you’d never met him until the parole hearing last summer.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Will looked at the picture again.  This wasn’t a toddler being held by a stranger.

“Do you remember him at all?”

Chris shook his head.  “I don’t think I do.  I was young though, you know?  So maybe ‘Uncle Dean’ was just someone who blended into my mom’s other friends.  Or maybe she stopped seeing him when I was old enough to start remembering him.”

“Do you—do you think she was having an affair with him?”

Chris half-laughed and shook his head again.  “That’s just it.  No, I don’t.  I really believe that nothing happened between them while my mom was married to my dad.  I guess they were just friends, but my dad really seems to only know him as his lawyer.  So, why would my mother hide the relationship if she wasn’t having an affair?”

Will handed the photo back to Chris and he looked at it again for a few more seconds before he stuck it back in his pocket.  He looked up and Will felt like he was silently pleading with him to offer up some explanation.

“Well.  You know, a lot of times people make a bigger deal out of things than they really are.  And they get wrapped up in it and think that they have to hide things.  Or—it’s hard to understand other people’s reasoning sometimes.  It’s hard enough trying to understand your own mind, and when you try to figure out what someone else is thinking, well that just makes you think that something bad is going on.  Because people usually assume the worst when they don’t understand what’s going on.  It’s kind of human nature to think that it’s something bad when someone is hiding something.  It’s not always.”

Will looked at Chris, wondering if his rambling helped at all.  Chris looked like he was thinking, but Will couldn’t tell if he was mulling over what he’d just said or had tuned him out and gotten lost in his own thoughts.

“Yeah, that may be true,” Chris finally said, “but like you said, it’s hard not to assume something bad when your mother hides something from you.”

“Yeah.  But, seriously, not everyone who hides something is doing it for bad reasons.”

“Like you?” Chris asked with a smile, turning the conversation on him.

“What do you mean?”

“What is with all the secrecy around Kendall?  What’s the big deal?”

Will turned back to his suitcase and started creating a little pocket for his spare pair of shoes to fit in.  “There’s no big deal.  It’s just not something I’m comfortable talking about.”

“With us?” Chris laughed.   “There’s nothing we don’t feel comfortable talking about with each other unless it’s something we’re ashamed of.”

Will whirled around and blurted, “I’m not ashamed of him.”  Hoping Chris wouldn’t catch his slip, he continued on quickly.  “There’s nothing wrong or bad about our relationship.  It’s just that, she _is_ older than me.  And while I am 18, it’s probably better that we not publicize our relationship while I’m still in high school.”

“Okay, okay.  I’m not trying to attack you or malign your relationship with your a- _maz_ -ing Kendall.  It’s just that when we can’t meet her, we can’t give her our seal of approval and as such, we’re worried about you.”

Will smiled.  “She’s fine.  She’s perfect.  She’s all I need.”

“All?” Chris asked.  “Have you really broken free of your co-dependency from us?  Tell me how you did it.  I feel like we could all stand to do a little bit of the same.”

Chris laughed, but Will couldn’t.  And he wasn’t quite sure why.

“Well, anyway.  If you want, you can talk about the picture to Scott and Julian.  It’s not that big a deal.  Scott already knows how far my delusion went, so.”

“Which was how far?”

Chris shrugged.  “Nothing true as it turns out.”

“Most delusions aren’t.  By definition.”

Chris rolled his eyes at him and started for the door.  He paused with his hand on the knob.

“Hey, Will, how _much_ older than you is she?”

“Oh.  Well.  You know.  A few.  Years.”

Chris tapped his fingers on the knob and gave Will a look to let him know that was not a satisfactory answer.  Will sighed and mumbled his answer.

“What?”

“She’s 33.”

“What?!  Oh my God!”  Chris starting laughing hard.

“Shut-up!  It’s not that big of a difference!”

Chris put a hand up and tried to control his laughing.  “You’re right.  Sorry.  I mean, in genius years you’re fifty something right?  Technically _you’re_ the cradle robber.”  Chris laughed again.

“There is no cradle robbing going on!  I mean, the two of us know what sex is.  Can you say the same of a sophomore you recently seduced?”

Chris wasn’t upset by the comment.  He just kept laughing.  “Yeah, yeah.  You and I are the big bad wolves.”  He continued to giggle as he left the bedroom.

Will made a face at his back and slammed the lid of his suitcase shut.  Well, if he thought about it, amusement was a better reaction than disgust or uncomfortable shock.  If that’s how they handled the age thing, then maybe learning she was a he wouldn’t be so terrible.  Will smiled and rolled his eyes at himself.  Yeah, like that was going to go easily at all.

 

Friday, March 14, 2006

 

Chris

 

Chris felt the knots forming his stomach already just looking at the large terminal as they drove up to it.  What was wrong with him?  Why couldn’t he be like a normal human being and handle a little airplane ride?  The other three seemed perfectly calm and were pulling their bags out of the trunk of Mr. Richardson’s car and thanking him for a place to stay and for feeding them and showing them around.  Mr. Richardson said he was happy to do it and any time they wanted to come visit Chris he would be happy to host them again if they didn’t want to crowd into one dorm room.  Chris picked up the bag with their communal toiletries and told them to go ahead to the security line while he checked it.  They shouted and waved goodbye to Mr. Richardson and began to noisily make their way through O’Hare International Airport.

Chris turned to Mr. Richardson and the man offered him a hand.  Chris shook it.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed your time here.  And congratulations again on getting into Northwestern.”

Chris smiled.  That still made him really happy.  “Thank you.”

“I hope when you come in the fall that we can meet up every now and then.  I know you’ll be busy and will have more interesting things to do, but if you’re willing to indulge an old man—I’d like the company.”

Chris nodded.  “I will.  I mean, I want to.  I am grateful for everything you’ve done for me.  And I really like you.  And I want us to continue our friendship.  I really do.”

Mr. Richardson smiled, but seemed a little confused by his wording.  “Good, I’m glad.”

“I really want to.  But…don’t call me or e-mail me or try to contact me at all until you can start telling me the truth.”

Chris pulled the picture Will had found yesterday out of his back pocket and handed it to Mr. Richardson.  He didn’t turn and walk away; he wanted to see his reaction.  Mr. Richardson looked confused and a little hurt as he took the picture, but it only took a moment for it to register with him what he was looking at.  He didn’t look up.  He didn’t try to speak.  Chris waited, watching his face.  There was some emotion Chris couldn’t quite identify flickering across his features, but he mostly kept his face blank.  After a couple of minutes of no response, Chris turned and got in the bag drop line.

He kept replaying every second of that brief conversation over and over again his head.  Thankfully his friends assumed that he was so withdrawn because he was nervous about flying, so they left him alone.  He was so absorbed in his thoughts he didn’t even allow his hind brain to force fear on him during the flight.  He was still panicky during the takeoff and landing, but he swallowed his pride and held Scott’s hand.  It did inexplicably make him feel better.

At the city airport, Will and Julian took off on the metro and Chris caught a ride with Scott’s dad.  He was saved from having to talk too much as Scott related the whole week to his father in great detail.  Towards the end his father did manage to ask him if they’d actually canceled the hotel reservations or if he was going to be charged for them anyway.  Scott shrunk down in his seat and looked apologetically at his father.  Chris rescued him by saying that Mr. Richardson had called for them.  In fact, he had called them the first night they were there, so he even saved him the late cancellation fee.  Apparently Mr. Richardson had assumed even then that they would all just wind up staying with him.

Mr. Ramsey dropped him off at his house and Scott said he would come see him tomorrow.  Chris nodded and thanked Mr. Ramsey for the ride.  Then he turned and looked at his front door.  It still looked aged and broken down, but it didn’t look as bad now that he had a future away from it.  He wondered how his mother would handle the news that he was about to have a $40,000 per year tuition.  That was way too much to ask for in student loans, especially for four years.  He hoped Mr. Richardson would grow a pair and save their relationship because he was definitely going to need a wealthy patron.

Chris used his keys to unlock the door, and inside he could smell something delicious cooking.  His mother rarely cooked anymore since she was so busy all the time, but when she did it was better than Mr. Harder’s greatest successes.  He dropped his suitcase off by the door and walked into the kitchen.  His mother was using a wooden spoon to stir the contents in a pot on the stove.  She looked up when she heard his movement.  She smiled and ran across the kitchen.

“Hi honey!”  She hugged him tightly.  “Are you okay?  How was the flight?  Did you have a good time?  Tell me everything that happened.”  She let him go and hurried back to her pot.

“You made me call you twice a day, Mom,” Chris said good-naturedly.  “I don’t think I have anything left to tell you.”

“Sure you do!  I never heard what the boys gave you for your birthday.  And I have a couple of things for you.  You can open them at the table.  Dinner will be ready in two and a half minutes.  As soon as the rolls are done.”

“Okay.  Let me use the bathroom and wash my hands.”

“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea.  I’ll set the table.”

As Chris was coming out of the downstairs bathroom he paused as he looked in the study.  There were three bookshelves in the room.  One held an extremely outdated encyclopedia and equally as old dictionary and thesaurus.  The second held his mother’s romance novels, his children’s books, and most of the assigned readings he’d been given over the years.  The third held picture albums, his baby books, and his mother’s old yearbooks.  He grabbed the one from her sophomore year and started to thumb through it as he walked back into the kitchen.

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yes?” she asked, setting a casserole on some trivets.  “What have you got there?”

“Your high school was pretty big, right?  There were a lot of students who went there.”

She smiled and tilted her head in question.  “Yes.  About 1500 in all the grades.”

“So, you couldn’t possibly know everyone who went there.  Even some people in your own grade.”

“Chris, what on earth brought all this on?”

“What a coincidence, huh?” Chris asked he set the open book in front of his mother.  “The man randomly assigned to defend your husband in court just happened to go to high school with you.”

He pointed to Dean Richardson’s sophomore picture, which was on the opposite page of the one his sixteen year old mother beamed at him from.  He looked at his mother.  She had a hand to her face and looked as if she was regretting lying about knowing Mr. Richardson.  Which she should.

“Were you the girlfriend that dumped him when you went off to college?”

She looked appalled.  “He told you that?!”

“Just that his high school girlfriend dumped him.  He didn’t say who.  But I kind of figured it out.”

“H-how?”

“Well, we cleaned out that storage unit of yours.  It’s mostly Dad’s stuff, but there were a lot of pictures in one of the boxes.  And it wasn’t very nice of you to tell me you burned all the pictures of my father.”

His mother let out a soft noise and bit her lip.  Chris tried very carefully to keep his voice gentle.  He wasn’t really angry with her and he didn’t want her to think he was.

“One of the pictures in the box—”

“The one at Humboldt Park.”

“What?”

“Humboldt Park.  It’s a park in Chicago.  I was there with you one day and bumped into him.  I took a picture on a whim.”

“Mom, don’t start making new lies.”

“I’m not.  I swear.  I didn’t see him much after high school.  We lost touch.  When I saw him that day, I was happy to see him.  I always liked him.  And you smiled so brightly when he held you…I couldn’t resist.”

Chris didn’t say anything, but locked eyes with his mother.  She straightened her shoulders and stood a little taller.

“I’m sure that your mind has been running wild since you saw that picture, but—”

“Longer than that.”

“But…your _father_ is your father.  And he was my husband.  I felt it would be disrespectful if he knew I had seen an old boyfriend.  And I’m glad I kept it from him because after I pleaded with Dean to take his case, then your father wouldn’t know it was a favor.  He doesn’t take favors very well.”

“Why would a man who you didn’t really keep in contact with after high school be willing to do something that huge for the girl who broke his heart when he was eighteen?”

His mother blinked.  “He said I broke his heart?”

“It was implied.”

“Well, that’s something you’ll have to ask him.  Besides, it’s not like he didn’t benefit from it.  It was very high profile and he got a lot of press and prestige when he won it.”

“It’s not like he knew he would win it when he took it.”

“I don’t know why, Chris.  Maybe that’s just the effect I have on men!”

Chris laughed and covered his face, embarrassed.  “Mom!”

“Well.  You asked.  Now sit down and eat some dinner and tell me about your birthday.  And your father.  Tell me how he’s doing.”

Chris groaned, still in shock by his mother’s bold declaration, but he sat down.  He looked at his mother and she pursed her lips together.  He smiled and reached out and took her hand.  She squeezed his tightly.

“Mom.  I understand your past is your business, but I need you to tell me the big things.”

“But it wasn’t supposed to be.  Dean never was.  And after what he did, your father never was.  I wanted you to live a life free from that mess.  I guess I should have known I couldn’t protect you from it forever.  But you can’t blame me for wanting to try.”

Chris wasn’t sure about that.  But he felt like he understood his mother a little better now.  He gave her hand a squeeze back.  She quickly brushed back what may have been a tear with her free hand.

“Well, we better eat before it gets cold.  And I want you to tell me what you boys really did to Dean all week long.”

“Oh, please.  He loved having us.”

“I bet.  He always did say he wanted to have a big family,” she smiled.

“I wonder how come he never got married then,” Chris mused as he served himself a large portion of the steaming casserole.  He glanced at his mother.

She put on a purposefully oblivious face and said, “I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”

 

Scott

 

Scott shuffled through his stack of postcards and then thrust one at his father.

“See, we went here too.  We went to the top.  It didn’t seem all that tall.”

“Mm-hmm.  Do you think maybe you can wait to show me those when I’m not driving?”

“Hunh?  Oh, yeah, sure.”

“How many did you buy?”

“I dunno.  Like, thirty.”

“Thirty?!  What on earth for?”

“They were ten for a dollar.  And I forgot my camera.”

His father laughed.  “Oh, my son.  You couldn’t be more different from me and I couldn’t imagine you being more perfect.”

Scott frowned at the postcards in his hand and then looked at his father.

“Was that something good?”

“Absolutely,” his father grinned as they turned onto their street.

They made the turn onto their long driveway, and Scott spotted a vehicle in by the garage.  He instantly recognized the Purple Monster.

“Oh, God.  Is Mom here?”

His father braked hard in the middle of the driveway.  He stared at the car.

“Oh, great,” he moaned and dropped his forehead against the steering wheel.  “What is she doing here?”

“You didn’t know she was here?”

“She wasn’t here when I left to pick you up.  And I don’t think she was supposed to pick up the twins or anything.”

“Did you tell her about my trip?”

“Yes, I made sure to let her know the dates and times and sent her your flight information.  And I told her you would be with the other three.  And you all were old enough and responsible enough to make the trip, especially since you will all be on your own in college in a few months anyway.  But even still, there was going to be adult supervision.”  His father looked at him.  “That Mr. Richardson person was a chaperone of some sort, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, yes.  He played our tour guide and since we stayed with him we were practically always with him.  Except that night we went to a frat party.”

“You went to a frat party?”

“Unh-huh?”

“Where?”

“At Northwestern.  Chris got in by the way.  And I could tell by the way he got excited that he’s definitely going to go there.  He was…giddy.  I’ve never seen him giddy.”

“Does he know how much it costs to go there?”

“I think he’s bound and determined at this point.  He’ll figure something out.”

His father nodded.  “Okay.  Well, let’s go see what your mother wants.”  He started to drive forward again, pressing the button on the garage door opener.  “Oh, don’t mention to your mother that you went to a frat party.”

“Dad.  I may be clueless sometimes, but I’m not stupid.”

His father chuckled.  “We’ll see.”

When they entered the house, Coco was there, wagging her tail and getting her front paws as high as their waists.  She was getting big.  Scott got on his knees and hugged her around the neck.  His father grabbed him by the collar and made him stand up.

“I’m not going in there alone,” he muttered.

Scott would have laughed or scoffed at him, but he kind of felt the same way.  The crossed the foyer to the kitchen and peeked around the corner.  Scott’s mother and Linda were sitting at the kitchen table.  They had coffee mugs in their hands, but neither was drinking from them.  Neither was speaking either.  They turned and looked at the entrance when Scott and his father entered.  Linda’s face turned to sheer relief.  Scott didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman so happy to see his father in all his life.  And that was really saying something because he had seen quite a few women become quite excited when David Ramsey entered a room.

He crossed the kitchen and bent down to kiss Linda on the cheek before greeting his ex-wife.  Scott wondered if he’d done that just because his mom was there or if he always greeted Linda like that.  Scott had never paid attention.

“What beings you here, Susan.  Unannounced.”

“I have every right to come visit my children whenever I want,” she said stiffly.

“Actually, you don’t.  That’s what sole custody means.”

Scott quickly stepped in before his parents got into it.  “Hi, Mom.  How are you?”  He hugged her and when he stood up he leaned against the table, mostly blocking his father from her view.

“Hi, Scott.  How was your trip?”

“Really, really great.  We had a lot of fun.  And visiting Northwestern’s campus has gotten me excited.  I really want to visit some campuses in state before I decide which school to go to.  You said you’d take me, right?”

“Well, yes, of course.”  She smiled, clearly happy that Scott was asking her to be involved in his life.  Then her smiled faded a little.  “I’m just not sure how much time I’ll have coming up, though.  I have my new job.  And the clinic is open on the weekends, so since I’m the newest, sometimes I get the bad shifts.”

“Yeah, I understand.  We can work around it.”

“And I’m sure I can handle a few trips myself,” his father said.

Scott looked over his shoulder at his father and widened his eyes at him, silently asking him to be civil.  He could see his father was in no mood for it tonight.  He moved from behind his wife and stood in front of his ex-wife.

“Susan, why are you here?”

His mother stood up.  “Why are you always so hostile?”

“Because whenever we’re in the same room we end up fighting and screaming and I don’t want to deal with that tonight.”

“Well whose fault do you think it is that we always scream and fight?” his mother demanded in a shrill voice.

“Clearly from my expression, words, and demeanor, I think you are.”

Linda stood up quickly and gently took his father’s arm.  “David.  Susan stopped by because Joanna asked her to.  She…something happened today.  And she needs her mother.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing you couldn’t do for her.”

“David, sometimes a girl needs her own mother.”

Scott was concerned about the poison dripping from his parents’ eyes as they looked at each other, but he was distracted by Linda’s words.

“What happened?” Scott asked.  “Is something wrong?”

“No.  She just…needs someone to talk to.  Now that she’s a woman.”

His father started and whipped his head to look at Linda.  “She had sex?” he whispered hoarsely.

“No, you moron,” his mother said.  His father turned back to look at her with displeasure at being called a moron.  “She started her period today.”

“Okay, whoa!” Scott cried, throwing his hands in the air.  “I don’t need to be here for this conversation.  I’m going to go unpack.”

 

Julian

 

Julian found himself in the Blue Boy lobby.  Usually after a trip, people went home.  So, why was he here?  He wasn’t concerned about Cornelius; Mr. Harder had taken him home with him when he’d learned that he would be abandoned by his wife and only child for a week.  Plus, Will had asked him not to pick him up until tomorrow since he’d told his parents he wasn’t coming home until Saturday.  Julian had not asked him where he intended to stay tonight and did everything in his power not to think about it.

Adam was at his desk.  Julian dragged his suitcase along the floor, watching Adam’s brow furrow deeper and deeper with each wailing squeal.  The racket echoed for a moment after he stopped.  He shook his head at Adam.

“Why are you here so late on a Friday night?  Don’t you have a life?”

Adam ran his tongue along his upper teeth, and didn’t reply.  Julian just grinned at him and walked around the desk, dragging his suitcase.

“Someday soon, Adam, you’re going to suddenly realize you’re madly in love with me.”

He flopped his suitcase on one of the benches.  Adam turned to his computer and snorted indignantly.

“Please.  Do I look like Hayden to you?”

Julian turned back from heading to the elevators.  “What?  Hayden’s in love with me?”

“Well, yeah.  Why do you think he’s so mean to you?”

“I thought it was because I’m straight.”

“Well, yeah.  He’s a heterohomo.”

“A what?”

“You know.  One of those gays that only falls for straight guys.”

Julian laughed.  “Are you kidding me?”

“Do I ever kid with you, Julian?”

“That is so awesome to know.  He’s a little too tall and wiry for me, but I wouldn’t mind having the power to render him motionless so I can gaze into those pretty, pretty eyes of his.”

He heard Adam let out a small laugh.  “Be careful you don’t get hypnotized by them.  He’s already expressed an interest in thoroughly examining you for other piercings.”

Julian started slightly.  “Oh, my.”  He turned and headed for the elevators again.  He was going to have them all eating out of his palm before too long.  He wasn’t sure what having a horde of boy whores at his beck and call would get him, but he would take it.  He hopped off on the second floor and looked around the entertaining room.  The lights were down low for the evening and over the sounds of the soft jazz music being pumped through the well concealed speakers were the sounds of a sporting event being watched on one of the large flat screens in one corner.  That part of the room actually looked like a normal sports bar as the men jumped out of their chairs to cheer or moan the last play.  That was until one of the men turned and planted a congratulatory kiss on one of the male waiters bringing another round of beers.  The rest of room looked like the waiting room of a brothel with the prostitutes draping themselves over furniture and clients and standing in ways that showcased their best assets.  Well, he supposed that’s what it was tonight as he looked up at the fifth floor balcony and saw that all the doors had the glowing red “occupied” signs above the knobs.  He wondered how the ones on the floor decided who got to go upstairs next.

Julian started for the bar, wondering if Leo was working, but he didn’t get one foot on the main floor before he was grabbed forcefully and hauled back onto the elevator.  He turned a glare on Rylan and realized he didn’t have to look up quite as high as he used to in order to make eye contact.

“What?” he groused.  He didn’t comment on the fact that they were going up instead of down to the lobby.

“Julian.  You are a high school student.  And straight.  And not a prostitute.  Please don’t go wandering the big gay snake pit when it’s dark and easy to get pulled into a corner and molested.”

Julian grinned and nudged him.  “You worried about me?”

“I will not forgive you if I go to jail for your foolishness.”

“Hmph.”

“Why are you here anyway?  Didn’t you ask for this weekend off?  Your schedule for next week won’t be ready until Monday.”

“I know.  I just.  I didn’t feel like going home.”

The elevator dinged and they stepped off on the top floor, at Rylan’s office.  Julian followed him as he placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it.

“This is why I stay away from orphans,” he muttered around the cigarette.

“What?” Julian laughed.

“The boys I have that ran away from home lost their parents because they hated them.  They wanted to get away from that family dynamic.  You liked your parents.  And now I’m your surrogate father.”

Julian snorted.  “Hardly.  You’re nothing like my father.”  He followed Rylan to his private bar and watched the man pour himself a couple of fingers of Scotch.  “Maybe my Italian mobster godfather…”

Rylan leaned on the bar, one arm holding the cigarette out as he took a sip of his drink.  And unless Julian was imagining things, he was hiding a small smile.  Julian sat on one of the barstools and plucked the cigarette from Rylan’s fingers.  He held it close enough to smell the smoke.  It had a strong odor of bitter cigarette, but again, there was that pungent, earthy undertone.  Without looking at Rylan, he took a short drag on the thing and just barely managed to blow out the smoke without coughing.  It actually tasted a little better than it smelled, but it was still kind of gross.

“You have to breathe it into your lungs,” Rylan said.

“What?”

“I hate all those posers who smoke just to be trendy and take two shallow puffs and then throw it away.  Breathe it in, fill your lungs, hold it, and then let it out.”

Julian raised an eyebrow at him.  “Definitely not a surrogate father.”

Rylan chuckled as Julian obeyed his instructions.  He was stunned by the tangible feel of the smoke.  He could feel it filling him up, his chest burned, but as he slowly let the smoke out, he felt the tension drain away with it.  He sucked in a mouthful of clean air and looked at the thing burning innocuously in his hand.  It hadn’t exactly been pleasant, but he could see how it could become addictive.  Rylan took the cigarette back and took another drag.  He looked at Julian, his eyes flicking up for a moment.

“You need to change your hair.”

Julian cocked his head.  “Why?”

“It’s too extreme.”

“Really?  You didn’t say anything about the faux-hawk or the orange streaks.  What’s wrong with blue?”

He shrugged one shoulder.  “It bothers me.”

Julian smiled.  “Does it remind you of someone?”

Rylan made a face.

“Ha.”

“Did you do it to emulate him?”

“No, of course not.  It just gave me the idea.”

“Good.”

“You know, you only hate him that much because you’re jealous.  And of what I can’t imagine because Ken is a panty waste.”

“No, he’s not.  He’s just going through a phase.”

“Yeah.  The longest north running phase in the world: De Nile.”

“Cute.”

“I really don’t get what you see in him.  The mere fact that he’s closeted would make me think you would have no respect for him.”

“There are circumstances.”

“Blah, blah, blah.”

“What did he do to piss you off so much?”

“My best friend.”

Rylan chuckled.  “Oh, yeah.  Right.”

“So…you think we should be good friends and suck it up or find a way to break them up?”

“I don’t think we have to do anything.  It will implode all in good time.”

“I don’t know.  Will is…he’s in love.  Like for real.  It’s not just some adolescent infatuation.”

“Mm.  So is Ken.  But love is not enough.  Trust me.”

Julian examined Rylan.  He hadn’t said it with a malicious will, just stated a fact.  He looked into Rylan’s dark eyes and tried to figure out if the pain in his chest was because he did remind him of his father or if he was falling for him.  It might have been the cigarette smoke.  Julian reached for the cigarette again, but Rylan put it to his lips.

“You need a place to stay tonight?” Rylan asked.

Julian thought of a number of smarmy retorts, but all he said was, “If you don’t mind.”

 

Will

 

Will glared at the keys on the floor.  He frowned and bent over to pick them up, and tried again to open the door.  This time he succeeded and entered the condo, accidentally banging his suitcase against his ankle.  He stumbled into the room and squeaked at the sharp pain.  Ken looked up from his work at the strange noise, a pen in his mouth and an eyebrow raised above his glasses frame.  Will fell out on the floor and lay unmoving.  Ken moved the tray table from over his legs and displaced Joyce Greene from his lap.  He walked to the door and shut it.  Joyce Greene meowed and rubbed herself on Will’s face.  Ken reached down with a hand.

“You okay, baby?”

“Greh.”

He pulled Will to his feet and held his face to give him a kiss.  Will pulled away.

“Okay.  The beard has to go.”

Ken smiled.  “Okay.  I’ll shave it after we eat.  Dinner is in the oven.”

Ken started to walk to the kitchen, but Will tugged on his hand.

“Wait a second.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yeah.  But if you’re going to shave it after we eat, then before we eat…”

Ken let out a small laugh.  “Seriously?”

Will pulled out one of the dining table chairs and sat down.  “You want a pillow for your knees?”

“Nah.”

 

The cold glass from the mirror chilled his back, but Will didn’t move away from it.  He sat on the sink counter in the bathroom, still overheated from the long, hot shower they’d taken after dinner.  Ken had suggested it so that he could soften his skin before he shaved, but it was over an hour before they finally turned the water off.  Now Will had one knee pulled up to his chest as he watched Ken lather on a generous amount of shaving cream.  He watched, fascinated, as the man pulled the first stroke of the razor down his jaw.

“So, how was your week?” Ken asked before concentrating on the next stroke.

“Great.  I had a lot of fun.  Have you been to Chicago before?”

Ken grunted an affirmative answer, but didn’t move his head.

“Did you like it?  I did.  We should go there sometime.”

Ken rinsed off the razor in the sink.  “Sure.  The penthouse at The Peninsula is really nice.  Jacuzzi tub.”  He started shaving again.

“Sounds like we wouldn’t be spending much time out in the city then.”

Ken laughed and then said, “Ouch.”  A small thin nick appeared on the smooth side of his face.  He lowered his hand to rinse the foam off, but Will reached out and collected the small drop of blood on his index finger.  He brought it to his lips and closed his eyes as he tasted the metallic bite of his lover’s blood.  He opened his eyes and Ken was frowning at him.

“That’s not sexy.  It’s creepy.”

He started work on the other side.  Will watched him silently, and when he was done, Ken bent over to splash his face with water.  He looked into the mirror, checking for any spots he missed.  He ran a hand over his jaw and looked at Will.  Will sighed very quietly in gladness at seeing Ken’s face again.  He reached for him and the man came willingly to his arms.  He rubbed against the very smooth cheek and enjoyed the smell of soap on his skin.  He pulled back just enough to bring their lips together, relishing the feeling of a non-bristly kiss.  Ken wrapped his arms around him and hugged him tightly, running his hands briskly over his back to work out the chill.

“Hey, Ken?”

“Yeah?”

“Um.  You know.  I know it’s still early, but all things considered, things have been—more or less normal.”

Ken pulled back and looked at him.  “What do you mean?”

Will refrained from squirming, but just barely.  And his face was growing warm.  “I thought—that—you were going to…I mean.  You said.  Well, actually I said that you could do…stuff.”

Ken chuckled and kissed his nose.  “Relax.  I’m not going to do anything weird to you.”

“You’re not?  But…”

“Will.”  Ken took his shoulders in his hands.  “I would never do something that pushes you beyond your comfort level.  I found your limit once, and I’m going to stay clear of it.”

“But.  I thought you like…to…do…more nonconventional…things.”

“Will, what I like is making love to you.  At times we do have some hard and inventive sex, but we’re always making love.  If we’re not making love, I don’t want to do it.  So.  You’re safe.”

Ken kissed his forehead.  Will rubbed the spot.

“Okay.  But you know, I’m not afraid to try new things.  If you really want to.”

Ken shrugged.  “I could be perfectly content with nothing more than holding your hand the rest of my life.”

Will smiled and took his hand.  “I know what you mean.”

They smiled at each other for a moment, and then Will said, “But, we are still going to have sex, right?”

“Oh, yeah.  I’m being sweet.  Not crazy.”


	30. Chapter 30

Sunday, April 30, 2006

 

Aaliyah

 

Aaliyah added sage to her bubbling pot on the stove.  She stirred it with a long wooden spoon and smiled as it hissed at her.  She could hear her oldest daughter walking down the stairs.  A perfect test subject.

“Linnea, won’t you come here, darling?”

She could hear the girl redirect her course from the TV room to the kitchen.  She appeared: young, vibrant and beautiful.  She had smooth, clear skin even though she was smack dab in the middle of puberty.  She was tall, slender, and golden headed.  Definitively not her husband’s child.  But he’d been aware that she had been achieving Third Degree elevation around the time of her first child’s conception.  And a child’s parents weren’t who made her, but who loved her.

“Yeah, Mom?”

She smiled at her daughter and held the spoon out toward her.  She could see a little worry leak into the corners of the child’s eyes.

“Try this.”

The girl hesitated for a moment, but then obediently stepped forward.  She took the spoon and put the concoction to her lips.  Aaliyah watched as she sipped the light colored broth.  Then she smiled.

“Mm, this is really good, Mom.  What is it?”

“Oh, it’s one of Rachel Ray’s recipes.  I thought I’d give it a try.”

“Well, you nailed it.”

“Thanks.”

Aaliyah returned the spoon to the pot and stirred it a little, watching the soup thicken.

“So,” Linnea said, “I was going to call Bronwyn and see if she wanted to go to the movies.  Can we if she says yes?”

“Certainly.  If you can get a ride there.  Your father has taken your sister to dance class and I can’t leave today because I’m expecting a visit from the High Priestess of our sister coven in Scranton.”

“Oh, that’s no problem.  I think I’ll also call Brandon.  His mom is always around.”

Aaliyah smiled at her daughter.  “Brandon, again, hmm?”

“Mooooom.  It’s not like that.  He’s just a friend.  Besides, he’s totally a Catholic and I can’t deal with that.”

“Now, don’t discriminate against someone because of their religion.  Goodness knows our people have suffered that enough to know it is never the right way.”

“I know.  But, he like…eats those wafers and thinks they’re Jesus’ body.”

Aaliyah laughed.  “I see no reason why that couldn’t be true.  Magick has always been with us.  Jesus may have been a priest in his own right.”

“Yeah, tell that to a Catholic: that Jesus was a witch.  They might kill you.”

“Well.  I never said Catholicism was reasonable or the best way to raise a child.  Just that we shouldn’t discriminate against those that do.”

“But we can look down on them derisively, right?”

“I think that counts as discrimination.  And besides.  I’m sure Brandon’s dimples could help you overlook something minor like that.”

“Moooom!”

Linnea stomped out of the room and her mother chuckled to herself.  She turned the flame on the gas stove down to low and put a lid on the soup so that it could simmer.  Before she was done cleaning up the kitchen, Linnea was already yelling at her from the door that she was riding her bike to Bronwyn’s.  Aaliyah walked to the door to tell her goodbye, but she was already down the driveway and turning onto the country road in front of their property.  Aaliyah sighed in both amusement and a little sadness.  Her little girl was growing up way too fast.

After checking the soup one more time, Aaliyah started upstairs to change clothes.  She hadn’t dirtied anything while cooking, but after the High Priestess’ visit, she might go to Silverwind’s Esbat.  Silverwind had been asking her for months to participate in one of his Esbats and lend her power to it, which she was more than willing to do since all ritual, even ones meant for amusement, pleased the Goddess.  And worshipping and pleasing the Goddess was the pinnacle of happiness.  However, she was pretty certain Silverwind intended to reach that pinnacle by harnessing her power through sexual congress with her body.  Aaliyah understood quite well the power in physical touch and the magick energies that were invoked and transferred during such a joining, but the Goddess never said anything about having to do those rituals with a Sasquatch.  She was changing into a simple white dress with a full skirt and low cut so that the green corset she put on over it would dramatically emphasis her tiny waist and full bust.  This was appropriate attire for an Esbat, but it wasn’t for Silverwind’s benefit; Aaliyah hoped that his son, Fred, might be home from college by now and he would be interested in performing an Esbat ritual of his own…like he had last autumn.

Aaliyah looked herself over in the mirror, grateful the Goddess had seen fit to return her figure to her after two babies—her youngest had been nearly ten pounds when she’d been born.  She’d been born via Caesarian section, at Aaliyah’s request, because she’d had no delusions what something that big would do to her body and she wasn’t ready yet to give up the joys and magicks of the flesh.  She looked at her face: it was pretty, by no means on par with a Hollywood starlet, but her sensuous figure and piles of dark, naturally curly hair made her appear prettier.  She knew she was desirable—Wiccans and non-Wiccans alike had never made that a secret—but she still felt that she’d never felt that perfect love.  Her daughters, of course, were unconditional love and filled a part of her she hadn’t known had been empty until they’d been born.  But romantic love…she was quite certain she’d never felt that.  Her husband was a good man and father, and devoted to the Goddess and Horned God, but she’d always felt that he’d married her to be closer to her mother, who had been High Priestess before her.

The doorbell chimed softly through the house.  She’d replaced the standard one installed by the builders with a much more harmonic crystalline chime.  She felt like the radiant sound pleased the Goddess.  Aaliyah descended gracefully down the stairs, her skirts sweeping behind her.  She felt a little like Scarlett O’Hara.  Imagine trying to be a good Wicca in the Deep South during the 1800’s…it might actually have been easier than in today’s world where privacy no longer existed.  Aaliyah opened the door, the smile and greeting for High Priestess Jenasia forgotten as she saw who stood on her doorstep.

The man filled the doorframe almost completely.  He was over six feet tall and broad through the shoulders.  He wore a black T-shirt over black jeans and boots.  His tan skin was a pleasing contrast where it broke up the black as he crossed his arms over his chest—toned, but not bulging muscles visible as they flexed.  His hair was short and dark reddish in color.  Definitely not a natural color, as were not the black dots spotting it.  His ears were riddled with piercings, his left eyebrow and lip not left out of the assault.  On the right side of his neck was a tattoo of two small, black symbols.  To most people they probably looked like a pair of sevens with the second one having a stray mark coming off the top.  But to people who had studied gematria they were easily recognizable as daled and lamed.  And together they read 4 and 30.  Or, as Aaliyah suspected, April 30th.  The marks looked fresh as the skin around the tattoo was still a little red.

Aaliyah looked at the handsome, tense man standing on her doorstep.  And she reflected that Julian really didn’t look much like his father after all.  She swallowed and brought her eyes up to meet his dark brown ones.  She tried to draw a deep breath, but the corset restricted the movement.  It forced her bosom to heave upwards, ordinarily an intentional flirtation, but she didn’t want to upset him.  She hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving.  Hadn’t heard anything from him or even about him.  He really had misunderstood her intentions that day.  But she had also failed to understand what he needed from her.  It wasn’t comfort he’d been seeking, and it certainly hadn’t been the kind of comfort she had offered.  She felt nervous and once again tried to breathe deep.  She saw his eyes flick down as they followed the movement of her breasts.  She wished she had a shawl to pull over the stupid things.  But then, would he think that she was intentionally hiding herself from him?

It had been some time since she’d opened the door, and neither had spoken.  He had come to her, shouldn’t he speak first?  But then again, usually it was the person who owned the home who was supposed to greet and welcome the guest.  She opened her mouth to speak but a wad of cotton was in place of her tongue.  She tried to swallow, but her mouth was just too dry.  She dropped her eyes and wondered how one tiny misunderstanding could make her feel so ashamed.  She closed her eyes for a moment and summoned the Goddess to her.  She calmed her nerves and restored her center.  Aaliyah looked back up into Julian’s eyes and mustered a small smile.

“Julian.  It really is good to see you.  I—I really wanted to reach out to you.  To talk about what happened.  But, I thought you could use some time.  And space.  And then I wondered if I’d waited too long and I—”

Aaliyah cut off.  He hadn’t reacted to her words.  Just stood there like he was hearing her, but not really listening.  He kept his eyes on her.  They weren’t hard or accusatory, but they were by no means friendly or reminiscent of the joyful boy she had had a hand in raising.  She waited, realizing he didn’t really want to speak to her but something had forced him to come.  After a few more seconds of thick silence, he spoke.

“I’d like to ask permission for my friends and me to enter your property.”

Aaliyah leaned just a hair to the side and caught a glimpse of a car at the end of the drive.  Beside it stood three boys in T-shirts and jeans, waiting for Julian to come back.

“May we?” he asked, drawing her eyes again.  “It’s the anniversary…of…I’d like to visit their grave.  If I may.”

She could barely speak for the sob that was in the back of her throat.  So she just nodded.  Julian turned and walked away from her.  He waved a hand to the three boys and they started up the drive.  When they reached Julian, they turned as a group to walk behind the house to the coven’s burial ground.  As they passed, each boy turned to glance at her.  One appeared concerned, one appeared curious, and the other looked furious.  Aaliyah didn’t have time to wallow in guilt, however, as she saw Jenasia turning into her drive.  She ducked inside to look in the foyer mirror to make sure she didn’t appear upset or shaken.  She was surprised to find that she did look just fine.  Maybe that’s why Julian had acted so cold.  Maybe he hadn’t realized how she felt.

She forced herself to push Julian to the back of her thoughts so she could at least properly host her guest.  She offered her some rose tea and then rather than take her to the living room where she always entertained, she led her to the sunroom.  She seated herself in such a way that she could face Jenasia and nod politely to everything she said, but still see out the glass door across the flat expanse of her back property.  Just at the edge of her vision, she could see the boys at the grave.  They stood for a while, and then they sat down.  They didn’t seem to move for a very long time, and it may have been her imagination, but she thought they were talking softly.

“Aaliyah?”

Aaliyah looked at Jenasia and realized she hadn’t the slightest idea what they had been talking about.

“Yes, Jenasia?”

Jenasia smiled kindly and patted her hand.  “You seem distracted, dear.  Is everything all right?”

“Yes.  Of course.  I just realized I’d left some soup on the stove.  I should check on it.”

Jenasia raised an amused eyebrow at her.  “Soup.  Okay.  Well, I don’t want you to worry about it too much.  I’ll be in town the rest of the week, visiting your mother, so I’m sure we’ll be able to talk again.  I’d particularly like to discuss some of the changes you’ve made to your coven since you took over for your mother.”

Aaliyah was suddenly completely focused on Jenasia.  “I took over nearly eight years ago.  Any changes I made since then are no longer changes but the way of the coven.”

“Don’t take it as an insult, dear.  We just feel that some of your methodologies should be evaluated.”

“We?”  Aaliyah could hear the ice in her own voice and hoped the Goddess would forgive her for her temper.

“The Council, of course.”

“The Council.  The one that was arbitrarily formed by the High Priestesses of six covens and enforced without discussion upon the rest of the Blue Star covens in the country?”

“Aaliyah.  We six are matriarchs of the Blue Star Wiccans.  We feel we are best suited to tend to—”

“Your flock?  That sounds like Judeo-Christian rhetoric to me.”

Jenasia blinked in surprise.  “Dear me, Aaliyah, why the hostility?”

Aaliyah stood up.  “Because I know what practice in particular of mine that you find to be an unacceptable change.  We don’t allow neophytes to devote themselves formally to the Wiccan religion until they’ve reached the age of majority.  I made this change because I’ve seen what tragedy can come of making children bind themselves to something they don’t understand.  There was a young girl who was in the coven a few years ago.  No more than fifteen when she got pregnant.  In a sexual magick ritual.”

“Now, Aaliyah, no Wiccan would ever believe that sex magicks should be conducted by children or by non-consenting parties.”

“And we teach them that sex magick is okay.  That it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s not!”

“Then why is she gone?  Why did she have an abortion and move away with her family, away from Wicca and the Goddess?  She was allowed to devote herself to Wicca at twelve years old and as such insisted on being taught everything about our ways.  And she foolishly acted on some impulse to experience that kind of magickal control without understanding what it meant.  Because she was too young to think of the consequences.  There’s another young man out there who lost his whole world in the blink of an eye and the Goddess was unable to see him through it.”

Jenasia stood up now.  “Then maybe it was because his High Priestess was unable to teach him and show him the path of the Goddess because she was too busy trying to sleep with him!”

Aaliyah’s jaw dropped.  “I have never—!”  Her hands clenched into fists.  She wasn’t talking to the Goddess now.  She needed the Horned God and his fury and strength.  “Every sex ritual I’ve ever performed has always been at the insistence of my mother and this new Council!  I was taught that that was how best to share my powers.  But a High Priestess’ _position_ is not on her back for the Coven’s amusement!  The Blue Star Covens have started to drift from what Wicca really is.  I feel the only way to save my ‘flock’ is to lead them back to the true path!”

“Aaliyah.  Be careful with your words.  You and the Council will discuss all this later in the week.  Go check your soup.  I’ll see myself out.”

Aaliyah refrained from screaming and stomping, but just barely.  She waited until she heard the front door close, and then looked back out at the grave.  The four of them were still there: Julian in the center with the hands and arms of his friends wrapped comfortingly around him.  She slowly lowered herself back onto one of the worn cushions and thought that they really needed replacing.  She put a hand to her face as a sickening wave of nausea passed through her as she thought about what she had just done.  She stayed in the sunroom and watched the still boys, slowly feeling better about what she had done the more she thought about it.  She really did have a core disagreement with the Blue Star Covens.  And if they decided to remove her from her position, that might actually be for the best.  She could certainly start her own coven and return to a holistic, more traditional approach to Wicca.  She could write her own Book of Shadows.  Whether she had any followers or not would be beside the point.  What was important would be that she would once again feel honest and pure when communing with the Goddess.

Aaliyah stayed in the sunroom for another hour, knowing that her soup was probably reducing to a roux, but not wanting to miss the boys’ departure.  Over two hours after they had first arrived, they all stood up and stretched the kinks out of their bodies from being crouched down and still for so long.  They started to walk toward the front of the house.  Aaliyah quickly ran to her foyer and checked herself in the mirror again.  Her reflection was nearly showing a fairy tale beauty looking at her: she had gone quite pale since her encounter with Jenasia and her hair only emphasized that.  Plus there were those boobs again, high and firm and nearly spilling out of the dress.  She should get a shawl.  Then she spotted the boys on the driveway.  She quickly grabbed the knob and threw the door open, calling out loudly to Julian.  All four stopped to look at her.

“Julian, please.  May I speak with you?  For just a minute.”

Julian tiredly rubbed the side of his face, but nodded at his friends toward the car.  They scuffed their feet along as they reluctantly went to wait by the car.  Julian walked up to her porch and Aaliyah was again struck by how grown up he was.  No, not grown up, though he certainly looked like an adult now.  He was just…large.  In a very appealing way.

Once again she couldn’t find her words.  She didn’t want a repeat of the tense silence they had endured before.  She also didn’t want to have to do this in full view of his friends, so she stepped back into the house and gently beckoned him in.

“Please.  Can we speak in private for a moment?”

Julian crossed the threshold and entered her home.  The narrow hallway didn’t leave much room for the two of them and she was pressed against the small table under the mirror.  She had her hands behind her on the table to keep some distance between them, but they were not even two feet apart and now she was arching her back, showing off her breasts to him.  And voluntarily or not (she couldn’t tell which) his eyes were on her chest.  She could feel his presence and his warmth and his eyes.  She had cast her own eyes to the floor, feeling the color return to her face.  Why by the Goddess was she blushing?

“Um.  Maybe we should go to the kitchen.”

“Here is fine.”

Her eyes flicked up to him.  His voice had been cold, but not in the same detached way he had spoken to her earlier.  His voice was flecked with malice.  He knew he was making her uncomfortable, and he was enjoying it.  Aaliyah didn’t know what had happened to him since she’d seen him, but she did not deserve to be treated in this way.  She wasn’t a trained therapist.  She’d helped him the way she’d thought she could.  The way her mother and that stupid Council would have recommended.  She was mad at them and the hell if she was going to let Julian push her around.  She straightened and squared her shoulders, not feeling the least bit intimidated even though those shoulders were nearly a foot below his.  She looked him straight in the eye.

“Julian March, I insist we have a mature, rational conversation or we won’t have it all.  It’s your decision.”

She saw several thoughts and emotions flicker behind his eyes.  She shouldn’t give him the time to sort through them.

“First, I want to apologize for what happened that day.  Not for the act itself, but for misunderstanding what you needed.”

Julian dropped his arms from their angry crossed position over his chest.  “Misunderstanding?  You—”

“Julian, as I recall you were already in mental distress that day, am I right?”

He started to speak and then stopped.  He leaned back against the wall, putting a little more space between them, but not much.  Aaliyah continued, realizing that a firm hand was what Julian really responded to.  His mother may have been a little loopy, but Nik March had been far more authoritarian than most people realized.  But it was tempered with such kindness that hardly anyone realized they were being so expertly handled.  He had been a truly great man and she had prayed to the Goddess on more than one occasion to help her curb her desire for him and assuage her jealousy toward Miranda.

“Julian.  I did what I did because I thought it would help calm you.  And then we could talk about what was bothering you.  But, backfire is too mild of a term for what happened, isn’t it?  For that I am sorry.  If I confused you or made you feel…abused.  I—”

“Aaliyah, that’s great that you feel bad about it, but how can you expect me to believe that you didn’t know that that wasn’t the right thing to do?  That seducing an unstable, grieving teenager maybe wasn’t the best way to help him?”

“Julian—”

“And that wasn’t even it!  If that had been it, it would have been fine.  Hell, I probably would have gone through with it.  I pulled back because you made it so painfully obvious that you were just trying to live out some sick fantasy about my father!  Is that why you took such an interest in my family?  Tried to get close to me and my mother?  So that you could insinuate yourself with him without us knowing?  Would you have been picturing him and wanting to call out his name?  Or would fucking his son be somehow—”

Aaliyah stepped forward and almost had to jump up to slap his face.  Even so she made excellent contact and there was a satisfying, sharp crack.  He put his hand to his cheek, his eyes wide.  But he didn’t look angry.  Exactly.

She stood right beneath him and tilted her head back to look at him.  She had her hands on her hips and did her best to keep her voice from shaking as she spoke.

“You watch how you speak, young man.  Your mother did not raise you to be vulgar or judgmental.  Now.  I have no defense for the tactics I used that day.  You’re right.  It was obviously the wrong approach to take with anyone under those circumstances.  Especially for someone with whom I did not have an extremely close relationship with.  I admit that, frankly, I was in a hurry.  I knew I needed to calm you down, relax you.  And I didn’t want to take the time to talk you down.  I thought feeling a burst of release would help diffuse your tension.  It was very wrong of me to try to rush through your problems for my own selfish reasons.  But you listen to me, Julian March, I would never, _never_ , use anyone to merely satisfy a carnal desire.  I did care for your father.  A great deal.  And I’ll admit, to you, that I did often wonder what life would have been like…if things were different.  But I never pursued him.  I never pursued your family with an ulterior motive.  I was always drawn to you because of your energy.  Your good spirit.  You.  Not your father.  And when I said you looked like your father, it was just a thought that I was struck with when I saw your profile.  I think you misunderstood what I was saying because of the way I said it.  I really did just think you resembled him, and not that you were a good substitute for him.  I just think that I was, perhaps…breathy is the best word for it…and that made it seem like I meant something more by it.  But, I was simply enjoying it.”  Then she muttered, “For a virgin you sure knew what you were doing.”

She looked up at Julian’s small laugh.  He was looking away from her out the window, but there was a small smile on his lips.  A real one caused by amusement.  He looked back at her.  She inhaled deeply again, and once again his eyes went down.  She was going to rip the damn corset off in a second.

“I’m sorry I slapped you.  But even more, I’m sorry for hurting your faith.  Because I know…that’s what really happened that day.  If you find me disgusting and hate me for the rest of your life, I would be ashamed and filled with regret.  But I could live with it.  What I can’t live with is being the reason you turned from the Goddess and wander through life without inner serenity.”

“Aaliyah.  Please.  I can’t take the touchy-feely crap right now.”

Aaliyah felt tears in her eyes.  “And that’s what I mean.  It wasn’t touchy-feely crap before.  It was your faith.  It was your core.”  She put her hands over her face.  “That’s what I did to you.  Oh, God, I’ll never forgive myself.”

She sobbed into her hands and wanted Julian to go away.  She couldn’t help him then and she couldn’t help him now.  So, he should get away from her before she made things worse.  She felt his large, strong hands on her arms.

“Aaliyah…”

She pulled away from him, but backed into the table and didn’t get far since his arms were so long and came with her.

“Don’t try to comfort me!” she wailed.  “I’m not asking for your sympathy or your forgiveness.  All I want is for you to be well.  To be happy.  Julian, I had to stay away from you after the accident!  It hurt too much to see you in that much pain!  I’m not strong!  I’m a fraud!  I shouldn’t be anyone’s leader.  I can’t help anyone!”

Aaliyah gasped softly as Julian took her into his powerful arms.  She could feel not only the physical strength of his arms, but that special energy he had always possessed.  It soothed her almost immediately, and made her feel great relief to know that he hadn’t lost that.  That he was still in one piece if not intact.

She kept her arms in front of herself to keep her chest from pressing against his—well, his stomach.  But she allowed herself to remain in his embrace.

“I’m so glad you found help, Julian,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“You found someone who helped you grieve and start to heal.  Right?”

He laughed softly.  “Yeah.  And you’d never believe who.”

“It doesn’t matter.  You were saved.  And I thank God for that.”

“God?” he asked gently.

“It’s hard to get rid of fourteen years of Catholic upbringing.  Though the Goddess knows how hard my mother tried after I came to live with her when my father died.”

He ran his hands comfortingly over her back.  “I guess there’s more to everyone than what they let us see.”

“Julian, you don’t have to, but please forgive me.  Please…for what I’ve done…”

Julian took her by the shoulders and pushed her back so that they could meet eyes.

“My faith had already begun to wither.  A long time before what happened between us.  I didn’t turn away from Wicca because of you.  Though I did begin to question the memories I had of our relationship.  And that cut just as deep.  You were the only one I had left in my world who felt like a parent.  But the way you made me feel that day…Aaliyah, I didn’t see you as a mother anymore.  Just as a woman.  I hate that I lost that relationship.  That comfort and safety I always felt with you.  Now, all I can see is the shape of your body.  All I can feel is a desire to give you what you wanted that day.  But I don’t want to do that.  So, I can’t see you anymore.  We couldn’t renew our relationship.  Because all I can think about doing is putting you up on that table and diving into you.  And whether the way your skin is turning a lovely rosy color and your breathing is getting shallower is because of me or because you want my father…it doesn’t matter.  We would wind up committing adultery.  Because we both know it wouldn’t be any Wiccan ritual.  We’d just be screwing.”

Aaliyah clenched her teeth as she looked at him.  “It’s not him, Julian.  It’s you.”

He smiled.  “That’s good to know.  And I do forgive you.  I was asking too much of you.  I was selfish and desperate and wanted an easy fix.  And I wanted you to be the one to fix me.  Though clearly you need to fix yourself first.”

Aaliyah let out a bitter laugh.  “Don’t I know it.”

“I can’t see you again.  If I can ask for permission in advance to come here every April.”

“Come as often as you like.  You’ll never be trespassing.”

He wiped a tear from her cheek.  “Please don’t cry.  Not over someone like me.”

“I’m sorry I ruined everything.  I’ll regret losing you for the rest of my life.”

He was quiet for a moment.  “I have to go.”

“I think you’d better.”

He turned to the door, but hesitated before opening it.

“Although, if this is goodbye…” he murmured.

He turned back to her and she wasn’t even surprised when he hauled her up by the waist and crushed his lips against hers.  She dug her fingers into his spotted hair and kissed him back, loving the feel and taste of his inimitable energy.  The pain from his lip ring.  The tremulous pleasure from his tongue piercing.  Then he lowered her back to the floor and turned abruptly to open the door.

“Good luck, Aaliyah,” he said as he left.

Aaliyah sagged against the tiny table.  She was envious of the person who had saved him.  And she was envious of the woman that would have him for her own one day.  But nothing was stronger than her gratefulness that he had survived this tragedy—the whole mess of it—and come out stronger on the other side.  Nik and Miranda March had raised a remarkable child.

Aaliyah jumped in alarm as the smoke detector began to screech.

“Oh!  The soup!”

She dashed from the hall to the kitchen.


	31. Chapter 31

Thursday, May 11, 2006

 

Will

 

Will gave the bunnies a long, hard look.  They were plotting something.

Will started awake, terrified the bunnies had jumped into reality and were dragging him off to who knows where by his ankle.  As he gained his faculties, he realized he _was_ being dragged by his ankle, but thankfully it was not the bunnies, but his lover.  Ken let him go just as his butt reached the end of the bed.  He must be in a good mood this morning.  Sometimes he would pull him all the way off onto the floor.  Will sat up, expecting to see Ken’s back as he left the room, but the man had turned back.  He grabbed his leg again and pulled him off the bed.  Will squawked in distress and then grunted as he hit the floor.

“Get up.  This is why you shouldn’t stay here on school nights.”

“OMG, shawty,” Will said, knowing Ken hated teenager vernacular, “if you’re still here I have plenty of time.  What put you in such a foul mood anyway?”

Ken turned a glare onto the T-shirt Will wore, and then turned his nose to the air.  He walked out of the room and Will wondered what the man would do if he asked him about breakfast.  Will stood up and hopped back onto the bed, pulling his T-shirt down so that he could look at what had offended Ken so much.  Last night he’d put on the green plaid boxers as usual, but instead of Ken’s Dartmouth shirt, he’d worn a light blue Columbia University T-shirt.  It had been his subtle way of telling his lover he had picked a school and it wasn’t Dartmouth.  Ken hadn’t been terribly pleased and had made him pay for it most of the night.  Pleasurably of course, but he had also come awfully close to violating his promise not to push Will past his limits.  For some reason though, Will hadn’t really minded last night.  Ken was slowly turning him into a pervert like him.  Maybe taking a break and going to school in New York would be a good thing.  Will groaned and flopped back onto the mattress.  He kept telling himself stuff like that because every time he thought about their imminent parting his stomach hurt and he had difficulty breathing.  He should just go to a community college in the city.  Who cared about education when you were happy?  And had a boyfriend rich enough to support your lazy ass?

Ken came back into the room and sighed as he put his hands on his waist.  “You’re not getting up anytime soon, are you?”

“I’ve got like over an hour!  Go away.  Go to work…where you’re happiest.”

“Actually, I’m not happiest there.  I’m always stressed.”

“Then why are you always there?!  Why do you spend hours and hours and hours—”

“Take that off,” Ken interrupted him, tugging at the hem of his T-shirt.

“Make me.”

Ken yanked the shirt over his head and with a remarkably impressive amount of skill captured Will’s hands inside the cloth.  He pinned his hands over his head by holding the shirt to the mattress.  He leaned over him and placed a light kiss on his lips.  Will shifted his hips under him, but they weren’t touching so he was decidedly at a disadvantage.  He tried to pull his hands out of the shirt, but he was totally stuck.  Ken slid his hand up so that Will’s arms stretched straight above his head.  With his legs hanging off the end of the bed, he was now pretty much rendered immobile.  He held back a huff of slight annoyance.

“That’s a neat trick with the shirt.”

“Rylan taught me that.  And trust me, it’s impossible to get out of.”  He smiled.  “I’ve tried.”

Will made a face at him.  “You let him tie you up?”

“Let?  Well, not at first.  But then it kind of grew on me.”

“So, Rylan turned you into the freak you are now.”

“No.  I’d say Devon did most of that.  Rylan’s just the one who taught me how to be good at it.”

Will drew his feet up onto the bed so that his knees were on either side of Ken’s body.  “Did you have a relationship with Rylan after you broke up with Devon?”

“Well…that’s a strong word.”

“Did you sleep with him after Devon?”

“Yeah.  Though it was more like paying up after losing a bet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he told me it wouldn’t last with Devon.”

“Did he now.  Just like he says it won’t last with us.  Are your relationship failures kind of self-fulfilling prophesies?”

“No, I promise.  Devon and I crashed and burned because he drove us into a wall.  On purpose.”

“Did you ever talk to him about it?”

“No.  Say, can we talk about my past relationships at some other time?  Like when I don’t have you right where I want you?”

“You’re the one talking.  You want something?”  Will raised his hips.  “Take it.”

Ken leaned down to kiss him, but pulled up short.  Then he stood up and let him go.  “I really wish I could but I have to get to—”

“Work.  I know.”

“Get rid of that shirt,” Ken said, shaking a finger at him.

“Do you know why I picked this school?” Will called out as his lover left.  The man paused in the doorway.

“I honestly can’t fathom a reason.”

“Because, don’t you think it would seem odd if your work started taking you to Hanover, New Hampshire for business trips?  Don’t you already go to New York City a lot?  Who’ll notice if you take a couple more trips than usual?”

Ken broke into a smile.  He laughed as he walked back to the bed and took Will’s face in his hands.

“You really are a genius, aren’t you?”

“Mm.”

Ken kissed him and Will wrapped his arms tightly around his neck, trying to keep him from leaving.  Ken extracted himself from his death grip and kissed his nose.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“I love you, Ken.”

“I love you too, baby.  Have a good day.”

“Bye.”

Will fell back onto the bed.  Lame.  It was almost like Ken didn’t seem to grasp the idea that in four short months they would be hundreds of miles apart.  He hoped he got super horny while he was away.  That would teach him not to take anything for granted.

Will sat up and was surprised to see Ken coming back into the room, removing his tie.

“Wha—”

Will’s question was cut off as Ken kissed him passionately.  They fell back onto the bed together and Will smiled against his lover’s lips.

“You back?”

“Yeah.  David Ramsey can handle it until I get there.”

“You’re trusting Mr. Ramsey?”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Well, that really depends on his mood, doesn’t it?”

“True dat.”

“True dat?” Will laughed, turning his head to the side so that Ken could run his tongue down his throat.

“Isn’t that how the kids say it these days?”

“The wha do wha…?  Nn...”

 

Will sat on the bench in the shower, watching Ken wash quickly.  It was the man’s second shower of the morning, but Will didn’t feel guilty.  It had been Ken’s idea to have an early morning delight.  He’d probably still be one of the first ones to his office even though he would get there an hour “late.”

“Hey, Ken?”

“Yeah?” he stuck his head under the spigot to get his hair wet.

“At any point in the past, would you say that you and Rylan ever dated?”

“Would I?  Yes.  Would he?  Probably not.  So, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.”

“So, if he’d let you, would you have stayed with him?”

Ken vigorously rubbed his fingers through his hair to work up a lather.  “What ifs are hard to answer, pet.  But I have thought about it before.  I think if we had tried to make a real go of it like a real couple, we would have broken up eventually.  And probably on bad terms.  I think by keeping me at a distance, Rylan saved our friendship.  And I think I would rather have that friendship with him now than a real romantic relationship with him in the past.”

Will was mesmerized by the bubbles sliding slowly down Ken’s body.  He shook himself and looked up to watch him work conditioner through his hair.

“So, what about Devon?  You don’t know why he did that?”

“I never did ask him.  I always just assumed it was his way of telling me he wasn’t ready for a serious, monogamous relationship.”

“But weren’t you already in a serious, monogamous relationship?”

“I thought so.  But maybe he didn’t.  Until I mentioned wanting to introduce him to my parents.”

“Was he closeted?”

“Not at all.  He came out when he was like thirteen or fourteen.”

Will stretched his legs out and braced them against the tile wall, not chilled at all due to the warm water running under and around his soles.

“So, it was strange, right?  What he did?”

“I thought so.”

“And you never asked him about it?”

Ken sighed.  Not like he was unhappy with the line of questioning, but like he was still trying to work out what had happened all those years ago.  “I was too hurt to deal with him right away.  And then I left, came back to the east coast, and spent the next few months wallowing in Rylan’s bed.  After that, I didn’t want to bother looking him up.”

“So…why did you and Rylan…stop?”

“I chose to.  I was happy to have emotion-free sex with Rylan for a little while.  I was kind of damaged from what happened with Devon, so it wasn’t hard to turn off my emotions.  But after a little while—a very little while in my opinion—I started having feelings for Rylan again.  I can’t ever really separate my heart from my body when I’m with him.  So, I chose to control what parts of myself I gave him.  I dated a couple of women after that; knowing I definitely wouldn’t become emotionally involved with them.  Not long after that, Rylan offered me a night with one of his boys.  So, I took it.  It’s really easy to not become emotionally involved with someone when you know they’re just doing it for money.  Even more so when you only see them once.”

Will sat up straight.  “How many have you had sex with?” he asked, trying to tone down his alarm.

Ken laughed and pulled him to his feet.  “Not that many.”  He began to soap Will down, starting at the shoulders.  “I only saw one about once or twice a year.  I mostly dated women.”

“And you never saw the same one twice?”

“Well…after Madeline—”

“Who the hell is Madeline?”

Ken half-groaned/half-laughed and took a seat on the bench.  “Is this when and where we’re going to have the ‘divulge our past relationships’ conversation?”

“Maybe we should have done it sooner,” Will said as he rinsed the soap off his body.  Then he sat on the bench next to Ken.  “Who’s Madeline?”

“I dated her for a year.  And then she started talking about marriage.  And then my mom started talking about marriage.  So, I dumped her.  Madeline, not my mom, and told my parents that I had proposed to her, but she had turned me down because she wasn’t ready to settle down.”

Will gave him a disappointed look.

“I know, I know.  But it worked.  Madeline left and my parents never asked about her.  So, after her, for about six months I saw one of Rylan’s escorts pretty regularly.  We did have sex sometimes, but mostly we just…hung out.  I guess I wanted something like a friend who wouldn’t constantly point out how ridiculous my life was and would just be a sympathetic ear.  He was that.”

“Who was it?”

“Just one of the escorts.”

“You don’t remember him?”

“I do.”  Ken leaned back into the tile, letting the water cascade over his shoulders and chest.  “You really want to know about him?”

Will pulled his eyes from the rivulets of water clinging to the beautifully sculpted abs of his lover’s body.  “His name at least.”

“Leo.  Like a lion.”

Will frowned at him and Ken chuckled.  He rubbed his thigh.  “What about you?”

“Nothing really serious.  I went out with a lot of girls, and made out with most of them.  But I wouldn’t say I was really involved with any of them.  I did get to third base with a lesbian in a janitor’s closet once.”

Ken laughed.  “Okay.”

“And Liz…”  Will sighed.  “A lot of people didn’t get me and her.  People think she’s shallow, but she’s just really candid.  Almost to the point of cruelty.  And she’s not coy.  She doesn’t play games.  She knows who she is and she never pretends to be anything else.  I liked that about her.  I _loved_ that about her.  It was so easy to be with her.  Anyway, I dated her exclusively for most of tenth grade.  And then I dumped her because I didn’t want to dump her.”

“Wow.  You have even more commitment issues than I do.”

“Uh.  Yeah.  So anyway, that’s it until you.”

“Hmm.  Rylan and Devon are it for me.  For serious boyfriends anyway.  Serious girlfriends it was Madeline and Marie in high school.  I really liked Marie.  She was sweet.  Definitely deserved not to lose her virginity to a homo.”

“Does she know it?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Well, then it makes no difference to her.”

“I guess.”

They were silent for a moment and then Ken turned to him.

“So, exactly how many is ‘a lot’ when it comes to girls you made out with?”

“Really?  You wanna play that game?  You graduated Stanford when you were, what, 24?”

“Yes.”

“And then a few months of wallowing back home, we’ll say you were 25 when you started hooking up with the Blue Boy employees.”

“That’s about right.”

“And you saw them up until you were 32?”

“Well, 31.  You would have been my first that year.  And I didn’t see one the year I dated Madeline.”

“Even if it’s only two a year, you still had sex with ten different prostitutes.”

Ken started to speak, and then looked like he was thinking about it and was slightly appalled.

“It didn’t seem like that many.”

“See, I think that’s worse than merely making out with a few dozen girls.”

“Yeah.  Wait, what?!  A _few_ _dozen_?!”

 

Will sighed and leaned further away from the people squishing him into the corner of the metro car.  This was why they shouldn’t have sex in the mornings.  All he’d done all day was imagine being back in his lover’s arms.  So, he’d failed to pay attention in class (not that he needed to), shocked poor Julian with extremely graphic mental visuals (not that the perv hadn’t enjoyed it), and was now moping on the metro because Ken would probably stay late at work since he went in late.  It would probably just be him and Joyce Greene for the next several hours.  Maybe he could go to the exotic fish store.  One of the angelfish in the saltwater tank had gone to glory and Ken said he could pick out the next one.  He figured he’d drop off his stuff at the condo first and check what color seemed to be missing from the collection.

LaRon was on duty at the guard desk and greeted him like he lived there when he walked in.  Well, he did several days out of the week.  In fact, he’d been at Ken’s for the last five days since both his parents were gone on another vacation.  Surely all the guards had to know about their relationship now.  Ken really wasn’t that good about keeping his own secret.  So why did it have to be a secret at all?  As much as he cringed at the idea of coming out as “gay,” he was more than ready to acknowledge his relationship with Ken to the world.  He couldn’t understand why Ken didn’t feel the same way.

Will unlocked the door to Ken’s condo and stepped inside.  He was too busy struggling out of his sweater vest and dropping his bag off on the dining table to notice that the place wasn’t empty.  Then he froze in mid-step as he saw two people on the couch.  Ken was sitting on the far end and the legs of the person lying on the couch were so long they actually touched the floor after going over the arm.  It had to be Rylan, but he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.  And he was lying on his back with his head in Ken’s lap, one hand over his face.  Neither had seemed to notice Will yet.  Will immediately felt the tension in the air and wondered if he should turn around and leave.  He felt like he had intruded on something that he had no right to see.  He backed up a step and bumped into the dining table chair he’d dropped his belongings on.  Ken looked over at him.  Will put his hands in the air, to show he was sorry and was leaving, but then he saw the tears on Ken’s cheeks.  The circumstances no longer mattered.  He needed to go to him.

Will walked over to the couch and stood in front of them.  Ken was stroking Rylan’s hair with one hand, but he reached out to Will with the other.  Will took his hand, brought it to his mouth for a kiss, and then squatted down.  It was strange to be that close to Rylan’s head, so he backed up and sat on the coffee table.  He kept a hold of Ken’s hand for a moment, and then let it go.  Ken immediately took Rylan’s free hand.  Will could tell there was something seriously wrong, and he was in no place to know about Rylan’s pain, but this was affecting Ken and he couldn’t leave him like this.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.

Rylan moved his hand and saw Will.  He must not have known he’d come in because he did a quick double take as he looked at him and then dropped his arm down to cover Ken’s hand where it held his other one.  He closed his eyes and didn’t speak.  Will looked at Ken.  He glanced down at Rylan, and then swallowed.  When he spoke, his voice was raspy, like he’d been crying for a while.

“Um, Rylan’s sister, Erin, had been sick for a long while.  And today, we found out that…she passed away.”

Will felt an immediate lump in his throat and tears in his eyes.  He was tired of death affecting people he loved.  And seeing Rylan this broken up over his sister, it made him human.  It made him sympathetic.  And he didn’t know how to deal with that.  Up until now he’d been able to view Rylan as a one-dimensional menace.  He didn’t want to start empathizing with him.  He didn’t want their relationship to change.  He was actually happy with their razzing and tormenting of each other.  They would probably still do that, but it would be just a little bit different now.  Rylan was a person.  Even still, Will didn’t know if he should say anything or reach out to touch him, or if he should just leave the two men to their grief.  Will wondered if Ken was this upset just because Rylan was, or if he’d known Rylan’s sister well.  He couldn’t ask now.

Will looked at Rylan’s face again.  The man had opened his eyes and was staring at the ceiling.

“I never wanted you to see me like this,” he said.

“Yeah, me either,” Will said.

Rylan turned his head slightly to glare at him.  “I wasn’t talking to you, you twit.”

Will repressed a laugh.  And nearly caused it to turn into a sob.  “Sorry.”

“I’ve seen you like this before,” Ken said gently.

“When?”

“When I left to go to Stanford.  You cried in your room over me.  And Erin comforted you.”

“That’s a bald-faced lie.”

Ken smiled.  And then his face crumbled back into sorrow and he bowed his head.  Will reached out and ran his fingers through his hair.

“None of that,” Rylan muttered.  “I already feel sick.”

Will made a face, but dropped his hand and didn’t make a comment.  Ken took in a deep, shuddering breath.

“God.  I don’t get it.  I mean, we knew it was coming.  But…it still feels so sudden.  The world doesn’t feel right with her not in it.”

Rylan quickly covered his face with a hand.  His shoulders shook a couple of times.  Then he went still.  Will put a hand to his mouth.  He felt like bursting into tears, but Rylan might hit him if he did.

“I’m sorry, Rylan,” Will heard himself saying.  “I really am.  No one deserves this.  Not even you.”

He heard the man draw in a ragged breath.  “Thanks,” he said wryly.

“Was Erin your older sister or younger sister?”

“Arralyn.”

“What?”

“Her name is…was…Arralyn.  You really do have poor hearing, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“She was my younger sister.”  He removed his hand from his face.  “She didn’t deserve this.  To waste away for years only to die slowly and painfully because the doctors said giving her more pain killers would kill her.  Well so what?!  She was dying anyway!  Why couldn’t she…”

He closed his eyes again, and now tears were pouring nonstop down Ken’s face.  He bent over and buried his face in Rylan’s chest and sobbed freely.  Rylan put a hand to his back.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be comforting me?”

Ken didn’t reply and Will wanted desperately to reach out to him.  Instead he stood up and walked into the kitchen.

“Can I get you something?” he managed to get out in a mostly steady voice.

“Water,” Rylan said.  “Please.  But none of that fruity flavored shit.”

Will dug to the back of the refrigerator to find the bottles of plain water.  When he turned back, Rylan was sitting up, and Ken was leaning against him.  Will crossed the room and handed Rylan the bottle.  He took it, and then gave a curt nod toward Ken.  Will walked around the coffee table and sat on Ken’s other side.  He put an arm around him and leaned against him.  The three of them stayed like that for quite a while.  Eventually, Will could tell that Ken had collected himself and he sat up straighter.  Will stayed by him as he comforted his friend.  He still felt useless and out of place, but he would stay with Ken as long as he needed him.  Or at least until Rylan forcibly tossed him out into the hallway.

 

Scott

 

Scott tapped his fingers on the steering wheel of his Beemer.  He barely refrained from giggling.  He had a Beemer.  And the only reason he was being allowed to drive into the city and to school (aside from the fact that all he had to do these days was his ask his father and he would be denied nothing) was that he agreed to drive his siblings to school.  The twins were in the back and Joanna was in the passenger seat.  She was playing with her new cell phone (she was pretty much almost never denied anything too) and talking about how she and Hunter were arranging to get together during summer break.  Scott had thought that moving back home would put an end to that relationship, but apparently they e-mailed each other everyday.  And now Scott had the disturbing knowledge that his sister had begun menstruating.  She was fifteen now, and most girls would have started earlier than that, but it made sense in Scott’s head that she was both a literal and metaphorical late bloomer.  But now that she was blooming, Scott felt the need to pummel his doppelganger into the mud.  He’d seen a more recent picture of the kid not long ago, and he still did resemble him quite a bit.  Surely Joanna could see that that wasn’t healthy.

“So, like, I can conference call too,” Joanna said, listing yet another feature of the phone.  “So, Jamie and Lisa and I can all talk at the same time.”

“Fantastic.  Are these girls from your new school?”

“Yep.”

“You know, I’m glad you’ve made friends, but do you ever talk to your ones from Calverton?”

“Scott, I didn’t have friends at Calverton.”

“What about Mila?”

“Oh.  Well, she grew boobs and kind of stopped hanging out with me as much.”

“Mila?  I thought she was nice.”

“She was.  Until she could find cooler people to hang out with.”

“Hm.”

“Anyway, I can also access the Internet.  Like fully.”

“As opposed to partially.”

“Well, yeah.  And it’s so much easier to text now with, like, an actual keyboard.”

“Yeah, just be careful you don’t overuse your thumbs and they get really huge compared to your other fingers.”

Joana stopped messing with her phone as she looked at her thumbs.  Then she got a glimpse of Scott’s sly smile and hit him in the arm.

“Shut-up, you loser.”

Scott chuckled and was grateful to have normal interaction with his sister again.

“Scott?”

“Yeah?”

He looked in his rearview mirror and the twins were staring back at him.

“When am I old enough to date?” asked Drake.

Scott was lucky they were traveling on a deserted stretch of road because he didn’t look where he was going for several seconds and drifted into the adjacent lane.

“Um.  What?  Why would you want to date?  You’re still young and free from all of that.”

“I don’t want to date now.  I just want to know when I’m old enough to date.”

“Twenty,” Scott said.

“Scott,” Joanna laughed.

“It’s thirty for you missy.”

She tsked at him.  “Whatever.”

“But you dated before you’re twenty,” Drake said.

“Yeah, but I’m the oldest.  So, I get to do things first.”

“What about when I’m thirteen?  And a teenager?”

“Nope.  Too young.”

“Fourteen?”

“No.”

“Fifteen?”

“I said twenty, Drake!”

“I can’t wait that long.”

Scott laughed.  “Why not?”

“Because she won’t wait that long.”

“She who?”

“Marguerite.”

Scott let out a small laugh.  “Antoinette’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“You met her once.  And you want to date her?”

“Yes.  When we’re older.  But, she’s older than me, so I need to be able to date sooner so that she won’t meet someone else.”

Scott couldn’t really argue with that logic.  He looked at Ferris who was sitting quietly beside Drake, not concerned that his twin was planning something that didn’t involve him.  That was a new development in their relationship that had occurred only within the last few months.  He hoped it just meant that they were growing up, and not apart.

“You want to date anyone?” Scott asked the younger by three minutes.

“Not right now.”

“Oh, but you don’t have anyone in mind for ‘some day?’”

“Julian.”

Scott slammed on the brakes and the car screeched to a halt in front of Joanna’s school.  Both he and Joanna turned around in their seats to look at him.  The twins were looking pretty blank faced.  Scott looked at Joanna and she shrugged.  He turned back to Ferris.

“You want…to date…Julian.”

“When I’m older.”

Scott looked at Joanna again.  She creased her brow in confusion and said to her younger brother, “Do you know what it means to date someone?”

“You spend time with someone you like a lot.”

Joanna held back a laugh and looked at Scott.  “Well with that definition I guess we’re lucky he didn’t say you.”

“Yeah, one sibling wanting me is enough.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Is that bad?” Ferris asked.  They looked back at him.  “Is it bad to want to date Julian?”

“No,” Scott said, “But, maybe you don’t know what dating really means.  I think you want to be friends with Julian, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re friends now.  So, that works out.”

“But dating is different, right?”

“Ye…s.”

“I want it to be different with Julian.”

Scott stared at him.  He looked at Joanna.

“Maybe we should just let this one go for now,” Joanna suggested.

“I agree.  We’ll check back after he knows what sex is.  When do they teach that again?”

“Um…I remember having FLE start in like, fifth grade.”

“Holy shit.  That’s next year for them.”

The twins “aww-ed” that he was in trouble for cursing.

“Sorry,” he said to them.

“Well, with a family this screwed up, it figures someone would turn out gay.”

“Joanna.”

“What?”

Scott strummed his fingers on the center console as he looked at her.  “Do you really think our family is that screwed up?”

“Uh, yeah.  Don’t you?”

Scott frowned.  “We’re getting better, right?”

“Definitely.  I hated it at first, but I like Linda now.  And Melissa, Joe, and Simon aren’t nearly as annoying and bratty as I’d thought they’d be.  The twins really weren’t that affected.  I’m a lot happier now that I’m in public school.  Dad is obviously happier.  And you seem happy with your life.  The only one who really got screwed in all this is Mom.”

“Does she…seem weird to you?”

Joanna shrugged.  “Not really weird, just sad.  I think she thinks that we chose Dad over her.”

“But the court gave him custody.  That’s all.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t really seem that upset to be going to live with him.  Even after he announced he was remarrying.  We have a whole new family that she’s not a part of.  And you _did_ choose Dad over her.”

“No, I didn’t.  I chose my friends.  I didn’t want to be away from them.”

“Well, you know that’s not how she saw it.”

Scott sighed.  “I can’t help that.”

Joanna opened her door and the door open indicator dinged softly at him.

“Look, we didn’t do anything wrong.  Dad did.  And Mom is paying for it.  Maybe we should go see her this weekend.”

Scott perked up.  “Yeah!  Let’s do that.  I’m free this weekend.”

“Good.  I’ll bet she’ll be happy with the surprise.  Plus, I’ll get to see Hunter.”

“Geh!  Get to class!”

Joanna giggled and hopped out, closing the door of his beautiful car a little too hard for his liking.  He looked in the rearview mirror again.

“Does one of you want to sit up front?”

They shook their heads.

“Okay.  Would you want to see Mom this weekend?”

The nodded their heads yes.

Scott faced front and put the car in gear.  He hated it when they went into their creepy not talking ghost children from a horror flick routine.  He didn’t think they did it on purpose, but sometimes they would stop talking and would only answer in gestures.  And somehow they also managed to move the same way at the same time.  It was creepy.

Fortunately by the time they reached the student parking lot at Calverton, they were talking again.  They had a spelling test today and they were quizzing each other.  Scott inspected them when they got out, straightening Ferris’ tie and turning down the collar on Drake’s dress shirt.  They returned the favor by tugging on the bottom of his sweater vest, not really straitening it, but doing their part to keep their older brother tidy.  He took them both by the hand as he led them across the parking lot, and was glad they were still young enough not to mind being treated like they were young.

“Hey, Scott.”

Scott turned partially to see Julian coming up behind them.  He fell into step beside them on Ferris’ side.

“I see your Dad finally let you drive your car to school.”

“Yeah, I had to agree to drop my sister off at school though.”

“Oh.  Is that why you’re on time?”

He laughed and Scott made a face at him.  He was about to speak when Julian put a hand on Ferris’ head.

“Wowsers.  You guys are the same height as I always remember you being, but I’ve grown like a freak this year.  So, you guys must have too.  You’ll probably be taller than your brother.”

Ferris smiled at him.  “I want to be tall like you.”

“Nah, I’m too tall.  Just get taller than Scott, then stop.”

“Okay.”  Ferris reached out and took Julian’s hand.

Scott stopped walking abruptly and the twins jerked back as he kept a hold of them, Ferris’ hand slipping from Julian’s.  Julian looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Something wrong?”

“No, no.”

He started walking again, pulling the twins in front of him, trading hands, and resettling them on opposite sides.  He smiled at Julian in what he thought was a casual manner.  Julian seemed a little amused by Scott’s behavior, but he didn’t question it.

“So, Ferris,” Julian said to the twin next him, “what are you guys up to today?”

“I’m Drake.”

“I’m Ferris,” Ferris called out.

“Oh, sorry.

“Can you really not tell us apart?” Ferris asked.

Julian looked at Scott for help.  He shrugged, not sure what to tell him.  The twins had never really minded all that much before that people couldn’t tell them apart.

“I want to dye my hair!” Ferris shouted.

They all stopped walking and the other three, even Drake, looked at him in surprise.

“I want people to know who I am,” Ferris said.

Scott took his shoulders gently.  “They do.  You don’t need to dye your hair for that.”

“But why can’t I?  You do.  Julian does.”  He smiled at Julian.  “I like the spots.”

Julian was still rocking his red cheetah look.  Scott kind of liked it on him though a lot people in school had been razzing him for it.

“Thanks,” Julian said.

Scott took his hand and started walking again.  Drake and Julian followed.

“Ferris, I know it’s hard being a twin at a school where you have to wear uniforms, but if you want to look different, you’ll have to do something other than dyeing your hair.  Mom will kill me if I let you do that.”

“You could cut it short,” Julian suggested.

“I’ll do that!” Ferris said fiercely.  “Take me to the hair place today.”

Scott gave Julian a look.  He looked confused.

“What?”

“We can’t go today.  You have to make an appointment,” Scott stalled.

“Well, we can call them when we get home, okay?”

Scott turned another glare on Julian.

“ _What?_ ”

“Fine.  We’ll make an appointment later.”

“Good.”  Ferris looked at Julian.  “How short should I get it?”

Julian looked at him for a second, and then understanding dawned on his face.

“Ooh.”

“Yeah,” Scott confirmed.

Julian probably just thought that Ferris was trying to emulate him, and didn’t guess that there was potentially an even more interesting component behind his admiration.  And it would probably be best to keep it that way.  Maybe when Ferris hit puberty he’d change his mind about who he wanted to date.  Though, if he was going to be honest, there were a lot worse people for his brother to crush on than Julian.

They made it through the parking lot without Julian inadvertently encouraging more physical changes in his secret crush.  However, Scott did notice that Ferris beamed happily as he watched Julian laugh at Drake’s description of his step-siblings’ “weird” bathroom habits.  Scott wondered if Ferris was just showing his interest more now that he’d told everyone about it, or if he’d always been this way around Julian and he’d simply never noticed.  As they stepped into the vocational hallway, Scott held the door open for the twins, and then followed after.  He was suddenly, and pretty viciously, body checked into the wall.  The twins and Julian looked back at the loud noise, and Scott stayed put where he was, watching Jake and his friends snigger as they walked away.  Julian went after them and shoved Jake into a wall, pinning him there with one hand.  Jake started to fight back, but then stopped when he had to look up several inches to see his assailant.  Jake was big.  And not just for a high schooler.  He was six feet tall and very muscular.  But a few inches more of height and a very large frame made Julian seem much larger.

“You having problems with your balance today, Jake?” Julian asked lightly.  “Do you need me to help you get down the halls?”

Jake glared at him, but didn’t try to shake him off.  “Naw, man.  I’m cool.”

Julian let go of his arm and took a step back.  Jake straightened his uniform and kept his eyes hard as he stared at Julian.  Then he turned and joined his friends as they walked away down the hall.  Julian turned to Scott.

“You want to tell me what that was all about?” he demanded.

Scott shrugged.  “I guess he’s still a little pissed.  I don’t blame him.”

“Has this happened before?”

“No, no.  Don’t worry about it.  It’s under control.”

Julian just kept staring at him, and he wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Come on, let’s get to class,” Scott said.  “This might be the only time I’m actually on time.  Let’s not ruin it.”

He put a hand on each of the twins’ backs and ushered them down the hall.  Julian trailed after them.  Ferris looked up at Scott and smiled.

“Wasn’t Julian super cool?”

 

As he’d hoped, Ferris seemed to have forgotten about wanting to get his hair cut by the time they got home.  They entered the house through the garage door, and Scott was a little put off by the amount of noise in the house.  When he’d been living alone with his father and came home to an empty, silent house, he’d hated it.  Now he kind of missed it.  His stepbrothers were in the den watching TV at a pretty loud volume and Joanna and Melissa were upstairs shouting at each other.  He didn’t think they were mad at each other; they were just trying to be heard over the music blaring out of their room.  Coco barked when they came in and jumped around them, making the twins squeal and laugh.

Scott took it all in as he rubbed Coco’s head.  No, this definitely was better than empty silence.  His stepmother came out of the kitchen and smiled at them.

“Do you boys want a snack?” she asked the twins.

“Yeah!”

They ran across the foyer to the kitchen, and Scott followed them, Coco right at his side.  Linda had prepared a snack of cheese and apple slices.  Three servings.  He looked at her.

“You made me an after school snack?” he asked as he got a treat for Coco out of the pantry.

Linda looked a little embarrassed, but she smiled at him.

“I was already making them one, so it wasn’t any extra work.  If you don’t want it—”

“Are you kidding?  I’m starving.  Thank you.”

He kissed his stepmother on the cheek and gathered up his snack in his hand.  He turned his back to the twins and whispered softly, “If Ferris asks about getting his hair cut, tell him the place is closed and he can’t go.”

“O-kay,” she said, amusedly confused.

Scott headed downstairs to his room and Coco followed.  He stopped by his desk to turn on some music on his computer and then flopped onto his bed.  Coco sat beside him and he fed her a couple pieces of cheese as he ate.  Then he rubbed her neck and closed his eyes.  He considered doing his calculus homework.  Then he considered not doing it.  He petted Coco for a while, enjoying the feel of her large, warm body next to his.

When he heard feet on the stairs, he realized he must have dozed off.  The person reached the bottom and ran right across to his bed.

“Scott!” a female squealed.

He felt the bed shift as the person jumped on the bed and climbed up next to him.  He smiled and reached out a hand, holding her face and sitting up to kiss her.  He opened his eyes just before their lips met.  He couldn’t stop the movement in time, and they kissed briefly.  Then he sat back and Anna sat back on her feet, her fingers pressed to her lips.  Scott put out a hand in apology.

“Sorry.  Sorry, I thought—”

“I was someone else,” Anna finished for him.

He laughed uneasily.  “Yeah.”

“That’s fine.  I’m in too good a mood to care.  Besides, I got a free kiss.”

She smiled and winked at him in an exaggerated manner and he laughed.  He sat up completely and Coco rolled just a touch to her right to allow room for Anna to sit Indian style on the bed.

“So, what has you so excited?” Scott asked.

Anna whipped a white paper out from behind her back and showed it to him.  “Look what came in the mail today.”

Scott took the paper and saw the header declaring that it was official letterhead from Virginia Tech.  It was a letter addressed to Anna and it only took him a couple of seconds to realize that she’d gotten in.  He yelled in excitement.

“Oh my God!  You got in!”

“I got in!”

“Ahhhh!” they both screamed together and bounced on the bed.  Coco rolled her to her stomach and wagged her tail excitedly.  She was still young enough that she found this activity to be exciting and not disruptive of her nap.  Then Scott felt queasy.

“Oh, God.  That means mine probably came today.”

“It did,” Anna said happily, “and you got in too!”

“How do you know?”

“Because they only send rejection letters in white envelopes.  You got a big brown envelope full of information like me!”

She pulled out a big brown envelope and waved it at him.  He took it from her and tore it open, ripping the top quarter inch of all the papers inside off with it.  He pulled out the top sheet of paper.  He screamed again.

“I got in!”

“You got in!”

“Ahhh!” they screamed together.  They stood up and bounced on the bed, Coco rising to her feet and barking at them.  Then they began to dance to the music still playing on his computer.

“Look at us!” Anna said, “We are cool college students!”

“I know right?!”

They danced and bounced some more, careful not to land on Coco.  When the song ended they fell onto the bed and Scott hugged her tightly.  They settled down and Coco licked at Anna’s face.  She giggled and gently pushed the dog away.  She lay down and wagged her tail at them.

“This is the best thing ever,” Scott said.

“I know.  I’m so excited to go.”

“And I’m so glad you’re going with me.  Chris is going to Northwestern.  Will got into Columbia.  Who knows where Julian is going.  I’m glad I’ll have you there with me.  I couldn’t do it alone.”

“I bet you could, but you don’t have to.”

“Which is awesome!”

He hugged her tightly again and she laughed as she hugged him back.

“Well.  This is a lovely sight.”

Scott looked at the basement stairs and decided he really did need walls and a door.  Antoinette stood looking at them with her arms crossed over her chest.  She looked very unhappy.  Scott released Anna and they sat up.

“Relax, okay?” Anna said, clearly annoyed.  “You won.  You have him.  There’s nothing wrong with him being excited that he got into college.”

Antoinette looked a little surprised and turned her eyes to Scott.

“You opened it without me?  You said we’d do it together.”

Scott made a “whoops” face and then looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry.  I was caught up in the moment.  Anna got in and I was really excited, so—”

“Got in where?”

“Oh, Virginia Tech!”

“Tech?  So, you got in too?”

“Yeah.”  He bounced off the bed and walked over to her.  “It was my first choice.  I really want to go there.”

He kissed her cheek, but she felt wooden under his touch.  He took a step back.

“So, you’re definitely going to go there.  With her.  Great.  So, I guess you’re not even going to consider George Mason, which is probably the only school I can get into.  It’ll be better to be there.  With her.  Than at an easy school.  With me.”

Scott rubbed her arm gently.  “Antoinette…”

“Don’t you dare try to make him feel bad about this, you bitch,” Anna said as she got off the bed and approached them.  “He worked really hard to get into the school he wanted to, and you shouldn’t make him feel bad for that.  Maybe if you’d studied a little harder, you wouldn’t be here trying to hold him back!”

“I am not trying to hold him back!  And this is between him and me and doesn’t involve you!  So why don’t you just go home?”

“Because I was here first and we have something to celebrate!  I’m sorry your dumb blonde thing isn’t just an act, but tough shit!”

“You bitch!”

Scott, bravely, put himself in between them.  “Hey!  Step back.  Step back!” he yelled at them.  Anna and Antoinette kept their eyes on each other, but took a half step back.  “Seriously, you two need to stop this, okay?  You’re my girlfriend, and you’re my best friend.  And I’ve chosen to keep both of you in my life because I love you both.  I’m not going to choose one over the other, and I’m not going to keep putting up with this.  If you can’t handle that, then you have to choose to leave me, okay?  It’s your decision here, both of you.  You can choose to get over this stupid cattiness, or you can let it ruin your relationship with me.  You decide because I’ve already made my decision, okay?”

Anna dropped her eyes to the floor and crossed her arms over her chest.  Antoinette tossed her golden curls over her shoulder and looked at a wall.  Neither spoke.  Scott waited.  They still didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear anybody’s answer.  Anna your choice is being my best friend and tolerating Antoinette, or nothing.  Antoinette, you’re my girlfriend, but if you can’t deal with Anna being my friend, then you’ve got to leave.”

Those words stabbed him like a knife in the gut.  Mainly because he didn’t mean them and if he had to make a choice, he would choose Antoinette.  But he trusted his girlfriend enough to make the right decision, which was why he had said it.  Anna was the wild card.  He didn’t know if her pride would get the best of her.  But it was she who spoke first.

“I’m sorry, Scott.  I wasn’t really trying to pick a fight.  I just got mad that she seemed to be implying that you should give up your own goals and dreams for her.”

“That’s not what I—” Antoinette shouted, but went quiet when Scott looked at her.  She continued in a softer voice.  “That’s not what I was trying to do.  Obviously you don’t understand what it’s like to be left behind because you get to go with him.”

“Antoinette, I’m not going to leave you behind.  Besides, you applied to Tech, right?  Did you hear yet?”

She held out a few white envelopes in her hands.  “These all came today.”

Anna looked at the envelopes, and then at Scott.  She didn’t say anything, but he could tell from her look that she was reminding him of what she’d said about rejection letters.  He took Antoinette by the hand and led her over to the bed and sat on the end with her.

“Let’s look at them now,” he said.

Anna moved to the head of the bed and sat down next to Coco.  The dog put her head in Anna’s lap and wagged her tail gently when she began to pet her.  Apparently she hadn’t been too bothered by the fight.  She was used to a lot of loud noises in this house after all.  Scott rubbed Antoinette’s hand.

“Which one do you want to open first?”

“Does she have to be here for this?” Antoinette muttered softly.

“How about JMU?” Scott moved right past her question and took one of the envelopes from her.

“No, let’s not bother with the anticipation.”

She stuck a nail under the Virginia Tech letter and slid it open in one quick motion.  Scott winced a little.  He was a little afraid of her nails.  Yes, he was a masochist and found pleasure in pain, but he preferred pressure.  Cutting and slicing made his stomach feel weird.

She unfolded the letter and he waited while she read it.  She didn’t immediately refold it and stuff it back into the envelope, but kept reading.  Scott glanced at Anna.  She played with Coco’s ears, pretending to ignore what they were doing.  He looked back at Antoinette.  She lowered her arms and met his eyes.

“Well?” he questioned, unable to be patient.

“Well, it’s not a no,” she said.

“It’s not?” Anna asked incredulously.

Antoinette ignored her.  “I got wait listed.”

Scott brightened and hugged her suddenly.  “That’s great!”

“It is?” she asked doubtfully.

“Yeah!”  He pulled back and held her by the arms.  “I told you that extra studying for midterms would pay off!  They don’t wait list people unless they think they are good enough to get in.  So, you did get in.  Now, it’s just a matter of waiting for some people to go to other schools, and you’re officially in.  It’s a done deal.”

“Scott…there’s a really good chance that I won’t make the cut.”

“You will.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Scott grinned.  “Because my life is perfect.  And I’m finally mature enough to not care that it is.  So, I’ll get my way.”

Antoinette laughed and shook her head.  “You have enough optimism for us both, so don’t be upset if I take a slightly more pessimistic view of the subject.”

“Do what you want, sweetie.  We’re going to Tech together in the fall.”

Antoinette leaned forward and gave him a little kiss.  “I really hope so for your sake.  But if I don’t, I promise I’ll make you feel better.”

She kissed him again and Anna groaned in disgust.  They looked at her.

“Please,” she said.

Scott leaned back onto the bed and looked at Antoinette where sat on the end of the bed, her longs legs crossed and revealed almost to mid thigh as her skirt rode up when she leaned back on one arm.  He turned his head and saw Anna sitting at the head of the bed, her hair wiry and puffy today and making her look cute.  Scott was happy enough that he gave permission for his brain to take the next logical step when looking at two girls in cute school uniforms on his bed.  Anna frowned at him.

“What’s that weird smile for?”

“He’s imagining us having a threesome,” Antoinette said dryly.

Anna hopped off the bed.  “What?!  Ew!  You pervert,” she accused him as she walked around the bed.  “That would never, _ever_ happen.”

“So you say…and yet…I can see it happening perfectly right here in my—”

Scott was cut off as Anna pounded a pillow onto his head.  He just started laughing and she started hitting him repeatedly.

“What’s so funny?!”

“A pillow fight is how it started!” he got out between giggles.

Then he was getting beat with two pillows as Antoinette joined the assault.  Both girls were calling him a pig and a perv.  But he was okay with that.  After several minutes of wailing on him, they were both out of breath and panting on either side of him on the bed.  He knew better than to point out how close this was to the fantasy, so he enjoyed it by himself.  Antoinette turned to her side and leaned an arm on the bed and propped her head up with a hand.  She looked down at him and put her free hand on his chest.

“I bet you never thought you’d be in a fight that involved us that you would enjoy, huh?”

Scott laughed.  And so did Anna.

“Must be the strangest thing that’s happened to you all week,” Anna said.

“Ordinarily I would agree with you.  But today Ferris told me that he wants to date Julian.”

“What?” Anna asked, sitting up.

Antoinette blinked at him.  “Ferris.  Your brother Ferris?  Little cute, sweet nine year old Ferris?”

“Yup.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know exactly what that means,” Anna said hopefully.

“Yeah, that’s what Joanna and I were thinking.”

“Um, I think he knows exactly what it means,” Antoinette said.

Anna gave her a look.  “He’s nine.  And not a slut like you.”

“Anna,” Scott said in a disappointed tone.

Antoinette, to her credit, only gnashed her teeth and said, “He knows that Scott and I are dating.  And he’s seen what we do together.”

“What is wrong with you?!” Anna spat out, directing her disgust only at Antoinette and not at Scott, “you let little kids watch you have sex?!”

“Oh, my God!” Antoinette shouted as she sat up.  “Of course not, you stupid whore.  Why do you—”

Scott sat up and pushed them both off the bed in opposite directions.  They stumbled away from each other as they tried to gain their footing.

“Easy—” Scott started, but Antoinette cut him off.

“That wasn’t me, Scott!  I’m trying, I really am!  You heard what she said to me and I ignored it.  She’s the one who keeps attacking me!”

“I know, but—”

She pushed Scott onto the bed, and squared off with Anna, but didn’t move closer to her.

“I’m sorry, Anna.  And I truly mean that.  I know how much it hurts to think you’ve lost him.  I’ve been there and I hated myself and I was miserable.  So, I’m sorry if you feel that way.  It’s wretched.  And I don’t think that we have to spend time with each other and start to like each other, but there will probably be times in our lives when we’ll have to be in the same room, and the least you can do is not call me a slut all the time!  I’m not!  I may not have used the best judgment when I was changing my relationships with Jake and Scott, but I’m not easy!  And I don’t put out for just anyone.”

“That doesn’t matter, Antoinette!  It wouldn’t matter if you were still technically a virgin.  You used sex to manipulate and control two guys.  That makes you a slut.  And you just said that you do things in front of little kids.  That makes you a skank.”

“And why wouldn’t Scott be included in that second definition then?”

“Because I’m sure you jump on him like a dog in heat.”

“Anna,” Scott groaned from the bed.  “Please, stop.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Antoinette wailed.

“I said ‘Anna,’” he said.

“Oh.”

“All Antoinette meant when she said that Ferris knows what it means to date someone by watching us is that he’s seen us kiss before.  And nine year olds can tell the difference between kisses family members give each other and something different.  And she’s right.”  Scott sat up and looked at Anna.  “I treated you like shit last year, and I get that.  And I am so sorry.  But, if you’re mad at me, don’t take it out on her, alright?”

“I’m not mad at you!” Anna shouted.  “It’s her!  I hate her!  And I don’t understand what it is you see in her!”

“Obviously huge tits and a tight snatch,” Antoinette said harshly.  “Maybe you should have put out and then you’d have him.”

Antoinette’s hands were balled into her fists at her sides.  Her voice was shaking and she looked embarrassed and upset.  Scott immediately stood up and put an arm around her shoulders.  What she had just said had been mean, but he could tell she was saying it out of irony.  What Anna had said had shamed her, even though Scott didn’t think it was true.

“Anna,” he said quietly, “can you leave, please?”

Anna opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it.  She walked over to the bed to pick up her acceptance letter, and then she left the basement.  Antoinette’s face crumbled and she started to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Scott.”

He took her in his arms and rubbed her back soothingly.  “For what?”

“Because I ruin everything.  I always have.  I should have just left you alone!”

Scott pulled back and held her shoulders.  “Hey.”  She dropped her head as she cried, so he gave her shoulders a gentle shake and said her name to get her attention.  She looked up and met his eyes.  “Do you really mean that?” he asked.

She bit down hard on her lower lip as more tears spilled from her eyes.  “That’s the worst part.  I don’t mean it.  I want you.  I love you.  And I would do it all over again!”

Scott hugged her again, and she held him back this time, still sobbing.  Scott put a hand to the back of her head and kissed her hair.

“Good.  I’m glad.  Of course, if you did it over again, maybe you could just dump Jake and ask me out.  I’m pretty sure I would say yes.”

She let out a small laugh.  “You know, when you put it that way, it does sound so reasonable.  I wonder why I didn’t just do that in the first place.”

Scott shrugged.  “You had some issues to work through.”

“Still do.”

“We all do, honey.”  He pulled back and took her face in his hands.  “Antoinette, I do love you.  And I didn’t mean it at all when I said I’d let you go.  If you can’t deal with Anna…I’ll…I’ll stop…”  Scott took in a breath.  It was hard to say out loud.  But Antoinette spoke before he could finish.

“No.  Don’t.  I wouldn’t ask you to give her up anymore than I would ask you to give up the boys.  Because while you might give up Anna for me, I’m pretty certain you’d pick them over me.”

Scott didn’t attempt to make any sort of response to that.  She was right.  If a choice came down to them or her, no matter how much it would hurt, it wouldn’t be her.

“I can deal with her.  Well, what I mean is that I’ll put up with her.  I won’t try to deal with her by doing something to her.  I’ll just take it.  Because I was worried before, but now I know what you’re willing to do for me.  So, I can just take it, and it won’t really bother me.  Because all that matters is what you think of me.  And you don’t think I’m a…like that.  Do you?” she asked in a small voice.

“Not at all.  Not even a little.  Not then and not now.”

He pulled her forward and kissed her.  She put her hands to his waist and kissed him back.  Scott was already forgetting about the scene that had just happened as the kiss deepened.  Heck, he’d pretty much forgotten he’d gotten into Virginia Tech.

“Scotty?”

Scott repressed a groan and pulled back from Antoinette.  They looked at the basement stairs and a twin had just arrived at the bottom.

“Walls and a door,” Scott murmured.

Antoinette patted his chest comfortingly and smiled at the little boy.

“Hi, Ferris.  Did you need something?”

Ferris made a strange face.  “How come you can always tell who I am?”

“Your smile,” Antoinette said.  “You and Drake smile differently.”

“Oooh.  But no one else notices.  You’re the only one.”

“That’s not true.  Scott can tell you apart.  And you father and sister.”

“Yeah, but Linda can’t.  And Melissa and Joe and Simon can’t.  Our teacher can’t.  Our friends can’t.  Chris and Will can sometimes, but Julian can’t.”

Antoinette glanced quickly at Scott and gave him a wink.  She stepped close to Ferris and knelt in front of him.

“Does it bother you more than Julian can’t?”

“Yes.”

“Mm-hmm.  So, I hear you want to date him.”

“When I’m twenty.”

She laughed.  “Why twenty?”

“Scott says me and Drake can’t date until we’re twenty.”

Antoinette looked back at Scott.  He shrugged.  She turned back to the boy.

“Well, you can date before you’re twenty, but you’re too young right now.”

“I know.  Drake and I just talked about who we wanted to date when we’re older.  And he wants to date Mar-gwerite.”

Antoinette grinned.  “My sister?”

“Oh.  Um.  I wasn’t supposed to tell.  Don’t tell Mar-gwerite.”

Antoinette pantomimed zipping her lips.  “So, you wouldn’t want to date Veronique?” she asked, naming her other sister.

“No,” he said with little boy bluntness.

“You just want Julian.”

“Yes.”

She cocked her head to the side while she looked at him.  “You’re a big boy, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, you know what it means to date someone, right?”

“Yes.”

“You know you do things like what you just saw Scott and me doing, right?”

“Kissing?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.  But Julian and I wouldn’t do that.  Kissing is gross.”

Antoinette laughed and looked back at Scott as she stood up.

“Well.  There you go.  Nothing to worry about.”

Ferris tugged on Antoinette’s hand.  She looked at him.  “Yes, sweetie?”

“Does kissing always go with dating?”

“Um.”  She looked at Scott for help.

“Not always,” Scott said.  “Definitely not, actually.  You can accomplish dating without ever even touching the other person.”  He wrapped an arm around Antoinette’s waist and Ferris watched him do it.

“But you always touch An-t-nette.”

Scott jerked his hands behind his back.  “Well, um…”

Ferris sighed.  “There has to be kissing, doesn’t there?”

Scott dropped his forehead onto Antoinette’s shoulder and let her answer.

“Well, sweetie, that’s how you know you really want to date someone.  You want to kiss them.”

“Oh.  I see.”  Ferris thought for a moment.  “Will I stop thinking kissing is gross one day?”

“I hope so.  It is nice.”

Ferris made a doubtful face.  Then a contemplative one.  “Maybe I just think kissing is gross because I’ve never done it.  Maybe I should—”

“No!” Antoinette and Scott said together, the latter lifting his head.

“No, don’t do that,” Scott said.  “If you think kissing is gross, it will be if you try it.  It’s only good when you think it will be nice.  And even then…it can be bad.  And gross.  It’s not something you should rush into.  You should definitely wait.  Until you’re twenty.”

Ferris nodded.  “Maybe I’ll ask Julian.  Oh, yeah.  Linda says dinner will be ready in twenty minutes and An-t-nette can stay.  Will you stay?”

“Uh…yeah.  I’ll just call and let my parents know.”

“Okay.  I’ll tell Linda.”

He ran up the stairs and Antoinette turned to Scott, hoping to pick up where they’d left off for the next twenty minutes.  Scott was across the room at his desk, digging through his backpack for his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Calling Julian and letting him know that if he says or does anything weird to my brother I’m going to shave his head.”

 

Chris

 

Chris looked at his alarm clock in annoyance.  He had literally gone to bed two hours ago, and it felt like it had been two minutes.  Maybe he should cut school.  Or maybe he shouldn’t stay out until four in the morning on school nights.  Maybe parents were onto something.  But that would require one to trust their parents.

Chris put his hands under his head and stared at the ceiling of his bedroom.  He hadn’t heard from Mr. Richardson since they parted at the airport.  And if his mother’s story was true about a onetime run in at the park, then there was no reason for Mr. Richardson not to call him and tell him the same story.  Well, there was always the possibility that Chris and his friends had annoyed him so much that he was glad for any excuse to break off their relationship, but even Chris’ low self-esteem wasn’t entirely convinced of that.  His instructions had been pretty clear: Mr. Richardson had to tell him the truth, or not contact him.  And he hadn’t contacted him, which made Chris feel that his mother’s story was a lie and that Mr. Richardson was a coward.  And then he had to wonder if his father was just as ignorant of all this as he was.  He really didn’t seem to know Mr. Richardson as anything other than his lawyer, which was a small comfort.  But he had a criminal father, a lying mother, and potential cowardly biological father.  Three strikes and parents were out.

So, Chris had decided not to believe anything any of them had ever said.  And he’d decided to make them as angry with him as he was with them.  Of course the only one who would know would be his mother, but as far as he was concerned she was the biggest culprit.  He didn’t allow his anger to affect his schoolwork.  He was already in Northwestern, but he had to maintain his grades to qualify for financial aid.  And if he couldn’t go there it would impact his life negatively—mainly in that he wouldn’t be able to get away from his mother.  So, he had to rebel in other ways.  And staying out all night wasn’t as fun as he thought it would be.  For one thing, he was so good at sneaking in and out that his mother didn’t even know he was doing it.  So, that kind of defeated the purpose.  Being 18 had helped him get into some places that stayed open past 11:00, but if he wasn’t 21 there wasn’t much to do.

Yesterday he’d worked at Abercrombie and Fitch after school as usual until 7:00, but he’d told his mother he was working until closing.  She went to bed between eight and nine o’clock, so she wouldn’t wait up for him on nights he had to close thus making it easy to get in and out undetected.  Besides, she was a heavy sleeper who wouldn’t hear him come in no matter time he made it home.  He got home so late last night because he went into the city after work with a girl he’d met while ringing up her lingerie purchase.  They’d gone to an eighteen and over club downtown, then he’d left the club with a different girl and went back to her apartment for a couple of hours.  Then he’d had to figure out how to get home since the metro and buses had stopped running.  He’d considered calling Scott to come get him, but his bad behavior shouldn’t affect his friends.  Then he’d considered staying in the city and just going to school in the morning, but it was only three in the morning and four and half hours just seemed like a lot of time to kill at that time of night.  So, finally he’d sucked it up and called a cab.  It had cost him almost fifty dollars to get home.  If he was going to stay out late again, he was going to need to drive his car into the city.

The alarm went off again and he reached out with a hand to slap the snooze button.  His mother barged right into his room without knocking, as usual.  She seemed oblivious to the fact that he had been upset with her for weeks now.

“Hey, Chris, I didn’t hear you come in last night.”

“You never do,” he replied.

“True.  But I stayed up until ten last night.  If you don’t get home until after ten on nights you have to close, you should tell your boss you can’t close anymore.  It is a school night.”

“School’s almost over and I don’t want to lose the hours over the summer.”

She sighed.  “I know, but—”

“I’ve been working this late for over a year now.  It’s seems a little late to be concerned about it now.”

She stopped picking up his clothes from the floor and looked at him.  He didn’t know if it was the words or if his tone had changed, but she seemed to sense something was off now.  She smiled at him and clearly decided to ignore it.  She turned away.

“I guess you’re right.  Besides, who am I to talk about late hours, right?”

Chris didn’t respond.

“Well, I’m going to do laundry tonight when I get home, so if you have anything else, bring it downstairs.”

She left his bedroom and left the door wide open.  Chris wondered why she never seemed to catch on to the fact that he slept nude.  She couldn’t be that hard up for a man, could she?

Chris shook his head at the thought and sat up.  His eyes felt heavy.  And his mouth was cottony and his teeth fuzzy.  He’d hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth when he’d gotten home.  Maybe he should take the sheets off the bed to be washed.

He was on his way to the bathroom when his cell phone rang.  He changed course to dig it out of his book bag and answered without checking the display; only Scott would call this early in the morning.

“What’s up, Scott?” he asked, flopping back onto his bed.

“Oh.  It’s not Scott.”

Chris made a face and looked at the display.  He sighed and put the phone back to his ear.

“What do you want, Karen?”

“Geez, wake up on the wrong side of the bed much?”

“What do you want, Karen?”

“Okay, so that’s a yes.  I want a ride to school.”

“No.”

“Chris!”

He pulled the phone away from his ear, his eardrum still vibrating from the shout.

“What?”

“I’m your girlfriend!  You can’t just talk to me like that!”

“My girlfriend?  You said you wanted to go on a break.”

“No, take a break from each other.  But not break up.”

“Really?  It’s been, like, over a month.”

“I needed time to think.”

“Okay.  And I only needed a few days to assume we were broken up.  So.  I’m operating under the belief that I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Well, you do.  So, pick me up in half an hour.”

She hung up and Chris kept staring at ceiling.  She was crazy.  No way was he picking her up.

 

Karen smiled sweetly at him as he glowered behind the wheel of his car.  She pulled down the visor to check her appearance in the mirror and then put it back up.  She smiled at him again.

“So, do you want to know why I wanted a ride?”

Chris put his car in gear and circled the cul-de-sac to leave Karen’s street.

“I wanted a ride because I thought we could use the commute time to talk.”

“Unh-huh.”

“And this way you can’t run away.  And your friends can’t interrupt.  I know that they don’t like me and don’t want you dating me and I know you do everything they tell you to do…”

She paused as if she was expecting be interrupted.  But he didn’t bother.  No, that wasn’t an entirely true statement of their relationships with each other, but if Karen wanted to use it to make her point he wouldn’t argue.  It was close enough to the truth after all.

“Um, anyway, so I needed to talk to you free from their influence.”

“Go ahead.”

“So.  I got into Spelman and Howard, obviously.  Did you?”

Chris had applied to the predominantly black universities because back when he was filling out college applications he’d been dating Karen.  He’d gotten his acceptance letters from both a week ago.  He was surprised he got into both.  Maybe they were trying to fill their quota of white people.

“Yeah, I got into both.”

“Great!  So, I was thinking, Spelman would be nice because then we can get away from my parents.  But Georgia is kind of lame.  And can be hot.  So, I think Howard is the best choice.  And going to school in Washington, D.C. will be pretty dope.  There’s a lot of stuff going on there.  Right?”

“Karen, I’m going to Northwestern.”

He could feel her staring at him and could almost see the smile fading from her face, but he didn’t take his eyes off the road to check.

“What?” she finally asked.

“I applied to Northwestern, in Chicago.  And I visited the campus when I visited my dad over spring break.  I really loved it there.  In fact, it even brought back memories of when I used to live there.  I like Chicago.  And Northwestern is a great school.  And I got in.  So, I’m going there.”

Karen was quiet for three seconds.  “You didn’t tell me you were applying there.  I didn’t apply there.”

“Because it was just kind of on a whim.  A…friend suggested I apply, but I didn’t think I had a shot of getting in.  But I did.  And that’s where I want to go.”

“But, Chris,” she let out a disbelieving laugh, “that’s, like, hundreds of miles away from Howard.  We’ll only be able to call and e-mail each other and only see each other at semester breaks.”

“Yeah,” Chris agreed, not really wanting to point out that he didn’t think they would be doing any of that.

“And that doesn’t bother you?  You won’t mind being that far away from your girlfriend?”

“Like I said Karen, I didn’t know I still had a girlfriend until this morning.  I’m not planning my life around that.  I’m certainly not planning it around you.  Look.  I don’t consider us to be dating.  I pretty much haven’t since that conversation before spring break.  And quite frankly, I’ve moved on.”

There was more silence and even though they were at a stop light, Chris didn’t look at her.  The light changed and Chris went through it, aiming for the ramp to the highway to take them into the city.

“You’re going to need to clarify that last statement.”

“Well…I thought we were broken up.  So, I hooked up with some girl at a frat party while I was in Chicago.”

There was more silence.  They drove a few miles at speed until they caught up with the rest of the traffic heading into the city.  They slowed to crawl.  When Karen spoke again, the ambient temperature of the car dropped by twenty degrees at least.

“Okay.  So you had a one night stand with some skank.  Obviously you were upset over us, so—”

“That wasn’t exactly—”

“ _Obviously_ you were upset about our non break-up.  But now you know and we can work through this.  There will be a lot of groveling on your part, of course.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think what?”

“That I’m going to grovel for anything.  I thought we were broken up and I didn’t try to come get you back, so obviously I’m okay with it.  So, I’m not going to lie down and let myself get whipped because you didn’t carefully check my chain when you put me outside.”

“Chris, that’s not what I did at all.  And I resent the slave imagery.”

Chris didn’t apologize.  He’d been implying more like pet ownership, but her mind must have gone to “slave” because he used the word whipped.

“Okay.  Fine.  Let’s say we were broken up.  We don’t have to be anymore.  I slept with someone when we were broken up for real last summer.  I suppose I can get over the fact that you slept with someone while we weren’t really broken up at all.  Kind of.  That’s how much I love you.”  He could feel her glare on him.  “Did you use protection?”

“When?”

“When you slept the skank!”

“Who, Kenisha?”

“Kenisha?” Karen repeated, her voice and head bobbing reaching deep into her black heritage now.  “You slept with a black girl?”

“What’s wrong with that?  Quite frankly I thought you’d be more upset if I slept with a white girl.  And that’s really racist to assume she was black because her name is Kenisha.”

“Chris.  How dare you!”

“How dare I?!  We were broken up!  She was hot and offering it up!  So, I took it.  And, yes, I used protection.  Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business!  Need I remind you that there have been a couple of times that we didn’t bother with a condom?  I’m on the pill so I’m not worried about pregnancy, but if you give me an STD from some skanky hoe I will murder you!”

“Well, if you don’t sleep with me, you won’t have to worry about it.”

“You seriously want to date someone you’re not going to sleep with?”

“No, I don’t want to date anyone at all.  Because I’ve discovered that I don’t have to be dating someone to have sex with them.  And after having sex with someone, I don’t even have to talk to them.  Not anything past, ‘Hey, can you hand me my pants?’  And I kind of like it that way.”

“Oh, you’re such an expert after one one night stand,” Karen said caustically.

Chris adjusted his grip on the steering wheel as he let out a sigh.  And he didn’t look at her.

“Oh, my God.  It wasn’t just one time.”

Chris didn’t confirm her accusation, but he didn’t deny it either.

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bull shit.  How many?”

Chris shrugged.  “Five or six.”

“Just since Spring Break?”

“Yes.  I never cheated on you when we were together.”

“So, you’ve been fooling around since April.”

“We weren’t dating, Karen.”

“Even if you really believed that, I can’t believe you would sleep around like that.  That’s not like you.”

“No it’s not and that is entirely the point.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Daddy issues.”

“You rat.  Stop being like this!  There are other ways to hurt me!  You can just dump me!  Don’t make up shit like that!”

“I’m not.  In fact, I slept with someone from work just last night.”

She was shocked into silence again.  And then hit his shoulder, hard.

“Ow!  Not while I’m driving.  Beat me up when we get to school.”

“Who was it?!”

He looked at her now.  Her voice had been in complete distress.  She had tears in her eyes and she looked furious.  “Was it Jessica?  Amy?  I bet it was Suzanne.  That whore has always had her eyes on you.”

Chris looked back at the street again.  Fortunately they were in between exits and traffic was moving a little.

“It wasn’t anybody I work with.  It was just some girl who was shopping there last night.”

Karen leaned forward into the dash so that she could look at his face since he wouldn’t look at her.

“You hooked up with some girl you just randomly met last night at an Abercrombie and Fitch store in the mall?”

“Um, no.  I went to a club in the city with a girl I randomly met last night at an Abercrombie and Fitch store in the mall.  I hooked up with a girl I randomly met in the club.”

“Why are you saying these things?” she cried.

“Because you asked,” he reminded her.  “Look, I’m not interested in dating right now, Karen.  And it doesn’t have anything to do with you if you can wrap your head around that concept.”  He heard her gasp in disgusted surprise.  “I would have broken up with you by now even if I hadn’t already thought we were.  And I’m not going to do anything insulting like tell you I’m still willing to hook with you every now and then.  We’re not dating anymore, so I know that means you’re going to pretty much be through with me.  Unless you do want to hook up because I wouldn’t say no.”

“Shut-up,” she snapped.  She crossed her arms and sat back in her seat.  They drove in silence the rest of the way to school, Karen occasionally reaching up to brush away a tear with her thumb.  When they pulled into the parking lot, Chris quickly locked the door so that when she yanked on the handle the door wouldn’t open.

“Karen, wait two seconds.”

She turned a death glare on him.  “What!”

“I never meant to hurt you like this.  I swear I thought we were broken up.”

“So what if we were?  Even if I had under no uncertain terms broken up with you before spring break, you don’t think it would hurt me to hear that you’ve been sleeping around with dozens of girls?”

“Okay, one, it’s has not been dozens of girls.  And two, why would you care if we’re broken up?”

“Why would I care?!  Because I love you!  Yes, Chris, I’m hurt and upset because I feel betrayed.  But I’m worried to death about you!  This isn’t like you.  I know something is wrong and I’m worried and scared because I care about you!  What on earth do you think the boys would say if you told them the same thing?  Maybe one or two one night stands they might think is great or funny.  But you go tell them you slept with six different girls in only five weeks.  That you meet them randomly and just hook up for the night.  Could you tell them that?  Could you?  Answer me!”

Chris didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought.  If you can’t tell them, you’re ashamed.  So, you know it’s something you shouldn’t do.  And when someone does something they shouldn’t do, that means something is wrong!”

“I’m not denying that, Karen.  Something is wrong.  But, I don’t want you to be a part of it.”

“Why not?!” she wailed and Chris felt his eardrum vibrate again.  “Why?!  I love you!  You love me!  We’re a couple!  Let me help you through this!  Whatever it is!”

“Karen, we’re not a couple.  I don’t love you.  And quite frankly, I don’t think you really love me.  I think you have strong feelings, but you’re not in love with me.  You know you aren’t.”

“Don’t tell me what I feel!”

Chris sighed and sat back into his seat.  “Don’t call me for a ride to school anymore.”

He stayed facing the Nissan Sentra parked in front of him.  He could hear Karen choking on her sobs next to him.  Then she wrestled with the lock and door and got both open.  She slammed the door behind her so hard the car rocked a little bit.  Chris rubbed his thighs with his hands.  Why couldn’t they have been broken up?  He never even considered that he would have to deal with this.  She hadn’t talked to him in a month.  Turned her nose up when they passed in the halls.  Who would have thought they were still dating?  And what was worse, he didn’t really feel all that bad about what had just happened.  He found Karen to be nothing but an annoyance now.  And hopefully she was gone for good.  Maybe if he hadn’t been so wishy-washy with her before, it never would have come to this.  He’d decided he was going to be a little more firm from now on.  It would save a lot of unpleasantness in the future.

Chris got out of the car and locked it.  As he walked through the parking lot, he could hear feet running behind him.  He didn’t think anything of it at first, but as they got closer, he realized they were directly behind him.  He thought about turning around to look at who was chasing after him, but before he could follow through with the action, the owner of the feet landed on his back.

“Christophe~~r!”

Chris put his hands under Will’s legs and let him piggyback ride him up to the school building.  He was really light.

“What’s up, Will?”

“Nothin’.”

“You’re in a good mood.”

“Mm.  Most people who are sexually sated are.”

“Ew.”  Chris dropped him to his feet.

“What?  I showered after.”

“Mm-hmm.  And that’s not always true.  I got some last night and I’m not in a good mood.”

“Well, Karen normally doesn’t put you in a good mood.  Even when she sleeps with you.”

“It wasn’t Karen.”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s what caused your bad mood.  I saw her storm out of your car.”

“Well, she is the cause of my bad mood.  Well, a part of it.  But, she’s not who I got it from.”

Will’s eyebrows shot up.  “Seriously?  Then who was it?”

Chris reached out and opened the door to the building, looking at Will as he did.  He thought about what Karen had said.  Was he ashamed to tell Will?  That would be a pretty good gauge of whether or not what he was doing was severely wrong.

“Come here,” he said.

He walked down the hallway and turned into a stairwell.  He walked underneath the stairs so that they wouldn’t be visible from the halls.  It was still pretty early so there wasn’t a lot of traffic anyway, but he didn’t want to be overheard.  Because if Will found his behavior appalling, it could be bad if it got spread around the school.

Will was smiling at him as he joined him.  “Is there a reason you’ve brought me behind the stairs?”

The stairwells were known make out spots so usually people of the same gender (boys) avoided being alone together in them.  Even if they weren’t under the stairs there was a stigma about coming out of an empty stairwell with another person.  That may have been another reason why rumors circulated about the four of theirs sexuality.  They would often be spotted coming out of the stairwells in pairs because it never occurred to them to think about the implications of it when they were together.  With every other person in school, especially Computer Club members, Chris was always hyperaware of who he was with and who was looking when he was on the stairs.  But Will, Scott, and Julian—it never seemed to cross his mind.  At least, not unless one of them brought it up like Will just had.

“Yes, there’s a reason, but no it’s not dirty.  You know, Will, I’m starting to wonder about you.  Are you getting a crush on me?”

“Whaaat?”

“Well, you just seem to have that on your mind a lot when you’re around me.”

“Oh, whatever.  Let your id handle these kinds of things because your ego is crazy.”  Will grinned at him.  “Though it does have good taste.”

Chris laughed.  Then he leaned against the wall.  Will stepped closer to him and spoke softer, but excitedly.

“So…who was the lucky lady?  Was it Sophia?  I’m not interested in her all, but I get the feeling she’d be one of those virgins it’d be fun to play with.”

Chris laughed.  “I totally agree.  She—wait, I’m not talking about Sophia.  I don’t want to think about her.  And no, it wasn’t her.”

“Oh, so who was it?”

Chris lightly gripped his pants in his hands.  So, this was it.  Could he tell Will?  Was Karen right?  Ah, who cares if Will knew?  He could have sex with whomever he wanted.  The problem would be that if he told Will now, if it was that bad, he might get worried, tell the other two, and they would give him an intervention.  And he’d have to stop.  Maybe he should get another couple of weeks of sex out his damage before he tried to get help.  Well, maybe he could have put off Scott or Julian for a little while, but now that he had Will curious it was going to have to come out.

“Who, who?” Will hooted at him.

Chris half-laughed.  “I…don’t know actually.”

Will raised one eyebrow.  “What do you mean?”

“I don’t who she was.  I met her at a club last night.  And we hooked up.”

Will stared at him for a few seconds, and then gave a little shake of his head.  “Okay.  Was she good?”

Chris waffled a hand in the air.  “So-so.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

Will rocked on his heels, and narrowed an eye as he looked at Chris.  “Is there something else to this?”

Chris inhaled deeply, but didn’t bother with a sigh.  “I’ve kind of had a few one night stands.  Since Chicago.”

“Not…because we told you to, right?”

“No, no.  I’m angry with my mom.  I think she’s lying to me about Mr. Richardson.  And he won’t say anything either.”

Will stared some more and then said, “So…the sex is…?”

“Rebellion.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sneaking out at night and staying out late.  Sometimes I’ll hook up with someone.  Not that often.  And I’m always careful, so.”

“Hm.  How’s your mom reacting to it?”

“Well…she doesn’t know I’m doing it.”

Will let out a small laugh.  “Doesn’t that defeat the point?”

“Yeah, I guess.  But if she knew I don’t think it would help.  She would just lie more, which would make me want to act worse.”

“Define worse.”

“Oh, nothing too bad.  I’m not going to jeopardize my future at Northwestern, and consequently my ticket to independence, or anything.  I just think I’m tired of being a model son who’s always worrying about pleasing her because now I don’t think she deserves it.  And I mean, it’s not that there’s something wrong with me.  You like sex, right?  I mean, you do it a lot.”

Under the stairs it was dim, but Will blushed.  That was easy to see.

“Well.  Um.”

“Don’t get shy now, Will.  It’s no big deal to like sex.  Most teenage boys, and girls, do.  And you’re lucky you’ve found someone that you love, whose company you want to be in, so that you can have sex as often as you like and not be bothered by all the BS that goes with it when you’re in a relationship.”

Will half-smiled at him.  “You know, when you’re in a real relationship, it’s not BS.”

“I know.  And that’s great for you.  But, I’m just so not in a place right now to deal with someone else’s baggage.  I don’t want to be sensitive and try to take on other people’s problems.  I don’t want to be involved with anyone.  I don’t want to have to constantly think about someone else and what I can or have to do for them.  I did that all my life with my mother and right now I just want…to focus on myself.”

Will shrugged.  “I see nothing wrong with that.  You’ve broken up with Karen, so it’s not like you’re stringing someone along.  You’re single.”

“See!  I knew I wasn’t dating anyone.”

Will seemed a little confused.

“Look, you agree, right?  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be single, right?”

“Right.”

“And I am currently single.”

“As far as I know.  Does someone else not know that?”

“Well, she does now.  But, just because I’m not dating someone doesn’t mean I don’t still want sex.”

“That is definitely a universal truth.”

“And so long as I do it with girls who know that that’s all it is, there’s no harm, no foul, right?  I mean, I wouldn’t do it with someone like Sophia.  Just some girl who’s looking for the same thing late at night in a club.”

“Chris, I am fully on board with this, but are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“Both I guess.  I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything wrong, but Karen yelled at me for it.”

“Why did you give Karen a ride to school anyway?  You guys have been apart for a month now.”

“That’s what I thought!  Apparently she just thought she was giving me a time out to think about what I’d done.”

“Which was what?”

“Honestly, I’m not really sure this last time.  But, she does know now that I’ve slept with other people.”

“Good.  Maybe she’ll finally leave you alone now.  Look, Chris.  Being single and hooking up with different girls every weekend isn’t really bad.  It’s just that…it could be dangerous.  If you know what I mean.  So, it’s like, I won’t tell you not to do it because it’s skanky because I couldn’t care one way or the other.  However, I would beg you to be sensible when you do it.  I know you’re the guy so it’s a lot less dangerous, but don’t go some place completely isolated.  Or with a girl who looks high.  Or, you know…it’s just impossible to tell by looking at someone what they have or what they might do.  I’m just worried if you’re doing this to hurt your mom, that you’re not thinking clearly and making bad choices.”

“Yeah, I know.  But that’s the point, right?”

Chris looked up and saw Will pursing his lips together in displeasure.  Obviously that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Do you want us to stage an intervention?”

“God, no.”

“You know what it would be like.  Scott would be sobbing so uncontrollably we won’t even be able to understand what he’s saying.  Julian would be offering himself so that you don’t have to have sex with strangers.  And I—”

Chris laughed.  “Wouldn’t that be you?  You’ve propositioned me twice pretty recently.”

“That is your subconscious desires making you hear what you want to hear.”

“Mm-hm.  Look, Will, I appreciate the concern, but right now I’m just kind of…enjoying not being an ideal son, student, human being.  I just want a break.”

“And I’m all for that, Chris.  But while you may only want this break to last a few months, you could wind up with some permanent reminders.”

Chris smiled sardonically.  “I know it has its risks, and I’m taking precautions, but the risk is kind of part of it.”

“Well, what’s wrong?  Why do you feel the need?”

Chris shrugged.  “Eighteen years is a long time to never misbehave.”

“Oh what kind of bullshit answer is that?  Look at who you’re talking to.  I don’t know what you were like before second grade, but you have been misbehaving pretty regularly since you were eight and met us.  Just because you always said we shouldn’t do what we were doing didn’t mean you weren’t participating.”

Chris laughed.  “That’s certainly true.”  Chris rubbed his head vigorously and let out a little groan.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  Why I’m feeling so sorry for myself.”

“Yes, you do,” Will stated bluntly.  “You’re just not telling me.  Are you afraid I won’t think it’s worth what you’re doing?”

“Maybe.”

Will got a sudden shocked and offended look on his face.  “Is it because you don’t want me to know?”

“Hey, you’ve kept secrets too.”

“And it killed me!  I told you all about Kendall.”

Chris gave a slight shake of his head.  “Sort of.  But there’s something else you’re hiding.”

“Well, not for much longer.  I’ll tell you after graduation.  Introduce all of you.  If I can.”

“If you can?”

“She may say no.”

“And then what?”

Will’s face turned even paler than usual.  His eyes were suddenly dark and a muddy color.  He swallowed hard.  “I don’t know.  What I’ll do.”

Chris reached out on instinct and cupped the back of Will’s neck, his thumb resting gently just in front of his ear.

“Will, are you okay?”

Will’s eyes were moving, almost like he was reading.  He must be thinking hard about something.  Then he looked up.  His eyes were hazel.  Not the clear pretty green they usually were, but better than they had been.

“I’m sorry.  We’re trying to deal with your problems, aren’t we?”

Chris smiled and lightly moved his thumb against Will’s face.  “I kind of feel like yours is direr at the moment.”

Will gave a slight shake of his head and let out a small laugh.  “No.  I’m just a lot more melodramatic.”

“What’s going on here behind the stairs?” a voice sang out.

Chris dropped his hand and they turned to find the lesbians giggling and smiling at them like they had just discovered a juicy secret.

“What will Karen do about this?” Caitlyn mused.  “Is she confident enough to take on a rival as sexy as Will Harder?”

“Or is the real problem for, Chris?” Layla chimed in.  “Julian’s gotten really big recently.”

They giggled again and Chris wasn’t quite sure how to combat them.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever actually spoken to either of them before.  Will, however, had much more extensive dealings with them, so he stepped forward.

“Now, Layla, sweetheart, I’ve always done you a favor when you needed it, right?”

“Mm-hmm,” she said with a smile that made Chris bite his lip.  Caitlyn looked a little annoyed.

“So do me a favor.  So that Chris and I may safely continue our torrid love affair—”

“Hey,” Chris protested.

“—Why don’t you give Julian something to focus on?”

“Oh, please,” Caitlyn laughed.  “Like Layla would go for that.  She can barely tolerate you because you’re so small and girl-like.  You really think she can handle a big hulk of a man like Julian?”

Caitlyn was directing her speech at Will and didn’t see her sometimes-girlfriend’s reaction.  She blushed.  Beet red.  And looked like she’d been called out on a crush.  To verify, Chris glanced at Will.  He gave a quick raise of an amused eyebrow to confirm what Chris thought he was seeing.

“Now maybe me…” Caitlyn continued as Layla tried to recover herself.  “I bet I could keep him occupied for you.”

Will shrugged.  “Nah.  I’m not in the mood for Chris anymore.  Why don’t you give him a whirl?  I hear he’s open for business.”

“Hey!” Chris protested again.

“Maybe I will,” Caitlyn smirked playfully at him.

“Hey,” Chris said with a smile and a nod.

Layla elbowed Caitlyn.

“Anyway, if you boys are done,” Caitlyn said, “we have some business of our own to take care of.”

Chris and Will put their hands in the air and backed out of the stairwell.  Chris looked at Will as they entered the hallway.

“Do you really think I have a shot with that?”

“If she gets pissed enough at Layla.”

“Hunh.”

“What the freak were you two doing in there?”

Chris saw Julian, Scott, and his twin brothers standing at Scott’s locker across the hall.

“What do you think we were doing?” Will asked as he walked over to them.

“Talking I hope,” Julian said with a narrowed eye on Chris.

Chris made an annoyed face at him.  “Relax.  I don’t want him.”

“Chris, Will,” one of the twins said.  “Do you know who I am?”

“Sure.  Scott’s brother,” Chris stalled, looking back and forth for clues to their individual identity.

“Which one?” the little boy demanded.

Chris and Will exchanged looks.  Then they pointed to him and Chris said Drake while Will said Ferris.  Then they looked at each other again before re-pointing at the twin and changing their answers.  Then they looked to Scott for help.  He started to mouth something to them, but the little boy squealed.

“I’m getting my hair cut!”

He started to stomp away.  The other twin followed him.

“Why do we have to be different?” Drake said.  “Who cares?  Why is it bad if people think you’re me?  What’s bad about me?”

“Nothing!  But people should love us for who me and you are.  Not who we are together!”

“That’s stupid!”

“It is not!”

“Ferris, Drake,” Scott started.

“This doesn’t concern you!” they shouted together.  And then walked together down the hallway, talking in softer tones.

Scott looked devastated, so Chris patted him comfortingly on the shoulder.

“Do nine year olds talk like that?” Julian asked.

“I did,” Will said.

“What was that all about anyway?” Chris asked.

Scott sighed.  “Ferris has, or thinks he has (I don’t know if he’s actually old enough to really understand it) a crush…on Julian.”

“Julian?” Will questioned, sounding slightly offended.

“Relax, Will,” Scott griped.  “I’m sure if he realizes he’s gay when he’s older that he’ll definitely find you attractive.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Are you sure he just doesn’t admire him?” Chris asked.  “I mean, if he’s having an identity crisis maybe he is just in awe of Julian who is definitely an individual and knows how to show it.”

“Thanks for putting that so nicely,” Julian said.

“I did say it nicely.”

“That’s why I said thank you.”

Chris and Julian raised eyebrows at each other.

“I don’t know,” Scott said.  “Joanna and I aren’t sure where exactly his head is in the matter.  I mean, it could be something innocent like that.  I don’t think he knows what sex is yet.  Hopefully.  Of course my philandering father and amorous girlfriend have probably given him some clues, but he’s only nine!”

“So, kids that age can get crushes,” Will said.  “They see cartoon characters having relationships on TV.  They see commercials that are supposed to be cute to adults, but show kids his age engaging in romantic relationships.”

“That’s not what has me worried.  It’s the sex part.  But maybe you’re right, Will.  Maybe it’s just the idea of a relationship that he’s seen on TV or something.  Coupled with Chris’ theory, I think it makes some sense.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Julian suggested.

“We kind of did.  But I don’t want to delve too far into it because I don’t want to wind up giving him ideas or explaining things to him that at the very least _I’m_ not ready for him to know.”

“I could talk to him,” Julian said.

Scott turned faux claws on him and swiped the air.  “You most certainly will not!  I remember quite well that my sexual education came way too early due to your hippie-dippie Wiccan love fest our bodies are a natural part of life and everything we do parents!”

Julian grabbed his wrists and pinned them behind his back.  He squirmed to get out and Julian fought to keep control.

“First of all.  My parents may have been crazy Wiccans, but they weren’t hippies.  Second of all, you were the one who asked how bunnies made more bunnies.”

Scott and Julian continued to struggle and Chris looked to Will.  Will patted his shoulder.

“Just be grateful you didn’t join us until you were eight and missed Mrs. March explaining sex and nature and magick to a bunch of five years olds.”

“Ah.  Maybe that explains why all of you are so oversexed.”

Will gave him a look.

“Okay.  Maybe I should put the rocks down since I just moved into my brand new glass house.”

Julian and Scott’s scuffle was starting to draw attention, so Chris and Will decided to get to class.  Chris waved goodbye to Will, turned the corner, and ran smack into Sophia.  She looked cute today, which she usually did, but her hair was in those half-pigtails that Chris loved.  She still had great legs, but she was pretty short.  And still small and young-looking in the face.  She still looked as young as she had last summer.  She was one of those teenagers who definitely did not grow up too fast.  She had no business dealing with the likes of him.  And the Universe seemed to be displeased with him today as it kept throwing people he didn’t want to see at him.  All women as it turned out.  He wondered if it _was_ possible to choose to be gay.  Because becoming a social pariah notwithstanding, his life would be easier and help explain his strange devotion and love/hate relationship with his mother.

Sophia blinked her big brown eyes at him, and then her automatic reaction was to smile.  Then she tried not to smile at him with marginal success.

“Hi, Chris.”

“Hey, Sophia.  How’s life?”

She shrugged.  “You know.  Finishing up sophomore year, so still stuck smack dab in the middle of high school.  And like three of my friends got asked to senior prom.  That’s like crazy.  Three of them.  It kind of sucks that I can’t go.”  She tried to look at him nonchalantly and failed.

“Sophia, sweetheart, absolutely not.”

She laughed.  “I had to try right?  And don’t I get points for being subtle and not crazy about it?”

Chris smiled.  “Yeah, definitely.

“But like, if things hadn’t been crazy this year.  And you and Karen hadn’t gotten back together and then broken up again recently—”

 _I knew we were broken up!_ Chris thought.

“—then, like, would you have considered me?  Even a little bit?”

“Would you still want me to ask you knowing full well that I’d expect you to put out on prom night?”

She laughed uneasily.  “Probably.”

“Well, then my answer is no.  I wouldn’t even consider it.”

“Such a gentlemen,” she grumbled.

“Not really.”

“Well, in that case, would you at least want to make out later in the janitor’s closet?”

“Can’t do that either.”

“Why not?” she pouted.

Chris put his arm on the wall at the height of her head and leaned down.  “Because, Sophia, when I’m with you,” he said as he gathered a bit of the hem of the side of her skirt in his hand and tugged on it lightly, “I have a really hard time stopping.”

Sophia shifted her weight, but it was apparent she was trying really hard not to move.  He saw the sudden desire in her eyes.  At least one part of her had grown up.

“You know, there is a part of me, and it’s getting bigger every day, that kind of thinks that’s not such a bad thing.”

Chris balled the fabric of her skirt in his fist.  “Yeah?”  He leaned down closer.  “Call me when it’s at 85%, okay?”

She nodded.  “I’ll probably call when it’s at 51%.”

“I look forward to that.”

He straightened and walked away from her.  What was wrong with him?  Why did he like to tease her so much?  _Because she’s so cute when she squirms_.  Chris frowned at his own thought.

Then he was suddenly reeling from a sharp, burning pain that covered most of his right cheek and bottom lip.  He put a hand to his face and tried to draw the breath he’d been interrupted in taking.  He saw Karen standing in front of him, glaring at him and backed by four of her friends.  She had just slapped him.  Really, _really_ hard.  He put his fingers to his lip and then checked them.  She’d actually drawn blood.  Several of their fellow students were whispering and observing the scene.  Some had their cell phones out and were taking pictures. 

He glared back at her.  “Just to be clear, since I never know what you’re thinking, we _are_ officially broken up now, right?”

She didn’t answer but continued to stare at him.  Her friends were actually giving better death glares than she was.  He wondered why she wasn’t bringing it as usual today.

He wiped his lip and could tell it had already stopped bleeding.  He turned a hard look on Karen.

“So, we’re not going to do this amicably?  You feel the need to make us try to hurt each other as much as possible?”

Karen opened her mouth, but her friend beat her to saying, “It’s no less than you deserve you two-timing prick.”

Karen closed her mouth and Chris watched her.  She didn’t really seem to be the one leading this assault even though she was in front.

“Okay.  Fine.  I never actually cheated on you, but you’ve decided to go with hurting with physical pain.  Fine.  Obviously, I can’t hit you, not that I want to, but how about this?”

He turned and looked down the hall.  Sophia was still standing at the corner and talking with a friend.

“Hey Sophia!” he hollered, getting the attention of everyone in the hallway.  She looked directly at him, and looked a little startled.  “Do you want to go to the prom with me?” he called out.

He saw her take a split second to think, and then he could almost see the devil on her shoulder gagging the angel and telling her not to think about it.

“Yes, of course!” she said.

“Great.”

Chris turned back to Karen.  Her friends’ jaws were on the floor and they looked like they were about to lay into him.  Karen looked furious.  For which he was grateful.  If she’d looked hurt or sad, he would have felt bad too.  As it was now, he felt…nothing.  So he held her eyes with his for a moment and then walked away before her friends found their voices.

Females were so taxing.  They always wanted something, but they wouldn’t say what.  They’d rather glare and give the silent treatment than tell you what was wrong.  They would declare themselves strong and independent, but they would tear each other down to stay in the good graces of a man.  And they would be meek and placating instead of standing up for themselves.  They were all like that.  And he was finally seeing it.  He hated his mother for being weak and lying to him.  He hated Karen for always demanding he be what she wanted rather than who he was.  He even sort of hated Sophia for always giving him what he wanted rather than asking for what she wanted.

Chris stopped at his locker and began to work the combination as he let these thoughts race around inside his head.  He sounded like a total misogynist.  And he wasn’t even that upset about being one because he kind of felt like he had good reason to be.  And that just couldn’t be healthy.

 

Julian

 

“So…what is it with you and older women?”

Julian glanced up from his calculus homework.  He and Will were in study hall.  And while Julian and the other five people in the class were diligently studying and working, Will was bored.  The two of them were tucked away into the corner, isolating themselves from the other students.  Not out of a desire to be asocial, but because they were seniors and the other five were freshman and sophomores.  The social bridge between them, the juniors, were away on a class field trip.  Julian was sitting with his back to the classroom, and the teacher, with his feet propped up on the chair of the desk next to Will.  Will was trapped in between the wall and Julian’s body and had spent the first three minutes doing his calculus homework, the next five minutes doing all the problems they had not been assigned, the four minutes after that studying tomorrow’s chapter, and finally the past one minute staring at the freshman girls across the room who were mostly working on their homework, but alternating between flirting with the sophomore boys and throwing looks in his direction to see if he noticed or cared that they were showing attention to someone else.  Julian was aware of all this because of the college dorm room style mirror that hung on the wall he faced.  Over it Ms. Sturney had written, “Who is the most important person of all?  Look here and discover who it is, whether they be tall or small.”  Ms. Sturney had a good heart, but Shakespeare she was not.

Julian pushed his homework toward Will.  “You take care of this for me and I’ll answer any inane questions you may have.”

Will scooted his chair forward a little bit so that his desk was even with Julian’s.  The class and Ms. Sturney had turned to look at them due to all the scraping noise, but no one said anything because it was barely audible over the rattling air conditioning unit anyway.  Will pushed the notebook to Julian and said, “I’ll help you with it, but I won’t do it.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll answer your questions, but I might not tell the truth.”

“Okay.  I might not tell you the right way to do it.”

Julian frowned.  “Is this one of those integrals that looks complicated but actually is easy because you substitute all the crap in the parenthesis for a ‘u’ and then solve it and stick the crap back in?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.  Good.  Which one is it?”

“Figure it out.”

“You said you’d help!”

“I said I’d help, not give you the answers.”

“Well, I figured out the type it is.”

“No you haven’t.”

“I’m like halfway there.”

“So, look at it and think it through.  If it has a square root over—”

“I think I’d rather answer your stupid question.”

“Go ahead.”

“What is with _you_ and older men?”

“That’s not an answer, it’s a question.”

“You never said I couldn’t answer a question with a question.”

“I don’t have a ‘thing’ for older men.  It’s one man.  And only him.  Believe me.  The more I’ve had time to process my relationship with him, the more questions I’ve asked of myself.  I’ve tried to look at other men, my age and older to see if I’m physically attracted to them.  I don’t think I am.  I really tried with Mr. Richardson, you know?  Cause he’s an attractive workaholic businessman.  But, nothing.  Ken is like, the only exception.”

“Maybe it’s just because you’re _in love_.  Maybe you’re not attracted to anybody else.”

“Sort of.  In a way.  But, I still find girls attractive.  Like when Layla was sitting on the stair railing yesterday…”

“Oh, God,” Julian moaned softly.  “Don’t remind me of that in public.”

They snickered together like pervy teenaged boys.

Will smiled and tapped his pencil on Julian’s homework.  “Do you like her?”

“Who?”

“Layla.”

“Oh, yeah.  She’s a lot nicer than I thought she was.  We talked a good deal at your birthday party actually.  I was really surprised she talked to me that much.”

“Unh-huh.  So…do you like her?”

“I just said yes,” Julian frowned at him as he began working his math problem.  Will tapped his pencil and made him stop.  He shook his head.  Julian cursed inwardly.  He was doing it wrong.  He flipped the page back to re-read a section.

“Don’t make me go all junior high on you.  Do you _like_ like her.”

“Oh.”  Julian didn’t respond right away as he finished reading the explanation of irrational integrals.  “Um, no.  Well.  I mean she’s hot, and nice.  But, I don’t have a crush on her or anything.”

“Not old enough for you?”

“Dude.  Dr. Gorman was an exception.  Just like Ken.  She was the first person I went to to deal with my parents.”

“What about Ms. Peterson?”

“Every seventh grader had a crush on her.  Including you.”

“What about Aaliyah?”

“What about her?” Julian asked evenly, starting again on his math problem.  Will didn’t stop him this time, so he assumed he’d chosen correctly.

“Dude.  I like, saw you.  Through the window.  You full on trashy romance novel cover-ed her.”

Julian smiled at the imagery that evoked and turned his notebook for Will to look at the problem.  He barely glanced at it before putting a check mark next to it with his pencil.  Julian started on his next problem.

“That was,” Julian groped for an explanation.  “Issues.  That’s all.  It had to do with what happened between us on Thanksgiving.  It didn’t really mean anything.”

“Well, that’s three older women and three makes a pattern.”

“What about Delia?”

“Who?”

“The girl I obsessed over in ninth grade.”

“She was a year older than you.”

“That doesn’t count!” Julian laughed.

“Sure it does.”

“How about Eun-hee?  She was in our grade.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t actually date her, nor did you really like her that much.”

Julian was quiet as he finished another problem.  Before he could push the notebook over for inspection, Will gave it a check mark even as he looked at it upside down.

“What about Anna?” Julian asked as he concentrated intently on the next problem and wouldn’t look at Will.

“Finally admitting to that, huh?”

Julian only reacted by flaring his nostrils a little.

“She’s four days older than you.”

Julian slapped his pencil down and looked up at Will.  He was grinning at him.

“You know, I don’t find you as cute as I used to.”

“Yeah, you do.  I should find out when Layla’s birthday is.

“Why Layla?”

Will shrugged.  “I’m just curious where that would lead.”

“Probably no where since she’s a lesbian.”

“Hm.  Are you still seeing Dr. Gorman?”

“No.  I see Dr. Corbin.”

“No, I mean, are you still _seeing_ her?”

“Oh.  Well, I never really was.  And she was only okay with it for a couple weeks, and then she went right back to pushing me away.  I try to be good around her, but she makes it hard.  Because she wants it as bad as I do.  So, the only solution is to not see her.  So, I don’t.  I haven’t seen her in a couple of months.”

“Is that okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to be with her?”

“I want to have sex with her.  But, I don’t think I would want with her what you have with…what you have.  I don’t think I’m really ready for a long term, serious relationship.  I think I want some time to myself.”

“That’s understandable.”

Will reached out and wrote upside down on his paper.  Julian started reworking the problem with Will’s “hint.”

“Would you want to ask Anna out?”

“Umm…no, I don’t think so.  I don’t really feel comfortable around her anymore.  Not since Thanksgiving.”

“But she forgave you, right?”

“Yeah.  She said she’d forgive me, but never forget.  You can’t have a relationship with that.”

“No, I guess not.”

Will was quiet as Julian continued to work.  When he finished half of the problems, he looked up and found Will watching him.  He got the impression he’d been staring at him for the last several minutes.

“W-what?”

“Are you making friends with your co-workers?”

Julian leaned back in his chair.  He examined Will’s face, but it was a perfectly calm, neutral mask.  He supposed he shouldn’t get defensive yet.  Technically Will hadn’t said anything or used a tone to indicate that he was being snide or mean.

“Some of them,” Julian answered.

“Are they nice?”

Julian tilted his head with a small smile.  “Well, most of them.  Certainly the ones I’ve made friends with.”

Will nodded.  “Are they…do they talk about their clients?”

“Will, I don’t mind talking about this, but I need to know where you’re going with it first.”

“I’m not trying to be mean.  I promise.  I just.  Um.  I was wondering if they’re mean about clients.  Or if they hate all of them.  And resent them.”

“Um…”  Julian still wasn’t quite sure where Will’s mind was going, but he figured he could answer this question.  “It depends, you know?  They gossip.  Like people do.  Some more than others.  They share information if they share clients.  And some of them do say bad things about clients, but that’s not so unusual.  But even if they don’t like a client for some reason, I’ve never gotten the impression that they resent them.  It’s a mutual decision for both parties.”

“Yeah.”  Will was gnawing on his lower lip and thinking about something to the point of distraction.

Julian recognized the look.  He’d wait it out.  If he asked him to explain, he’d draw him out of his thoughts and he might clam up.  If he let him keep thinking, he might blurt out his thoughts.

“Do you know one named Leo?”

Julian tried not to react to the name since Will was now focused on him again.  He didn’t want to do anything to remind Will of whom and what they were talking about.  He was pretty sure he was about to learn something very interesting.

“Um…Leo?  Leo, Leo, Leo.  Oh, yes.  He’s usually the bartender.”

“The bartender?” Will asked.  “So, he’s not an escort?”

“He is.  He just spends more time behind the bar.  He’s very picky about who he services.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.”  Julian rolled his pencil in his fingers.  He was taking a risk of closing the subject if he asked a question, but he needed to know the answer to this one.  “Can I ask…how you know him?”

“I don’t.  I’ve just heard the name.”

“From where?”

Will’s eyes cleared.  He was aware of what he was discussing again.  The green slowly faded to hazel.

“He’s…Ken.  Mentioned him.  As one of the ones he used to see.”

Julian raised his eyebrows.  He took a moment to try to picture Ken and Leo together.  He couldn’t quite make it work.  Leo was usually a top.  Hm.  Maybe he was wrong when he assumed Ken was topping Will.  If Will was taking the man’s role, even though he was smaller, maybe he was still completely straight after all.

“Well, he’s a good guy,” Julian said, wondering why he was trying to make Will feel better about his stupid boyfriend.  If anything he should tell him that Leo was into really weird stuff which would make Ken a freak.  But then, maybe he was and Will knew it.  “He’s pretty businesslike I think.  No romance, no fantasies.  He doesn’t make deep connections with his clients.”

Will nodded.  “Yeah.  That makes sense actually.”

“Did Ken mention anyone else?”

Will shook his head.  “He said he didn’t really take Rylan up on his offers too often.  And he would never see the same guy more than once, so he doesn’t remember them too well.  He remembers Leo because he’s the only one…he ever saw more than once.”

“Ah.  Well, don’t be jealous.  The two of you are nothing alike.  If he chose you, he’s not going to be interested in Leo.”

“I’m not worried about him being unfaithful.  I guess I’m just curious to see what he intentionally chose.  Because he didn’t pick me.  It just happened.”

“Well, I don’t think his taste in prostitutes means too much.”

“No, not the random ones.  But the one he saw more than once.  The boyfriend he had in grad school.  Rylan.  Those are people he chose.  And I’m very different from them.”

Julian was doodling circles on his homework.  “And you’re also the one that stuck.  So.  Maybe that means something.”

“Maybe.  But he dated his grad school boyfriend for almost three years.”

“Are you worried he’s going to dump you?” Julian asked, attempting to hide the hope in his voice.

“No.  That’s not what worries me.”

“Then what does?”

When Will didn’t answer, Julian looked up and found his friend staring at the mechanical pencil he held in his hands.  He didn’t look sad exactly.  Or worried.  Maybe it was more sorrowful.

“Will?”

Will looked up.  “Oh.  Nothing.  I’m not really worried about him.”  He shrugged tiredly.  “It’s me.  I’m afraid it’s going to be me.”

Julian’s brows drew together.  “I don’t understand.”

Will sat back in his chair and took Julian’s notebook with him.  He turned to a different page and began writing down the answers to the second half of Julian’s remaining problems.  Julian supposed he could either just copy them down in his own handwriting later or use them as a check for his own work.  He hadn’t decided yet if he was going to be lazy or not.  Though, he probably was.  School was almost over and he’d gotten into a couple of state colleges as well as a couple of out of state art schools.  But what he hadn’t told any of his friends yet was that he was considering deferring for a year.  So, what did calculus matter?

“Are you going to ask anyone to prom?” Will asked.

Julian was surprised by the question.  He thought Will was being broody and introverted.  “Um…I hadn’t given it much thought.  Are you?”

“No.  I’m not going to go.  I’m going to spend the evening with Ken.”

“Oh.  Why?  It’s your only chance to go to senior prom…as a senior.”  Julian remembered that Will had been to the prom three times already.  He was still only one of four freshmen (and the only boy) in the history of the school to ever get an invite to the senior prom.  He’d even gone last year, but that was only because he’d agreed to be Felicia Kline’s date before the accident.

Will shrugged.  “Ken and I have decided that we can’t date other people, even for pretend, just because nobody knows about us.”

“Ah.”  Julian tapped his pencil against his lips.  “Does this decision have anything to do with the woman he took out on New Year’s?”

Will looked up with an intense frown.  Julian hid his smile.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Did you know her?”

“Know who?”

“Angela.  The woman.”

“No.  But she did seem willing to have a threesome with me and Ken when I offered.”

“What?” Will laughed.

“Camellia had gotten me all hot and bothered and then left me hanging.  I was horny.  And Ken seemed to indicate that was going to sleep with her, so I guess in my slightly tipsy state that didn’t seem very fair.”

“Camellia?”

“Dr. Gorman.”

“Doesn’t fit.”

“Neither does Kendall.”

“I know, right?”

Will gave him his notebook back.  Julian kept it open in case Ms. Sturney was looking at them; then he could pretend he was still working on it.

“He didn’t go through with it, you know.”

“Hmm?”

“Ken told me he didn’t sleep with her that night.”

Will nodded.  “He told me that.”  He smiled smarmily at him.  “You know, he’s really jealous of you.”

Julian sat up straight.  “Of me?”

“Mm-hmm.  He thinks your feelings for me go beyond a simple crush or friend admiration.  He thinks you’re completely full on in love with me.”

Julian was quiet.  Wasn’t he?  That was hard to say.  His feelings for Will went beyond simple terms like love and admiration.  It would be hard to define his feelings with such weak words.  Plus, there was also the fact that he did like other people.  That he found girls attractive and could even like one enough to find what she had to say about her life interesting.  He supposed his feelings for Will were more similar to his feelings for Scott and Chris after all.  The only real difference all along had been that he did find Will sexually attractive.  And now that he’d spent more time with the Blue Boys, he could see Chris and Scott in a similar way.  If he didn’t think about it too much while he was teasing them.  So, did that mean that he really wasn’t _in love_ with Will?  He didn’t know.  Either he’d never really been in love before, or he’d never been in love with anyone else to compare the feeling to.

Julian saw that Will was looking at him expectantly.  He’d kind of said it like it was the delusion of a jealous lover that Julian was in love with him, but he also seemed to be waiting for an answer.  In great relief Julian noticed he wasn’t simply waiting for a confirmation that he wasn’t in love with him.  He was just waiting for an answer no matter which way it went.  He didn’t blame Will for not knowing how he really felt about him.  He himself didn’t know after all.  Finally, he responded.

“I don’t know, Will.  He might have good reason to be jealous.  I honestly don’t know.”

Will smiled.  “I wish I could say that that means you’re not.  That even an idiot would know if he was in love with somebody.  But, it took me a while to figure it out.”

“Would you be mad if I am?”

“No.  Just sad.  Because I can’t love you back the way you deserve.”

“I bet you could.  If someone had a horrible accident.”

Will threw his pencil at him.  “Shut-up, dick.”

Julian chuckled and caught the pencil before it hit the floor.  He looked over Will’s face, loving the angles, the smoothness, the barely noticeable upturn of the corners of his eyes.

“Can I ask you something inappropriate?” Julian asked.

“Sure.”

“You and Ken…who’s on top?”

Will partially smiled, his tongue going to one of his incisors as he processed Julian’s’ question.

“I’ll answer that if you tell me why you want to know.”

“Morbid curiosity.”

“Not good enough.”

“I’m trying to gauge your level of gayness to straightness.”

“Ah.  So, I’m still attracted to girls, and if I top Ken then I’m not really all that gay after all.”

“I guess.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Well, are you gay and you never told us?  Or you never knew?”

Will shrugged.  “Couldn’t tell you.  Like I said, I don’t find any other men attractive, and I still do find women attractive.”

“So, you’re straight.  But you love Ken enough to keep the bile down while you kiss him and do him.”

Will smiled.  “Not exactly.”  He leaned forward and put his face very close to Julian’s.  He whispered softly, sexily, “I’m not the top, Julian.  Not by a long shot.  I spread for him and I go down on him.  Taking him in as deep as I can, no matter which end he’s in the mood for.”

The bell rang, but Julian didn’t move.  Couldn’t move.  He was paralyzed with arousal.  Will stood up in his chair and hopped over Julian’s legs.  The class was clearing out and Julian had to stay put, using the desk as a cover to his condition.

“Julian?”

“Yes, Ms. Sturney?”

“Did you need something?  Is that why you stayed after?”

He met her eyes in the mirror.  She was probably in her mid-thirties and pretty plain looking.  A little chubby.  But he would take her now if he could.  He wondered if Will was right: did he have a thing for older women?  Maybe it had only started after his mother had died.  That was a disturbing thought.  Disturbing enough that he was now able to stand up without embarrassing himself.  He did so and smiled at Ms. Sturney as he stuffed his notebook into his messenger bag.

“I’m fine, thanks.  Just, finishing up a problem.”

“Oh, okay.  See you tomorrow.”

“Goodbye.”

 

Julian walked down the sidewalk toward the metro station in between two knots of students.  Thankfully he’d only had one class left after study hall because he’d spent the time since then being alternately aroused and disgusted as he kept picturing Will in compromising positions and then wondering if he was developing Oedipal tendencies.  He was going to strangle Will the next time he saw him.  Either that or actually rape him.  Julian winced at the thought.  He hadn’t really meant it, but when you came as close he had come to doing something like that, it made it harder to joke about.  Even if it was only in your head.  Maybe he would just punch Ken again.  That had been extremely satisfying despite nearly breaking his hand on the man’s jawbone.

“Julian!  Julian!”

Julian turned back and saw a small figure waddle-running after him.  He quickly jogged back toward Laney to keep her from overexerting herself.  She was due in a little over a month from now and while not extremely huge, definitely had a sizable belly to contend with.

“What’s up, Lane?  How was the art museum?”

“Oh, boring.  Can I, like, ask you a huge favor?”

“Oo...kay.  Shoot.”

“Well, I really appreciate that you were willing to go with me to the place.  You know.”  She waited for a couple of girls to pass them.  “To get an abortion,” she whispered.

“Unh-huh.  Yeah.”

“So, I was wondering if you would be willing to do something else with me.  Baby related.”

Julian put a hand to the side of his neck.  It had become a nervous habit since he’d gotten the new tattoo.  “Do you want me to go with you to Lamaze classes?”

“Oh, no!  Ha, ha.  My mom goes with me.  She’s going to be my coach.  Only she’ll be there when she’s born.  I think it’ll be better that way.  I just wanted you more for moral support.”

“For what?”

“Well.  At the end of the month I’m going to meet…her adoptive parents.  You know, I like got to pick from a list.  And now I’m going to meet them to see if I really like them and to sign the preliminary documents.  I like, can’t actually officially give her up until after she’s born, but these are papers saying that I won’t consider other parents than them.”

“Oh, okay.”

“And, I know you can tell when people are good or bad.  So.  I want you to meet them too.”

“Lane, I’m happy to go, but I’m not like a psychic or something.  I can’t tell you that they’ll make good parents or not.”

“But you can tell if they’ll try, right?”

“I don’t always get feelings about people, you know.  There are a lot of people that I don’t really feel one way or the other about.”

Laney cocked her head at him.  “You’re usually so proud of your ability.  How come you’re playing it down now?”

“Because this is important!  It’s your daughter’s life.  I don’t want to be responsible for giving her to bad people or taking her away from good parents.”

Laney took his hand.  “It won’t be your decision.  It’ll be mine.  I just want to know if, after you meet them, they give you bad vibes or something.”

Julian nodded.  “Okay.  I can do that.”

“Great!  Thank you!  So, it’s not for like another two weeks, but I just wanted to make sure you can go.”

“Is it on a weekend?

“No.  A Monday I think.  My mom can pick us up from school.”

“Okay.  That works.  We don’t have practice on Mondays.”

“Oh, yeah.  I forgot we still try to pretend we have a soccer team.”

Julian laughed.  “It’s getting better actually.  The JV team is strong and we’ve won four games this year.  That twice as many as last year.”

“I’m sure Will is thrilled the team is getting good right when he’s leaving.”

“He’s already looking ahead to his college team.”

“Oh.  Did he pick?”

“Yep.  He’s going to be a lion.”

Laney stared blankly.  “Where’s that?”

“Columbia.”

“The school, right?”

“And not the country?  Yes.  The school.”

“Where’s that?”

“New York.”

“City?!”

“Yes.”

“Awesome!  Free place to stay in NYC!  Do you think he’d let me?”

“Probably.  Maybe.  Well, you might have to persuade him.”

“Aw, I can do that.  So, where are you going?  How many cool places do I get to visit for free?”

“I haven’t decided yet.  I don’t have to mail back an acceptance until, like, June.  So, I’m just mulling it all over.”

“Hmm.”

“So,” he said, taking her hand and leading her toward the metro, “you really didn’t enjoy your day at the museum?”

Laney took the bait and forgot about where he was going to college.  She chatted a little bit more about the trip to the museum.  She talked mostly about how boring art was, but Julian was glad to hear she’d had these thoughts with friends.  There were definitely some snotty people in school who had been cruel to her when her pregnancy had been revealed, but it was good to know she still had friends other than their group.  Because they were all graduating and he didn’t want to leave Laney all alone next year.

When they reached the metro he gently pulled his hand from hers.  “I’m actually heading somewhere else today,” he said.  “Do you need help getting down the stairs?”

“I’m pregnant, Julian, not handicapped.”

“Okay.  Be careful though, all right?”

“I will.”  Laney smiled at him.  “I totally love you, Julian.”

“And that means a lot to me.”

“Bye!”  She waved her hand at him and walked down the stairs faster than he thought she should.  He waited to make sure she made it to the bottom, and then he turned to walk the ten blocks to the Blue Boy building.  Julian wondered if Rylan knew just how close to a high school his business was.

Inside the lobby Adam the Receptionist was sitting at his desk, tapping a pen on the blotter while he held a phone to his ear.  He appeared to be on hold.  He frowned when he saw Julian.

“Just keep walking, March.  Just keeping walking.”

Julian grinned at him, but obeyed.  He took the elevator to the second floor.  He found that he usually did this when he came to get his schedule instead of going directly to the 15th floor.  He liked to say hi to people.  He had made some friends with some of them though a few still seemed to be a little displeased with his status as the token breeder.  Especially Walker who had been downgraded from an official hetero since Julian was certainly straighter than him: not only did he not have sex with the clients, but he even shied away from letting the escorts touch him.  Well, too much.  It was hard to get them to keep their hands completely to themselves.

As Julian passed through the somewhat busy main hall, he saw Walker sitting on a couch with a client.  He wasn’t sidling up next to the man or sitting coyly and provocatively on the other side.  He was scrunched against the other side, hands clenched into fists while the client tried to coax him closer.  That was Walker’s shtick: gay for pay.  And there were quite a few men who seemed really turned on by the idea of making a straight guy get it on with another dude.  Never mind that he did it nearly every day and often with repeat clients.  He was straight and he could be coerced into bed by another man.  That was good enough for the ones that liked that sort of thing.  Of course, Walker’s client’s attention was diverted for a moment as he watched Julian walk by.  All of Walker’s clients wanted him, but as they’d been unequivocally instructed not to, none of them had made him any offers.  Walker flicked him off behind his client’s back.  Julian smiled back at him.

He made his way to the bar and found Russell in Leo’s place, smiling and flirting with the clients.  He was still off-duty until his tests came back, but from the gossip Julian had heard from the escorts he was trying desperately to forget and get over dumping his boyfriend, Treyvon.  Apparently, he hadn’t been all that faithful after all.  Julian slid onto a barstool, not even needing to raise himself up to get on to it.  It had been fun getting tall at first, but he really hoped he was about done.  He was around 6’4” now and really didn’t want to get any taller than that.

“Hey, Jules,” Russell greeted him, filling a glass with ice and Coke for him.  “What brings you here today?”

“I have to pick up my schedule.  Do you know if it’s Dan or Rob here today?”

Russell slid away from the clients so that he was completely in front of Julian.

“You didn’t hear?” he asked.

Julian put his arms on the bar and leaned forward.  “No, what?”

“Dan got canned.”

“Seriously?  What happened?”

“Well, not long after that day when Rylan found out that Dan had told you you were supposed to have a sponsor and turn in leave forms and stuff, he started asking the other employees what they thought of him.  And nearly everybody had some sort of weird story.  Nothing bad, but just weird stuff, right?  So, Rylan told him he needed to stop being weird, essentially.  Then out of nowhere, like four days ago, we all see Dan leaving the building with a box of his personal effects.  Like, Rylan just totally gave him the boot.”

“Hunh.  I would have thought Rob would be the one who was so weird he got fired.”

“Yeah, I hear that.  But what’s strange, is that Rylan is really careful not to just fire people like that.  It’s too risky to have someone mad at him.  I mean, we don’t know all the details, but it was pretty abrupt and no one has seen Rylan since.”

Julian sat up a little straighter.  “What do you mean?”

“He hasn’t been to work.  I guess he’s in a really foul mood.  Even for him.”

“Has that happened before?  Does he ever not come to work?”

“Well, he doesn’t come everyday, but I’ve never known him to miss two days in a row let alone four.  Unless he’s on vacation.”

“Is he on vacation?”

“He didn’t say anything to anyone.  But then again, he doesn’t have to.  He’s the boss.”

Julian got a queasy feeling in his stomach the moment Russell said Rylan had done something “strange,” and it had gotten worse the more he heard.  Something wasn’t right.

“No one has talked to him at all?”

Russell shrugged.  “Guy does what he wants to.”

“And none of you are worried?”

“About what?”

“About why he’s acting strange?  Why he’s disappeared for four days?”

“Julian.  You’re hearing things.  I said he did something that wasn’t what is usual, but there may have been reasons he did that.  And I never said he disappeared.  He just hasn’t been here.”

“Did he put someone in charge?”

“No, but he never does.”

Julian stood up.  “Something just doesn’t seem right.”

Russell shrugged again.  “I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong.  He might have had some personal business come up.  Everybody has stuff they have to deal with.  And this company can run itself pretty easily.  As long as we follow Rylan’s strict rules.  That’s why there isn’t really a second in command, you know?  Maybe you can talk to EJ or Tyler about it.  They know him better.  And have known him for longer.  Maybe he’s done something like this before.  I’ve only been here a couple of years.”

“Russell!” a client yelled from the end of the bar.  “I need another drink.  Or I’m gonna need something else to put in my mouth.”

The three other people at the bar snickered and seconded his declaration.  Russell put a hand on his hip and smiled playfully at the man.

“Well, that’s not really incentive for me to get you another drink, now is it?”

The men at the bar hooted and hollered and Russell reached under the bar for another glass.  He looked at Julian as he poured some brandy into the glass.

“Don’t worry your sexy little head over it.  I’m sure he’ll storm back in here eventually.  And when I tell him about those little worried puppy dog eyes of yours, he’ll probably fire you.”

Julian half-laughed as Russell walked away to give his client the drink.  He started to walk away from the bar and saw the client grab Russell’s wrist and pull him across the bar to give him a sloppy kiss.  Julian wondered if that violated his no servicing clients order.  And that made Julian think of Rylan and his rules.  Something was wrong.  He paused by the elevator.  What would Rylan do to him if he showed up at his apartment?  It might not be pretty.  But if he’d be reasonable and give people his cell phone number then people could get a hold of him and not have to worry about him.  He could understand Rylan not wanting to be bothered by people, but he didn’t have to answer just because someone called him.  Of course, he’d probably never answer anybody’s call even if he did give out his number, so he would still be in the same situation.  Julian tried to think if he knew anyone tech savvy enough to trace an “unavailable number” phone call on a cell phone.  Unfortunately, Will wasn’t that kind of genius.  And Chris was working.  Ah, heck.  What’s the worst that Rylan could really do to him for showing up unannounced at his home?  He shuddered to think, but he was going anyway.

Julian walked right past Adam the Receptionist, too wrapped up in his own thoughts to even give him a saucy smile.  He’d long since forgotten about his schedule.  It was a quick ten minute metro ride to Rylan’s neighborhood, but even that was long enough for Julian to convince himself further that something was wrong.  He remembered how Rylan had acted right before he’d left for Spring Break.  He’d been back to his usual self by the time Julian saw him again, but there had been something off about him.  Julian hadn’t thought much of it because people did have personal business that sometimes affected their energy.  But this was nearly a month later, and now he was acting strange and missing work without explanation.  Julian just wanted to check on him.  Even if he got his ass kicked for it.

Julian strolled right into Rylan’s building, glad that its front door wasn’t locked by electronic access like Camellia’s.  Though maybe it should be since its security seemed to be staffed only by cute, busty women.  Behind the big desk today was Poppy.  The bustiest of them all.  Even though Julian was very concerned for his boss, his eyes were drawn to the low V-neck of the woman’s sweater and the voluptuous mounds barely covered by it.

“Oh, hey!”

Julian started and snapped his eyes up to the woman’s face.  It was always embarrassing getting caught staring at a woman’s breasts.

“You’re one of Mr. Treviño’s, right?  I think I’ve seen you a few times before.”

“Oh, yes.  I’m…”  A friend?  Employee?

Poppy sighed.  “I guess I have to accept it.  All I ever see visit him are gorgeous men.  He doesn’t play for my team, does he?”

Julian kind of laughed and shrugged one shoulder.

“Oh, well.  He’s not here.”

“He’s not?  Has he been gone for four days?”

“Oh, no.  He was here today.”

Julian felt a little better hearing that.

“I saw him leave a little over an hour ago.”

“Did he have a suitcase or bag or anything?”

“No.  It was just him.  He was dressed pretty casually.”  Poppy leaned forward, spilling more of herself out of her top.  “Are you trying to hunt him down because he’s sneaking out for a midday love tryst?”

“Hunh?”

“Is he cheating on you?  Though, with the number of men I see here, I would think you’d have to know that by now.”

“Oh, no.  No, no.  We’re not dating.  I’m not gay.”

“Oh.”  Poppy sat up and smiled brightly.  “That’s great!  I was so worried you were always staring at my breasts because you were coveting them for your drag show.  It’s good to know it’s the old fashioned kind of coveting.”

Julian cleared his throat and looked away.  Embarrassing.

“Well, if he’s not here then I’ll try somewhere else.”

“Okay.  Do you want me to tell him you were here if I see him?”

“No!  I mean, that’s okay.  It’s not important.”

“Okay.  Well, my husband is out of town this weekend if you want to hang out.”

Julian paused at the door as he looked at her.  Then he just turned and left without replying.  What did you say to that anyway?

Julian stood out front on the sidewalk wondering if he should still continue to search for Rylan.  And if so, where?  Poppy had said he’d been dressed casually and without luggage.  So, he probably wasn’t going out of town.  And if he was depressed enough drink, he would probably go to his private bar in his office at Blue Boy.  But Julian had never seen him there in anything other than a suit.  If he was in fact looking for something to comfort him in his strange mood…where would he go?  Who would he turn to?

Julian frowned.  Ken.  He knew where he lived, but if he was helping Rylan, what would Julian do besides annoy him?  Well, who cared if he annoyed him?  He was worried, he needed some answers, and he, unlike most of the other Blue Boy employees, actually wasn’t afraid of him.  Ken’s building was about fifteen blocks north and thirteen blocks east of Rylan’s building, but Julian decided he would walk it anyway.  It would probably be best if he walked off some energy so that he wouldn’t be nervous when he got there.  He may not be afraid of Rylan, but mentally sparring with him could be extremely draining.  Both physically and emotionally.

At Ken’s building, no one seemed to be coming in or out anytime soon to let him in.  He could always buzz Ken’s apartment, but if Rylan wasn’t there, he didn’t want to talk to the asswad.  He could buzz Camellia and see if she would let him in.  Then he remembered his earlier conversation with Will about how he and Camellia had difficulties behaving themselves around each other.  Perfect.

He reached out and pushed the button next to Camellia’s name.  A few seconds later, a burly, male voice grunted out a “hello.”  Julian made a face.  Barry.

“Hi, is Camellia in?”

“She’s at work.  Who is this?”

“Just a friend.  Thanks.”

Julian leaned against the wall and ignored Barry’s repeated question for his identity.  He didn’t ask a third time and Julian assumed there must not be video connected to the intercoms.  Should he knock on the door and see if the guards would let him in?  They’d seen him a couple of times.  Maybe that was enough to warrant an invite.

“Julian?”

Julian turned his head and the first thing he saw was a gold tasseled cardigan.  It was over a teal skirt that probably showed quite a bit of her amazing legs every time she uncrossed and re-crossed them.  He lifted his eyes to her face.  She looked surprised to see him, but not flustered.

“Hey, Camellia.”

“Hello, Julian.  W-why…what brings you here?”

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“Does he live here?”

“No, but a friend of his does.”

“Oh.  Well.  Oh!  Did you get another tattoo?”

Julian put a hand to the mark.  He could touch it every time without fail.  For some reason, he could feel that one on his skin unlike the other two.

“Yeah.  To commemorate the anniversary of my parents’ deaths.”

“Oh, that’s right.  It has been a year now.  How are you feeling?”

“I’m good.  Life is good right now.  Mostly.  Will’s dating someone.  Seriously.  And I’m a little jealous.  But, you know.  It’s okay.  ‘Cause we’re back to where we were before the accident.”

“That’s good to hear.  Well, not that you’re jealous, but—”

“I get it,” Julian smiled at her.

“Yeah.”

She played with the keys in her hands and stared at him.  He stayed leaning against the wall, letting her get a good look.  He wanted her to compare what she was seeing now to Hairy Barry.  Then some piercings and tattoos wouldn’t seem so off-putting.  She let out a little huff of air and looked at him with a slightly self-mocking smile.

“Is there something I can do for you, Julian?”

“Can you let me into the building?  I’d like to see if my friend is here.”

“Why don’t you buzz the friend’s friend?”

Julian shrugged and didn’t answer.  Camellia waited for a moment and then put out a hand.

“Is that the only explanation I’m going to get?”

Julian nodded.  “It’s up to you if that’s enough to get me in.”

Camellia pursed her lips at him and pushed her glasses up her nose.  “If I didn’t know you so well I’d tell you to take a hike for not offering a reasonable explanation for wanting to get inside.  You’re scary now, Julian.”

“Why?”

“The piercings, the tattoos…you look like a hoodlum.”

“I only have one visible tattoo, and it’s very small.  And my piercings barely infringe on my face, so I’m not ‘deformed’ or anything.”

“No, you’re not.  Maybe it’s just that you’re…”  She took in a breath as she looked him over, and then her eyes dropped below his waist.  “Huge.”

“Yes, I am.  So, you gonna let me in?”

Camellia looked up and he grinned at her.  She tried to stop a smile and stepped onto the stair with him.

“Fine.”

She punched in the code to the door and there was a soft buzzing as the lock disengaged.  Inside the lobby a guard was sitting at a desk with his feet propped up next to the small television on which he watched a _All in the Family_ rerun.  He glanced up at their entrance.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Gorman.”

“Hello, LaRon.”

LaRon kept an eye on Julian as he followed Camellia to the elevator, but he didn’t say anything.  Inside the elevator he let Camellia push the button for the 17th floor.  He couldn’t remember what floor they were on, but he did know Ken lived on the same floor as her.  As the elevator started to rise she looked at him.

“What floor are you going to?”

“Seventeen.”

“Oh, really?” she asked with a little sarcasm.

“Yep.”

“Fine.  Follow me if you like, but you can’t come in.  Barry is there.”

“I know.  We spoke.”

She gasped.  “You did not!”

“Just to establish that you weren’t there.  I didn’t tell him who I was.”

“So, you _are_ looking for me.”

“No, I was looking for a way in.”

“Then why didn’t you buzz the person who lives here?”

“I don’t like him.”

“Then why are you looking for him?!” she laughed.

“I’m not.  I’m looking for my friend.  And I think he’s with the guy I don’t like.”

“Mm-hmm.”

The elevator arrived on the seventeenth floor and they stepped off.  He started down the hall, remembering that Ken’s apartment was not the first one, but before Camellia’s.  He just couldn’t remember if it was on the right or the left.  He didn’t want to knock on the wrong door because he recalled that across from Ken lived a crazy lady.

“Hey, Camellia…?”

She turned back to look at him as he paused in between the two middle doors.

“I need you—”

“Oh, thank God!  I thought you were going to actually behave yourself!”

Julian was so surprised by Camellia’s launch into his arms that he almost dropped her.  But he got a grip under her legs and fell against the wall as she kissed him voraciously.  He really wanted to run his hands over her body, but he couldn’t without putting her down, so he concentrated on teasing her tongue with his piercing.  If her soft moaning was any indication, she seemed to like it.  She locked her legs around his waist, so he moved a hand to tangle his fingers in her hair.  He wasn’t sure how long they made out against the wall, but his two earlier troubles, arousal and concern over Oedipal tendencies, were both finally working together.

When they needed to breathe, she pulled away and started kissing his neck.  He leaned his head back, wishing with all his being that Barry wasn’t home so that he could just carry her to her door, into her bedroom, and finally finish what they’d started on more than one occasion.  But since he couldn’t do that, he supposed that they should probably stop.

“Camellia, not that I’m complaining, but why did you jump me?”

She stopped kissing his neck and pulled back to look at him.  “Because you asked me to.”

“I did?”

“Didn’t you say you needed me?”

“Oh.  _Oh._   I was actually saying I needed you…to do me a favor.”

She blinked at him.

“I can’t remember which door is the guy’s.  I know one is him and the other is the crazy lady.  So.  I was wondering if you knew which is which.”

She stared a little more, and then closed her eyes.  “Oh, God.”  She dropped her legs to the floor and backed away, a hand to her forehead.  “Oh, my God, that is embarrassing.”

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed.  If I’d known it was an option I would have propositioned you.  I just thought you didn’t want to fool around anymore.  If you do…you have my number.  Call me when Barry’s not here.”

“No, no.  That’s okay.  I am so sorry.  There is something wrong with me.”

“Yeah.  Obviously you’re not getting it from Barry.  Why can’t you let me?”

“Because.  I have to go.  It’s the door on the left.”

Julian grabbed her hand and pulled her back.  He felt something sharp and hard on his palm.  He moved his hand to hold hers from the underside and raised it up.  On her ring finger was a gold ring with a fairly sizable diamond in the middle of it.  He stared at it incredulously.

“Are you kidding me?!” he whispered shouted.  She wouldn’t look at him.  “You’re going to marry him?!  Camellia!”

“What?”

“You’re a shrink.  You should know better than to marry someone you don’t love just because you’re desperate.  _Think_ you’re desperate.”

“Julian.  It’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it?”

“And I do love him.”

“Is that why you were looking for any reason whatsoever, valid or otherwise, to be with another man?”

“It was just.  It was stupid.  I get that.  I—”

“Camellia.”  Julian took her shoulders in his hands and gave them a little shake.  She looked up to meet his eyes.  “Don’t you dare do this.  Don’t settle.”

“Don’t settle?  And do what?  Wait for you?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m 40, Julian.  I don’t have the time to wait for you.”

Julian let go of her.  “Then wait for someone else.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Julian let out a noise of disgust.  “Fine.  Marry him.  When you’re ready to have an affair, look me up, okay?”

She half-laughed and nodded.  “Okay.”

Julian raised his eyebrows as she walked away.  He had a strange feeling that she did intend to do just that.  He waited until she was inside her apartment, and then he shook himself.  He needed to refocus his mind.  If he had to see Ken, he needed to be mentally prepared for it.  He took a couple of deep breaths and faced the door.  He knocked loudly three times and waited.  So prepared was he for facing Ken, that he was quite shaken to see Will open the door.  For some reason it hadn’t occurred to him that Will would be here.  But of course he would go to his lover’s home.  Julian felt a pain in his chest.  It wasn’t horrible.  In fact, in a way, it was good.  It was the pain you feel when you finally accept something you don’t want to.

“Julian?”  Will spoke softly.  “Were you…looking for me?”

Julian opened his mouth.  He didn’t know what to say.  Was it sad that he had followed him here?  Wait, that’s not why he was here.

“No.  Actually, I’m looking for…Rylan.  Is he here?”

Julian saw Will move like he was going to look over his shoulder, but he didn’t.  He spoke again, in the same soft voice.

“Now’s not a good time.”

“Is he here?”

“Yes.  But…I don’t…I have no idea how or if I’m supposed to handle this situation.”

“Is he okay?”

Will hesitated and chewed on his lower lip.  “I don’t think so, actually.”

“Who’s at the door?” Julian heard Ken ask from inside.

Will stepped back and turned to answer him.  “It’s Julian.”

With the door opened, he could see Ken steeping a tea bag in a mug of steaming water in the kitchen.  Rylan was on the couch, his head against the back.

“Tell him to go away,” Rylan muttered.

Will opened the door wider and stepped out of Julian’s way.  He nodded him in.  Julian glanced at Ken.  The man just shrugged at him.  So, Julian came in.  He looked around Ken’s apartment.  It was neat, clean, orderly…what else would it be?  He saw a fluffy white cat sitting on a bay window watching fish swim around inside a very large tank.  So Will really was a cat sitter.  Sort of.

He crossed the room and stood in front of Rylan.  The man took up nearly half the couch.  It was a small couch though.  Barely more than a love seat.  He wore a heather grey T-shirt and jeans and almost looked like he belonged in them.  His hair was slicked back, and looked a little greasy, like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of days.  He had a pained expression on his face, but he didn’t look like he was crying.  Julian was struck with a horrifying thought.

“Are you dying?” he croaked.

Rylan opened his eyes and frowned at him.  “What?”

“Are you sick?  Are you dying?”

“And if I were?”

His words hit Julian like a blow to the gut.  His knees wobbled and he was lucky the coffee table was behind him to catch him as he plopped onto it.  He knocked the candy bowl over and there was the loud sound of glass circling around quicker and quicker on the wood until it came to a halt.  Rylan was still frowning at him.

“Please don’t joke with me, Rylan.  If I’m being stupid fine, but tell me what’s wrong.”

“What are you doing here?”

Julian took in a breath to calm himself.  Why couldn’t Rylan ever just answer a question?

“I’m looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Because…I knew something was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve felt something for the last several weeks.  That you were upset about something.  And then Russell told me that you fired Dan and hadn’t been at work for four days.  I knew you wouldn’t just take off unless something was really wrong.”

“So, you wanted to find me.”

“Yes.”

“Even if you knew you couldn’t help.”

Julian swallowed.  “Yes.”

“Even knowing you might make it worse.”

“Rylan, shut-up.”  Ken sat next to him on the couch and handed him the tea he’d been preparing.

Julian glanced to his right to see where Will was.  He was sitting sideways in one of the chairs at the dining table, watching them quietly.  He looked back at Rylan who held the mug of tea in his hand, but didn’t drink from it.  Julian waited in the silence, feeling more out of place than he ever had in his life.  He didn’t belong in Ken and Will’s world, and Rylan obviously didn’t want him here.  And that hurt.  He put his hands on his thighs as a brace to help himself stand up, but then Rylan leaned forward to put the tea on the coffee table and spoke softly.

“My sister died.  She had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  She’s been fighting it for years.  The last several months, it became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to fight it off anymore.  And she died today.  I can’t fly home until tomorrow.  So, I figured I would take today to be comforted and weak because I’m going to have to be the one to be in charge and be strong and make all the decisions.  God knows my mother can’t.”

Julian didn’t know what to say.  Surely he could relate, but he obviously hadn’t dealt with his situation well, so anything he said would be trite.  All he could do was reach out and take Rylan’s hand.  He was surprised when the man gripped it tightly.  Then he leaned forward and put his head in Julian’s lap.  Julian slid an arm over his back and bent over him, holding him as tightly as he dared, which was a pretty loose grip.  He didn’t think Rylan was crying, but he could feel the man’s grief.  Still leaning over Rylan to keep him in the half-embrace, Julian sat up just a hair to look at Ken.  He was crying as he looked at his friend.  Julian hated him a little less for that.  He turned his head and looked at Will.  He was resting his head and arms on the table as he watched them.  His expression was blank.  Julian couldn’t decipher a single emotion.

Julian felt Rylan stir and sat up so that he could as well.  The man suddenly raised his hands and held Julian’s face.  He leaned forward and kissed him in a hard, close-mouthed kiss.  And then again.  And then he kissed him a third time, holding their faces together for several long seconds.  Then he pulled away and sat back into the couch, dropping his head back again.

“Go away, Julian.”

Julian slowly let out the breath he’d been holding.  And then stood up.  He walked shakily for the door.  Will got up to open it for him.  He didn’t look very happy.  That was pretty plain on his face.

“I’m going to head out too,” Will said.

Ken nodded and didn’t try to stop him.  Julian and Will left the condo and walked down the hall in silence.  They waited for the elevator in silence.  It arrived, and they stepped on, in silence.  Then the doors shut.

“Okay,” Will suddenly broke the silence.  “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but what the hell was that?”

“Fuck if I know,” Julian replied.

“So…you’re not…with him…?”

Julian turned an incredulous look on him.  “Do I really need to dignify that with a reply?”

“Well!  It was shocking!”

“For me too!  After all the shit we’ve been through, after we’ve finally come out honest and healed on the other side…Do you really think that if I was involved in something as atomic as a romantic, or hell, even just a sexual relationship with Rylan that I wouldn’t tell you?”

“I wouldn’t,” Will said.  “Because that would mean someone would need to shoot me.”

Julian laughed, and then groaned.  “Oh, God.”  He put a hand to his head.  “It actually hurt to see him like that.  And not just because I care about him, but because…now I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“He was my anchor.  He was the thing that made it all…okay.  To see him like this…Does this mean that it was an act?  That he was fooling me and I consequently was fooling myself?  Am I…am I going to wind up…right back where I started?”

Julian tried to swallow and couldn’t.  The thought of returning to that dark place…Of having the pit inside him again…He tried to breathe.  And succeeded when he glanced at Will who was looking at him with an annoyed expression and said, “Don’t be stupid, you jagoff.”

Julian made a face.  “Hey!  I’m freaking out here.  You’re supposed to make me feel better.”

“I will.  By reminding you that people aren’t supposed to be indestructible.  And they’re not supposed to be invulnerable.  We survive hardships by leaning on strong people until we’re better.  And then when those strong people need someone in turn, they’ve helped us to become strong enough to help them.  So.  You’ve got to help him now.  If he needs it.  Actually, force it on him.  So he won’t rely on Ken so much.”

“So, you’re willing to sacrifice me to a man you hate just to protect your precious Ken?”

“No, I just think Rylan is less likely to try to sleep with you than Ken.  Or at least, I thought so.  Seriously, what was that all about?”

Julian shrugged, completely baffled.  “I dunno.  Maybe pissing you off is a way to make himself feel better.”

“Feh.  I wouldn’t put it past him.  Anyway, do your best to help him.  He really did look broken up.”

“Is that compassion for Rylan I’m hearing?”

“You know I’m not _actually_ a sociopath, right?”

“Sure, sure.”

“Just don’t sleep with him.”

“I won’t!  I would never!”

Will didn’t really respond but kind of half shrugged.  Julian turned to him.

“You really think I would sleep with Rylan?  I mean, I understand how you might think I’m bi because I want you, but you’re it.  You’re my exception.  I’m seriously not that into guys.”

“I’m sure you’re not.  But if Rylan wants something, do you really think he will give up on having it?”

“Then why doesn’t he have Ken?  Oh.  Maybe he does.  Maybe your precious Ken is two-timing you.”

“Or maybe Rylan has found a new obsession,” Will said, giving him a pointed look.

Julian snorted and looked back at the elevator doors.  They were still closed.  “Maybe it’s just because I’ve spent so much time at Blue Boy with the supersonic elevator, but this is taking forever.”

“Oh.”  Will leaned forward and pushed the button for the lobby.  “These elevators don’t automatically return to the bottom.”

“Oh.”

The elevator started to move and they laughed together.

“Wow,” Will said.  “We really are a couple of geniuses.”

“Hey, technically that’s only you.  I’m average Joe over here, so my stupidity is forgivable.”

“Shouldn’t you have been able to ‘feel’ that it wasn’t moving?”

“Um, I only commune with living things.  My gift is a connection to nature and people.”

“Mm-hmm.  So, seriously, no ‘communing’ with Rylan.”

“Dude!  Really?  And how can you be like this?  His sister just died.  I thought you were being compassionate.”

“The moment passed.”

“So, you’re only ‘not a sociopath’ in short bursts?”

“It’s all I can muster for him.”

“He’s not a bad guy.  Not really.”

Will frowned and crossed his arms with a little growl.  Julian smiled.  He was so cute when he was conceding something he didn’t want to.

The elevator doors opened to the lobby.  Camellia looked up from going through her mail.  She started slightly, and then smiled, and then saw Will, and then waved her mail at them.

“Hi boys!  Just getting my mail.”

She still kept smiling at them as they stepped off and she stepped on.

“So.  Okay then.  Bye, boys!”

Will looked back and forth between them.  “Did you two just—”

“No!” Camellia yelped.

Julian laughed.  “Almost, but not yet.”

Camellia’s eyes went wide with rage behind her glasses.  Julian and Will just laughed as the elevator doors closed on her.

“She is a trip,” Will snickered.

“I know, right?” Julian chuckled as he wiped a tear from his eye.

“I give you permission to go to her if you feel yourself getting seduced by Rylan.”

“Dude!  Seriously!”

Will shrugged.  “If you’re letting him get close enough to kiss you, that’s just too dangerous.  He’s good.”

“And how do you know this exactly?”

“Oh, is that a—”

“A what?” Julian asked, looking where Will was pointing.  When he turned back, Will was out the door.  “Hey!”  Julian ran out the door and yelled after his quickly disappearing figure as he booked down the sidewalk.  “Run all you like!  I know where you live!”


	32. Chapter 32

Monday, May 29, 2006

 

Chris

 

Chris leaned against his locker with his arms behind his back; he grabbed one wrist and pulled hard, getting his shoulders to work out their stiffness.  He was still sore from the hard ride he’d gotten from the girl he’d hooked up with on Saturday.  He’d never really understood Scott’s apparent enjoyment of getting roughed up by Antoinette in bed, but now he understood a little.  Still, it wasn’t something he’d want to do every time.

“Hey, slut.”

Chris started and let go of his wrist.  He blinked startled eyes at Julian.

“Wh-what?”

“Stretching out and displaying yourself like a cat in heat.  You’re just asking for it.”

Julian grinned and tried to reach behind him to slap his butt.  Chris blocked him with both hands and then put up a faux ninja pose to keep him at bay.  Julian just laughed and leaned against the lockers.  Chris couldn’t help looking him over.  He was so big now—barely recognizable as the kid he’d grown up with.  He’d become an adult in so many ways over the last year, and his physical appearance was obviously the most telling sign of that transformation.  Only his piercings and current hair style kept him from looking like a gym obsessed Wall Street stocks man.  He’d used a pair of clippers to get the sides of his head really short and bleached it blond; then he left a strip of longer hair down the middle which he’d dyed a bright pink.  Chris wondered why Julian was changing his hair so much lately.  Before he only changed it every two to three months, now it seemed like he had something new and even wilder every two weeks.  Maybe he thought he might have to start wearing his hair more conservatively once he graduated.  But surely at an art college he could really do whatever he wanted with it.  He’d gotten into three different art schools and five regular universities, but he’d yet to decide where he wanted to go.  Chris wondered if that meant he didn’t want to go at all.  But if he didn’t…what would he do?

“Why ya scrutinizing me, hon?” Julian asked teasingly.

Chris shrugged.  “Just taking in the hair.”

“And my broad, manly shoulders with my impossibly sexy narrow waist?”

“No.”

“Hn.”

“So, speaking of thinking that you’re so hot, who you taking to the prom?”

“Ah…” Julian crossed his arms over his chest and half-shrugged.  “I don’t think I’m going.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got no one to take.”

“What?  Come on, there’s a dozen girls that would go with you.  If nothing else, just about anyone in the sophomore and freshman class would be dying for an invite no matter who asked them.”

“Well, there’s a rousing endorsement.  Why would I want to go to my senior prom with some freshman I don’t even know?”

“Okay.  Ask someone you like.”

“She’s 40.  If Will thinks he can’t bring his thirty-something…girlfriend, then I sure as hell can’t bring my shrink.”

Chris stared at him for a moment.  He remembered the crush Julian had developed over the summer, but had he actually acted on it?  Is that why he changed shrinks?  He better not ask.

“You don’t like anyone else?”

“Not currently.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I would know if I liked someone.”

“And that’s your story?”

“And I’m sticking to it.”

“Uh…what about Anna?”

Julian almost pulled it off.  He almost didn’t react and remained nonchalant.  But just as any of his three best friends could pick up on the littlest details concerning him, Chris could spot their tells a mile away.

“What about her?” Julian tried to play it off.

Chris didn’t reply with anything other than a patient look.

“What?  Why does everyone keep asking me about her?”

“Because you’ve had a crush on her since, like, kindergarten.”

“No I haven’t.  And how would you know?”

“Will and Scott told me.”

“Whatever.  I just think she’s nice.”

Chris chuckled.  “You like her ‘vibes.’”

Julian snorted.  “I thought you didn’t believe in ‘that stuff.’”

“I don’t.  But you do.  And we’re talking about _your_ feelings.”

“Well how about we talk about _your_ feelings?”

“About what?”

“I dunno.  Do you have any feelings for any of the girls you sleep with?”

Chris let out a small groan and closed his eyes.  He leaned his head against the lockers and then looked up at Julian.  “Will told you?”

“Yup.”

“Did you tell Scott?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, don’t.  It’s no big deal.”

“Are you still doing it?”

“You know, I know the four of us are abnormally close and supposed to be BFFs and all, but honestly, who I have sex with isn’t really any of you guys’ business.”

Julian put his hands in the air.  “Okay, okay.”

Chris raised his head and turned to lean his shoulder on the lockers; Julian turned a little to partially face him.

“So…” Julian said with a smile, “Is it fun?”

“What?” Chris half-laughed.  “Sex?”

“No, doing it with different girls every time.”

“Depends on the girl.  But you know, Cherry, sex _is_ fun.”  He reached out a hand and grasped Julian’s tie.  He didn’t wear a sweater vest because he’d outgrown the one he’d bought for the fall, and by the time spring rolled around he refused to buy a new one for two and half months of use.  So, Chris could wrap his hand around the fabric and pull Julian closer.  “You should really try it some time,” he said softly with a smug smile.

“Oh, shut-up,” Julian made a face at him, but he was blushing.

“Oh, that’s it!” Chris said, allowing Julian to pull his tie from his hand with only a little resistance.  “You really should get a date for the prom.  It’s at the Hilton, so a lot of people are renting rooms.”

“You know, I just don’t see it happening that way for me.”

Chris shrugged.  “It would probably be better than some first experiences.”

“Was yours bad?”

“No.”

“Where’d you do it?”

“My bed.  Karen and I usually did it…well, at least at my house if not always in my bed.  My mom was gone a lot.”

“Right.  So, do you bring your random girls there?”

“Oh, no way.  You never bring ‘em to your own place.  You need to have the option to leave whenever you want.”

Julian laughed, but it wasn’t completely out of humor.  “Wow.”

“What?”

“Nothing.  I’m just friends with a total dog.”

Chris scoffed in offense.  “Wha-?  Shut-up!”

“Ha, ha, no it’s cool.  You can, like, make a database for us of what kind of girl makes for good tail.  I’m sure you’ve already got a long list of girls going—”

Chris spotted Sophia rapidly approaching them and cleared his throat as he slapped the back of his hand against Julian’s chest.  He stopped talking and turned to look over his shoulder to see what Chris was looking at.  Sophia walked right up to them and smiled at Chris.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Chris replied.

“Hi,” Julian joined in.

Sophia turned to him, almost as if surprised to see him there.  How on earth could she miss the thing responsible for affecting the tides in the local bodies of water?

“Hi,” she said.  She stared at him for a moment, her head tilted almost all the way back.  Then she turned back to Chris.  “Um.  I’m sorry.  I really should have checked sooner, but I didn’t want to.  But I really should.”

“Check for what?” Chris asked.

“If you meant it.”

Chris stared blankly at her.

“About prom.  If…you really wanted to go to the prom with me.  I mean, if you just asked in order to…well.  I mean.  If you’ve changed your mind or something.”

Julian gave Chris a look which he ignored expertly.

“No, not at all.  I’m looking forward to it.  Are you…having second thoughts?”

“No!” she shouted.  “I mean,” she cleared her throat and spoke softer as she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.  “No.”

“Oh, good.  I’m glad.  I’ve already got my suit.”

“Oh!  Oh, okay,” Sophia laughed in nervous excitement.  “Great.  So, you said you’d pick me up at 5:30, right?”

“Yeah.  I know it doesn’t start until 8:00, but I figured your mom will want to take pictures.”

“Uh, yeah.”  She looked like she was already picturing the humiliation.

“And then we can go to dinner first.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Well, almost.  I hope you don’t mind if I pick you up in my car.  I can’t really afford a limo.”

“No, that’s fine.  Limos are like, _so_ overrated.”

“A limo?!” an excited voice chirped out of nowhere.  The trio turned to see Antoinette Bixby with her cute boy on her arm.  The light came in from the windows behind her and scattered beautifully off her bouncing yellow curls.  Scott gave them a little wave and smile.  Antoinette continued, “You’re getting a limo?!  Oh!  We should share!  It would be so fun!”  She bounced up and down a little and rapidly clapped her hands.

Chris exchanged looks with Julian.  They were both thinking the same thing: How did Scott wind up with her?

“Scott!  We should, right?”

“Yeah, honey, it sounds fun.”

Antoinette fixed her blue eyes on Julian.   “Julian, you’re in, right?”

“Oh, I, um, don’t know if I’m going—”

“Uh, hang on,” Chris cut in, “even split two ways I don’t know if I can afford it.”

“Oh, please, my parents will pick it up,” Antoinette said.  “I mean, come on, you have to take your date to the prom in a limo.  It’s like a rule.  It’s a special day for—her.”  Antoinette obviously couldn’t remember Sophia’s name.

“Antoinette,” Chris said, “she’s a sophomore.  She’s got two more proms to go to after this one.”

“Yeah, but this one will be the only one with you.”  Antoinette didn’t seem aware of her unintentional implication about Chris’ and Sophia’s relationship.  But Chris saw on Sophia’s face that she did, and that it was kind of what she’d feared.  “And what do you mean you’re not going, Julian?  I mean, it’s your senior prom.  You have to go.”

“Is it, like, another rule?” Julian quipped.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is, smart ass.  Besides,” she smiled wickedly, “I wanna see that body in a tux.”

Julian started, and then blushed.

“Hey,” Scott whined softly.

“Oh, sorry, honey.”  She wrapped an arm around Scott and kissed his cheek.  She faced the group again.  “So, we’re all in, right?  Julian, you can just go stag.  But, I think the hair still needs to be…what is your natural color?”

“Um…”

“You don’t have a date to the prom?”

Everyone turned toward the soft voice.  There stood the dark-haired lesbian.  Universally accepted as the prettiest girl in school, Layla was almost becoming a close second since the light didn’t play quite as delicately off her dark tresses as it did on Antoinette’s golden ones.  The group stared at her.  Caitlyn was very loud and outgoing, but it wasn’t just boys that Layla tended to shy away from.  She kept her eyes on Julian, and he realized that question had been directed at him.

“Oh, um,” he stood up straight and dropped his arms.  “No, I don’t.”

“Oh.”

Everyone was quiet.  Layla seemed to process that information, and then she turned to leave.  But before the group could lean in and whisper what had that been all about, she turned back.

“So, um, would you want to go with me?”

Everyone who wasn’t Julian tried to hide their disbelieving smiles as they looked to Julian for his answer.

“Would I if what?”

Layla looked momentarily confused, and then said, “What?”

“That’s a conditional question you asked me.  Would I want to go to the prom with you if what happens?”

“Oh.”  A ghost of a smile appeared on her face.  “Would you want to go with me if I asked you?”

“Well, _if_ you asked me, I would say yes.”

“So, if I asked you, you would say yes.  But would you _want_ to go with me if I asked?”

“Hmm.”  Julian actually paused to think about it.  Chris licked his lips as he watched his friend.  If any other person had to stop and think if he wanted to take a girl to a dance, he’d be an asshole.  But with Julian he was just giving it the consideration that all parties deserved.  “Yes, yes, I would,” he finally replied.

“Oh.  Okay.”

She turned to leave again.  After two and a half steps, she turned back.

“Julian?”

“Yes?”

“Will you go to the prom with me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Silence.  Chris nudged Julian by disguising it as needing to scratch his nose.

“Oh.  Um, apparently we’re getting a limo.  So, we can all pick you up.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary.  I live in the city.  In a pretty sketch neighborhood.  It’s close to the school.  I can meet you there.”

“No, it’s cool.  We’ll come get you.  I think we’re going to dinner beforehand.  So, I guess we have to figure out where so that we can arrange a time.”

“Oh!” Antoinette cried.  “If we’re coming into the city to get Layla, I know the perfect place!  I’ll make reservations!  Yay!”  She clapped her hands again.

“Okay then,” Layla said, suddenly looking like she’d regretted ever opening her mouth.  She smiled awkwardly.  “I guess I’ll hear from you.”

She turned on her heel and this time left.  The group watched her go.  After she rounded a corner, everyone looked at Julian.  He put out a hand and moved it in a small circle.

“Okay, did that just happen?”

 

Chris sat cross-legged in front of his locker and ignored the noise of the crowded halls.  Even though there was still ten minutes left of sixth period, the seniors and juniors had been released in order to do a locker cleanout.  Most of the students were using the time to hang out with friends and gossip.  Chris reflected that they were all like squirrels: chattering and tittering, and then occasionally sticking their heads into their locker hidey-holes only to come back out with nothing.  Chris didn’t bother to try to find his friends because he was using the time to hurriedly finish his government assignment.  This was the only class he couldn’t completely blow off since his grade still wasn’t guaranteed.  He frowned and wondered why he had such a mental block regarding the subject.  Maybe if he had zero inclination toward politics that made him a better human being than most.  He actually laughed out loud at that thought.  He flipped open his phone to check for any messages.  No texts, no phone calls, no e-mails.  Same as it had been since before his last class.  Same as it had been the class before that.  When he’d woken up in the morning, same as last night…Mr. Richardson was not contacting him.  He was surprised by how much that hurt him.  He was starting to think he might need to reach out first.  And just say that he didn’t care about the truth.  Mr. Richardson and his mother could lie to him all they liked, just so long as he got to keep Mr. Richardson as a friend.

Chris glanced over the two paragraphs he’d written in the previous class and the half paragraph he’d written in the last five minutes.  Eh.  Good enough.

“Go away!” he heard somebody shout over the din in the hallway.  He raised his head as he closed his government notebook.  He knew that voice.  He pushed against his locker and slid up to his feet just as Riley turned on Nick to yell at him some more.  Chris didn’t think they’d even realized they’d stopped right in front of him and effectually trapped him against the lockers.  Nor did they notice they had a small audience.

“Riley!” Nick finally cut her off, “you’re being completely unreasonable!”

“Unreasonable?!  You’re stalking me!”

Chris didn’t think that was totally exaggeration.  Nick had been a little fixated since the break up and that was over three months ago.

“Because you won’t take thirty darn seconds to talk to me!”

Darn?  Had he never heard Nick curse before?

“I don’t fucking have to!  I have no desire to talk to cheating bastards!”

Riley clearly had no problems with it.

“I’m not a cheating…I’m not!  Gosh!  It was the mistletoe!  For Pete’s sake, Will Harder made out with Jaymz under the mistletoe.  But I don’t think that makes him gay.”

“Oh, that’s just a rumor, you twit.”

“Actually,” Chris said, startling them both.  “It is true.”  They both stared at him with shock, but it was also kind of a glare, like he had barged in on a private conversation.  More like their conversation had barged in on his silent, depressing reflections.  Maybe he should get their minds focused on something else.  “Though, it wasn’t so much making out as Jaymz kind of latching onto Will.”  Chris demonstrated by grabbing the air with his hands.  They continued to stare at him.  “Of course, he did kiss Jake of his own volition.”

“He did?” he finally got a reaction out of Riley.

“Yep.  And he never did adequately explain why,” Chris mused.

“And you saw this for yourself?” Riley asked doubtfully.

“No, but I have it from a good source.  Scott was there.  Actually…he kissed him too.”

“Maybe he is gay,” Nick murmured.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Riley said snottily.  “Trust me.  I know.”

“Right!  Because _you_ made out with him when there wasn’t any mistletoe involved at all!”

“Yeah, well, I also wasn’t _dating_ anybody at the time either!”

Chris sighed.  And he’d lost them.

“Riley, _please_.  It meant nothing.  Do you really think I’d keep chasing you for months afterwards with the way you’ve been treating me unless I really care about you?”

Riley drew breath to speak, but didn’t.  Chris looked at her for a moment.  Maybe Nick had finally said something that would make her listen.

“He’s got a point,” Chris said softly.

“You stay out of this,” Riley snapped at him.

“No, no, maybe he should be a part of this,” Nick said, sounding annoyed.  “Your little special group of friends is all you care about and listen to.  I spoke to your field hockey friends…you barely spend time with them anymore.”

“Well, I don’t stay in the city after school now because I like to ride home with Laney when I can.  To make sure she gets home okay.”

“And that’s fine!  That’s great.  Because you are a sweet, caring person.  I heard about how you stood up to Lindsey for her.  You have a good heart and are loyal.  Which is why I know what I did to you hurt you so much.  But Riley, please…I…I…”

Nick looked a little like a floundering fish as he groped for the end to his sentence.  He glanced at Chris in desperation.  Chris mouthed “love” to him.

“I love that about you.”

Chris tilted his head.  Well, that was close.

Nick took a step closer to Riley.  “Your heart is what drew me in.  It’s what made me like you and want to get to know you.  And you can make me laugh when I’m feeling down.  And you made me look at myself and find out how strong and secure I am because I loved having a girlfriend who was so strong.  A lot of guys would feel insecure about that, but your independence gave me confidence.”

Chris nodded in approval.  Not bad.  It was even better if it were true.

“Which is maybe weird and means I’m not a real man—”

Chris coughed sharply and gave a little shake of his head when Nick looked at him.  Nick cleared his throat and waved a hand.

“Anyway.  What I mean is that no one has ever made me feel the way you do.”  Nick laughed softly.  “Which is happy and confident.”

Chris held his breath as he waited for Riley’s reply.  Nick looked like he wasn’t getting much oxygen either.

“Nick, I…”

“Did you feel anything for me?” he asked, sounding hurt at the thought that he might have meant nothing to her.

“Of course.  I really, really liked you.”  Nick smiled.  “But…”  His face fell.  “I just can’t forget about Stephanie.”

“Well try!”

Both Riley and Nick started again at Chris’ outburst.  He looked at Riley like she had a goiter the size of a softball growing out of her neck.

“Riley, do you know how rare this is?” he asked, indicating Nick’s pathetic, depressed figure.  “Most guys would have said the hell with you by now.  It was December.  It was mistletoe!  For crying out loud, I kissed Farih Barrow and supposedly she was supposed to be hating my guts for dumping Karen.”

They stared blankly at him.

He held back a sigh.  “You know, Farih?  Karen’s best friend?  So kissing her best friend’s ex-boyfriend is like a breaking of the Girl Code or whatever.  Plus, she’s always talking about how she only dates ‘brothas,’ but come every mistletoe season or spin the bottle party and she’s on me like white on rice.”

“Chris,” Riley snipped.  “What is your point?”

“Just…ask yourself:  Is it really the mistletoe and Stephanie that’s bothering you?  Or is this just as good an excuse as any because you actually don’t like him?”

“No!  No, that’s not it.  I did like him.”  Riley gritted her teeth.  “I do like him.  A lot.”

“Then…” Nick said gently, reaching out cautiously to take her hand.  “Be with me.  Let’s be together.”

Riley looked pained as she said, “I want to…but I’m scared, Nick.  I’m not good at…stuff.”

Chris grinned.  “Aw, you just need practice.”

“You stay away from her,” Nick said, putting a finger in his face.  “I heard about what you on Valentine’s Day.”

Chris let out a small, disbelieving laugh.  “What _I_ did?”

“Yes, well,” Riley broke in hastily, “that’s all in the past.  We should all really move on.”

Nick focused on Riley again.  “Do you really mean that?”

Riley’s eyes searched over Nick’s face.  Then she smiled.  “Yeah.  I do.”

“Yes.  Yes!  That’s great!”

Nick stepped forward to hug her, and Riley half-turned to accommodate the maneuver, or perhaps to get away.  Then they embraced awkwardly and Chris wondered if this was really going to work.  The hall broke out into teasing applause and cheering.  They pulled apart, both blushing furiously.  Then the bell rang signaling the end of sixth period, so everyone went back to their own business of exchanging their books for the last class of the day.  The halls got even more crowded as all the grades were released.  Since the spotlight was now off them, Riley and Nick were more a natural shade.  And Nick was still smiling.

“Omigosh,” he burst out.  “This is great.  So, um, will you go to prom with me, Riley?”

Riley shrugged a shoulder.  “Yeah, sure.”

Chris shook his head in amusement.  Apparently Riley wasn’t going to go completely girly on them.  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t still give her a hard time.

“Aw,” Chris pretended to get choked up, “I’m getting all verklempt.”  He waved his hand in front of his face to hold back the fake tears and Riley slapped him on the arm.

“Shut-up, you douche.”

Chris smiled at her and she smiled back.  Before his depraved, over-sexed brain could wander off into “what would she be like” territory, like he did with almost every girl now, he clapped his hands and then gently pushed between them to get out from his locker cage.

“Well, I’ll get out of your hair now.”

“One second,” Nick said.  “Um…”

Chris turned fully to look at him.  His eyes were cast to the floor, and he looked quite serious and torn between two conflicting thoughts.

“Look,” he said.  “You did help me here, and I owe you for that.  Also, I care about Riley, and I don’t want to do anything that would hurt her.  So, that includes not making her feel bad by having something happen to a friend.”

Riley’s brow creased in confusion.  “What are you talking about, Nick?”

Nick looked up at Chris.  “Just…maybe you shouldn’t let Scott leave school by himself today.”

“Hunh?” Chris asked, thoroughly confused by the semi-warning.

“Just don’t…leave him alone.  Okay?”

“Oh…kay.”

Chris looked at Riley.  She gave a little shrug.  She didn’t know what he meant either.

“All right.  Thanks, I guess.  You two run along to where you’re supposed to be.  Or, if you would like to consummate your new love, I think the janitor’s closet has a broken lock.”

“Shut-up, Chris,” Riley groaned.

Chris smiled and walked away.  He wondered what Nick was trying to tell him.  No matter what it might be, staying close to Scott wouldn’t be hard.  He’d wait for him after his last class since he was always late leaving places as well as arriving to them.  He rounded a corner on his way to government class and was nearly knocked to the floor as Laney barreled into him.  He grabbed her arms to steady her and saw the panicked look in her eyes.  And then relief as she recognized him.

“Oh thank goodness.  Chris, hurry!”

“Oh my God, Laney, are you okay?  Are you in labor?”

He looked down to see if TV was accurate and there was liquid on the floor at her feet.

“No, no, I’m fine.  It’s not me.  It’s Scott.  Come on, hurry!”

Laney pulled on his hand and led him toward the vocational hallway.

 

Scott

 

Scott looked inside his locker.  He didn’t keep anything that wasn’t school related in there and he kept his notebooks neat and tidy, so he didn’t have anything to do.  He supposed he could just find someone to chat with while they cleaned out their locker.  Scott exchanged his books for his last class.  He dropped his calculus book to the floor with disgust. Only a few more weeks of that miserable mess.  Then a few more weeks after that and he’d get the results of his AP test.  Hopefully he scored a 4 or 5 on it, which would get him out of freshman math classes at Virginia Tech.  It didn’t look like anything beyond calculus was required for medical school.  Scott laughed at himself.  Was he seriously considering medical school?  He had to go in order to become a psychiatrist.  Maybe being a psychologist would be just as rewarding.  Or was that the equivalent of becoming a chiropractor?

Scott closed his locker and turned to find arms and lips coming at him.  He was getting better about not spazzing out at Antoinette’s sneak attacks, but he had a heavy textbook in his hands, so all he could do was accept her kiss and enjoy the feel of her nails lightly playing along his hairline at the nape of his neck.  He shivered a little as the sensation sent little chills over his body.  Antoinette pulled back and smiled as she looked him over.

“I love you.”

Scott smiled.  “Thanks.”

She put a hand on her hip.  “Thanks?”

“Yep.”

She gave a little roll of her eyes, but she was smiling.  She linked arms with him.

“So, you know that trig test you helped me study for?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Guess what I got on it.”

“Mm…a B?”

“96.”

She was smiling smugly at her own achievement.

“Out of one hundred?”

She frowned at him.  “Yes.”

He laughed and kissed her cheek.  “That’s amazing.  I’m so happy for you.  See, I told you you’re smart.”

“Well, I knew I was smart, I just didn’t know I could put it down on paper.”

Scott laughed and glanced up as he saw Anna pass them.  She kept her eyes forward and didn’t acknowledge them in any way.  Scott sighed.  Once again, they weren’t speaking.  He dropped his head for a second and then looked after her.  It hurt him that she was so intentionally non-understanding of his feelings for Antoinette.  He knew if the situation was reversed and he loved her but she was dating some douche bag (not that he thought Antoinette was a douche bag) that he wouldn’t like it, but he would never cut her out of his life.  He liked her too much.  Enjoyed her company.  He still needed her in some ways.  Or maybe that’s what her problem was.  He didn’t need her in the same way anymore.  Antoinette wasn’t only his lover, but a female best friend.  He had the boys, he had Antoinette, what role would Anna play in his life?  Well, she was a fool for not realizing that she needed to fill the Anna part of his life.

Antoinette glanced after her too.  She looked like she was about to say something, but then she blinked and gave a little shake of her curls.

“So, I’m super excited for prom now that we’ve got a group going,” Antoinette said, leading Scott out of the hallway since Anna’s locker was only ten feet away from his.  “I hope you won’t mind if I ask my friends to join us.”

“Why would I—”

“Well, Bebe is still mad at me about Jake.  Even more so since he hasn't asked her to prom yet and I don't think he will.  And Natalie kind of has that crush on you and is still POed at me about that.  So, that might be a little awkward.  And Stephanie never does anything without the other two.  But, I guess I should still ask anyway.”

“Antoinette, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Because…I’m always talking to you about losing Anna, but you lost your friends too.  And I’m always so absorbed in my own head that I—”

“Scott, that’s okay.  It’s hardly the same.  Anna was—is—a good friend and cares about you and I know it’s hard watching that friendship break apart.  But, honestly, I was never really close with them.  I only became friends with them when I got hot and popular.  Bebe and Stephanie are kind of petty and just plain mean girls.  Natalie is much nicer, and I wish I could make up with her, but we weren’t that close either.  I wish I did have that kind of close relationship you had with Anna with someone, but,” she shrugged, “I haven’t really had a best friend since grade school.  Well, until now.  I have you.  You’re my best friend.”

Scott felt tears prick his eyes.  “You’re my best friend too,” he said, his voice thick with unshed tears.

Antoinette smiled pityingly.  “Scott, don’t cry about it, you big baby.”  She stopped walking and hugged him.  “And besides, I’m not your best friend.  That’s reserved for ‘your boys.’  And the relationships you have with them…I certainly wouldn’t want anything like that.”

Scott pulled back.  “Why not?”

“Because.  That’s intense.  We have that with each other and it consumes me.  I couldn’t imagine giving all of myself to three more people.  That would burn me out.”

Scott shook his head.  “It’s not like that.  It makes you stronger.”

Antoinette shrugged doubtfully but didn’t respond.  She just nudged him to get him walking again.  The bell hadn’t rung yet, but it was best to get Scott moving in the right direction as soon possible.

“So, are you sure your parents will be okay with paying for the limo?  My dad can chip in,” Scott volunteered.

“Oh, it’s no problem.  I already asked them about it a month ago.  Now we just need to get a bigger one to fit everyone.  This is going to be so great!”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, why’d you say it like that?’ she pouted.

“Because.  You’re going to be elected queen.”

“Um, not necessarily.  It’s not a sure thing anymore.  And if I did win, would that be a bad thing?”

“No.  But Jake will be elected king.  And I don’t want to see you dancing together.”

“Aw come on, it would be short and there’d barely be any touching.  It would totally be stiff middle school swaying.  Besides, there’s a good chance it won’t be Jake.  I think Will might take it.”

“Can he win if he’s not even going?”

“He’s not going?”

“No.  He wants to spend the night with his girlfriend.”

“So, why doesn’t he just bring her?  She doesn’t have to go to school here.”

“Yeah, well, he can’t bring _this_ girlfriend.”

“Why not?”

“Uh…I can’t really say.”

“You can’t tell _me_?” she wheedled giving him kitten eyes and pressing her breasts against his body.

“Well…”

She blinked her blue, blue eyes at him.

“I think she’s older than he.”

Antoinette shrugged.  “I don’t think anyone would be surprised by that regarding him.  So what?”

“Well…I think she’s a little too old to be at a high school dance if she’s not one of the chaperones.”

Antoinette put a hand up to cover the amused, shocked O her mouth formed.  Then she giggled.  “Well.  Good for him then.”

“Yeah, good for him.  Apparently they’re madly in love.”

“Awwww!  Our little sociopath grew a heart.”

Scott was a little upset by the comment.  After all, only he Chris and Julian could call Will a sociopath.  But she was smiling and laughing and obviously didn’t mean it in a derogatory or mean spirited way.  So, he smiled too.  He supposed he couldn’t really be surprised if other people drew the same conclusion about him.  After all, he never did much to hide his indifference and apathy to the other occupants of the world.  Though he had gotten better over the last year.  Whether that was from dealing with Julian’s tragedy or his relationship with his girlfriend was a tossup.

“I guess if we can just get me to stop crying all the time,” he said, “all four of us will finally be grownups.”

“No way,” Antoinette declared.  “I like it when you cry.”

She tweaked his nipple, kind of hard, and he pulled away from her as she laughed.  He rubbed the sore spot and was a little annoyed that he was also kind of aroused.  He scowled at her as she walked away, still laughing.

“Love ya, babe.  I’ve gotta clean out my locker, but you better start heading to class.  Just one more and then we can continue that somewhere else.”

She rounded the corner and Scott took a couple of moments to calm his body from the reaction her promise had provoked.  Then he slowly made his way to the vocational hallway for his last class of the day.  He was about five steps from his classroom door when he was slammed up against some lockers.  He hadn’t seen it coming at all, so his head snapped back and hit the metal hard.  He saw lights dancing in front of his eyes as his occipital lobe tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.  He shook his head to clear his vision.  Jake swam into view.  Scott rubbed the back of his head and groaned in annoyance.

“Seriously, this again?” he asked with derision.  “Look, I get it.  I’m an asshole.  I stole your girlfriend.  But she wanted to come.  It’s not like I blackmailed her or brainwashed her or something and that’s what’s keeping you two apart.  I don’t have her locked in a tower.”

Scott flinched as Jake pounded his fist into the locker directly beside his head.  The metal warped in and Jake’s breathing was a little labored as he looked at Scott with crazed eyes.  Scott felt an icy needle of fear start to prick his stomach.  This was different from the times before.  And he was scared.

“You don’t know anything about us,” Jake’s voice came out, low and straining under a tight and tenuous control.  “You think that just because she likes to beat you during sex that that means she loves you?  You’re a toy.  A game.  She’ll dump you when it starts to take too long for the bruises to heal.”

Scott was scared, but he was also angry.  So, that overrode his common sense.  He met Jake’s eyes, irritated that he had to look up a little to do it and said, “Speaking from personal experience?”

“No way, bitch.  I’m a man.  And always let her know it.  She screamed for me, man.  Does she scream for you?  Or is your little faggotty dick so pathetic she has to fake it?”

Scott flexed his jaw and stared Jake down, but he didn’t respond.  At last he decided that it would be pointless and vulgar and quite disrespectful to Antoinette to get into an argument with her ex-boyfriend about who was better at getting her off.

“Okay,” Scott said.  “We’re done here.”

He slid slightly to the side to get away from Jake and started to walk away, but he stopped when he saw Derrick blocking his way out.  He looked to the other side under Jake’s arm: Kyle was there.  Behind Jake were Ben and Jon.  The icy needle was now a knife, and it was twisting.  Scott swallowed hard and looked at Jon.

“You too, Jon?  You’re not even a soccer player.”

“Nick pussyed out,” Jon said.

Jake pounded the locker again, denting it even further.  “Don’t get distracted!  What’s important is that I’m here!”

The bell rang and the halls got even more crowded as everyone pushed and shoved to get to seventh period unaware of the brewing storm.  Scott started to move again and Jake pushed him back.  Scott froze for a second and then moved as quickly as he could to duck under his arm, but Jake grabbed him and threw him back with an echoing, hollow bang that drew the attention everyone in the hallway.  After taking in the scene, no one looked inclined to help.  Scott’s last resort was to try reason.

“Jake, we’re at school.  What do you really think you can do to me here?”

Jake smiled at him and Scott shrank back.

“I’m going to beat you unconscious.  Scotty.  The only this is, I’m worried that as I break every bone in your body, it’s just going to turn you on.  Be sure to give me fair warning if you’re going to spray your shorts so I can get clear.”

Jake laughed and his friends sniggered with him.  Scott stood up straight and shoved Jake hard enough that he actually had to backpedal several steps.

“Fuck you, Patterson.  _I_ have a girlfriend for that.”

Jake’s humor left his face.  He stepped forward and Scott avoided the first punch to his face, but got almost the full brunt of the one to his gut.  He tried to gasp for air, but the pain prevented the attempt.  He held his stomach and finally drew breath, but he was also seeing stars again.  This was real pain.  The closest he’d ever felt to it was when Jake had punched him on New Year’s.  That had sucked.  And this was even worse.  He was completely defenseless right now.  Why wasn’t Jake finishing him off?

“Leave him alone!” he heard an indignant voice shout.

He opened his eyes and saw his very tiny, very pregnant friend standing in front of him with her arms outstretched to protect him.  He would have felt embarrassed to have a pregnant chick defending him, but he was too grateful.

“Laney, go away,” Jake ordered with annoyance.

“No!” she shouted.  “ _You_ go away!”

Jake scoffed in impatience and said, “Guys.”

Ben and Kyle took Laney by the arms and started to pull her away.  She fought back hard and kicked at them, but her legs were too short to reach.  Scott exploded and leapt forward to nail Kyle in the face by a hand that had suddenly become a fist.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!”

Kyle let go and stumbled back, but Jon and Derrick were there to jump on him as Ben pulled Laney completely out of the way.  Scott blocked and defended against his two attackers fairly effectively, they didn’t hit nearly as hard as Jake, but he knew Jake was still there.  Waiting.  And Laney was screaming and the other students were gasping and yelping and squishing themselves against the lockers like they could disappear inside them if they pressed hard enough.

Scott broke free by ducking down and slid partway across the hallway.  He leapt to his feet again and took in the situation.  Derrick, Jake, Kyle, and Jon were all coming for him.  Ben was acting as a lookout.  The vocational hall was pretty isolated, but the classroom doors weren’t that thick and a curious teacher might peek her head out to see what was causing all the screaming.  Though now, Scott noticed Laney had stopped screaming.  She was gone.  Guess she didn’t want to see him get pulverized.  He didn’t know which way to go.  The hallway was blocked on two sides; there were more lockers at his back.  He couldn’t run.  Not that he had time to.  Kyle was on him, obviously wanting revenge for the punch Scott had gotten in.  He grunted as Kyle punched him and then winced as someone landed a kick to his thigh.  He started to drop down to a ball and cover his head as all four descended on him, belatedly realizing that that might be more dangerous.

Suddenly the pack was temporarily broken up when they stepped back in surprise as a body came flying at them and took Derrick out.  Scott was crouching down, but still on his feet.  He stood up when he saw that Chris had Derrick splattered out on the floor and was on top of him beating him.  Jon jumped to help Derrick and Scott shoved Kyle hard enough that he stumbled into a group of girls who squealed in alarm.  Jake was coming for him again.  Scott turned to the side and got Jake’s punch half power as he saw Laney panting by the corner.  She’d gone to get help.  But Chris wasn’t enough.  He wasn’t a fighter.  They were both going to—Scott put up an arm to block another punch, but suddenly Jake was falling backward as a rabid Will Harder rode him to the ground.  Scott kicked at Kyle’s ankle and he stumbled back into Julian who wrapped his arms around him and lifted him off his feet.  Scott used the break to go after Jon who was hitting Chris from behind, which hadn’t done much to make him lose his focus on destroying Derrick’s face.  Now it was even, as Ben the lookout didn’t seem like he wanted to join in at all.

Kyle struggled to break free from Julian’s body lock, but was helpless.  Chris stood up when Derrick went limp and helped Scott slam Jon into a wall.  He slid to the floor, holding his ribs and they turned to look at Jake.  He was panting and looked like he was in a colossal amount of pain, but he also had Will’s arms pinned behind his back.  He shoved the smaller boy away, obviously uninterested in paying him back for the beating he’d given him, and started toward Scott again.  Scott balled his hands into fists.  Jake had tunnel vision.  And Scott was at the end of it.  Fine.  He took a step forward too.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

Jake and Scott turned to find Antoinette gaping at them with rage.  She walked right up to Jake and put a hand on his arm.

“What do you think you’re doing, you Neanderthal?!”

“This doesn’t concern you, Antoinette!” Jake shouted and shoved her away.  She stumbled and gasped in outraged shock at him.  Scott saw red.  How dare he lay a hand on his woman?  Scott moved forward with snakelike speed, his fist flying with all the righteousness a man has when defending his woman’s honor.  Jake easily sidestepped it and clocked him good.  He went down.  From his dizzy perspective on the floor, he saw Antoinette march up to Jake, ball her beautiful but slightly mannish hand into a fist, and punch Jake hard enough to snap his head sideways.  Everyone in the hallway went dead silent.  Jake put a hand to his lip and looked at her.  She looked about ready to give him another when someone shouted, “Teacher!”

It was like turning the lights on in a cockroach infested apartment.  They scattered, bumped into each other, tried to cause confusion for the adults swarming in to break it all up.  Scott felt someone help him to his feet.  And then more sobering than a cold bucket of water to his face, he heard Mr. Hayden’s voice.

“What is going on here?!” the man roared.

Scott panicked.  And ran.  He turned several corners before he took notice of where he was.  He was near the boys room in the elementary wing.  He ducked inside.  This was perfect.  Everyone knew about the supply closet that was a perfect hiding spot.  It could only be locked from the inside, so unless someone was already hiding inside, it would be unlocked.  And if a teacher came by and tried the locked door, they would think it was always locked and therefore unable to accommodate any hiders.  The only question was, was it already occupied?  There were kids running all over the hallways and he could tell some had followed him inside the bathroom.  In fact, he was even behind someone, but that closet should be able to fit two.  At least two…

Scott jumped inside with another person and they pulled the door shut, throwing the lock.  The supply closet was smaller than a bathroom stall and Scott and his co-occupant were squished together.  The person shifted his weight and stepped on Scott’s foot.

“Ow!”

The person covered his mouth with his hand and said, “Shh!  Someone’s in here.”

Neither moved.  Neither dared to breathe.  They could hear someone banging all the doors of the stalls open as they looked for students.  Shouts started.  Someone had been caught.  They heard the teacher roughly escort his quarry out.  The door shut.  They still waited.  Then they heard the telltale signs of someone who was trying to be clever by not leaving and standing still start to move again.  The person exited.  The air in Scott’s lungs burst forth, but was blocked by the other’s person’s hand.  He whipped it back and rubbed it against Scott’s sweater vest.

“Gross,” he complained.

Scott didn’t bother to reply.  He hadn’t made the guy put his hand over his mouth.  He knew it was a guy, sadly not because of his height or the masculine sound of his hushed voice, but because they were pressed so tightly together it was impossible _not_ to know he was a guy.  Even though they were uncomfortable, they knew not to leave yet.  The hallways were probably still being cleared and Scott could feel the blood clotting at his eyebrow, so it would be obvious he had been involved in the altercation.

The other person sighed heavily.  “That twerp isn’t worth this,” he muttered.

Scott cocked his head to the side.  It couldn’t be.

“Jake?”

The person started.  “Ramsey?!”

They wrestled awkwardly in the tight space and someone’s elbow hit the metal shelf behind them.  It got pushed up and then came back down with a loud banging clatter.  They both froze.  They didn’t hear anyone come back into the bathroom, but they both knew better than to try anymore squabbling in the tight space.

“Fuck!” Jake hissed.  “I cannot believe I’m stuck with you!  I knew I should have waited until after school.  I just couldn’t when I saw your stupid face.”

“Okay, seriously, what the fuck, man?” Scott griped.  “You got dumped.  It’s high school.  It happens.  Get over it!”

“Would you?!” Jake shouted.

Scott couldn’t even be concerned about the noise he was making.  He was startled by Jake’s words.  And more interesting than his words, Scott could hear the hurt in his voice.

“What do you mean?” he asked softly.

“Would you get over her?” Jake grumbled and suddenly took a deep breath, forcing their chests tightly together for a moment.  Scott was amazed.

“You…you really loved her.”

He got no reply.

“Wow.  She always made it seem like you were just interested in her tits.”

“That’s what she said?!”  Scott could hear Jake grumble to himself.  “That lying bitch.  She loved me!  She wanted me.  Jesus!  We even talked about getting married.”

“Seriously?” Scott blurted out.  Did Antoinette talk about marriage with all her boyfriends?

“Well.  Sort of.  But the point is that we were happy before you showed up!  You get your super cool sexy hair and suddenly you’re God’s fucking gift.”

Scott repressed a laugh and knew he was going to get punched for saying, “You think my hair is sexy?”

He did get punched in the stomach, and due to the tight space it had no power behind it.  But it still hurt a little because he was still sore from the blow he’d taken earlier.

“Shut-up, you dick.”

Scott closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.

“Jake, you wanna know the truth?”

“No.”

Scott opened his eyes.  They had adjusted somewhat to the darkness and he could just make out Jake’s large form.  He was more or less looking in the direction of his eyes.

“Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway because you can’t stop me.  My hair—”

Jake put his hand on his mouth again.  “I can definitely stop you.”  He rolled his hand up so that his index finger plugged Scott’s nose.  He wasn’t completely blocking his flow of air, but the intent was there.  And Scott had had enough of Jake’s pissy bullshit for one day.  He licked his hand.

“Ah!”  Jake whipped it away and once again wiped it off on Scott’s clothes.  “Dude!  Gross.  Seriously.”

“My hair is like this because Antoinette did it.”

“What?”

“She did it.  She cut it, she bleached it, and she styled it.”

Scott could hear Jake make some noise, but he got no real reply.

“See, I was living happily in ignorance of my own apparent hotness.  It was after your last game last season at the consolation party at the Pizza Dome.”  Scott thought about that day again.  “It was the same night Julian’s parents died.”  He took in a breath, forcing that memory away for now.  “Antoinette hit on me, okay?  She came on really strong.  I mean, really strong.  Dry humped me against the wall outside.  And asked if I wanted to help her cheat on you.”

“Wh-what?!”

Scott laughed humorlessly.  “Do you really think _I_ went after _her_?”

There was no response.

“Eventually, after we’d been doing it for a while, she said that she just wanted to know what cheating was like, to know what the big deal was, because she was trying to understand how her father could do it to her mother.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t, but that’s what she thought at the time.”

Jake let out a short, harsh laugh.  “I doubt that.  Probably another lie.  No one who has ever seen Mr. and Mrs. Bixby together would think he’s cheating on her.  He adores her.”

Scott shrugged in response and instantly regretted it.  The movement had rubbed their bodies together.

“Egh,” Jake got out.

“Sorry.  Anyway.  That’s why she said she wanted to do it.”

“Just sounds like an excuse.”

“Yeah, maybe.  She said she didn’t pick me at random.  She said she’d had a crush on me since ninth grade and that she’d dated you to make me jealous.  If you can believe it.”

“I can’t,” Jake said dryly.  Then Scott could feel Jake’s body tense.  “No!” he said harshly.  “You’re full of shit!  Our relationship was _not_ fake!”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.  She did like you.  She told me she did.”

“ _Like_ ,” Jake spat the word out.

Scott knew if he did anything that might make it seem like he was pitying Jake that it could result in a lot more pain, but he also wanted to tell Jake the truth.  He owed him that much.

“I‘m sorry, Jake.  I really am.  I didn’t know how much you cared about her.  And I understand your anger now.  It would be the same if not worse for me if I lost her.”

“God,” Jake said, sounding embarrassed.  “It’s not like that,” he continued, not sounding too convincing.  “I’m not _that_ crazy about her.  It’s…it’s just a pride thing.  I have to beat you up to save face.”

Even with his poor lie detecting skills, Scott could easily tell Jake was lying about his feelings.  But he certainly wasn’t going to call him out on it.

“Oh.  I see.  Well, you should be good now.  I got the snot beat out of me _and_ had to get defended by a pregnant chick.”

Jake laughed.  “God.  I couldn’t believe Laney did that.  She _is_ cute.”

“Yeah.”

They were silent a moment and then Jake asked, “So who’s the baby daddy anyway?”

Scott shrugged again, and rubbed them together again.

“Egh,” Jake said.

“Sorry.  And I don’t know about Laney.  Only Julian knows and he’s not talking.”

“Maybe he’s the father.”

“I don’t think so.  Laney’s not his type.  Plus, she’s giving the baby up for adoption and I don’t think Julian would ever give up his own child.”

“Hunh.”

Then there was some more silence.  They seemed to be having reasonable conversation, maybe he should try to save his own skin.

“So, Jake, can we…can we not do this anymore?  It’s the last few days of our last year.  Then we won’t have to see each other until the ten year reunion.  Don’t you want to enjoy the end of your senior year?”

Jake sighed grudgingly.  “Yeah.  I guess.  Plus Antoinette will be guarding you now.”

Scott chuckled.  “Yeah.  Jake…?”

“Jesus.  Don’t say my name like that in the dark when we’re this close.”

“Sorry.  I just…felt bad and really guilty about it the whole time.  I really didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You didn’t.  She did.”

“Yeah, but I—”

“Ramsey.”

Scott cleared his throat.  “Sorry.”

They were quiet again.  They didn’t hear anything in the bathroom.  The bell for the start of seventh period had rung a few minutes ago.  If they didn’t show up they would be marked as skipping and automatically suspected of being involved in the disturbance.  It would be a stretch as it was showing up late and saying they got confused during the ruckus.

“Do you think we can leave now?” Scott asked.

“Just give it another couple of minutes.  We’re gonna have to say our lockers are in the space behind the gym and that’s why we didn’t hear the bell ring.  Hopefully the teachers won’t look into it.”

“Oh.  That’s a good idea.”

Silence.

“Jake..?”

“ _What_.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Can I stop you?”

“How…um, how did you…uh.  Well.  How did you know that…about me.  That I’m like…a little.  Um.  Masochistic.”

Jake laughed softly.  “I dated her for a year and a half, remember?  I know what she likes.  She likes it rough.  Though not in the way I would prefer.  She used to do it to me a little.  But, I’m not really into getting slapped around during sex.  I just thought bringing up her _penchant_ for it would embarrass you.  I actually had no clue you were into it.  Until you just told me, of course.”

“Ah.  I see.”  Scott put a hand to his face.  Even in the dark, this was humiliating.

“Oh, man,” Jake said in worried voice, “Were you really getting turned on when I was beating you up?”

“What?!  Ew, no!  It doesn’t work like that!”

“What,” Jake laughed, “does it have to be more localized?”

He lifted his knee and ground it hard against Scott’s groin.

“Ow!  Quit it, you jerk!”  Scott pushed ineffectively against him.  The feeling was mostly unpleasant, but God help him, he was also feeling a little tingle.  It made him think of Tyler.  “Knock it off!”  Scott slammed his fist down on Jake’s shoulder as hard as he could and he finally stopped with the grinding, though he was still laughing pretty hard.

“Ha, ha, oh, God.  You are a freak,” Jake practically giggled.

“Shut up.”

“So, Ramsey.”  Jake snickered again, and then pulled himself together.  “Okay, so, in exchange for me leaving you alone, can you do something for me?”

“What?” Scott griped.

“Can you tell your friends not to seek revenge?  I really didn’t think through picking on their favorite pet.”

“I’m not a pet!”

“Yeah, sure.”

They heard an electronic crackle as the PA system clicked on.  They couldn’t make out the words through the door, so they opened it and squeezed out to listen.

“…rang five minutes ago.  All students must return to class immediately.  Tardies will be waived this one time as long as everyone gets to class within two minutes.”

“Oh, we got lucky,” Jake said.  “We might get away with this.”

“ _You_ might,” Scott grumbled as he examined his face in the mirror.  He had bruises already forming and blood at his left eyebrow and left corner of his lip.  He wetted a paper towel and began to dab at the blood.

“Just keep your head down,” said Jake.  “It’ll only be for forty-five minutes or so.”

“Yeah, that’s helpful advice.”  Scott looked at Jake.  “And what about you?”

Jake looked in the mirror.  His bottom lip was split open and he had dried blood all over his chin.

“Jesus.”  He got a wet paper towel and began to dab too. 

“Did I do that?” Scott asked hopefully.

“Not a chance.”

“Will?”

“No.  That punk practically destroyed my ribs.  And you see those finger shaped bruises starting to form around my neck?  That was his handiwork too.  This…”  He winced when he blotted the towel over the cut.  “This is from Antoinette.”

Scott laughed.  “It is?  That’s my girl.”

Jake lowered the towel and looked at himself in the mirror.  Then he turned to Scott and said in a sad, accepting voice, “Yeah, she is.”

Scott dropped his eyes.  Then he turned back to the mirror.  He’d done all he could, but he still looked pretty bad.

“Do you think the teachers will notice?”

“Just sit in the back.  With a bag over your head.”

“Thanks.”

Jake opened the bathroom door.  “Hey.  You better not rat me out.”

“I won’t.  I’ve done enough to you.”

“Come on, Ramsey.  Enough.  I’m not going to forgive you.  So don’t try to make yourself all pitiful and sympathetic.”

“I’m not.”

Scott could see Jake’s eyes jump around as they searched his face.

“Hunh.  Maybe you are a good guy who just got suckered by a manipulative bitch.”

“Don’t talk about her that way.”

“Relax.  I truly say it with love.  Now get to class before we get busted.”

Jake left the bathroom and Scott looked at himself in the mirror again.  He barely recognized himself with the bright hair and cuts and bruises from the mousey, sleepy kid he’d been practically all his life.  But, that was okay.

 

Will

 

Will sat on the hood of Chris’ car and made a face as he dribbled hydrogen peroxide on his bruised knuckles.  He’d actually broken the skin on his right hand, and he was watching the tiny bubbles fizz in his cracked skin.  It didn’t really hurt, but it felt kind of weird.  Chris was putting Neosporin on a laceration at Scott’s eyebrow.  Julian was readying a Band-Aid for him.  Julian had cut the last class of the day to go get some first aid supplies, and the three of them had tried with varying degrees of success to hide their injuries from their teachers.  Scott’s had been the most noticeable since his face was pretty bruised on one side.  Will seethed every time he glanced over at him and saw his skin getting darker by the minute.  Technically Scott and Jake had finally resolved their issues, but Will still wanted to break Jake’s hands.

“Again, guys, thanks,” Scott winced as the Band-Aid was applied, “for standing beside me.”

“Where else would we be?” Chris asked softly.

Will liked watching Chris coddle Scott.  He knew that the four of them were very close and cared about each other, but like Will and Julian were closer with each other than to the other two, so were Chris and Scott more closely connected.  And Will could see how affected Chris was by Scott’s pain.  After learning that he was trying to drown his anger and sadness in sex and women, Will had been worried he felt a little too much apathy radiating off him.  But now he could see that he hadn’t lost his capacity to care and to care deeply.

Chris put a hand through Scott’s hair and then briefly rested their foreheads together.

“You should have told us sooner,” he said.

Scott nodded.  “Honestly, I didn’t think there’d be anything to tell.  He punched me on New Year’s, and said while it didn’t make us even, it would be enough.  And he’d push me into the lockers every now and then, but I didn’t really blame him for that.  I never thought he would take it that far.  I, and even Antoinette, didn’t realize how much he loved her.”

“What’s so great about her anyway?” Chris griped.

Scott shrugged and didn’t try to respond, rightly assuming that while not a rhetorical question Chris didn't really want an answer extolling the virtures of Antoinette Bixby.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive home?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.  I just don’t want to have to explain this to Linda.  She’ll freak.  Heck, my dad might too.  He’s been a little overprotective lately.  Plus I gotta pick up Joanna.  I just don’t really want the twins to see me like this.”

“I can take them home,” Chris said.  “Maybe it’ll be better if they don’t see it right away?”

“Yeah, maybe.  Do you guys need a ride home?” Scott directed at Will and Julian.

“I gotta stop by Mr. West’s and feed the cat and fish.  He’s out of town this week.”  Will looked at Julian.  “Do you have to go to ‘work?’”

Julian narrowed an eye at him for the tone he used for the word “work,” but he said, “Not today.  Today’s the day I’m going with Laney to meet the adoptive parents.”

“Ohhh, right,” the other three said, turning toward him.

“That’s going to be…interesting.  Right?” Scott questioned.  “Or is it just going to be weird?”

Julian shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get hit in the face.  ‘Cause then I might really freak them out.”

“Well, you could try not to be so huge,” Will said unhelpfully.

“Or, you could take your piercings out,” Scott suggested.

“And you could have dyed your hair a normal color for once,” Chris said.

Julian ran his hand over the pink stripe and frowned.

“I thought you said you liked it.”

“I do,” Chris said.  “But, I’m not trying to adopt…well, it’s not your baby I guess.”

“You _guess_?” Julian snorted indignantly.  “I’m serious.  Laney’s baby isn’t mine.  If it were, I wouldn’t give it up for adoption.”

“Well, she just wants you for moral support, right?” Scott said.  “So you probably won’t even go into the meeting with them.  You’ll just be there to hold her hand until you get there.  Where is there anyway?  Are you going to their house?”

“No.  We’re meeting at their lawyer’s office downtown.”

“Hey guys!”

They all turned to see Laney walking up to them, her very pregnant belly stretching out the argyle pattern on her sweater vest.  She didn’t waddle though, and she hadn’t gained much weight in her limbs or face.  Pregnancy actually agreed with her and she definitely fit that cliché about glowing.

“So, that fight was craaaazy, you guys.  Mr. Hayden has been asking everyone about it.”

“And what are they telling him?” Will asked, wondering if his acceptance to Columbia was now in jeopardy.

“Nobody is saying anything.  I think you all might actually get away with it.”

Scott let out a sigh of relief.  “Good.  I don’t think I’d be able to stand it if you all got in trouble because of me.”

“We’d gladly accept the punishment, Scott, because we would do it again,” Chris said.

Julian and Will nodded.  Though Will did think that _not_ getting caught was better and not a betrayal to hope for it.

“Oh, there’s my mom!” Laney said.  “Come on, Julian.”

Julian put a hand on Scott’s shoulder and gave it squeeze.  “See you guys tomorrow.”

“Have fun?” Scott questioned.

“Hey, Laney,” Will said, “look at their nails.  Make sure they’re attached right.  They could be aliens masquerading as humans so that they can steal human babies.”

“Will!” she squealed and slapped him on the arm.

He started to laugh and then said, “Owww.”  Jake had wrenched his arms pretty good.  He waved goodbye to Julian to mask that he was actually raising his arm to hold his other one.

“Okay,” Chris said.  “I’ll go back to the school and intercept the twins.  You drive carefully home, Scott.  And, Will, it’s not enough to disinfect those knuckles.  Put some bandages on them.”

“Yes, Mom,” Will and Scott intoned in high-pitched voices.

Chris made a face at them and left.  Will slid off the hood of the car and stood close to Scott.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Scott smiled.  “Yeah, I’m sure.  I’m serious, Jake and I worked things out.”

“How’s Antoinette?”

“I’m not sure.  She said she’s okay since I’m okay, but she internalizes stuff a lot.  She cut the last class and said there was something she had to do.  I told her I’d stop by her house after school, and she said okay.  So, she wasn’t trying to keep me away.  I think.  We’ll see if she answers the door.  But, I think she’s okay.”

Will gave Scott a hug.  “Just say the word, Scotty, and I’ll take care of him.”

Scott laughed anxiously and patted his back.  “Will, calm down.  I’m fine.  You’re fine.  Chris and Julian are fine.  It really was one of those harmless fights that kids can have.  We didn’t start a gang war.”

Will pulled back and scowled as he looked at Scott’s face.  He put a hand gently to his cheek, but even so, he winced slightly.

“It was only that way because we were there.  If we hadn’t been there, it was a four on one fight.  And you wouldn’t have come out ‘fine.’”

“Aw, Antoinette was there.  I’m sure she would have protected me.  You should have seen Jake’s lip after the fight.  She got him real good.”  He laughed.

Will smiled as he remembered the beauty balling her hand into a fist and punching her ex with all her might to defend her man.

 “Yeah, that was pretty funny.”

“I know, right?  So, don’t worry.  I’ve got my bodyguard.  And I hope this doesn’t ruin your friendship with Jake.  I mean—”

“Oh, it’s already too late for that.  And don’t feel guilty about it.  He and I were just acquaintances who had soccer in common.  That’s all.  I’m not going to regret losing an unstable jerk like him.”

“Will…”  Scott must not have seen the point in continuing the argument, so he just kind of half shrugged.  “All righty then.  You want a ride to this Mr. West Person’s place?”

“Sure.”

Will was pleasantly surprised by Scott’s greatly improved driving skills.  Maybe now that he had a car he cared about, he wanted to be careful with it.  Because he certainly hadn’t been this safe of a driver in the Purple Monster.  He even put his hazard lights on when he pulled up next to the curb to let Will out.  As Will opened the door, he called to him softly.  Will immediately turned back.

“What is it, Scotty?”

“Does…does it…?”

“Yes?”

“Does it really look that bad?” he asked, looking at his bruised and cut face in the rearview mirror.

Will smiled.  “You look like a badass.”

“Really?”

“Well, kind of.  Good luck with Linda.”

“Thanks.  Bye.”

Will waved to him as he carefully pulled out into traffic.  In the lobby, Jeff waved him over to the desk.

“What’s up?” Will asked.

“Mr. West got a package.”

“Oh.  Thanks.”

Jeff handed him a small brown box that was from Nordstrom’s.  He wondered what Ken had bought now.  And if, possibly, it was for him.  He wasn’t really in the mood to check it today, however, and dropped the box off on the dining table.  He fed Joyce Greene and the fish, and then raided Ken’s bathroom for some gauze and medical wrap.  Then he sat on the couch and carefully wrapped his knuckles, trying not to turn his hand into a replica of a mummy.  Then he sat still.  Joyce Greene hopped up into his lap, and he petted her while she purred.  He sighed.  Because he was a little sad.  Because Ken _was_ out of town.  Will turned carefully so as not to disturb Joyce Greene and laid down on the couch, putting one hand under his head, the other still available to pet the white fluffiness of the cat.  And he started to think.

He’d been thinking a lot about Ken’s past since their conversation in the shower two weeks ago.  He’d also asked Ken more and more about his life and his relationships.  He seemed more than happy to open up and share with him.  It was strange that they’d technically been together for a year now, and he’d learned more about him in the last two weeks than he had in a year.  He wondered why they’d never really talked like that before.  He was happy that they were now.  He loved Ken even more now that he really knew him.  And it made him realize that what he thought were odd quirks in a serious businessman were actually who Ken really was.  The serious businessman was a façade for his father.  In fact, there wasn’t anything too serious about Ken at all.  Which is perhaps why both he and Rylan liked him so much.  Will and Rylan tended to make too many plans or get too intense about some things.  Ken could actually calm them down simply by being a distraction.  He certainly wasn’t the opposite of them.  He loved plans too and was by no stretch of the word spontaneous, but despite his anal retentive nature, he could actually handle change better than either Will or Rylan.  As long as that change didn’t affect his filing system.

Will had also been thinking a lot about Devon.  He wanted to know who the asshole was that had broken Ken’s heart and nearly ruined his life by outing Ken to his family in the worst possible way.  He wondered where he lived now and what he did.  He wondered if he could find out that information on his own.  All he would really need is a last name.  Would Ken want to know why he wanted to know?  Maybe Kennedy would know his name.  And not only was Will interested in Devon, but he was insanely curious about Madeline.  What had she been like?  A woman who Ken had been willing to spend a year of his life with.  Quite possibly more if marriage had never come up.  He could probably ask Kennedy about her too.  More than likely, she lived in the city.  Unless Ken had hurt her so badly that she’d moved away.  But it was entirely possible that he could meet a serious ex of Ken’s without them knowing who he was.  Of course, there was one other person that Ken had preferred that he definitely knew still lived in the city.  In fact, he knew exactly where he was.

Will sat up as the thought struck him.  He hadn’t even realized Joyce Greene had moved off him and was curled up on the other side of the couch.  His brain was whirring.  Julian was with Laney.  That meeting would have to take some time.  And Ms. Newberry would insist on taking him to dinner afterwards.  Ken was out of town.  And he knew Rylan was out of town too.  That’s where Ken was.  He’d gone up to Vermont for Rylan’s sister’s funeral and had come back after a weekend.  But he’d gone up two days ago to help Rylan who was still up there dealing with his sister’s estate.  Apparently there were two disputed versions of a will.  One which had been brought forth by Aralyn’s ex-husband—the guy who had divorced and left her after getting worn out after four years of her being sick.  From what he’d been told by Ken, Rylan and the man had actually come to blows at some point.  Will couldn’t imagine anyone other than pro-boxers being able to actually trade blows with Rylan, so more than likely the ex-husband had been pummeled to within an inch of his life.  Ken had gone up not only to be moral and emotional support for Rylan, but also to help with the legal side of matters.  Will learned that despite never having gone to law school, Ken was almost as knowledgeable about all kinds of law as Will’s mother was.  And maybe more so than his father.

So what that amounted to was that Rylan and Ken were in Vermont, Julian was occupied, and Will was bored and curious.  A dangerous combination.  Will hopped off the couch and patted Joyce Greene on the head.  He grabbed his bag from the dining table chair he’d left it on and was out the door before he could talk himself out of his plan.  He had a short metro ride to where he was going in which time he could talk himself out of it, but now he was really determined.  And when he was determined to do something, he usually saw it through.  For better or worse.

The Blue Boy building looked like he remembered it: large, nondescript, off white concrete blocks that could almost pass for marble took up half a city block and stretched about twenty stories into the sky.  If it weren’t for the large, ornate doors, the building would be pretty unremarkable.  Will put a hand on a handle and leaned all his weight back to get the heavy door moving.  He hoped it would be empty.  He didn’t want too many people to witness this.

Will walked slowly across the huge, marble hallway.  He remembered the powerful acoustics of the hall and was grateful his rubber soled shoes weren’t making any noise.  He’d stuffed his sweater vest in his bag and hoped that wearing black dress pants, a white dress shirt, and a red tie (which he’d loosened) would make him look older.  The cavern was empty of furniture, plants, decorations, and people.  A desk at the very back of the hall under the Blue Boy logo was the only item present.  And a receptionist.  As Will got closer he also noticed two benches pushed up against the back wall on either side of the receptionist desk.  He wondered what Rylan’s thinking had been when he’d designed it this way.  Will had little doubt that Rylan designed and controlled every aspect of his company and had reasons for everything he did.  It also made him wonder what the rest of the place was like.

The receptionist watched him approach, his eyes roving over his body.  Will wondered if he should try to charm his way in.  By the cynical raise of the receptionist’s eyebrow it became evident that he was not in any way interested in cutesy flirting.  Will stopped in front of the desk, far enough away that when he took his casual stance that slightly jutted one hip out to the side, the receptionist’s eyes would still have a clear view of his narrow waist.  Which was exactly where his eyes were drawn—and a little lower—for a split second.  Then he looked up.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked coolly.

“I’m here to see Leo.”

Will could see surprise flick over the man’s face as he requested someone by name.

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked skeptically.

“Do I need one?”

“Generally.”

“Well, if it’s generally, then there are instances when you don’t.  Is he available today?”

“Even if you don’t need an appointment, this club is members only.  So, why don’t you come back after you’re finished with puberty and got the jacket to prove it?”

The reference to Members Only jackets went over Will’s head, but he knew snarky when he heard it.

“I’m not a member, but I am a guest of a member.”

The receptionist smiled like he’d caught Will in a lie. “We don’t allow members to bring guests.”

“Well, I didn’t so much mean ‘member’ as ‘owner.’”

The receptionist let out a little scoff.  “Excuse me?”

“I’m a…friend of Rylan’s.”

“Rylan doesn’t have friends.”

“Ken West is his friend.”

“Mr. West is his _only_ friend.”

“You’ve seen me here with them before.”

The receptionist thought about it for a moment and then recollection colored his features.  “Oh.  You were here the day Julian punched Mr. West.”

“Yes.”

“Too bad it didn’t go the other way around.”

Will frowned, but was grateful he hadn’t lead with the fact that he was Julian’s friend.  Apparently the receptionist didn’t like him that much.

“What was that all about anyway?”

“I’ll tell you if you let me see Leo.”

“No.”

“Fine.”

Will started to turn away.  He had some more arguments to make, and he was taking a risk by pretending to leave.  But he’d seen the curiosity in the receptionist’s eyes.

“Wait.”

Will turned back.  “Yes?”

“Is it juicy enough for me to potentially get in trouble for letting you in?”

“Definitely.  And besides, Rylan’s in Vermont, so how will he ever know?”

“Because Rylan knows everything that goes on here.  Although the fact that you know Rylan is in Vermont and not Europe tells me that you really do know him.”

Will walked forward, smiling the smile he’d learned from his father.  And it was working on the poor receptionist now.  He put his hands on the desk and leaned down.  The receptionist leaned forward.

“You see, I’m Mr. West’s boyfriend.”

The receptionist sat back in complete shock.  “Shut-up!  You are not!”

“I am.  And Julian…well, he’s always had a little crush on me.”

“But he’s straight!”

Will stood up straight and laughed a little arrogantly as he put his arms out in a display of his greatness.  “That’s just how magnificent I am.”

The receptionist laughed.  “Whatever, you little twerp.”

Will deflated, but the receptionist was still smiling at him.

“So what do you want Leo for if you’ve got Mr. West to see to your needs?”

“All I want to do is talk.”

The receptionist looked him over for a moment.  “You mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You have to promise me that’s all.  You are underage.”

“Only for drinking.”

“Mm-hm.”

“So, can I go see him?”

“Well, this is some pretty choice information.  The fact that Mr. West has a boyfriend goes a long way toward explaining Rylan’s cranky mood the past few months.”

“Well, that could also be attributed to…do you know why he’s in Vermont?”

The mirth left the receptionist’s face.  “Yeah, I do.  But not many others do, so keep it zipped, all right?”

Will nodded.  “So does this mean I can go in?”

The receptionist made a face.  “God, I’m going to get fired for this.  Around the corner, take the elevator to the second floor, Leo should be at the bar.  Unless he’s been picked up for the night.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s your name?”

“Will.”

“Oh.  I would have thought it would have been something like spore or brat.”

Will fake laughed at him.  “You and Rylan are so funny.”

“We are.”

“What’s your name?”

“Adam the Receptionist.”

“Hn.”

Will was so irritated that Rylan would complain about him to people who didn’t even know who he was that he didn’t think about where he was going.  So he didn’t have time to be nervous on the short walk or very short elevator ride.  And before he knew it, the doors opened up to the belly of the beast.  Will stood motionless at the top of the seven stairs that led down to the main floor of the Blue Boy club hall.  It was huge.  It was one giant open space, ceiling-less until about the fifth or sixth story.  There was a balcony near the top that overlooked the floor.  It almost had the feel of a casino pit.  It was 4:00 on a Monday afternoon so it didn’t appear to be very busy considering the number of tables, chairs, couches, and lounge type areas that covered the floor.  Maybe it would get more crowded once the businessmen got off from work.

Will could see a middle-aged man in a suit talking with a very attractive twenty-something on a loveseat.  They weren’t touching and the scene itself was pretty innocuous.  But then Will was struck with what this all meant.  That man was probably going to pay that guy for sex later.  Had Ken done this?  No, he said he’d never stepped foot in the main room of the Blue Boy building and always met his escorts outside in public.  But still.  This was kind of nuts.  Did Julian experience this everyday?  Could he really just walk through the room, seeing people paired off and knowing what it was leading to, and not be bothered by it?  Did Julian see worse?  When there were more people and they’d had a little more to drink…was there groping?  Fondling?  Did Julian get molested when he was here?

Will wanted to leave.  But he spotted the bar against the back wall.  And someone was moving behind it.  Caucasian with brown hair.  That’s all he could make out from here.  And that was probably him.  That guy used to sleep with his lover.  He thought that seeing him would be enough, but now he had to talk to him.

Will walked down the stairs and started to make his way across the room.  He spotted one other couple that was in what looked like a screened off porch in one corner.  That middle-aged man in a suit was smoking a cigar.  The very attractive twenty-something was sprawled indecently (though clothed) in front of him.  They didn’t see Will.  But the two on the loveseat did.  They looked up as he passed and kept their eyes on him.  Both of them.  So here was one of those rare situations when it wasn’t the best thing to be really attractive.

The bartender didn’t see him approach at first as he was checking the levels of the bottles on the bar.  Will sat down and watched him.  He was tall.  Well, he was tall when compared to Will.  He was probably about six feet, maybe an inch over, so he was a touch shorter than Ken.  His skin was definitely Anglo-Saxon in origins, but unlike Will he could tan.  He seemed to be tan now even though it was just the end of May, which was really impressive.  Or maybe he’d just come back from a tropic vacation.  It definitely wasn’t spray on though.  His hair was cut pretty short and was a generic brown color.  His body was nice though.  Even Will could acknowledge that.  He had lean muscle and his skin was flawless—unblemished by freckles, moles, or scars.  When he turned around, Will could see that he was handsome.  More so than he’d allowed himself to picture.  And his eyes were grey.  A deep, misty grey that immediately reminded him of descriptions of stormy skies at sea since he’d never actually seen them for himself.  The bartender seemed surprised to see Will, but then he went into his role as he’d been trained to do.

“Hi.”  He leaned his arms on the bar and smiled enticingly at Will.  “You’re definitely new because I would remember that gorgeous face.”

“I’m…not new exactly.  I’m just visiting.”

The bartender stood up straight, the act gone.  “We don’t have—”

“Visitors.  Yeah, I know.  Adam told me.”

Leo raised a skeptical eyebrow.  “Adam let you in?”

“Yep.”

“O—kay.  Well then, what can I get for you?  Soda?  Water?  Juice?”

“Do you have any wines?”

“Do you have any ID?”

“Coke is good.”

Leo smiled at him as he scooped up some ice in a glass and filled it with soda.  “I have a very good eye, darling.  And I know that you are barely legal.  If you’re even that.”

Will took the glass from him.  “Three months legal actually.”

“Whoo.  That is 89 days more than enough.”

Will rolled his eyes as he took a sip of his soda, but he was amused.  He could already tell why Ken enjoyed spending non-sexual time with this guy.  He had a dry sense of humor and appeared to be pretty no-nonsense.  Well, maybe he should verify that this was who he thought it was.

“You’re Leo, right?”

The man leaned back on the bar staring hard into Will’s eyes.  “I am.”

Will stared back, totally enthralled for a moment.  Then he shook himself.  Geez.  Was Leo that good?  Were all the escorts that good?  Or was Will just more susceptible because he was curious about the man who had touched his lover?  That thought helped clear his mind.  He looked back at the bartender.

“Do you remember your clients?”

“Of course.  You make more money when they’re deluded into thinking that you remembered them because they’re more special than the others.”

“Ah.  Of course.  Um…”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I just need to get a sounding on what you’re into because I’ve got limited time until my 5:00 shows up.”

“What?” Will asked.

“Well, I mean, if you’re just looking for a little tender love-making, we’ve got time.  But if you require something more—involved—I don’t think I’ll be able to accommodate you until probably after nine.  I can find someone else for you too if—”

“No!  Oh, God no.  No, no, no.  I’m not here for that.”

“You’re…not?”

“No.”

Leo gnawed on his lower lip for a second as he looked him over.  “Then why are you here?  You’re too young to be a cop.”

“Oh.  No, not a cop.”

“I just said that.”

Will gave him a little glare and the escort smiled back at him.

“I just wanted…to talk.  To you.”

“To me.”

“Yeah.  About.  One of your clients.”

“Oh, crap.  Are you Mr. Lasseter’s son?”

“Um, no.”

“Oh.  Good.  So, who are you?”

“That’s not important.  Could you remember someone you saw pretty regularly about five years ago?”

“Maybe.  And it totally is important who you are.”

“Jealous lover.”

“Ah.  Sweet.  Wait, do you have a gun?”

“No.”

“A knife?”

“No.”

“Taser?”

“No.”

“Poison, rope, club, chainsaw…”

“No, no.  I’m not here to hurt you.  I’m just…curious.  What you look like.  What your personality is like.  You see, he never saw the same escort more than once.  But he saw _you_ for six months.  So, I was wondering what made you so special.”

Leo grinned.  “Well isn’t that obvious?”

Will looked him over.  Leo was a very attractive man.  But Will didn’t feel any attraction to him.  Not really.  He wasn’t controlling his thoughts very well during their conversation and his imagination had flashed made-up images of Leo and Ken together.  They’d mostly disturbed him.  But a couple had been arousing.  Not so much because Leo was there, but because imagining Ken looking sexy never really failed to get him going.

“Not so much.”

Leo tsked at him.  Then noticed a patron standing a little to the side.

“Hang on,” he said to Will.

Will focused on sipping his soda.  He tried to tune out the flirtatious dialogue that took place between the barkeep and his customer.  It was kind of raunchy.  Finally the man left with his bourbon as another escort dragged him away.  Leo returned to his position of leaning on the bar in front of Will.

“So…I think I know who you’re talking about.  But you’ve indicated that you’re this man’s lover, which I find hard to believe.”

“Why?”

“Well…for starters, Rylan would probably exterminate anyone who laid such a claim to this man.  And secondly, you don’t really seem like his type.”

Will clenched the glass in his hand and could feel his features hardening.  Not with anger at Leo, but with irrational peevishness that his suspicions had been confirmed and he was nothing at all like what Ken would have chosen for himself.

“By the expression on your face, I assume we _are_ talking about Ken West.”

Will didn’t reply right away.

“Oh, wow,” Leo said.  “You’re dating Ken.  No wonder Rylan’s so cranky all the time now.”

Will half-laughed.  “How can you tell from what’s normal for him?”

Leo laughed.  “He actually carries through with his threats when he’s cranky.”

“It must be awesome to work for someone that nutsoid.”

“It is.  Best boss I ever had.”

“Best pimp you mean.”

“No…I worked for drug dealers and weapons smugglers.  But never a pimp.”

Will blinked at him.  “What.  Seriously?”

“Yup.  I met Rylan because one of the arms dealers was a client of Rylan’s.  Until he got busted.  When he was out of a job, I came to Rylan and asked if I could have one with Blue Boy.  Then he explained to me what Blue Boy really was.  And I still said, ‘Okay.’”

“Why?”

“Good money for very little work.  I’m salaried, you know.  So, even if I never sleep with a client all year, I still get 80 large.  Not bad for a bartending gig.”

Will was in shock.  He thought Rylan was just a middle-man.  A high class pimp.  Where did that money come from?  So, he asked.

“How on earth can he afford to pay you a salary if you don’t earn money?”

“Oh, you see, most of the revenue for Blue Boy doesn’t come from the sex part.  If a client and an escort decide to spend an evening together, whatever tip or swag or extras he gets goes directly to him.  And it all gets recorded.  Not the dinners or jewelry or anything like that, but the cash does go on our tax returns.”

“As what?” Will laughed.

“Mm, income for companion services.  You see, paying someone to hang out with you because you’re lonely isn’t illegal.  It’s only illegal to exchange sex for money.  In fact, it’s not even illegal to exchange sex for clothing, jewelry, or non-material services like spa treatments.”

“It’s not?”

“Nope.  So, technically, what we do here isn’t illegal at all.  The cash tips do push the envelope a little, but it doesn’t have to be for the sex we had.  It could just be for spending the evening with them.”

“Unh-huh.  So, the escorts get kickbacks, I guess, and that’s in addition to the salary?”

“Yep.”

“But how does Rylan afford that?  If these guys aren’t paying him to have sex with his prostitutes?”

“Ah, well, Blue Boy is a gentlemen’s club.  And all these gentlemen are members.”

“Ohh.  They have to pay dues.”

“Yup.  Just like a Moose Lodge.  Or whatever those things are.”

“How much are the dues?”

“Well, it varies depending on the level of membership.  Silver, gold, platinum.”

“Unh-huh,” Will said, completely mystified by the operation Rylan was running here.

“But the lowest plan has a minimum of 10K a year.”

Will choked on his Coke.  “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.  If I service at least eight different clients within a year, then that’s my salary right there.  But, of course, I service more than eight different clients a year, so that’s pure profit for Rylan.”

“Holy crap.”

“Well, I guess that’s not true.  He does pay property taxes on the building.  And has to keep the bar and coffee stand stocked.  And he pays for new sheets and beds every now and then.  Obviously he keeps us well supplied with condoms and…other items.  And he reimburses us if—”

“Hang on, sheets and beds?  Does he pay for the hotel rooms?”

“No.  If a client takes us to a hotel that’s on him.  But you see up there…?”  He pointed to the balcony.  “There are some rooms up there for clients who don’t want to go off the property.”

Will felt his face stretch into grossed out shock.  There could be people having sex right above his head right now.

“What’s with the face?  You’re gay.  But you’re acting like the thought of two dudes getting it on near you is awful.”

“Well, I’m not…”  He decided not to bother with the “I’m not gay” speech.  “It’s not the two dudes part.  Exactly.  It’s the sex for hire part.  I find prostitution bizarre.”

“Ah.  And that’s why you needed to see me.  To make me a normal human being and not some strung out druggie who infected your boyfriend.”

“That’s…not what I meant either.  I don’t like touching strangers on the metro.  I just can’t imagine having sex with one of them.”

Leo laughed.  “Aw, come on, darling.  Do you really think any of _our_ clients take the metro anywhere?”  Leo’s smile had just a touch of sex in it and Will dropped his eyes to the bar.

“No, I guess not.”

“So, you wanna know how he is?”

He raised his head.  “How who is what?”

“If Ken’s good in bed.”

“Um, I already know that part.”

“Oh.  That’s interesting.  Because you’re three months out of jailbait-land and Rylan has definitely been cranky for at least four.  If not more.”

“Let’s not concern ourselves with details, okay?”

Leo bit his lower lip in a seductive smile as he leaned forward.  “Mm.  I never would have guessed Ken would go there.  Though he does have his kinky side.”

Will blushed.

“Which you apparently also already know about.”

Will blushed hotter.

“Does he top you?”

Will went rigid.  “Excuse me?” he said sharply.

“Relax, darling, you’re the one who started this conversation.”  Will started to protest, but Leo continued.  “I’m only asking because usually that wasn’t his preferred position.”

Will was quiet for a minute.  He wasn’t exactly surprised.  He’d assumed that much about Ken’s relationship with Rylan, though that was one thing he’d never asked about: what he did with Rylan or Devon or his escorts.

“Did he usually choose tops?” Will asked.

Leo shrugged.  “I’m not sure who else he saw here, really.  I know he saw EJ once.  And he flip-flops, so it could have gone either way.  I think he saw Ian once.  And Ian is mostly a top.  But the last time he had an appointment it was with Tyler, who is more often than not a bottom.  I guess it depends on his mood.”

“Oh.”

“What’s the matter, darling?  Why the long face?”

“Will.”

“What?”

“My name is Will, not darling.”

“So, why’re you being a Gloomy Gus, Will?  Are you worried he’ll cheat on you when the bug hits him for a top?”

“No.  I’m not worried about infidelity at all.”

“Well, lucky you,” Leo said dryly.

“I’m just worried he’s not…actually, it’s none of your business.”

“You’re just worried he’s not getting completely satisfied with the ways things are between you?”

Will swallowed and hated that the blush that had just gone away was creeping back.

“You see, it _was_ my business for a while there,” the escort stage whispered with an irritating grin.

Will remained quiet and ran his thumbs over the sweating glass in his hands.

“Is that all you wanted to know?”

“Ken said…he said that you two sometimes…had sex.  But that most of the time you just—”

“Hung out and talked?  That’s true.  He had a lot of guilt over the chick he’d dumped.”

“Madeline.”

“Madeline!” Leo said, snapping his fingers.  “I was trying to think of her name.  I thought it was Margaret or something.  But it was Madeline.  That’s right.”

“What did he say about her?”

“That she made him wish he was straight because she was perfect.”  Will felt a weird thud against his chest.  “But because she was perfect, it made it all the more painfully obvious that he was gay.”

“But he said that.  That he wished he was straight.”

“Yeah.  But don’t feel bad about that.  A lot of gay guys do.  It would just make life easier.”

“To not be yourself?”

“No, they don’t wish they could convincingly pretend forever that they’re straight.  They wish who they are, ‘being themselves,’ is being straight.  There are a lot of proud gay men out there who shrivel up at the thought of being straight, but some wouldn’t mind it.”

“And Ken would rather be that way.  If he had a choice…he’d choose Madeline.”

Leo’s expression softened.  “You mean over you?  Well, I don’t know anything about your relationship with him, so I can’t answer that.  But you probably know the answer.”

Will clenched his jaw.  Leo watched him for a moment, and then spoke.

“What do you think?  If he really had a choice, would he choose Madeline or you?”

Will felt his chest tighten and tears filled his eyes.  “He loves me.  I know he does.  But I think he might choose her over me.  No, he wouldn’t choose _her_ over me, but he would choose being straight over being with me.  He hates being gay.  I mean he _hates_ it.”

Leo reached out and covered his hand.  “I know.”

“Which is so strange.”  Will wiped his eyes and laughed bitterly.  “I’m straight.  You know?”

Leo raised his eyebrows.  “You are?”

“Yeah.  I like girls.  Always have.  Still do.  But I would give it up in a heartbeat for him.  I wouldn’t mind being born gay.  I don’t care.  Whatever it takes to be with him.”

Leo gave his hand a squeeze.  “Hey, if you love him that much, maybe he loves you that much.  That’s the way he was when I knew him, but I haven’t seen him in three years.  Maybe he would choose you.”

“If that’s true, he would come out, right?  To acknowledge us?”

Leo made a doubtful face.  “Well, I don’t know about that.  You do know about his daddy issues, right?”

“Yeah.”

“This is dangerous territory, darling.  Making him choose between you or his secret.  If you do make him choose, you better be damn sure you mean the world to him.  Because you’ll be asking him to end his for you.”

Will took in a shuddering breath and turned his head away.  He didn’t want anyone to see him like this.  Especially not some escort.  This was pathetic.  Why did he care if Ken would choose to be straight?  He couldn’t.  So, it was a moot point.  What he could choose between, however, was staying closeted or acknowledging his relationship with Will.  And Leo was right.  Ken would, in his mind, be destroying the world he’d so carefully constructed for himself.  And no matter how much he loved Will, it might not be enough to push through that fear.  And the worst part of it was, Will knew he was going to ask him to do it one day.  Possibly soon.  And he was afraid of the answer.

Will wiped his eyes again and sniffed.  He smiled embarrassedly at Leo.

“Sorry,” he said softly.

“For what?”

“Dumping my shit on you.”

“Darling,” Leo drawled, “I’m a bartender.  It’s what I’m here for.”

“That and really good sex.”

Will and Leo turned to see a man hauling himself onto the barstool next to Will.  His thigh brushed Will’s, not because he was being intentionally invasive, but because he was so large that he simply spilled over into Will’s space.

“Hi, Mr. Lowenstein,” Leo greeted him.  “What can I get for you?”

“A condom, some lube, and a table for you to bend over,” the man chuckled.

“Oh. My.  God.”  Will punctuated his words carefully.  “And with that, I am so gone.”

The man reached out and put a hand on Will’s thigh before he could move off the stool.  “There’s no reason for you to leave.”

“Ah,” Leo leaned forward with lightening speed and removed Mr. Lowenstein’s hand from Will’s body.  Just in time before he lost it.  “This is a client, not an employee.  So, hands off.”

“Aw,” the man pouted and his eyes raked over Will, not even attempting to disguise what was going on in his mind.

“And, I can only get you a drink right now.  I’m booked until about 9:00.”

“That damn John Medina, huh?”

Leo shrugged.  “Most Mondays, yes.”

Mr. Lowenstein turned to Will.  “Well, looks like our favorite is taken.  I don’t see why we can’t entertain each other though.”

“Mr. Lowenstein.  You know Mr. Treviño’s rules as well as we do.  Clients aren’t allowed to fraternize with each other in here.  You can only be entertained by employees.”

“Well, do you really expect me to believe that this is a client?  He looks like an employee.  He looks like an employee that everyone else is going to be fighting over soon.  How new are you?  Would I be your first?”

Will just made a face, and then turned to Leo.

“Thanks for talking with me.”

“Sure.  Take care of Ken, okay?”

“Yeah.  As much as he’ll let me.”

“Ha.  I understand that.”

Will started to slide off the stool and Mr. Lowenstein grabbed his arm.

“You know, I’m sick of you whores always acting so high and mighty.  You may have a pretty marble castle and a big, mean boss to protect you, but you’re nothing but whores!  Filthy prostitutes who suck and fuck for money.  You’ve got nothing to back up that false pride.”

Leo reached out and put his hand on Mr. Lowenstein’s wrist, but he didn’t let go of Will.

“Would you like me to call down Mr. Treviño so that you can continue this conversation with him?”

“Rylan hasn’t been here for weeks,” Mr. Lowenstein sneered.  “Your Big Brother can’t help you.”

“We don’t need Rylan to help us,” Leo said calmly.  “Because he’s the one who made our pride real and not false.  And we can stand up for ourselves.  And after I tell Rylan about this incident, your membership will be revoked.”

“Rylan wouldn’t dare lose a client.  Don’t delude yourself into thinking that he cares more about you glory holes than his money.”

“Mr. Lowenstein, you really don’t know Rylan at all, do you?”

“He wouldn’t get rid of me!  I work for the governor!  That’s right.  Not just some dinky mayor, but the governor.  One word from me and this place gets shut down and your precious defender gets tossed in jail.”

“You’d take yourself down with us.”

“One anonymous tip to a particularly homophobic police chief and you all will be servicing your cell mates for free.”

Leo smiled at Mr. Lowenstein.  “Chief Kline?  Have you ever asked yourself _why_ he’s so homophobic?”

Mr. Lowenstein looked completely surprised.  “He’s not…”

Leo shrugged.  “Never said he was.  Now, Mr. Lowenstein,” Leo’s smile turned sexy, inviting.  “Why are you in such a bad mood tonight?  Do you need someone to punish you?”

Will disguised his relieved exhalation of air when Mr. Lowenstein’s grip on his arm loosened as the man turned to Leo.

“I had a bad day at work.  There’s this young upstart snot who upstaged me in front of my boss.”

“Ah.”  Leo bit his lip and let eyes roam over Mr. Lowenstein’s disgusting blob of a body like it was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life.  Mr. Lowenstein seemed to be buying the act.  “So, you don’t want to be punished…you need someone to spank for being such a bad boy.”

“That…would be excellent.”

“What color is his hair?” Leo asked.

Mr. Lowenstein was so drunk with lust he wasn’t even following the conversation anymore.  “Who?”

“This young upstart snot.”

“Black.  He’s a slanty-eyed Chink.”

“Mm.  One second.”  Leo turned around and scanned a sheet of paper that was on a clipboard hanging on the back wall.  Then he picked up a hard-line phone and made a quick call.  “Hi, Howie.  You free?  Good.  Come on down.  Mr. Lowenstein needs some stress relief therapy.”  Leo hung up and turned back to the bar.

“Howie’s on his way down.  Do you know him?”

“I think I’ve seen him before, but I’ve never done him.”

“Well, you’re still not going to do him.  Because tonight you’re going to be showing…?”

“Evan.”

“Evan…who exactly is in charge in your company.”

“That sounds…perfect.”

“He’ll be waiting for you by the elevators.”

The man chuckled again and the sound made Will’s stomach turn.  He heaved himself off the stool and waddled away.  Will’s nails were digging into the bar.  Leo looked at him, and unless Will was mistaken, there was a little shame and embarrassment on his face.

“It’s not always like this.”

“How could you do that?!”

Leo started at his outburst.  “Well, we really don’t want to lose the client—”

“No!  Sell out Howie or Evan or whoever!  That man is going to hurt him!”

“Oh, no.  I don’t think so.  He’s not going to hit him or beat him.  He just likes a little light bondage and spanking.  Howie will be fine.”

“He looked furious!”

“Yeah, he gets like that sometimes.  But he’s been a client for years and no one has ever complained that he’s been abusive.”

“But would you?  If he did hurt someone, would that person come forward?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Really?  Because from where I’m sitting, I don’t think he would.”

Leo swallowed, but didn’t reply.

“I swear to God, Leo, if you or any of the other self-hating nut jobs in here ever let something like this happen to Julian, I have enough influence with Ken and consequently Rylan to make all of you regret it!”

Will could feel his eyes flashing and his body was shaking violently.  He was more afraid than angry though.  What had Julian gotten himself into?  Leo looked just as shaken.

“You…you know Julian?”

“He’s my best friend!  And I will defend him to the point of death!”

Will slid off the stool and started to leave, but Leo practically jumped across the bar and grabbed his wrist.

“Will.”  Leo’s voice cracked.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “It’s not like that in here.  I swear.  I promise you.  You know Rylan wouldn’t stand for it.  There are just a couple of problem clients, but it’s under control.  And Julian doesn’t…He isn’t touched by any of them.  We wouldn’t stand for it.  _I_ wouldn’t stand for it.  I would never let anyone or anything hurt him.  I haven’t known him long, but he’s…he’s special.  You must know that.  I’ve felt it.  I would protect him like a brother.”

Will looked into Leo’s eyes which had gotten considerably darker in his distress.  He looked in earnest and Will believed him.  But that didn’t really make this a good place for Julian to spend his time.  Will relaxed a little, and Leo let his feet go back on the floor, but he still kept a hold of Will’s wrist.

“Who’s the new meat?” a delighted voice asked.

Will started as a hand slapped his ass and then gave it a hard squeeze.  He narrowed his eyes at Leo.  He smiled and laughed uneasily.

“Oh, come on,” the escort said.  “You’ve got to expect a little bit of that.”

Will’s mouth turned down in a little frown.  Then he reached back and grabbed the hand of the client.  He yanked the man forward, pulling his arm behind his back, and slammed him down onto the bar.  The man let out a squawk of surprise and then a grunt of pain.

“What the hell?” he groaned.

Will let go of him, gave Leo the stink eye, and then turned around.  He started to walk across the room.  He reflected that he’d been in Blue Boy for all of twenty minutes, and three clients had shown real interest in him; he would make a fortune as an escort here.  But he probably didn’t have the temperament for it.

 

Julian

 

Julian sat in the front seat of Ms. Newberry’s car.  Not only because he was so big, but because it was safer for Laney in the back.  Still, even with the seat pushed all the way back, he was scrunched up in the tiny Honda Civic.  It wasn’t an old, dumpy car by any means.  It was brand new and suped up.  Julian just guessed that when Ms. Newberry and her daughter (both of whom were not even five and a half feet tall) were considering new cars they hadn’t thought about the needs of men over six feet.

“Julian,” Laney’s mother was saying, again, “I really appreciate you doing this for Laney.  It’s rare to find such a compassionate and responsible boy.  I mean, most boys your age won’t even stand up when it is their own baby.  So, I think it would be really…unique for someone who is not the father to do it.”  She glanced over at Julian and he raised an eyebrow at her look.

“For the last time, Mom,” Laney groaned from the back seat.  “Julian is _not_ the father!”

Julian went rigid and felt a stiff, awkward smile on his face as he focused intently out the front window.  Had Ms. Newberry thought he was the father all along?

“Okay, okay,” the woman said.  “I believe you.  I just wish you would tell me who it is.”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t know who it is.  If you did know you’d wish that you didn’t.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better, Melanie!”

“God!  I know!  But it doesn’t matter anyway.  Mr. Dunne is going to be her father.  And Mrs. Dunne will be her mother.  So it doesn’t matter which two idiots made her.”

Julian glanced at Laney in the backseat via the rearview mirror.  She didn’t look upset when she said that.  She was just stating the facts.  The silence in the car was a little uncomfortable though.

“So,” Julian said, “Donne, like the poet?”

“Who?” Laney asked.

“John Donne?  You know, ‘No man is an island.’  ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’  _The Flea_?”

“The Flea?”

“He wrote a poem about a flea.”

“Ew.  Gross.  Why?”

“It was actually about sex.”

“Even grosser.”

“Um, Julian,” Ms. Newberry interjected, “the couple’s last name is spelled with a u, not an o.  So, no, not like John Donne.”

“Oh.”

“And the line is actually, ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls.’”  She smiled.  “I wrote my thesis on him.”

“Oh, yeah?  You majored in English?”

“Yes.  And got a Master’s in English Lit too.”

“That’s impressive.”

“Okay, can you two stop flirting?” came a voice from the backseat.  “You’re making the baby queasy.”

“Melanie!  Honestly.  You need to start thinking before you open your mouth.  Be careful what you say around these people!”

“Why?  Shouldn’t they be the ones careful around me?  I mean, there are literally like 50 couples that want this baby.  One word from me and the Dunnes don’t get her.”

“Don’t be arrogant, Melanie!  You should be grateful someone is willing to clean up your mess!”

Julian pressed himself into the door.  Oh, he should have known better than to do this.  Laney didn’t reply to her mother’s comment and they rode the rest of the way to the lawyer’s building in silence.  This was awful.  He’d much rather be fighting off clients at Blue Boy.  That was probably safer and less psychologically damaging.

They parked in a public garage a few blocks away from the building, and then walked slowly to it so that Laney could keep up.  She’d gotten a lot slower in the last two weeks and her stomach had really gotten big.  Julian couldn’t believe she still had three more weeks to go.  She looked about ready to pop.

The lawyer’s owned their own large, fancy building just north of “downtown.”  So, they were a pretty prestigious and expensive firm.  Maybe that meant the parents were very wealthy.  Either that or one of them was a paralegal or file clerk here.  The receptionist at the front desk told them their meeting was on the sixteenth floor, and that someone would be waiting for them up there.  The three of them got onto the elevator, and Julian realized no one had a said word since Laney’s mother’s last comment in the car.  This wouldn’t be good energy to take into a meeting.  The elevator started to rise.

“Oh, um,” Laney began, “I should let you guys know.  I told the Dunnes, and their lawyer, that I was bringing the father to the meeting.”

“Well, what are you going to say when he’s not here?” Ms. Newberry asked crossly.

Laney half shrugged and said, “They won’t know that.”

Ms. Newberry and Julian took a full two seconds to process that.

“Laney!” they both hissed her name.

“You said it was me?!” Julian whisper-shouted at her.

“I didn’t say it was you.  I just said I was bringing him.”

“Oh, Melanie,” Ms. Newberry moaned, “how could you do this to Julian?”

“I didn’t want them to think I’m a skank!  I wanted them to see that we’re a nice teenage couple who after being irresponsible are being responsible by giving her up for adoption.”

“And you thought Julian would be the best way to present the father as a nice, normal boy?”

“Hey,” Julian said, slightly offended, but also understanding what she meant.

“Oh, Julian, don’t take it personally.  You know I love you, but for goodness sake.  What is with that hair?”

“I like it,” Laney grinned.  “It’s sexy.”

Before either could respond to that the elevator binged and the doors opened.  A skinny, college-aged kid in a suit that was a little too big for him was standing directly in front of them.

“Hello.  You must be Melanie Newberry.”

They stepped off and Laney shook his hand.  “I am.”

“And this is your mother, Denise Newberry.  And the father, Julian March, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.  Come this way.  The meeting is in a conference room at the end of the hall.”

The guy turned on his heel and began to stride off down the corridor.  The trio followed.  Julian leaned down to whisper to Laney.

“You gave them my real name?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want it on the birth certificate.”

“Don’t worry.  It won’t be.  I don’t think even my name will be on it.  I think she goes directly to them.”

Julian felt his brows furrow.  That didn’t seem right.

The conference room was small and intimate, with a small table and six comfortable-looking chairs around it and a seventh not so comfortable looking chair squeezed in on one side.  There were a couple of potted plants in the room and the windows were large and let in a lot of sunlight.  There was a man and a woman in suits that fit them much better than the college-kid gopher’s did.  They were well groomed and quite frankly looked like lawyers.  On the other side of the table were a man and woman who leapt to their feet the moment the group arrived.  The couple was white, and the woman was a little pudgy, but pretty.  She wore a floral dress and kept her brown hair short.  The man was dressed in a blue polo shirt and khakis.  He had brown hair and a handsome face.  He looked athletic, especially compared to his wife.  They stepped forward gingerly, but anxiously.  Like they were approaching a wild animal and trying not to scare it off.

“Hello,” Mrs. Dunne said, her voice clearly shaking.  “You’re Melanie.”

Laney nodded.

The woman looked over at Julian.  And then looked up.  “And you must be Julian.”

Julian cleared his throat.  “Yes.”

The man laughed, but it sounded a little strangled.  “Well, maybe he’ll play basketball.”

The Dunnes laughed together, and then Laney suddenly said, “It’s a girl.”

They stopped laughing immediately and stared at Laney.

“A—a girl?” Mrs. Dunne asked.  “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.  Oh, this is great!  We just figured we would be surprised when the baby was born.  But.  A girl!”  Mrs. Dunne covered her mouth with her hands as she tried not to cry out with joy.  Now Julian noticed the grey hairs at the couple’s temples.  They’d been waiting for a baby for a while now.

“Well, um,” the female lawyer stepped forward, “why don’t we all have a seat and then we can take a moment to get to know each other.  And then we can discuss the terms of the adoption.”

Julian and Ms. Newberry helped Laney into a chair, and Mrs. Dunne quickly took the seat next to her.  Julian started to walk around the table to take a seat next to the male lawyer in the uncomfortable chair, but Ms. Newberry put a hand to his arm and nodded to the seat next to Laney.  Ms. Newberry actually placed herself between the two lawyers.  The woman may have a Masters in English literature, but she made her living by being a contract specialist.  No way was Laney going to get screwed on this deal.  Which was somewhat of a relief.  Julian sat down next to Laney and reached out and took her hand.  It was cold and clammy.  He gave it a squeeze.

“My name is Rosalie Hurd and my colleague is Daniel Dellinger.  We’ll be the ones handling the legal side of the adoption and try to help make the process smooth and understandable.  Melanie, don’t hesitate to ask any questions about anything you don’t understand.  The same to you, Mr. and Mrs. Dunne.  It’s important in these matters that everyone understands and is comfortable with the proceedings.”

Everyone in the room nodded.

“Now, Melanie, you had a chance to read through the Dunne’s file, so you know what they do for a living, their religious preferences, and things of that nature.  Do you have any other questions for them?”

Julian could see a little deer in the headlights blankness on her face.  She shook her head stiffly.

“Well, then, Mr. and Mrs. Dunne, do you—”

“How long have you been trying to have a baby?” Julian asked.

The lawyers and Mr. Dunne didn’t look like they thought the question was terribly appropriate, but Mrs. Dunne smiled.

“Almost twelve years now.  Jim and I got married when I was 27 and he was 29.  So, we wanted to start trying right away.  After two years of trying and talking with a fertility specialist, we tried in vitro fertilization.  And then we tried harvesting my eggs to use in a surrogate.  But, as it turned out, my eggs weren’t viable for much of anything.  So, we discussed using a donor egg and Jim’s sperm.  But, and this may just be craziness on my part, I couldn’t really stand the thought of having a baby that was his and not mine.  I know that’s strange—”

“It’s not,” Julian said.  “I understand.”

Mrs. Dunne smiled again.  “So.  We decided to adopt.  And we’ve been on the wait list for four years.  And every year that passes it gets harder to adopt.  Most mothers want to give their babies to younger couples.”

“That’s why I picked you,” Laney said.  “Because you were a little older and had been married for a while.  You won’t get divorced.  Probably.”

Julian saw Ms. Newberry’s lips go white with tension.  The woman still felt guilty for putting Laney through such an ordeal at 14 years old.

Mrs. Dunne reached out and took Laney’s hand.  “Jim and I have been through the wringer more than once in our lives.  We’ve had hard times and fears and sometimes even fights.  But we’ve never had doubts or regrets.  He has been my pillar of strength in all this.  And I would happily spend the rest of my life with just him.  But, if we could have a child to raise and love…it would make our lives just a little more perfect.”

Julian studied her face.  She was completely genuine.  Nothing but good vibes came from her.  Maybe she’d be interested in adopting a recently orphaned adult.

“Well, if that’s all the questions you have for each other,” began the lady lawyer, “we can move on to—”

“Actually,” said Mr. Dunne, “I have a question.”  He chewed on his lower lip briefly and then said, “How exactly did you two…get together?  If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh,” Laney began, pink coloring her cheeks.  Julian gave her hand a squeeze.

“Laney was the friend of a friend.  And then she just became a friend because we all hang out together.  Then Laney confessed her feelings for me at a school dance.”  Julian smiled.  After all, that was all true.  “She’s hard to say no to.”  Also true.  Though he had managed to do it.  He gave no further explanation.  They could infer whatever they wanted from there.

“So,” Mr. Dunne said, still seeming befuddled, “you were…at a school dance?”

“Well, yeah.  We all went.  The friends I spoke of before.”

“You were…invited?”

“Well, yeah,” Julian said, now feeling as confused as Mr. Dunne looked.

“I think,” Laney’s mother interjected, “that he’s wondering why you were invited because he doesn’t realize you’re still in high school.”

The Dunnes and the lawyers looked surprised.

“Oh,” Julian said finally comprehending why Mr. Dunne was so leery of him.  He thought he was some perverted child molester.  “Yeah, we all go to the same high school.  I’m a senior.  Laney’s a junior.  And, I never got held back.  I’m eighteen,” he volunteered so that there would be no further misunderstandings.

“Really,” Mrs. Dunne said with interest.  Julian could see she was looking him over again.  She met his eyes and gave him a small smile.  Julian smiled back.

Holy crap.  Was he flirting with her?  Maybe he did have a thing for older women.

“Okay, then,” said the male lawyer.  Julian wondered why he couldn’t remember their names.  “We do encourage everyone to get to know each other as much as possible, but I also think it’s important that we make a decision on the type of adoption we will be proceeding with.”

“What do you mean type?” Laney asked.

“Open versus closed.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, a closed adoption is the traditional way.  The Dunnes are issued a birth certificate with their names listed as the parents, and the records regarding the names of the birth parents are sealed until the child’s eighteenth birthday.  And there is no contact after the baby has transferred homes.”  Laney nodded solemnly.  “An open adoption would require the Dunnes to send you annual updates and be open to the idea of visitation when the child is older.”

“Oh!  That sounds really nice.”

The lawyers didn’t respond right away and the Dunnes glanced at each other but didn’t say anything.  Laney could sense that something wasn’t being said.  She tightened her thumb on Julian’s hand.

“The Dunnes would prefer a closed adoption,” Lady Lawyer said.

“Oh.”

“But it’s not a requirement,” Mrs. Dunne said quickly.  “If that’s what you want, we will of course have no problem with that.”

Julian could tell she was desperate not to lose this baby.  She and her husband had probably gotten close and lost before.

Laney smiled sadly and eased her grip on Julian’s hand.  “No, it’s okay.  I understand why you would want that.  Besides, that’s the way I figured it would be anyway.”

“But you have to do what is right for you, Laney,” her mother said.

“No.  I have to do what’s right for her.  And I think that annual contact with a birth mother would be harder to deal with.  Like, she would think, ‘My mother wants to know what’s going on but couldn’t be bothered to keep me?’”  Laney shook her heard.  “I think closed is best.”

“Okay, then I have some documents I’d like to go over with you and the Dunnes, but these won’t be signed until after the birth.”

The Dunnes and Ms. Newberry began to discuss a thick contract the lawyers produced from somewhere, and Julian tuned them out.  He wasn’t sure if Laney was really listening to them or not, but her hand kept getting colder and colder.  It must finally be sinking in with her what she was going to do and what she was giving up.

At last the lawyers slid something in front of Laney to sign.

“Again,” said Man Lawyer, “this is not the adoption contract.  This is just an agreement that you won’t consider any other adoptive parents than the Dunnes, otherwise you will have to reimburse them for the medical expenses.  They will be paying for everything from here on out.”

“But my insurance covers almost all of it,” said Ms. Newberry.

“We know that,” said Mr. Dunne.  “And if you would like to continue using your insurance so that you can see your own doctor, we understand.  But we’ll take care of the co-pays now and the fees for any procedures not covered by your insurance.  For instance, we would like to have an amniocentesis done and have a full genetic panel run.”

“Why?” Laney asked.  “If something bad comes up will you not want her anymore?”

“No, of course not,” Mrs. Dunne said, reaching out to pat Laney’s free hand.  “We just want to be completely prepared for her.  Also, we want to freeze some of her cord blood.”

Laney raised an eyebrow.  “Okay.”

“Laney?”

Laney looked at the lawyer.  He was holding a pen out to her.  She took it from him, but hesitated as she put the tip to the paper.

“It’s okay, Laney,” Lady Lawyer said comfortingly.  “This is not binding.  This is not a forfeiture of your parental rights.  That cannot occur until after she’s born.  And in fact, even after you give her to the Dunnes and sign the papers, you still have 45 days to change your mind.”

“Really?”

Lady lawyer nodded.  Laney nodded back and signed the paper.  Then she looked at the Dunnes.

“Don’t worry.  I know giving her to you is the right thing to do.”

The Dunnes smiled gratefully.

There was a little more chatter among the adults, during which time Julian wondered that if he were the father if he also had 45 days to decide if he wanted the baby even if Laney surrendered her guardianship.  No one had even asked him what he wanted.  He was insulted for all potential ignored fathers out there.  Not that the father of Laney’s baby deserved any real consideration.  He may be a grown man and could possibly support the child, but he’d slept with a high school girl.  He was gross.  Then again, didn’t he ask Camilla to do almost the same thing every time he saw her?  Maybe she really did feel like it would be a pervy thing do.  And it was pervy.  And that didn’t seem to bother Ken a whit.  Julian tried to prevent the small frown that formed on his lips whenever he thought of that man.  It just wasn’t fair.

After twenty minutes more of hand shaking and confirmations for Laney’s next ultrasound, it looked like they might finally be able to escape.  Then Mrs. Dunne stopped Laney and looked very anxious.

“Um, Laney, dear, would you…would you mind…can I?”  She put a hand out tentatively.

“Oh, sure.”

Laney took her by the wrist and put her hand on her belly.  Mrs. Dunne held it there for a moment, and then knelt down to put both hands on her belly.  Her smile slowly faded.

“I don’t feel her.”

“Hang on,” Laney said.  She stepped back to given her belly a good rub and jiggle.

“Laney!” her mother admonished softly.

Laney stepped forward and Mrs. Dunne put her hands back on her belly.  The lawyers and Mr. Dunne were smiling at the somewhat rough handling of the little bundle in question.  Mrs. Dunne smiled probably so she wouldn’t cry.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Hang on a sec,” Laney said, holding Mrs. Dunne’s hands in place.  “Julian, talk to me.”

“What?” he laughed.  “Why?”

“Because she always responds when my heart speeds up.  So, say something that will make me blush.”

Everyone laughed except Ms. Newberry who covered her hands with her eyes.  Julian put a hand to his waist and thought for a moment.

“Come on, can’t you think of something?”

“Well, of course, but nothing appropriate for mixed company.  Oh, wait.  I know.  You remember for my last birthday I got a tattoo?”

“Yeah, the blue star on your back.”

“Well, I actually got two.”

“Oh yeah?  Where’s the other?”

Julian gave her a small, wicked smile and then tapped the spot with his finger.  Laney’s eyes went down.  And her face flushed red.

“Oh!”  Mrs. Dunne cried.  “There she goes!  Oh, hi baby!”

Everyone in the room laughed again, both Laney and Ms. Newberry still blushing.

“So hey,” the gopher finally spoke up making everyone remember he was still there.  “If you’ve had sex before, how did you not know that was there?”

Most everyone turned distasteful eyes on him.

“Because I got it after the dance.  We haven’t done anything since then.”  Or before then.

“Well, that hardly matters,” said Mrs. Dunne, standing up.  “Thank you, Laney.”

“Sure.  You should feel her.  She’s yours.”

Mrs. Dunne smiled brightly, tears glistening in her eyes.  Her husband wrapped an arm around her and shook both Laney and Julian’s hands.  Again.

Julian, Laney, and Ms. Newberry left the conference room first.  They didn’t say anything until they got onto the elevator.  Ms. Newberry smiled at her daughter.

“You okay, honey?”

Laney nodded.  Then she looked at Julian.

“Thank you, Julian.”

He shrugged with feigned arrogance.  “No problem.”

Laney smiled.  “So, did you like them?”

“Did you?”

Laney nodded.  “Yeah, I did.”

“So, did I.”

“It’s too bad.”

“Why?” Ms. Newberry asked.

“I guess a part of me was hoping that they would be horrible and I would have no choice but to keep her for myself.  But, now I know, she’ll be happier and better off with them.  It makes it easier to give her to them.  And just a little bit harder.”

Julian put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly.  The crown of her head was about two inches below his shoulder.  He bent down and kissed her hair.

“You’re braver than I would be.”

“Thanks.  But no I’m not.”  Laney suddenly turned her head up to look at him.  “Did their nails look funny to you?”


	33. Chapter 33

Thursday, June 8, 2006

 

Liz

 

Liz stepped off the metro with two other girls.  She walked slowly, pretending to listen to their gossip, but her eyes were on Will and Julian.  Usually, the main metro hub was where they parted ways.  Julian would take a blue line train to go to whatever mysterious after school job he had and Will would take the stairs up to the street level.  Where he went was no longer a mystery.  She’d followed him on three separate occasions.  He went to a building of condos in the heart of downtown, meaning whoever lived there was filthy rich.  And why would a filthy rich person need a high schooler to watch their cat?  They wouldn’t.  They would hire one of those ridiculously expensive pet daycare services who gave dogs massages and cats spa manicures.  Whoever Will was seeing in that building had to be the woman he was dating.  She’d watched him go in once, but he’d taken so long to come back out there was no way he was only there to feed a cat.  She’d had to leave before he came back out.  The second and third times she’d followed him, she’d gone up to the glass lobby doors and watched him enter the elevator.  She hadn’t been able to see what floor the elevator stopped on the second time, but the third time, she’d slipped in with a resident and watched the numbers.  He’d been the only one on the elevator, and it had stopped on the 17th floor.  Since then she’d been waiting for her chance, and here it was.  Neither Julian nor Will took their usual paths.  They stayed together and walked over to the short stairway that led to the green lines.  They were going home.  If it were anybody else she would have thought it was about time the two of them finally spent some time at home, but of course, neither of them had anyone waiting for them.

“Hey, Monique,” Liz started.  Then she faced her friends and saw that she had not been walking with Monique.  “Oh, um, Jackie.  Sorry.  I was just gonna say—”

“Where have you been, Liz?  You’ve been ignoring us since the bell rang.”

“I wasn’t ignoring you; I was just trying to remember something.  I knew my mom asked me to do something after school, but I couldn’t remember what.  I just suddenly remembered.  So, I’ve got to run an errand.  I’ll see you guys later, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Jackie mumbled and turned away.

Leah rolled her eyes at Jackie’s back and then smiled at Liz.  Liz smiled back and waved goodbye to her as she ran to catch up with their slightly bipolar friend.  Liz went up the stairs to the street.  The sounds of the city greeted her before she even saw daylight.  The light revealed a tangle of traffic at a bad intersection as pedestrians crossed the street against the lights.  She turned west.  She started walking, telling herself that she could always walk by when she got there.  She didn’t have to actually do anything crazy and stalker-esque.

It was less than a five minute walk to the building.  She stood slightly away from the steps up and looked through the doors.  One guard was watching TV and the other was talking to the mail carrier as she worked on putting the tenants’ mail into the large brass boxes in the wall.  She stepped closer to get out of someone’s way as they walked briskly to some very important destination or other.  The momentum kept her going and she found herself on the stoop.  Neither of the guards was looking; all she had to do was walk in and get on the elevators.  If only the stupid doors weren’t locked.  Maybe that was a sign.  That she should just walk away.  She probably didn’t want to see the woman Will was dating.  She was probably beautiful and sophisticated and all kinds of perfect things that she as a measly little high schooler with attention span issues wasn’t.

She turned to leave, but only got partially turned as she looked at the key pad on the door.  She’d never seen a building that used a lock like that before.  She looked closer to see if it required a thumb print or something.  Surely it wasn’t that advanced.

“Oh, I’ve got it,” a voice behind her spoke.

Liz started and took a step back.  Her heel missed the end of the step and she started to fall back.  Her high pitched squeal was cut off as she didn’t actually fall, but was stopped by a powerful arm.  She looked up into the face of her rescuer.  He was young and cute.  Of course.  She always made a fool of herself in front of attractive guys.  But his deep blue eyes were sparkling with amusement as he helped her get her footing back.  He laughed once she was steadied.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Liz said, dropping her eyes and feeling her face go red.

“Well, since I helped you, would you be so kind as to return the favor?”

Liz went rigid as her head snapped up to look at him again.  He was tall.  “S-sure.  I-I mean, yes,” she stammered, feeling even more like an idiot.

“Will you hold this for me?”

Liz looked down to see the black leather briefcase in his right hand.  She took it by the handle and felt a shiver of excitement race up her arm from the slight contact their fingers made during the exchange.  Then he turned to punch in a code on the key pad.  She noticed his left hand was holding a carry on size suitcase.  Liz heard the electronic lock buzz and the bolt slid back.  The man held open the door for her to enter first.  He smiled at her again and Liz would have blushed if her previous reaction had cooled at all.  Then she noticed he was waiting for her.  If she said she wasn’t going in, that would seem weird.  Of course if she bolted, it would still be weird, but she’d never see the man again, so who cared?  But she was still holding his bag, so she tried to swallow the cotton in her mouth and smiled awkwardly as she stepped inside.

The guard watching TV glanced in their direction, but said nothing.  The one chatting up the mail carrier didn’t even seem to notice the door had opened.  Liz really hoped the residents didn’t pay too much for their services.  Then again, the man had had a code for the building, and the guard probably knew him.  And since Liz came in with him, she could just be his guest.  So really, it was the resident who needed to be more careful.  Then again, she was cute and innocent looking.  Who would suspect she was totally and completely off her rocker?  What the hell was she doing?

Liz followed the man to the elevator, enjoying the way the cut of his suit framed his well-maintained body.  Maybe she should take a page out of Will’s book and find herself an older man.  She tried to see if the man had a wedding ring.

“Going up?” he asked as he stepped onto one of the three elevators.

“Oh, um—”

“Oh, well of course you are,” the man laughed.  “You can’t very well go down.”

Liz stepped on and saw that the man’s face looked kind of confused and slightly embarrassed.  “Well, actually, you can.  We have a four level garage under the building.  Um, are you going down?”

Liz shook her head.  Not quite trusting her voice yet.

“So, what floor?”

“Se—”  Liz cleared her throat and tried again.  “Seventeen.”

The man’s eyebrows raised a little, but he pushed the button for the seventeenth floor.  The doors closed and her stomach dropped as the elevator began to rise.  Not because of the movement, but because the man had not pushed any other buttons.  He was going to the seventeenth floor.  Crap.  He lived there.  So, obviously he knew she wasn’t a resident now.  Well, maybe.  Maybe he didn’t know all his neighbors.  She certainly didn’t know everyone who lived on her floor.

Then the elevator doors opened to a long corridor.  And even though it was long, Liz could tell there were no L-shapes or T-intersections.  There were only six apartments on the entire floor and they were all within sight of each other.  Double crap.

The man held the elevator doors open for her and she hoped her smile was genuine and not the grimace it felt like.  Please, let him live in one of the first two apartments.  She took a chance and walked by the first two doors.  But so did he.  She walked slowly and he beside her.  They didn’t speak.  But then glanced at each other and smiled tightly.  Liz felt her heart pounding.  What was wrong with her?  Why was she doing this?  Why was she obsessed with Will?  She didn’t even want him in that way anymore.  She could never trust him enough again to date him, so why did she care what he did?  She supposed it wasn’t about _him_.  It was about _her_.  The woman who had made him drop her like a warm turd.

Liz dragged her feet as they approached the second set of doors.  Maybe he would keep walking to the end of the hall.  How was she going to get out of this without seeming like a suspicious freak?  But the man slowed too.  Then he stopped and faced her.

“Well, thank you,” he said.

Liz blinked at him.  “What?”

He looked down at her hand.  She did too.  She was still holding his briefcase.

“Oh.  Oh!  Oh, no problem.”  She laughed softly and handed it to him.

He took it from her and smiled warmly again.  Liz looked him over.  He really was way hot.  Then he turned and kept walking.  Liz barely held back her sigh of relief.  She turned toward the door on her left and raised a hand like she was going to knock.  And sure enough, she saw the man turn and glance back at her out of the corner of her eye.  She knocked on the wall, softly, and hoped that whoever lived there wasn’t home or wouldn’t hear it.  But at least the man who had escorted her up would hear it and see the motion.  That would convince him she was there on purpose.  The man used his keys to open the last door on the left and went inside.  She waited until she heard the door close, and then she groaned at her own idiocy and turned around to lean against the door.  God.  She had done some bonehead things in her life, but this was ridiculous.  What was she really expecting would happen?  That there would be a sign over one of the doors that said, “Will’s girlfriend lives here?”  That the woman who was his girlfriend would just happen to be in the hall at the same time as she?  She didn’t have the slightest idea what she looked like anyway.  Hell.  That man could have been Will’s special someone for all she knew.  Well, except for the fact that she knew Will liked girls.

Liz laughed softly to herself.  “I’m losing it.  I’m more than halfway around the bend.”  She made up her mind to leave.  This was pointless and beyond stupid.  She dropped her head back on the door with a soft thud.  She was pretty certain that after this ordeal she was no longer all that interested in finding out whom Will was dating.  He’d probably tell them someday.  Maybe after he graduated high school and then it wouldn’t be quite so sketchy for him to be dating her.

She was about to push off the door and go home when suddenly it opened.  She fell back into the apartment with a little gasp of surprise.  The person who opened it was saying, “You know, if you want to come in you have to knock louder than—”

He cut off his admonishment as he saw a stranger tumble into his home.  Liz had balled up so she wouldn’t fall flat on her back, and succeeded in doing a half somersault that left her legs over her head.  She was also flashing her pink thong panties at the astonished man.  She bolted to a sitting position, yanking her skirt down around her legs and nailing it to the floor with her hands.  The man politely averted his gaze as quickly as possible, but Liz could tell it wasn’t so much out of chivalry as it was that he was trying not to snort with laughter.  He closed his eyes for a second to get himself under control and then he looked back at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” Liz mumbled, staring at his shoes.

“Here.”

She looked up and saw that he was offering her a hand.  She hesitated before prying her knuckles off the floor, but eventually took the man’s proffered hand.  She looked at him as he helped her to her feet.  His age was hard to guess.  He looked fairly young, but he also had a look of maturity and experience about him.  Either way, young or old, he was devastatingly handsome.  Though perhaps with a little too much product in his hair.  It was pretty apparent he was amused by her entrance to his apartment, but it was impossible to tell what he was really thinking: his eyes were much too dark and inscrutable.  He was wearing a dark colored name brand suit that fit his body even better than the man she’d rode up the elevator with.  Oscar de la Renta, unless her designer brand sense failed her.

“I’m so sorry for…opening the door,” he said, not sure how else to phrase it.  “I just thought I heard a…noise at the door.  I’m expecting a friend.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay.  I, um, was leaning against your door and must have thumped on it.  I think I’m lost.  I was looking for a friend’s apartment, but I think I got off on the wrong floor.  I might even be in the wrong building.  I just came in with someone else and didn’t really pay attention where I was going—”

Liz cut off.  She was babbling.  And probably sounded like she was crazy or lying.  Or possibly both.

“Well, who are you looking for?  Maybe I know her…or him?”

“Oh.  Um.  Joe.”

He looked at her.  “Joe.”

“Yeah.  Joe.”

“Just…Joe.”

Liz laughed uneasily.  “I actually don’t know him all that well.”

The man’s brow creased in slight concern.  “You’re not—”  Then he cut off and smiled.  Like he knew it was none of his business and should not ask even if his intentions were good and he only wanted to help.

“Well.  I don’t know anyone named Joe who lives on this floor.”

“Yeah.  I thought I was lost.  Sorry about that.  I should get out of your way.  Looks like you’ve got a hot date tonight.”

The man laughed.  “Hardly.  Business dinner.”

“Must be important though.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked with a friendly smile, curious at her reasoning.

“Well, you obviously came home from work to change before going to dinner.  I mean, you are rich enough to wear designer suits to work every day, but Oscar is when you want to look super snazzy.”

The man laughed again.  “You are a dangerous woman.”

Liz was both offended and highly pleased.  He considered her a woman.  “Why is that?”

“Only dangerous women know designer brands with just a glance.”

“You mean gold-diggers?” Liz sniffed, only partially feigning her indignation.

The man grinned and Liz felt her body react to him in all kinds of pleasant and yet certainly embarrassing ways if he should guess the reason for her small shiver.

“I happen to like gold-diggers.”

Liz narrowed an eye at him and raised an eyebrow.  He hadn’t denied her interpretation of his meaning and he certainly hadn’t said he didn’t think it of her.  She wasn’t a gold-digger.  Just because she’d only ever dated rich guys had nothing to do with a premeditated search for them.  Most of the boys at Calverton were rich.  It’s what kids who attended private schools in major cities were.  She was one of the few students there on scholarship.  And while everyone knew she was a scholarship recipient, she made it her life’s work to never let any of them, especially Will, know that it was an academic scholarship.  She didn’t need Will’s tutoring in the slightest.  But then again, she hadn’t sought him out as a tutor in order to get help with her science classes.

The man laughed at her expression.  “Ah, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want a man who could keep me dressed in Prada, D&G, and Valentino and take me all over the world.  But, I also don’t have to have that.”

“What would you want?”

Liz thought this was a bit personal of a conversation to be having with a stranger, but then again, he’d already seen her practically half naked.

“I want someone who finds me interesting.”  She was surprised to hear herself say that.  Maybe she meant it.

“Oh,” the man looked sympathetic.  “You mean, you want someone who will listen to you not just so he can give you the right answers that will get you to let him take your clothes off?”

“Exactly.”

“A noble ambition.  I wish you luck.”

“Yeah.  Do you care more about what a woman says than what’s under her clothes?”

The man’s smile was more than amused.  “I am definitely more interested in what a woman has to say than what’s under her clothes.”

“Well, good for you,” Liz grumbled.  “Sorry, for…falling into your apartment uninvited.”

“Not at all.  I enjoy the unexpected.  As long as it doesn’t involve my files.”

Liz chuckled.  “Okay.”

She stepped out into the hallway and the door across from the man’s was flung open.  A woman stood in the frame, looking somewhat distressed.  She was tall, slender, and well endowed.  Her face was beautiful and perfectly put together with light, airy make-up and tendrils of auburn hair framing her high cheekbones.  She was dressed in an expensive skirt suit and wearing diamond earrings and a necklace that probably cost more than her parents paid in rent for three months.  This had to be her.  It had to be.  She was gorgeous.  This was Will’s secret girlfriend.

“Ken!” the woman burst out.

Liz started, but then realized she wasn’t talking to her.  She looked over her shoulder and saw the man’s eyes go wide with a little panic.

“Y-yes?” he questioned carefully.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, stepping into the hallway and crossing the space, almost running over Liz as she did.  Did she not even realize there was a third party present?

“Ken.  I can’t take it anymore.  It’s been over five years.  You know I feel.  You have to.  Only a fool wouldn’t.  I know you work a lot and are married to your job, but that’s not good for you.  I can’t keep going on letting you think that it’s just a crush or infatuation or curiosity!”  The woman took in a deep breath.  “I love you, Ken West.  And I think we need to explore that.”

Liz put a finger to her lips to keep from grinning or giggling.  This was kind of pathetic.  And poor Will.  His woman was leading him on while she was in love with her neighbor.  Or maybe this wasn’t her.  Who would dare pass over Will for—Liz looked at the man again.  The abject terror on his face notwithstanding, he was damn fine.  She could understand picking the rich cute guy over an apathetic high school brat.

“Now, I know this is an abrupt way to bring this up, but I know subtlety doesn’t work on you.  You need someone to put it right out in front of you.  I know this about you.”

“Y-you do?” the man squeaked.

“Yes.  I got some advice and I know it’s right.”

The man scowled.  “Ryan?”

“No, your house sitter.  He knows quite well that you need to have a woman need you desperately, and you do!  He told me that I need to just be honest and give myself to you completely and with no confusion about what it is I want.”

“Did he now,” the man pondered darkly, obviously missing most of what the woman was saying.  “Look, I’m flattered, I really am, but I’m not—”

“It doesn’t matter!  I’m not taking no for an answer!  I’m taking what I want!  What I _deserve_.  What I’ve waited five years for!”

The woman leapt forward and Liz jumped out of the way in the nick of time.  The man put out a hand to block her, but she got a hold of him and pulled him forward.  In a desperate effort to avoid her lips he pitched too far to the right and they stumbled toward the woman’s door.  They fell to their knees and the woman hit the back of her head on the wall while the man crashed into the doorframe face first.  Liz’s hands flew to her mouth in surprised horror.

“Omigosh!  Are you okay?!” Liz bent down to check on the man.  Psycho bitch was on her own.  The man sat back, holding his eye.  Liz put a hand on his arm and tried to see if there was any blood.

“Ow,” the man said softly.  He dropped his hand and looked at the woman.  She was rubbing the back of her head.

“Are you okay, Autumn Rose?”

Liz thought the man was going above and beyond by even asking her that.  And it also made her even more certain that this was _not_ Will’s secret girlfriend.  He might date a wild, crazy person, but no one this whacked out.  And certainly he would never, ever date someone named Autumn Rose.

The woman didn’t answer and Liz leaned over to look at the man’s face.  There was a red mark going diagonally across his upper cheek and above his eye.  Fortunately it looked like the eye itself had been spared.  He looked at her.

“Is it bad?”

She shrugged.  “Not as bad as it will be tomorrow.”

The man chuckled.  “So, you’re saying don’t reschedule tonight’s dinner for tomorrow?”

“Maybe you should put some ice on it.”

“Yeah.”

Liz helped the man get to his feet and he reached out to help “Autumn Rose.”  She refused his help and stood up slowly with a hand partially hiding her face.

“Autumn Rose, I’m sorry that—”

She put up her other hand, stopping his speech.  Then she turned and wobbled into her apartment, refusing to make eye contact with either of them.  In fact, Liz still wasn’t sure the woman knew she was even there.  The door shut behind her and Liz bit her lip.  She glanced at the man.  He looked back at her.

“Well.  That sucked,” he said eloquently.

“Yeah,” Liz agreed.  “But it was certainly better than the alternative.”

The man paused in gingerly touching his bruised face as he looked at her.  “And what was the alternative?”

“That you returned her feelings.”

The man stared at her for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.  He seemed to be in a fit and was trying to get himself to stop, but he was kind of hysterical.

“Maybe you should lie down,” Liz suggested.  “Or go to a hospital to check for a concussion.”

The man waved a hand and at least got his laughter down to quiet giggles.  “No, I’m fine.  Just fine.  I owe you my life…what’s your name?”

“Liz.”

“Liz.  Liz.”  He eyes suddenly swept over her.  “L-L-Liz!” he shouted.

“Uh, yeah.  It’s short for Elizabeth?”  She let her confusion and weirded out feeling color her voice.

“Uh, yeah.  Right.  Elizabeth.”  He choked on a laugh.  “Sorry.  You’re right.  Maybe I should lie down.”

“Um, yeah.”

She stood shifting her weight, feeling a little uncomfortable as he looked at her.  He was actually really looking at her now.  Why the sudden interest?

“Oh, hello, there.”

Liz and the man looked down the hall to see who was joining them.  The first thing Liz saw was a robin’s egg blue pleated A-line skirt paired with a lilac, lavender, and baby blue button down shirt with shoulder pads large enough to please any woman from 1986.  Liz almost gagged on the tragedy of the outfit, but her shock blocked the reaction as she took in the yellow and royal blue pumps the woman wore.  Whether or not she was pretty was impossible to tell with the nuclear glow from the radioactive outfit blocking everything.  Plus her hair was pulled back so severely in a bun it pulled at her features under her 60’s librarian glasses.  The horror, the horror!

“Oh, goodness!  Are you okay?” the death of good taste asked the man.

“Is it that bad?” he asked with a worried expression.

Liz tore her eyes away from the train wreck and looked at the man’s face.  The marks were getting darker.  And looked a little bigger than before.

“No,” the fashion travesty said.  “It’s fine.  Really.”

She smiled unconvincingly and the man acknowledged the smile with a small frown.

“Hello,” it said, setting its sights on Liz.  “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

“No,” Liz said, “we’ve never met.”

“Are you sure?  You seem so familiar somehow.”

“Trust me.  I’m positive I would remember.”

“Hunh.”

Liz saw the man’s lips twitch into a slightly evil smile.  Then he schooled his features as he looked at the woman.  “Maybe it’s not her that seems familiar.  Maybe it’s her hair color or her clothes or something.”

The woman looked at Liz again, and then something seemed to click.

“Oh, yes, of course.  That’s the school uniform for Calverton.”

“You know Calverton?” Liz asked, hesitant, but willing to engage the Thing in conversation.

But then she seized up and looked like she might have swallowed her tongue.  “No!” she burst out.  “No!  Of course not!  Why would I know any high school students?  Or be so familiar with them that I could recognize their uniforms?!”

Liz glanced at the man; his lips were white with the effort not to smile.  She looked back at the panicking woman.

“Um.  But you _did_ recognize it.”

“Oh.  Right.  Right!  Well.  I have a student.  I mean a patient.  A patient who is a student.  Not my student of course.  Just a student.  At Calverton.  I see him after school and he comes in his uniform.  So, that’s why I know.  I’m a psychiatrist.  So, that’s why I see him.  It’s an appointment.  Not a social d…call or anything.”

The woman laughed nervously and then cut off abruptly.  Liz could feel her jaw wanting to drop to the floor.  _This_ was her?  _This_ was the woman Will was dating?  She obviously recognized her school uniform because she saw Will in it all the time.  And she was all panicky about someone realizing she was shtupping a high school kid.  But this couldn’t be real.  Will was dating _her_?  She was crazy!  And hideous!  Well, her clothes were anyway.  She supposed her face was okay and the ill fitting clothes couldn’t hide a tiny waist and marginally perky boobs considering what must be her advanced age.  God, she must be at least…30.  Maybe older.  Though Liz did have to acknowledge that she had slammin’ legs.  She’d never really considered Will to be a legs man though.  He always seemed more obsessed with her boobs, which she attributed to his abandonment issues and the fact that his mother never breast fed him.

“Well.”  Liz said sharply.  “I have to go.”  She smiled tightly at them both.  “Nice to…meet you, I guess?  Next time, use your peep hole.”

“I should really start doing that,” the man agreed.

Liz turned on her heel and marched back to the elevators.  Hopefully the woman would wait until she was gone or take a different car.

 _See_ , she said to herself.  _You knew you shouldn’t have come because knowing is_ always _worse than not knowing._

Liz stepped on the elevator and turned around to look down the hall.  The woman had a hand over her face; the man was looking right at her.  And if she wasn’t mistaken, he looked just a little bit hostilely victorious.


	34. Chapter 34

Saturday, June 10, 2006

 

Scott

 

Scott picked his tuxedo jacket up from the back of his desk chair and tried to ignore his audience as he slipped it on.  He stood in front of the mirror that was propped up against the wall that hid the washer and dryer.  He smoothed the fabric down and then buttoned the front.  He checked himself out.  He cut a pretty handsome figure even if he thought so himself.  The only thing was the hair.  In one regard, it gave him an edge that kept him from being a square, but if he had dark hair he could be all Secret Agent-y.  Of course, he’d have to dye his hair dark.  His natural color was akin to dying wheat.  He turned to face the small crowd on his bed.

“So, how do I look?” he asked.

His siblings and stepsiblings were looking thoughtful, but bored.  Except Joanna who looked like she was super impressed with the way her brother looked.  Actually, so did Melissa, his stepsister.  Did he just exude pheromones that attracted sister types?  Linda was sitting on the edge and was waving a hand at her eyes to keep the tears back.

“Oh, goodness, you’re so handsome,” she said, sounding a little choked up.  “Gracious, what will I be like when it’s one of my own children getting ready for the prom?”

“The real question is what will you be like when one of us gets married,” Simon said dryly.

“Oh!”  Linda started crying.

Scott looked at his father.  He placed a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder and grinned at him.  For some reason, he found Linda highly amusing where he’d found his first wife to be a drain on his life force.

“You do look good, son.”

“Thanks.  And since you insisted on a real bowtie, will you do it for me?”

“Sure.”

His father crossed the room and picked up the ends of the bowtie and began to work the difficult knot expertly.

“We probably should have done this before you put the jacket on.”

“Well.  Can you do it anyway?”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.  My boss can’t tie a bowtie to save his life.  I’ve fixed his on more than one occasion.”

“Why would you?  I thought you hated him.”

“Oh, I don’t hate him.  He drives me nuts.  Like all the time.  But he’s fun to tease.  Kind of like you.”

“Dad, shut-up,” Scott groaned.

His audience laughed and the twins’ high pitched giggle was the loudest.  They loved it when their daddy did something they thought was funny.  The doorbell rang and Scott almost jumped out of his skin.  The kids on the bed squealed and jumped off, thundering up the stairs to the door.  His father placed his hands on his shoulders and Scott was comforted by the gentle weight.

“Relax.  She’s just a girl.”

“No, she’s not.”

His father smiled and half-rolled his eyes.  “Just, make sure I’m not a grandfather before I’m fifty.”

“No promises,” Scott said with an amused smile and turned to check himself in the mirror one last time.  He _did_ look good.

“Scott!” one of his siblings yelled from upstairs, “Antoinette is here!”

“And the limo too!” shouted another.

“Let’s go,” his father said and took Linda’s hand to escort her up the stairs.  As they passed through the kitchen, Linda went to the refrigerator.

“Don’t forget the corsage.”

“Right, right,” Scott said, grateful he had people to help him.  He wondered why he was so nervous.  He saw Antoinette all the time.  They went on dates almost every weekend.  He’d seen her naked more times than he could count, though it never did seem to be enough.  He guessed he just knew that this night was important to her and he didn’t want to screw it up in some typical Scott fashion.  Also, there was a slight parallel being drawn to another type of event.  Antoinette had made a big to do about her dress and had refused to let him see it before tonight.  He looked at the corsage in his hand: it was a circle of red rosebuds around a blooming white camellia flower.  She’d told him to get something red.  He hoped she liked it.

Scott stepped out of the kitchen and froze in his tracks when he looked up.  He was pretty sure he’d seen this woman on a red carpet at a movie premiere or an awards show before.  She wore a pure red dress of a thin, fine material that was so formfitting everyone knew she had to be wearing even less than a thong.  It was floor length and had straps that went over the outside of her shoulders.  The cut was actually fairly modest, but with Antoinette, she could never really hide what she had.  Her hair was full of even more curls than usual, each one perfect and glossy and cascading down her bare back and over her shoulders like spun gold.  She’d left her make-up very simple and light, the way Scott liked her, but she was also a little shimmery.  She was unreal.  She made his mouth go dry and his hands tremble a little.  And she was staring at him like he was just as beautiful.

“Okay,” said Joe, “this is making me sick.”

He and Simon marched up the stairs and everyone except Antoinette and Scott laughed.  The two at the center of the attention had tried to laugh, but they both felt too jittery to manage it.  Scott was grateful for the helpful nudge his father gave him to his back.  It got him moving so that he could actually approach her.

“Hi,” he said shyly.

She actually ducked her head a little and bit her lower lip as she smiled.  Then she suddenly stopped and said, “Oh, crap.  Did I get lipstick on my teeth?”

The one item of make-up that was strong on her face was the fire engine red lipstick that matched her dress and perfectly outlined her full lips.  Scott checked her teeth.

“You’re fine.”

“Oh, good.  The commercial didn’t lie.”

They laughed softly and were grateful the tension was gone.  She was just his Antoinette again.  Though looking so sexy he wanted to just skip the prom and take her to his room—no walls or door and all.  Instead, he had to settle for stepping forward and kissing her cheek, which he had to lift his face up to do.  She was wearing black stiletto heels that made her a good three inches taller than him.  But he didn’t mind.  Then he slid the corsage on her wrist.  He’d been worried about the white flower, but it matched the diamonds she wore at her ears and throat.  Scott was pretty sure they were real and most likely her mother’s.

“There aren’t adequate words to describe how beautiful you are,” Scott said.

“Awww,” his sister, stepsister, and stepmother chorused softly.

Antoinette smiled.  “I like that one.”

“Thanks.  I’ve been working on it for three days.”

Antoinette smiled and shook her head.  “And what if I showed up in my PJs with bed head?”

“Well, then you’d be even more beautiful.”

“Awww!” came the chorus again.

“Why do they keep doing that?” Drake whispered to his twin.

“I think they wish it was them,” Ferris replied.

“We do not!” Joanna said with a tsk and annoyed expression for her brothers.

They stuck their tongues out at each other and their father pushed them aside.  Scott nearly balked when he saw the camera is his hand.

“Are you serious?” Scott asked with a little squeak.  “Pictures?”

“Perfectly serious.  I promised your mother and hers.  Now the question is, will I just take pictures or will there be posing?”

“Um, we don’t have that much time to—”

“Sure you do.  Julian’s not expecting you for twenty minutes.”

There was posing.  A lot of it.  His stepmother and sisters acted as art directors and made them pose side by side, facing each other, Scott behind Antoinette, on the stairs, outside on the porch, in front of the azalea bushes, and under the dogwood in the front yard.  When they started considering whether or not to bring in props, Scott called a halt.

“Okay, we really have to go now.”

“Have fun!” Linda called.

“Don’t forget to look around at stuff, Scott,” Joanna said.  “I wanna know what it looks like.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

His father walked them over to the patiently waiting limo.  He waved off the driver as he opened the door for them.  Then he put a hand on Scott’s shoulder and spoke softly.

“I know you’ve got a room.  Will you be staying the night or coming home late?”

“Um…well, the limo is going to take the others back home, so we’ll probably stay the night.”

“That’s probably safer anyway.  Have a good time, and remember what I said earlier.  Safety first.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Ramsey,” Antoinette said.  “We’re very responsible.”

“All that could mean is that you’ll take responsibility for not being safe.”

Antoinette smiled cheekily at him.  “I forget sometimes that it’s no use talking around the point with you.  You’re just as sly.”

“I’m serious,” he warned teasingly.  “No grandkids until I’m 50.”

Antoinette scoffed.  “I am _not_ waiting that long.”

She got into the limo and Scott looked at his father and shrugged.  “I’ll at least try to get her to hold off until after college.  And we’re married.”

His father sighed.  “I’d be scared that you’re throwing away your life at such a young age if I didn’t know how much you want that life.”

“I’m not you,” Scott said as gently as he could.

“And for that we can both be grateful,” his father chuckled.

Scott smiled.  He saw his father glance in the limo and give a small shake of his head at the vixen checking her makeup in a compact mirror.

“I still have no idea how you landed that.”

“Apparently I was nice to her when she was ugly.”

His father laughed.  “That’ll do it.  Have a good time.  No drinking.”

“Yes, sir.”

Scott waved goodbye to the small group on the front porch and got into the limo.  He scooted over the long seat to get next to Antoinette.  His father shut the door and the limo started to roll slowly down the driveway.  Scott was going to open the window and wave back to his ecstatically waving family, but he forgot when Antoinette leaned against him and ran her immaculately manicured French nails down his cheek.

“You wanna see exactly how smudge resistance this lipstick is?”

“Oh, yeah,” Scott breathed, leaning forward to meet her in a perfect kiss.

Fortunately the ride to Julian’s was very short, otherwise they would have gone much farther than any two people should in a limo they are going to share with other people.  Scott was panting as he got out of the limo and the driver who had opened the door for him had a knowing look on his face and gave him a wink.  Scott blushed and ran up the drive to Julian’s house.  He glanced at the “For Sale” sign in the yard.  It partially sobered him up.  He’d be sad to see this house sold, but Julian couldn’t possibly stay here by himself forever and it would be too difficult to maintain when he was off at college.  It was the only logical choice, but still a sad one.

He reached the porch and knocked on the door.

“It’s open!” Julian called from inside.

Scott opened the door and was greeted by Cornelius.  He knelt down and scratched the excited, but silent dog behind the ears.

“Hewwo, Cornelius.  How ware yoo?  Oh, thank you for the kisses!  We need to set up another play date with Coco, don’t we?  Yes we do!”

“What are you doing to my dog?”

“Gettin’ some love.”

“Is Antoinette holding out?”

“Not quite,” Scott chuckled as he stood up.

“Mm-hmm.  I can tell.”

“Really?”

“Come here.”

Julian led him to the downstairs bathroom and flicked on the light.  He had red lipstick smeared on his mouth and down the side of his neck.

“Hunh.  I hope she can get her money back.”

Julian grinned as he handed him a dampened tissue to wipe the red evidence away.

“So, am I going to get a show when I join you?”

“No, we’ll behave.”

“Too bad.”

Scott made a face at him in the mirror.  Then he really noticed him.  He supposed he should have noticed sooner because Julian looking normal should be more shocking than anything outrageous that he did.  Well, normal for Julian.  His piercings were all still in place, and his guy liner was heavier than usual, but he’d clipped his hair to be all one length and dyed it a dark brown.  If memory served him, it was pretty close to Julian’s natural hair color.  And Antoinette was right: his very masculine body in a tuxedo was a sight to behold.

“You look good,” Scott said as he turned to face him.

“You too,” Julian replied, reaching out with both hands and burying them in Scott’s hair.  “God, I wish I knew why I loved this hair so much.”

“You and me both, buddy.”

They laughed and Julian wrapped an arm around Scott’s neck and dragged him out of the bathroom.  He ordered Cornelius to behave and they left the forlorn dog behind with some ignored dog treats nearby.  The driver opened the door for them and they slid into the limo.  Scott could see Julian’s eyes roaming over his girlfriend.  And then he made a concerted effort to look away as he said in a tight voice, “You look lovely, Antoinette.”

“Thank you, Julian.  You are quite handsome yourself.”

When she was temporarily distracted by looking for something in her clutch person, Julian looked at Scott and mouthed, “Wow!”  Scott grinned.

It was an even shorter ride from Julian’s house to Sophia’s.  That’s where they were picking up both Chris and Sophia.  When they pulled into the cul-de-sac, Sophia’s parents and Chris’ mother were taking pictures of them and Natalie and her date.  Natalie and Antoinette had made up on the terms that Natalie thought Antoinette was certainly less trouble to deal with than either Bebe or Samantha.  Antoinette hadn’t been offended, just grateful that they had begun to mend fences.  And fortunately Natalie’s date was a junior boy who wasn’t a soccer player nor had many dealings with the senior class drama that had been going on.  On the unfortunate side of the scale, they couldn’t just pick them up.  The parents ordered everyone out of the car for more pictures.

Scott noticed that Chris looked incredibly relieved to see them arrive, so he walked over to him and just barely refrained from hugging him.  Instead he greeted him with a boy appropriate high-five/handshake, which he also noticed induced relief in Chris’ eyes.  He looked his friend over.  He’d opted for a fancy suit with a tie rather than a true tuxedo, but he looked good in it and the uniqueness made him stand out.  He’d also cut his hair super short again and looked even better for feeling comfortable with himself.  Scott noticed this friend’s eyes were also drawn to his girlfriend.  Chris pulled him close for a moment and murmured softly, “Your girlfriend is way too hot for you.”

“I know, right?” Scott agreed good-naturedly.

Chris laughed and looked at him.  Then he let out a little sigh and gave Scott a semi-hug by pulling him close by the shoulder.  For just a second though.  Scott looked at Sophia and wondered if Chris would be able to be good and keep his promise not to do anything naughty with her.  She wasn’t like Antoinette: sex in a dress (but classy, of course).  She was wearing a sleeveless pink dress with a short, but full skirt.  The bodice was sparkly and matched her baby doll make-up.  She was cute, and kind of young-looking.  But Scott had managed to wheedle out of Chris why he was so hot for her.  It was because she was young and inexperienced and innocent.  Scott could understand the appeal.  She did look adorable and impressionable.  And like she would be a lot of fun to introduce to the carnal pleasures of life.  He wondered if he needed to worry about Antoinette too.  That had been one of the things she’d really enjoyed about him when they first started hooking up.  He glanced at his girlfriend; she was talking and laughing with Natalie.  Good.  Natalie caught his eye and smiled at him.  He smiled back.

_Oh, wait.  Crap.  Does that count as flirting?_

Antoinette had informed him that Natalie had a crush on him and that he shouldn’t do anything to encourage it.  He never encouraged anything and yet all these people kept hitting on him.  His girlfriend’s friends, _his_ friends, his sister, male escorts.  It wasn’t his fault he was irresistible.

It was another twenty good minutes of picture taking before Antoinette reminded them all they had dinner reservations and Julian pointed out his date still needed to be picked up.  The parents let them go and they got into the limo, quite impressed that there would have been room for at least three more couples.  Antoinette had rented the biggest one possible just in case Will changed his mind about going (which he didn’t), Anna and Scott made up (which they didn’t), and if Riley and Nick and Samantha and Bebe decided to join them.  Samantha and Bebe had politely, though somewhat snidely declined, and Riley had told them not to bother since Nick lived on the north side of the city and they would have to drive through it and backtrack in to pick them up.  Liz had not been offered a spot in the limo.  She was going to the prom with Jake.

The ride into the city was quite pleasant as the close, comfortable relationship of Scott, Chris, and Julian helped put everyone at ease.  They were all laughing and joking and taking bets on what the Regurgitator would be wearing.  Scott knew they shouldn’t tease her so much, but it’s not like they would do it to her face.  Or go all _Carrie_ on her or something.  They quieted down a little bit as they entered the super sketch neighborhood Layla lived in.  They were all grateful for the tinted windows and that Julian was the one who had to get out.  He looked like he could handle himself.

Scott moved to the back of the limo and rolled down the window so he could see the reaction on Layla’s parents’ faces.  Julian rang the bell on the left side of the rundown duplex.  A door opened, and then was immediately slammed in his face.  Julian looked back at the limo with a bewildered expression.  Scott put out a hand in question.  Julian shrugged.  Then the door opened again and Layla walked out swiftly, grabbing Julian by the wrist and hauling him after her.  He followed obediently, but turned back to wave at the anxious faces of her parents.  Scott nudged Chris and he moved to look out the window with him.  Layla was in formfitting, slinky black.  She was petite, but just as well built as Antoinette.  Scott and Chris exchanged looks.  There were going to be way too many beautiful women in this limo.  Scott was pretty sure Natalie’s date was already trying to hide an erection.  Teenage boys were so gross.

Scott and Chris moved back as Layla opened the door and swiftly slid in, startling the driver who wasn’t being allowed to perform his duties this evening.  Julian folded his large frame in after her and the driver shut the door.  Everyone tried not to stare as they stared at Layla.  The easy feeling was gone as everyone sat awkwardly still.  The limo started to move.  Julian relaxed back into his seat, spreading his legs and arms out and invading just about everyone’s space in some way.

“So, I take it your mother wasn’t expecting me?” he asked.

“No.  They were expecting Caitlyn.”

Everyone was silent, and then Antoinette snorted as she tried to hold back a laugh.  She covered her mouth.  And then everybody burst out laughing.

“If I’d been expecting Caitlyn and saw Julian instead I probably would have slammed the door too,” Chris laughed.

“Hell, I might just slam the door on Julian if I didn’t know him even if I was expecting him,” Scott piled on.

Julian frowned at them, but everyone else was laughing.  Even Layla cracked a smile.  Julian caught her eye and gave her a wink.  Then she laughed too.

“Well, at least now the ice is good and broken,” Natalie said.

Everyone agreed and enjoyed the thirty minute ride to the restaurant which should have been ten, but for some reason the Saturday evening traffic was a mess.  Scott didn’t mind.  He had his arm around Antoinette and they snuggled up as they listened to everyone talk around them.  They were technically the only true couple in the car, so most everyone else were talking and interacting like friends.  Scott noticed Julian was a little preoccupied with his cell phone the last fifteen minutes.  He alternately looked amused and annoyed.  As they got out he tried to get a glimpse of the name on the screen, but Julian put the phone in his pocket.

“Who was that?” Scott asked.

“Will.  I’m asking him how his date night is going.  He’s being an ass.”

“Did you send him a picture of Layla?”

“No.  I should.  So, should I get her attention or do it slyly?”

“I don’t think she’d mind if you’re sending it to Will.”

“She might if she sees what I write about it.”

Scott tsked at him.  “Don’t be dirty.”

Julian just laughed and set up the camera on his phone.  Scott went to Antoinette’s side, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek.  She hummed in pleasure and leaned lightly against him.  They were waiting for the Maitre D to make sure their table was ready.  Scott hoped Chris wouldn’t freak out when he saw the dinner prices.  If he did the Prix Fix meal he should be okay.  La Trattoria was the best Italian restaurant in the city.  He probably should have consulted with Antoinette before she made the reservations.  And looking at Natalie’s date’s face, he probably was surprised by the prices too.

“Scott?” Antoinette said his name demurely.

“Yes, love,” Scott replied with a kiss in her hair.

“Do the shoes bother you?”

“Are you kidding?  I’m probably going to want you to leave them on all night.”

Antoinette laughed.  “No, I mean the height.”

“Oh, no.  Why would it?”

“Well J—some guys don’t like being shorter.  If I wore these I’d be an inch taller than him and he’d pout about it all night because the girl isn’t supposed to be taller.”

“Well, you’re not.  We’re the same height.  So, when you put on heels, of course you’ll be taller.  It’s not like I think you’d never wear heels again just for the sake of my ego.”

She turned to look at him.  “That’s why I love you.”  She kissed his nose.

“Besides.  I love you in heels.  Makes your legs look even better and your butt is so cute.”

“And, the moment passes.”

“Whatever.  You love compliments.  Of any kind.”

“True.  I really do.”  She put her arms around his neck and pulled him close.  “Tell me more about me.”

“Your kiss is sweeter than the purest sugar.”

She giggled.  “Is pure sugar much sweeter than regular?”

“I have no idea.”

They both laughed softly and leaned in to share a kiss.  His arms slid around her, feeling bare skin due to the very low cut back.  He spread his fingers out, wanting to feel more.  Someone cleared their throat.  They looked over at the Maitre D.  He didn’t look particularly pleased.

“Your table is ready.”

“Okay.”

They got the attention of the group and started to follow the snooty Maitre D.  Julian grasped Scott’s face gently and ran a thumb over his lips.

“What?” he asked, unnerved by the large, warm, strong digit on his lips.

“Nothing.  I think the color looks good on you if you want to leave it.”

“Dammit!  That stuff is supposed to be smudge proof,” Scott muttered, using his own hand to vigorously rub his lips.

“Stop touching each other,” Chris whispered at them.

“I’m not touching anybody!” Scott whisper-shouted back.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Julian said, taking Chris by the hand and refusing to let him go as they walked through the restaurant.  Most people didn’t take note of them, but a few saw the large, very well dressed man and his reluctant date.  Scott pulled out the seat for Antoinette and then sat down next to her, tugging on Chris’ sleeve so that he would sit next to him.  Chris did so happily because it would put at least Sophia in between him and Julian.  Layla sat on Sophia’s other side, clearly only willing to sit next to a male if it was Julian.  Natalie’s date, Jonah, sat next to Julian, which put Natalie next to Antoinette.  He hoped the truce would hold through the night.

It wasn’t long before he forgot to worry about anything.  He was having too much fun.  It was very interesting to be in a different group of people.  It had been so long since it hadn’t been the eight usual suspects that he’d forgotten what it was like to talk to people he didn’t know anything about.  Of course, he wouldn’t want to give up having Julian and Chris around, but having different girls and even another guy around was proving to be fun and a good kind of different.  He only wished Will and Kendall could have joined them.

Most of the meal the talk had been fairly innocuous—for high school kids—but by the time desert rolled around, somehow they had invented a game of “Tell the Truth.”  It wasn’t really so much a game as someone asking a question of someone and then everyone else judging that person’s answer to either be true or not.  Scott had been pleased when Natalie had asked Antoinette if she really and truly was into Scott as much as she appeared to be.  He was overjoyed when the table judged her simple answer of “yes,” to be true.  The questions had all been civil.  Layla had only been asked what her parents had said after seeing Julian at the door.  She’d replied, “Nothing really,” and the table had scoffed in disbelief.  She’d only shrugged.  Antoinette had asked Sophia if she always went for older men and Natalie’s date had asked Julian if the lip ring gave him any trouble during “amorous activities.”  Julian’s smile and raised eyebrow as he said “no” convinced everyone that he knew from firsthand experience that it was not.  Of course, Scott and Chris knew that only applied to kissing.  It was completely inane, but sometimes when Scott thought about Julian, it made him wish that he was still a virgin too.  Then he’d think about Antoinette and it didn’t bother him so much.

They were waiting for the check and the boys were all shuffling their bills, trying to estimate how much it would be when Jonah put an arm on the table and said, “Okay, I’m sorry.  But I have to ask.  This is for Scott, Chris, and Julian.  And Will if he was here.  Have you guys…well…I mean, everyone says…”  He stopped as the three boys looked at him with different expressions.  Julian: amused.  Chris: peeved.  And Scott: clueless.  “Okay, maybe I should ask Antoinette.  Are you ever jealous of Julian, Chris, and Will?”

“Sometimes,” she replied with a goading smile that was mostly directed at Chris.

Chris huffed and put his hands flat on the table.  “Okay.  I will address all the rumors.  No, the four of us are not secretly involved in a four-way romantic relationship.  No, we don’t date girls as ‘beards’ to hide our love for each other.  No, we do not fool around with each other—even ‘just for practice.’  No, we do not have intercourse with each other.  No, we have not ever been in nor are currently in nor will we ever have homosexual relationships with each other.”

“Have you ever kissed each other?”

The table turned their eyes to Sophia.  She sat looking cute and innocent.  Chris was giving her a mock disgusted face.   Then he frowned and faced the table.

“Not voluntarily,” he ground out.  “On my part anyway.”

Everyone else at the table tittered and laughed.  Jonah put a hand over his face.

“Oh, my gosh,” he groaned-laughed.

Layla had her lips rolled in to keep from grinning and kept her eyes focused on her two bites of leftover chocolate mousse.  Natalie was cackling and nudging Antoinette.

“Ah, you poor thing.  Ha, ha!” she said.

Sophia just kept a straight face and ignored the displeased expression Chris was giving her.

“Now, wait, wait,” Jonah gasped out between giggles, “who?  Who’s done what?”

“That’s not relevant—” Chris started.

“Yes it is!” Natalie, Jonah, and Antoinette said together.

“I really would like to know,” Antoinette added.  She turned to Scott.  “Who exactly is my competition?  I was there when you kissed Will.  And that’s pretty steep.  Don’t make me have to compete against all three.”

“Okay, one,” Scott said, “Will kissed me.  Not the other way around.  And two…while I have been molested by Julian, he’s never kissed me.  On the lips.  And three: Chris and I have never kissed at all.  There was an incident involving a night of drinking and an awkward awakening—ow!”

Scott cut off as Chris dug his fingers into his leg.  He rubbed the spot and scowled at his friend.

“You have kissed Julian on the lips,” Layla suddenly spoke up.  “After Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, yeah.  Well, that doesn’t count.”

“Wait a minute,” Chris said, “How do you know about that?”

She started slightly as she was caught with information she shouldn’t have known.  “Um, I, um, I may have—”

“Chris, you’re the biggest culprit of all,” Julian saved her from responding.

“In what way?!” he demanded to know, his voice pitching pretty high.

“Well, last Christmas I was going to kiss you for a joke, but you opened your mouth and tongued me.”

The table gasped in amused shock and Chris was so agitated he couldn’t get out words.

“And then there was that time you got it on with Will.”

“That was CPR class!” Chris sputtered.

“And Scott…well, I hesitate to even wonder what the two of you do together alone.”

Chris’ outrage bubbled up and came out in the form of a choked squeak.  The table was causing a scene with their rowdy laughter and tried to get themselves to quiet down as they got several dirty looks from other patrons.

“All right, all right,” Jonah said, “we get it.  You’ve made your point.  I guess that’s just the prejudice of our society thinking that if boys have close relationships they must be doing stuff together.  Sorry.”

The girls were mostly still giggling and Scott looked around the table.  They’d thought it was a joke.  All of it.  He glanced at Julian.  He was hiding a grin behind his napkin since he’d realized the same thing.  Scott looked at Chris.  He was leaning an elbow on the table and resting his face on his hand.  He met eyes with Scott.  He could tell his friend was beyond relieved to be saved from the truth being recognized as truth.  Scott pondered, maybe they did do a little too much with each other.  And then he had to wonder if Julian had merely been guessing about him and Chris or if he somehow knew about their super-secret-take-it-to-the-grave-never-think-or-talk-about-it-again-practice-how-to-French-kiss-so-we-won’t-embarrass-ourselves-with-girls session that happened when they were thirteen.  Well, technically, it had been for Scott’s benefit.  Chris was already pretty well educated on the subject.  Oh, wait, did that count as thinking about it?  He better stop.

The bill arrived and there was some prolonged calculating that proved even private schools don’t guarantee a fantastic mathematics education, and then they were off.  Antoinette linked her arm with Scott’s and walked slowly so they fell slightly behind the group as they made their way outside.

“So, that last topic of conversation,” she said.  “Exactly how much of it was a joke and how much was true?”

Scott just smiled at her.

 

Antoinette

 

The night had been perfect.  Scott was perfect.  He’d done his best to make her happy, and she’d appreciated it, though merely his presence alone was enough to make her happy.  She’d barely been out of his arms the entire evening.  If this was what waited for her in the future, she knew she would never be unhappy.  Even if they had to split up for school and that harpy Anna _belle_ got to stay with him, she had nothing to worry about.  She could see it in the way he smiled at her.  Feel it in the way he held her tightly, but gently.  The time had flown by she’d been so happy with him.  And yet, at the same time, she couldn’t believe she’d held out for three hours of not having more of him.  They should just go to their hotel room now.  She really didn’t care who won prom queen and king.  She was about to whisper this suggestion to her beloved when the music screeched to a halt and the microphone squealed as the very amateurish DJ interrupted their evening.  Again.  He’d been trying to be funny all night.  Maybe the fourteenth time was the charm.

“All right all you O.C. Wannabes, it’s time for the announcement of the prom court!”

Antoinette cringed.  The O.C.?  Who even watched that anymore?

Scott turned to look at the stage, and then he smiled at her.  “Looks like it’s time.  Did you prepare a speech?”

She laughed.  “No.  I don’t think I’m going to get it after all.  Let’s just go upstairs.”

He blinked surprise for a moment and then said, “Okay!”  He grabbed her hand and started to make his way through the crowd.  She laughed as he pulled her along and blindly followed his bright head.

“Hey, where ya goin’?” Julian got their attention as they passed him.

Scott stopped immediately to talk to his friend.  Antoinette had long ago gotten used to the idea that he found them just interesting as he found her—and she could offer him sex.  But those relationships with his friends were a big part of who he was and she wouldn’t change a thing.  She took the moment to look at the odd pairing that was Layla and Julian.  Julian was way above average in height and Layla was below average by several inches.  The crown of her head was somewhere around his pectorals.  Despite that, it looked like they’d been having a good evening; both were pretty sweaty and her perfectly executed French twist was long since gone as her hair fell in sticky clumps on her shoulders and back.  Antoinette actually thought she looked better now than she had at the beginning of the night.  Because she looked like she was actually happy and enjoying herself.  Maybe Julian really was a witch with real magical powers.  Or maybe he was a prince who had awakened a princess.

“Are you guys leaving already?” she heard Julian ask.  “I thought the limo wasn’t coming back until like three.”

“Oh, we’re not going home.  We’re—um.  Well.  We kinda, sorta—”

“We have a hotel room,” Antoinette said.

“Ah, gotcha.  Don’t let me stand in your way.  Oh, but didn’t you want to stay for the prom court thing, A?”

“No, I don’t really care about all that—Oh my God!  Frida Jamison is the Prom Princess?!  No way!  She doesn’t even have good hair!”

Antoinette pulled her eyes from the stage as the little Plastic Skank accepted her crown.  She looked at the others.  They were looking at her.

“So, you don’t really care about this stuff, huh?” Scott asked.

She laughed embarrassedly and looked away.  Natalie’s sister was approaching them.  The pink dress was cute and looked good on her, but it made her seem much too young.  If she really had plans of getting and keeping Chris’ attention, she’d picked the wrong outfit.  Which was painfully evident when she asked them, “Have any of you seen Chris?”

Scott shrugged.  “No, sorry.  But honestly I haven’t seen anyone since we got here.”

“I saw him going to the bathroom,” Julian offered.

“That was like, over twenty minutes ago.”

“Hunh.”

Antoinette saw Scott and Julian glance at each other, but she was clueless on how to decipher the look they shared.  It could have been anything from worry as to his whereabouts to knowing exactly where he was to wondering if they should go to Denny’s after the After Prom Party.

“And now, ladies and pervy high school boys,” the DJ snickered.  The crowd stared at him.  “Your 2006 Prom King is…drum roll, please!  Scott Ramsey!”

Almost everyone in the room broke out into cheers and applause.  Scott stood stunned as the spotlight swung in his direction.

“How the hell did this happen?” he whispered hoarsely.

“People like you, sweetie, of course,” Antoinette said as she rubbed his back even though she was already seething over the fact that some dumb bitch was going to get to touch her man.

“Is this a joke?” he asked.

“I think that’s only if you’re elected prom _queen_ ,” Julian observed.

“Oh, right.  But who would vote for me?”

“You must have gotten pity votes after Jake beat you up.”

Scott frowned.  “Awesome.”

“Go on,” Antoinette said and nudged him forward.

He made his way to the stage, looking very red and uncomfortable.  The plastic crown was put on his head and the audience cheered for him again, which made him seem a little happier.

“And now, for the Big Cheese Herself!  Your Prom Queen is—by popular demand—”

Antoinette did a quick mental rundown in her head.  Rina, Macy, and Jenna she might be able to stomach.  Samantha she could deal with so long as she didn’t do anything rude about dancing with Scott.  If it was Natalie, the whore had better watch her hands.  And if Bebe won, she just might slit her wrists.

“Antoinette Bixby!”

The spotlight swung back to her.  She froze, horrified for a moment that the DJ was going to suddenly say it was just a joke.  But her classmates were cheering for her.  She felt like crying.  She’d always been popular not because she was pretty, but because she had been one of those popular people who was actually nice to _everybody_.  But she’d been so worried that everybody hated her because of what had happened over the last year.  The truth was, not many people did know about exactly how dramatic it had all been.  The pall of dislike she’d felt had really been her own inner loathing of herself for the cruel way she’d used Jake and even Scott.  For the callus way she’d dropped her friends just to make sure she wouldn’t lose Scott.  But her past goodness seemed to be enough to make up for her quick stint in the Looney bin.  She walked toward the stage, seeing nothing but smiling faces, or bored ones of people who really didn’t care about all this.  As she walked up the stairs she saw Samantha and Bebe clapping for her.  Bebe wasn’t smiling, but Samantha seemed genuinely happy for her.  Her smile brightened.  Maybe there was hope of mending fences with them too.  She crossed the stage to Scott and accepted her crystal coated plastic tiara and scepter.  Scott laughed and leaned forward to kiss her.  The audience whooped and catcalled at them.  They broke the kiss with a laugh.

“And now, let’s let our Prom Court start us off with a romantic dance!” the DJ crooned.  And then he put on “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado.  The audience groaned, but Antoinette couldn’t even hear the song.  She just felt Scott hold her and whisper in her ear, “I’m happy for you.  I love you.”  She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could.  And imagined it was the first dance of their wedding reception.  She laughed softly.

“What is it?” Scott asked.

“Nothing.  You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I already do.”

She laughed again.  “I was just thinking…of proposing to you.”

“If it helps you make up your mind, my answer will be ‘yes.’”

Antoinette smiled and laid her head on his shoulder.  That was good enough for now.

 

Chris

 

Chris met Julian’s eyes again and they shared a private laugh over the fact that Scott and Antoinette had once again forgotten they weren’t alone in the limo.  They weren’t getting it on or anything, but they were leaning together, hands intertwined, fingers gently playing along the other’s.  They hadn’t heard Chris ask his question.  Twice.  Hence the look he’d shot in Julian’s direction.  Chris noticed that Julian’s eyes were constantly swinging back to Antoinette.  He was pretty sure it didn’t mean anything since he’d never shown much interest in her before; tonight she just looked way too hot.  Chris understood.  He’d probably be staring too except he was sitting next to Scott who was effectively blocking most of his view of Antoinette.  So, he had to content himself to looking at Layla.  He was trying to figure out what color her eyes were.  They were dark, but not really brown.  He talked to Sophia and answered her questions, but he wouldn’t look at her unless he had to.  She was killing him.  She’d used to dress older and sexy to try to seduce him, but he’d always been able to pull away.  Had she figured out that he found her most attractive when she looked young?  Was that the reason for the cute, fairy princess prom dress?  God, he was such a perv.  And it made no sense!  All the girls he’d hooked up with lately had been very mature, most of them older than himself.  So why did Sophia, looking like she was barely fifteen, make him feel like the creepy overly friendly uncle?

The limo pulled up to the Hilton and there were a couple other limos already in the drop off circle with tux clad boys awkwardly helping their dates struggle out with their tight, long dresses.  It was kind of funny and Maria Waller actually fell completely on the ground.  Which is why Chris leaned down and made sure he had a good grip on Sophia when he helped her out.  She was grinning, clearly ecstatic to be going to the prom, and it made him smile.  Or maybe she was ecstatic that he’d put his arm partially around her waist to help her out.  Everyone in front of the hotel—fellow Calverton students, valets, and annoyed guests alike—all stopped and stared when Antoinette and Layla made the scene.  Neither of them really looked like high school girls.  Actually…it kind of looked like Scott and Julian had hired escorts for the night.  Then Chris snickered to himself.  If Scott were going to hire an escort, it’d probably be that male one whose card he still secretly carried around.

Calverton had rented out three ballrooms for the occasion.  Two were joined to create a huge open space and was actually where the After Prom Party was being held.  They were going to set up games and activities like a fair.  Chris was kind of looking forward to putting on one of those giant, inflatable sumo wrestler outfits and pushing Scott around in it.  That is if Scott even made it to the After Prom Party.  He and Antoinette probably already had plans for after the dance.

The dance was being held in the largest of the three ballrooms and had been decorated with the theme of A Rose Garden.  He’d asked Antoinette whose idea it had been, but she claimed it was the entire prom committee’s and not one individual.  He supposed this was what happened when there were no guys on the prom committee.  But it was pretty.  They’d set up fences and gazebos that had fake ivy crawling up the sides and the lights were low with a literal blanket of sparkly lights overhead.  There were a few real roses placed here and there on the sparse tables, but Chris assumed they couldn’t have too many real ones not so much because of the cost, but because there were quite a few famous allergies among the senior class.  The Regurgitator being one.  He spotted her easily among the few early arrivers (themselves being a part of the second wave) propping up a wall with two other girls.  He’d guessed she’d be in something puffy and out of the eighties, but she was dressed simply and elegantly.  Her hair and make-up and been done nicely.  She didn’t look that bad actually, and then—she opened her mouth and let out a braying laugh.  Even from fifteen feet away he could see the piece of broccoli lodged in her braces.  He once again met eyes with Julian.  His friend had a pained empathetic expression on his face.  He felt sorry for the poor girl, but he couldn’t help laughing at her either.

Everyone in the room winced and a few covered their ears as the DJ screeched out a welcome.  Chris groaned.  It was the same DJ they’d hired for the Back to School Dance, the Halloween Dance, and the Winter Semi-formal.  His rates must be really cheap.  Fortunately he shut-up quickly and played an up-tempo pop song.  The group found an empty table on which the girls deposited their purses and the boys their jackets, and then they were off.

Chris wasn’t much of a dancer, but he’d learned pretty early on that he made an excellent prop for girls to dance around (and occasionally on).  So he moved just enough to keep on rhythm and Sophia bounced around him.  He found he was having fun simply from watching her have fun.  He caught glimpses of his friends every now and then.  Antoinette and Scott danced every song like it was a slow song.  Goobers.  And Julian and Layla were doing some horrifically awful 70’s and 80’s dance “moves.”  He spotted Jake and Liz once.  They were sitting at a table, drinking punch.  It looked like they were taking a break and not like they’d been rooted to the spot all night.  He followed Jake’s line of vision straight to Antoinette and Scott.  So he maneuvered Sophia’s bopping to put himself in the way.  Jake looked up and met his eyes.  He gave him a smarmy smile and toasted him with his drink.  Chris just glared and Jake laughed.  He put down his cup and pulled Liz to her feet.  He didn’t see them again for the rest of the evening.  He wondered if he’d just been careful to stay out of the way or if he and Liz had left.  Maybe they had a room.  Ah…a room.  It would have been nice, but certainly not where or how he would choose to take Sophia’s virginity.  He shook his head.  Not that he had _any_ such intentions.

Sophia tugged on his sleeve and he bent down to so he could hear her over the Black Eyed Peas.  “You wanna get some water?”

He nodded, not wanting to shout at her and led her off the floor.  They opted for the bottled water provided than the sugary fruit punch and made their way over to the table they had claimed when they’d first arrived.  Several other people had added their belongings to the pile since most of the tables and chairs had been cleared out to create the biggest dance space possible.  Since the song currently playing was really popular, most everyone was on the dance floor, so they could both take a seat.  Sophia gulped down half her bottle of water and Chris smiled at her as he sipped his.  It was another benefit of being a prop: he didn’t get tired or sweaty.

He scooted his chair close to hers.  “Are you having a good time?” he asked.

She smiled and nodded.  “Thank you for taking me.”

“I’m happy to.  Really.”

She smiled again.  And then neither of them could think of anything else to say.  They sat for a while, drinking their water slowly.

“So,” Sophia began timidly searching for any sort of conversation, “why didn’t Will come?”

“He opted to stay in with his girlfriend.”

“He has a girlfriend?”

“She doesn’t go to Calverton.”

“He didn’t want to bring her?”

“Well…she doesn’t go to any high school.  If you catch my drift.”

“Oh wow.  College girl?”

“Well…she might be a tad older than that.”

Sophia giggled.  “That’s Will Harder for you.”

“Do you have a crush on him?” Chris asked.

“What?” she laughed.  “Duh, no.  I have a crush on you.”

“Oh.”  Chris blushed.  “I know.  I meant more like…it seems every girl likes him a little bit.  Do you?  Or did you?”

“Well, sure.  Even the lesbians like him a little bit.  And speaking of that, do you think Layla really likes Julian…like that?”

They turned their heads and looked at the strange couple.  They were doing the snake.  Chris laughed.

“I honestly have no clue what is going on there.  But I usually don’t when it involves Julian.”

“You love him?”

Chris started and looked Sophia in the eyes. “What?  No.  I thought it was pretty evident I like girls.”

“Oh, I don’t mean romantically.  And yes, you’ve made it abundantly clear you like girls.”  She gave him a pointed look and he smiled a little guilty.  She didn’t even know the half of it.  “I just meant…”  She looked at Julian again.  “You and him.  And Scott and Will.  It’s love, right?”

Chris sat back in his chair and peeled the label off his bottle of water.  “Why do you want to define it?”

Sophia reached out and put her hand on his.  “I’m not trying to embarrass you.  I’m trying to understand the different ways people love each other.  What it means to love someone.  What is the difference between a crush and love?”

“I’ve told you before.”

“You have?”

“Yes.  Remember, I told you that it’s okay if you feel excited and butterflies every time you look at someone.  If you’re never quite completely calm around someone.  That doesn’t mean it’s worship or just about looks.  What makes the difference is if you feel inferior to that person.  If you feel like the relationship isn’t equal.  If you feel like you’re not good enough for someone and feel uncomfortable around them, then it’s just a crush.  Love is being at perfect ease.”

Sophia nodded thoughtfully.  “Like you are with them.”

Chris half-laughed.  “Well, yeah.  I guess it is love.”

“Hm.”

Chris smiled at her.  “So what do you feel about me?”

“Oh, it’s definitely still a crush.  But I feel more comfortable around you now than I did when we first met.”

“So, you’re saying you’re falling for me?” he asked with what he knew was an annoying grin.

Sophia gave him a mild glare.  “Oh, hush.”

He laughed and stood up, proffering her his hand.  “You up for more?”

“Are you?” she asked playfully, ignoring his hand and brushing by him.

Chris felt her warm body press lightly against his and her sweet scent filled his senses as she walked back to the dance floor.  He followed her, reminding himself that she wasn’t a complete angel.  Which she proceeded to prove by moving to the slow, but staccato beat of the song playing, forcing his eyes, his hands, and eventually his own body to follow close along beside hers.  If the next song had been fast, he would have been okay.  They would have separated and danced and it could have passed.  But it was a slow song.  And he couldn’t keep her close.  So he swallowed thickly.

“Sophia?”

“Yeah?” she asked, the question little more than an exhalation of air.

“I, um, I have to use the bathroom.”

Sophia blinked.  And then nodded.  “Okay.  I’ll wait at the table.”

“’Kay.”

Chris didn’t move for a moment, holding the small girl against his body.  He moved his hands slowly, deliberately around her body and then up her arms before gently putting distance between them.

“I’ll be right back.”

He turned and walked away quickly, still feeling the raised gooseflesh he elicited from her skin on his tingling fingertips.

 _Behave_ he commanded himself.  _Please_ _behave.  She deserves so much better than you._

Chris left the ballroom and walked past the elevators to where the restrooms were tucked away out of sight.  The men’s room was empty, so he didn’t bother going into a stall.  He just splashed some cool water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror.  He hadn’t really reacted much down there, which was a pleasant surprise, but he’d felt it in his accelerated heartbeat and the heat on his face.  That was odd.  That wasn’t how he normally responded to women.  He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.  Except that he wasn’t in a place in his life where he could take the time to find out.  Just, calm down, have a couple more dances, and then play around at the After Prom Party.  Take her home.  He wouldn’t even have to worry about whether or not to give her a kiss goodnight; her sister and her date would be there and he didn’t think either of them wanted to do it in front of them.  So, he could survive this night.  Just another half hour or so and the prom court would be announced, there would be the final dance, and it would all be over.  He took in a deep breath and nodded at himself.  Yes, he had a game plan.  He could do this.

Chris patted his face dry with a paper towel and wiped off his hands.  He used the paper towel to grasp the handle of the bathroom door.  He knew he had persnickety friends, but he wasn’t sure if any or all of them would razz him for being grossed out by public bathroom germs.  That’s why he always let someone else open the door when they went to the bathroom in groups.

He adjusted his cuffs as he exited the alcove and then stopped in his tracks when he heard an aggravated squeal.  He peeked back around the corner on the opposite side from the men’s room and saw a girl with one hand over her shoulder and one reaching up behind her back, struggling with her zipper.  She stumbled toward the bathroom door, missed her mark and let out another squeal as she hit the floor with her rump.

“Goddamnit!”

Chris walked over to help her up.  Quite possibly she didn’t want anyone to witness this, but he wasn’t going to let a girl flail around helplessly.  And she might have a hard time standing up in that dress due to the tapered bottom hem coupled with very high heels.  He was a little nervous as he approached her.  He hadn’t really seen her face yet, but that wavy auburn hair was unmistakable.  It was Caitlyn.  And she looked like she was in a very unpleasant mood, which every boy in Calverton knew was a very bad thing.

“Are you okay?” Chris asked softly as he offered her a hand.

She whipped her head around and glared up at him with irritated hazel eyes.  “Go away, penis,” she ordered.

Chris didn’t leave, but watched her struggle for a few seconds.  She tried to use the wall to inch her way up, but her heels skidded out from under her and she wound up on the floor.  She huffed indignantly.  Chris cleared his throat and she looked at him from under her bangs.  He held out both hands and she grumbled as she took them.  He pulled her up to her feet and she immediately took her hands back and brushed her hair back.  Then she squealed again as part of her hair wouldn’t move and once again began her weird hands behind the back shuffle.

“What’s the matter?” Chris asked, amused but not daring to crack a smile let alone laugh.

Caitlyn stopped moving and dropped her hands.  She looked like she was debating about what to do about him.  He looked her over.  She was in a green strapless dress that highlighted her hair and eyes.  It wasn’t formfitting the way Antoinette’s was, but it did follow the shape of her body so closely that he wondered how it was possible she could even walk in it.  He followed the shape up and saw that she was quite curvy in the hips and endowed with enough natural support that she didn’t need anything else to hold the dress up.  He snapped his eyes up to her face, worried what she might do to him if she caught him looking, but she was still frowning at the floor.  Then she glanced over at him.

“My hair is caught.”

“Hmm?” he asked, not expecting those words.

“My hair.  It’s caught in my zipper.  And it’s like a big chunk, so I can’t pull it out.  And I can’t reach where it’s stuck.”

“Oh.  Um.  Would you like me to—”

“No,” she snapped.

Chris put his hands in the air.  “Okay.”  He turned to leave.

“Wait.”

He turned back and looked at Caitlyn.  The expression on her face told him this wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to her all night.

“I’m sorry,” she continued.  “Will you help me?”

“Sure.”

She turned around and Chris stepped close to her.  She smelled like roses.  He looked at the tangled chunk of hair in her dress zipper.  It was really snagged in there good.  He gently began to examine the knot.  He attempted to pick a few pieces out, but nothing was budging.

“She hasn’t even looked at me all night.”

“Hm?” Chris asked, focused more on his task than her words.

Caitlyn spoke very softly.  “Or, not not looked at me, but hasn’t looked _for_ me.  She’s having fun.  She hasn’t had a single fight with her date all night.  Which is something I couldn’t offer her even if we came together.”

Chris started to pull down on the tab of the zipper a little to work out some of the hairs.

“Why is that?” she mumbled.  “Why can’t we ever be together without fighting?”

“Maybe you’re not meant to be together,” Chris observed, yanking down on the tab.

“Ow!  Hey!”

She pulled away, holding her dress up.

“Sorry, I—”

“This dress will not stay up if the zipper is down at all!”

“Sorry.  But, I think it has to be unzipped to come out.  I got some of it out.  Just let me pull it down a little more.”

“No!”

“I’m not trying to undress you, Caitlyn.  Your hair is completely zipped up in the teeth.  I don’t think I can even zip it back up now without making it worse.  I guess I could go get some scissors—”

“Absolutely not!”

“Then what?”

Caitlyn opened her mouth and then groaned.  “I don’t know.”

“Just let me pull it down, just a little bit more.”

“No!  I’m serious.  This dress will not stay up!”

“Well, just hold it and it will.”

“Dude, seriously.  No.”

“All right, then let me zip it back up.”

“You said that would make it worse!”

“It probably will.”

“Then you can’t do that!”

Chris laughed.  “What do you want me to do?”

Caitlyn let out a soft whine and shuffled her feet.  Then she said, “Grab my purse and come with me.”

Chris checked his watch.  He’d been gone a little over five minutes.  He needed to get back to Sophia.

“Come on, come on.  It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”

Chris bent down and picked up her little green clutch purse and followed her out of the alcove.

“Whoa!” he let out in surprise when Caitlyn hustled him onto a waiting elevator.  “What are you doing?”

“Just hang on.”  She punched the button for the fifth floor.

It was a quick ride to five and the doors opened on the first floor that had guest rooms.  She walked quickly around the corner, looking ridiculous and she quickstepped her feet to keep them moving in the restraining dress and her arms clutched to her sides to keep it from falling down.  She stopped in front of a door and nodded her chin at the purse still in his hands.

“There’s a key in there.”

He raised an eyebrow as he opened the tiny thing and tried to stick his big hand inside to grab the plastic card key.

“Don’t make that face,” she grumped at him.  “I was expecting to have a loving make up session with my girlfriend tonight.”

Chris used the key to open the door and looked at Caitlyn.  “The girlfriend that’s downstairs with my giant hulk of a man friend?”

Caitlyn scowled.  “Yes.”

She waddled into the room and Chris followed behind her.  She stopped in the front hallway, saw the giant mirror on the wall, and then made a face as she moved further into the room to stand in front of the king size bed.  Chris stayed by the door.

“Well, come on!”

Chris moved quickly, putting her purse down on the desk and moving behind her again.  He started to pull gently, so gently, on the tab, trying to part the teeth without completely breaking her hair off.

“What did you mean?” Caitlyn asked sulkily.

“When?”

“When you said we shouldn’t be together.”

“When have I ever said _we_ shouldn’t be together?”

“Not _us_ you nutsac.  Me and Layla.”

“Oh.  Oh.  Well, you said you two always fight when you’re together.  So, I just figured that’s a sign that you shouldn’t spend time together.”

“But—we love each other.  We’re meant to be together.”

“Why?” Chris chuckled.  “Because she’s the only other out lesbian at Calverton?  You need to get into the world, sweetheart.  You’ll meet more people and you’ll probably meet someone who’s better suited to you.  Hang on, don’t move.”

Chris wiggled the last bit of hair out of the zipper as he pulled it down farther, just to make sure it was free.

“I know I’ll meet other people, but—”

“Here, I’ll hold the dress, make sure all of you hair is free.”

Chris held the open back of her dress up and Caitlyn slowly and suspiciously moved her arms from her sides.  When she was certain he had a hold of the top, she reached her arms up and used her hands to rustle her hair.

“Ahhh!  That’s so much better!”

Chris watched her shoulders move, her back revealed as she pulled her hair up.  Her skin was creamy white and so smooth.  Flawless.  He didn’t know real people could have skin like this.  Without thinking, he moved one hand to touch the skin near her neck.  Part of the dress fell.

“Hey, what—”

Then deliberately, he let the other side of the dress go.  She must have been standing at just the right angle because the fabric slipped down her body and pooled at her feet.  She squealed and crossed her arms over her chest for she wore no bra.  Chris wasn’t even thinking about the front of her.  Yet.  He gently pushed her hair aside with one hand and ran the knuckles of the other across her smooth back.  He felt her shiver.

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing?!”

He put both palms on her back, drinking in the soft feel of her as his hands splayed across her back, and then up to her shoulders, his fingers reaching over the top, feeling her clavicles, his thumbs brushing her neck.  He’d never felt anything like this before.  Not a single mark to be seen or felt.  She was practically inhuman.

“Stop.  Right now.”

It was a weak request.  He knew it.  She knew it.  And she didn’t attempt to stop him or move away.

He ran his hands back down, over her spine, to her hips.  He felt the strings of her barely there thong underwear.  Her silky, perfect skin continued uninterrupted from shoulders to backside to legs.  He moved his hands to her stomach and pushed them against her, feeling fairly strong muscles under her soft, yielding skin.  He slid his hands higher and touched her hands where she covered herself.  He leaned close to her.

“Move your hands,” he commanded.

He heard her take in a hitching breath, and then she slowly complied.  He moved his hands up and cupped her soft weight.  They were better than any other girl he’d ever been with.  And that list had gotten quite long recently.  He massaged them gently, flicking the tips until they hardened.  He continued to knead her breasts and stimulate her nipples as he leaned his head down and kissed her shoulder.  She let out a small noise and there was no fear or uncertainty in her voice.  He kissed her again, and then her jaw.  She turned her head to look at him and he kissed her lips, tasting her lipstick and just a little bit of alcohol.  She opened her mouth and her tongue made first contact.  He accepted the encouragement and forced his tongue into her mouth, taking over the kiss like he had her body.  He could hear and feel her moaning, her hands came up to cover his where they still worked at her breasts.  He moved closer, pushing his erection against her bottom.  He felt her stiffen, just slightly, so he backed up and broke the kiss.  He was pleased to hear her panting already, and he reluctantly let go of her breasts.  He grabbed her arm and spun her around.  Before she was all the way around, he pushed her back onto the bed.  She gasped, and there was a little nervous fear in the sound now.  So, rather than climbing on top of her, he knelt in front of her.  He put his hands at her ankles and bit back a groan as his hands ran unhindered up her impossibly smooth legs.  He went over her knees, onto her thighs, and buried his fingers between them at the top.  He pushed them apart and lowered his face.

“No!” she gasped, but her legs moved farther apart, and he wasn’t pushing on them.  He put his face to the lacy front of her panties; he could tell she was completely shaved.  He actually preferred there be just a little there, but he wasn’t about to stop and mention that.  He licked his lips and breathed in deep.

“Oh stop!  Guys don’t like the smell!”

Chris laughed and moved his thumbs to run along the edges of the lace.  “How would you know?”

“I—I read blogs.”

Chris chuckled and slipped a finger under the lace, working the digit to her entrance, running it up and down.

“Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I am totally uninterested in guys.  And I don’t want some guy slobbering down there.  You don’t even know what to do!  Guys think they do, but they don’t.  And even girls who are with guys may think they do, but they just don’t know any better.  As a lesbian who has been with girls and therefore knows what it’s like to be with someone who really knows what a girl wants, I know that you couldn’t possibly get it right!”

Chris kissed the lace that barely covered her.  His finger was drawing forth a warm wetness despite her words.

“Are you really issuing me a challenge as a way of getting me to stop?”

“N—no.  Oh, damn.”

She was wet enough now.  Chris pushed his finger inside her.  She gasped and drew her knees up, but still didn’t try to close her legs.  He withdrew his wet finger and slid it up until he found the nub.  She let out a small moan and twisted under him as he worked it.  He used his free hand to pull at the ties of her thong.  The underwear was gone in a second, and she was exposed to him.  He felt her sit up and he looked at her.  The expression on her face was mostly shocked disbelief that she’d let a man get that far between her legs.  Before her brain could process this into moving away from him, he parted her swollen lips and ran his tongue up her slit.  Her body tensed with the pleasure and her hand fell to his head.  Unable to grasp any hair, her nails dug into his scalp.  It didn’t hurt, not that he would have noticed.  He was lost in his own ecstasy.  A lot of guys didn’t like doing this, but he loved it.  He loved the smell.  He loved how hot a girl got and how slippery she became.  He loved the taste.  He opened his mouth wider and kissed her, his tongue plunging into her entrance.  She groaned and twisted again.  He grabbed her hips to hold her still and continued to lap up her sweetness.  She was good, so good.  He moved his lips up, latching onto her clitoris.  She moaned louder and bucked against him, but he held her steady.  He sucked on the nub, occasionally running his teeth over it.  He sucked harder, repetitively, and she screamed before throwing an arm over her mouth to quiet her cries.  He let go of one hip and put his finger back inside of her, and added a second.  He sucked and stroked her and then suddenly she thrust her hips up and grunted against her arm.  He felt her squeeze down around his fingers and then felt the tell tale peristaltic movements that were the sign she had truly achieved orgasm.  He eased her out of the pleasure, slowly rolling his fingers inside of her and licking gently at her clit.  She was panting and groaning softly, and shifting her hips side to side.  He sat up and removed his fingers.  He waited for her to look at him before he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He smiled and thought about saying something annoying about how guys knew what to do too, but decided against it.  He pulled himself up, his hands finding her breasts again.  He leaned forward and buried his face in the mounds.  The smell of roses was mixed with sweat and sex now.  He’d never be able to smell a rose in the same way again.  He turned his head and took a portion of her breast into his mouth.  Then he moved toward his ultimate goal, flicking his tongue out to tease her tip.  She whimpered and squirmed, but he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him.  He covered her breast with his mouth and sucked greedily.  His tongue swirled over her nipple and she pulled against him, not trying to get away exactly, but almost unable to bear the pleasure.  He pulled back and covered the damp flesh with his hand and moved to her other breast.  He gave it the same treatment as the other, laving at her nipple with his tongue.  He was such a breast man; probably mommy issues.  The only thing better than drinking in a woman from her source was burying himself in her luscious breasts.  It might be strange that intercourse itself was so low down on his list, but he loved knowing a woman’s body and how to make her writhe in pleasure.  Pleasing women.  It was his life’s goal after all.

He didn’t really want to, but he pulled away from her breasts because his desire to get back to her lips had been building.  He pulled himself up so that he was completely over her and looked down into her face.  She was flushed and still panting from the high he’d given her.  He slowly lowered himself down until his lips grazed hers.  Their eyes met for a moment.  Then he crushed their lips together as he tried to taste a new part of her.  She hadn’t quite caught her breath yet, so she left her mouth open to breathe as he ravished her lips and lapped at her mouth.  Then he grabbed her hips and pushed her farther onto the bed.  He expertly got his pants undone and pushed them and his boxers down his hips.  He placed the head of his engorged penis against her still shuddering body, and then slid it up, covering his length in her wetness.  He ran it back and forth, enjoying the feeling of finally having some stimulation of his own.

Caitlyn had caught her breath and was kissing his lips and pulling at his tie.  She worked some of the buttons of his shirt open and reached her hands inside.  He felt her explore his chest, her fingers finding his nipples and working them rhythmically.  Chris quickened the pace of his hips and pushed hard against her, stimulating her clitoris again and making her moan with each upward thrust.  Chris put his head down to her neck and started to lick the sweat from her beautiful skin.

“Are—aren’t you—going to put it in?” she gasped.  “It’s okay.  Layla and I used dildos before.  Though, none as big as yours feels.”

Chris grinned against her neck.  “Thanks for the compliment, but no, I’m not.”

She pushed against him to make him sit partially up and look at her.

“Why not?” she asked plaintively.

“I don’t have a condom.  Do you?”

“No.  Don’t usually use them with just two girls.”

“Well, then you see my dilemma.”

“Can’t you use the rhythm method?”

“I can, but I don’t.”

He resumed his movement and Caitlyn tried to frown, but wound up smiling as she felt his hard member glide in her slick heat.

“Oh, come on.  Just this once.”

“Caitlyn, do you really want me to have to take you to Planned Parenthood in a couple of months?”

“I’m in the wrong part of my cycle for that.”

“Yeah, well, who knows where you and Layla have been.”

“Don’t be a pussy.  The penetrating partner has practically negligible risk when it comes to STDs.”

“Why do you know that?”

“I did a project for health class—oh, God, oh, God!  Shit!  I’m—aannh!”

Chris kept moving even as she shuddered through a second orgasm.

“Oh, God damn you.  I did a project to prove how gross men are.  They are the worst spreaders of STDs. But it’s hard to catch it from just penetrating someone who is.  And besides!  I’m totally clean, you asshole!”

“Yeah, but am I?  I’m a gross man.”

She sat up.  “I don’t fucking care right now.”  She grasped his penis, very firmly, and he froze as the pleasure shot through him.  With just a touch of pain at the tight grip.  But that felt nice too.  Sheesh.  He was going to wind up like Scott if he kept this up.

Caitlyn guided him to her entrance and he was no longer responsible.  He’d tried, he really had.  He pushed the head against her, and pushed a little harder.  He felt her tense immediately as he pushed her open; her face wasn’t entirely pleasure filled now.

“I thought you’d said you’d used dildos before.”

“We have, but they were kind of small.”

“Is this really your first time with a guy?”

“Yes,” she replied in a small voice.

He leaned down and kissed her cheek.  “Just relax,” he said gently.  He felt her relax a little, and then he balanced his weight on one hand and used the other to massage her clitoris.  She reacted to the pleasure and her body instinctively relaxed and softened.  He pushed inside her, going slowly, but he didn’t stop until all eight inches were inside.  Then he paused and gave her a moment to recover.

“Oh, God.  This is so different from a dildo.  You’re like…hot.  I can feel it.”

“Different?” Chris murmured.  “Better?”

“Oh, God, yes.  So much better.  Now move,” she ordered him.

He moved in her, sliding easily in her hot, wet cavern.  But she was still tight.  So very tight.  Because technically, she was a virgin.  And this was so much better for him too.  He’d never been without a rubber before.  The difference was incredible.  He made short thrusts, not wanting to pull out of her.  She felt too good.  Then he felt her squirm impatiently, so he began to give her full thrusts, pushing himself upwards so that he worked her G-spot.  He felt sorry for the idiots out there who thought a girl’s clit was it.  If you were big enough and could push hard enough, you could really get a girl to lose her mind.  He did this now, watching Caitlyn’s face contort into unbridled ecstasy.  He was mesmerized by the rhythmic bouncing of her breasts—perfectly in time with his thrusts.  He felt himself losing it.  He shortened his movements and thrust harder.  Caitlyn arched her back suddenly and gripped his shirt with both hands; she screamed and locked her legs around him as she reached her third orgasm.  Chris used one hand to support them and the other he used to hold her body to his.  He let his head fall back as he emptied his seed into her.  He could feel himself release several shots into her, way more than usual as he kept coming even after the initial wave of pleasure rolled over him.  He jerked her once, twice, completely filling her, and then they collapsed onto the bed, utterly spent.

Chris lay on top of her for several minutes, allowing his breathing and heart rate to slow down.  He could still feel himself inside her, hot and content.  He could feel at this moment that he could go either way.  He could harden again easily and have her a second time without even having to pull out.  Or, he could let his member relax and pull out.  He should do the latter.  He didn’t have time for the former no matter how much he wanted it.  He sat up and gently pulled out.  They both groaned softly when the head popped out of her.

“Are you really done?” she moaned indecently.

“No.  But I have to get back.”

He flopped onto his back beside her and let his body cool down.  She turned her head and her lips brushed his shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked.

“More than okay.  But I bet I’ll be sore in the morning.”

Chris smiled.  “Me too.”

He inhaled deeply, held his breath, and then let it out.  He sat up.  Time to go.

“Hey, Chris.”

He turned to look at her, slightly surprised she knew his name.  “Yeah?”

“I don’t really have anything to compare it to, so I don’t really know.  But…you’re…kind of big, aren’t you?”

“Big?  Oh, you mean my…”

“Yeah.”

“Well.  It’s not infomercial worthy or anything.”

Caitlyn smiled and looked at him.  “Really?  You’re being modest?  You just seduced and nailed a lesbian.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s big.”  He hesitated as he looked her over.  “Did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah.  I did.  All of it.”

“Even the oral?  Since as a man I don’t know what to do?”

She laughed embarrassedly.  “Better than what I usually get.”

“Really?” he asked a little too excitedly.

“Well, yeah.  You were good because you were actually enjoying it.  I don’t think Layla really does.  I don’t think she’s really attracted to women.”

“Oh.  Then why is she a lesbian?”

“I don’t know.  It’s one of the things we fight about.”

“Hm.”

Chris got up and went to the bathroom.  He dampened a wash cloth and began to wipe himself down.  When he finished he turned back to the room and saw Caitlyn watching.  He blushed a little as he hurried back to the foot of the bed to get his boxers and pants.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s just weird.  Like, I know now what kind of pleasure it can give me, but I’m still just like ‘eh’ when I look at it.  It’s still kind of gross looking.”

Chris laughed and hiked his pants up.  “Thanks.”

Caitlyn stood up and Chris watched as she tied her thong back on.

“You’re just going—” he started.

“Going to what?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head and buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his pants.

She stepped into her dress and pulled it up.  “Zip me up?” she asked, holding her hair out of the way.

Chris stepped behind her and kissed his way up her spine as he zipped.  She giggled and let him help her adjust the fabric over her breasts.  Then she pushed him away.

“Enough of that, penis.  We’re done.”  She smiled at him.  “For now.”

Chris smiled back.  “You let me know if you’re ever having a wardrobe malfunction again, okay?”

She laughed, almost humorlessly.  “I probably will.”

Chris checked himself in the mirror.  He looked normal.  It was a good thing his hair wasn’t long enough to get “bed head.”

He opened the hotel room door for Caitlyn.

“After you.”

Caitlyn started to walk through and then suddenly slammed the door shut.  Chris pulled back, terribly alarmed.  Had she just come out of some sort of spell?  Was she going to castrate him now for defiling her?  She stepped close to him, nearly eye to eye with her heels on.  Her heels that had managed to stay on the whole time.

With her nose almost touching his she said, “Layla can never know of this.  _No one_ can ever know of this.”

“Chyeah, I know,” Chris couldn’t quite get his laugh out.  “Like I’m going to tell people I ditched my date at the prom to have unprotected sex with one of the prettiest girls in school.”  Chris turned thoughtful.  “Well…”

Caitlyn grabbed him by the tie.  “Chris Pelletier…” she growled menacingly.

He raised his hands in surrender.  “Okay, okay.  I got it.”

“I mean it.  You can’t tell your friends.  Especially you know who.  You can’t confess it to a priest.  You can’t even whisper it to God Herself.  Got it?”

Chris tilted his head as he processed her last few words.  “Uh, yeah.  Got it.”

“Okay then.”

She loosened her grip on his tie and let her eyes roam over his face.  Then she leaned close and kissed him.  She smiled against his lips.

“You taste like a girl.”

“Oh, shut-up!” he laughed, thoroughly entertained by her weird sense of humor.  He opened the door again and this time she walked through.

“So, what’s your last name?” he asked.

 

Sophia

 

Sophia completed yet another circuit of the ballroom.  She hadn’t seen Chris in almost half an hour.  She hadn’t thought anything of it for the first ten minutes.  Then she’d been wondering what was taking him so long the next ten.  Then she was angry for the next five.  And now she was worried that he’d slipped in the bathroom and hit his head and was bleeding out on the tile floor.  She’d almost left to go to the bathroom a couple of times to check on him, but she was too worried about walking in on some boys using the facilities.  But then, wouldn’t she feel worse if Chris died of blood loss because she was too worried about a momentary awkward encounter?  She should check on him.

Sophia took a determined stride toward the exit, and then she spotted Chris sitting at their table.  She exhaled in relief.  Thank goodness.  It had all been bravado.  She would have gotten to the bathroom door and listened to see if she heard any one gasping for help.  If he’d really been unconscious on the floor, she never would have found him.  But awake and well and in the ballroom was much more preferable.  Sophia cocked her head as she approached him.  His eyes looked a little unfocused and the fingers of one hand were resting on his lips.  Even though she was walking pretty much in front of him, she didn’t think he saw her.  She stopped in front of him and he didn’t react.

“Chris?”

His eyes cleared and he looked at her.  And he smiled.  Her heart thumped so hard against her chest it actually hurt.  She tried to smile back, hoping it didn’t look too shaky.  She had meant it: she did feel more comfortable around him than she had.  But sometimes if he smiled at her just the right way she felt like she was star struck.  She couldn’t imagine meeting someone famous and feeling any more nervous than she did around Chris.  He stood up and took her hand.

“Hi.  Sorry I was gone so long.  I—”

“Oh, it’s fine!” she cut him off, too eager to please him.  “I didn’t even notice.”

He gave her a funny look and a smile.  Then he raised an eyebrow at her.

“Okay.  Maybe I noticed a little.”

“I ran into Caitlyn by the bathrooms and she’d gotten her hair caught in her zipper.  I tried to help her out and it took forever to pull the hairs out of the teeth.”

“Ouch!” Sophia empathized, remembering a dress her grandmother had made her wear once that had tangled in her hair.  “I bet that sucks.  But Caitlyn who?”

“Caitlyn Bell.”

“Oh!  Really?  She’s here?”  Sophia leaned in close.  “With Layla here with Julian?” she muttered softly.

“I guess she was trying to win her back.”

“I don’t think it worked.  Last time I checked, they were having a great time together.”

“Yeah…”  Chris’ face suddenly became shuttered.  “So, um, I noticed they’ve gone ahead and opened the doors to the ballroom for the after party.  Do you want to go now?”

“Oh, well, the DJ said the next song would be the last, so…” she trailed off, hoping Chris would take the hint.

He smiled.  “Oh, yeah, sure.  Let’s stay for the last song.”

Chris sat down in a chair and Sophia looked around, noticing most the chairs were taken by people taking a break.  There was one on the other side of the table.  Should she drag it over, or just sit over there?  She took a step in that direction, but then Chris took her wrist and pulled her into his lap.  It was so casual for him, like he hadn’t even thought about it.  In fact, he was leaning an elbow on the table and resting his chin on his hand looking pensive about something completely unrelated to their position.  His other hand lay unmoving on her thigh.  And she sat rigid and hot.  Completely taken aback by being with him like this.  She closed her eyes and forced herself to take in some deep breaths, but it wasn’t really helping.  She shouldn’t read into this; he was just being nice so she wouldn’t have to stand.  But would he do this for someone who was _just_ a friend?  Her legs and arms started to feel sore because she was trying so hard not to move or put too much weight on him.  God, she’d dreamed about something like this and yet when it happened she was a total spaz.  Life wasn’t fair.

“Oh…hey.”

Sophia opened her eyes and saw that Julian and Layla had arrived at the table.  She wondered if something had happened.  Both of them looked so sober.  And they’d been smiling and laughing and hamming it up on the dance floor not long ago.

“So…are you leaving?” Chris asked softly.

Sophia would have turned to see what kind of face he was making, but she didn’t dare move in his lap.

“Yeah, I’m going to take her home.”

“Julian, I told you, I can take a taxi and I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I told you I was taking you home.”

Layla gave a little bob of her head but whether it carried a meaning of submission or “okay, whatever,” Sophia wasn’t sure.

“No way!  You guys are leaving?!”

Sophia let out a small squeak and shrank back into Chris as Scott came flying off the dance floor at them.

“Come on!  The party is just starting!  There’s a ball pit guys!  And jousting!  And sumo!  Sumooooo!”

Sophia saw Antoinette arrive in a much more subdued manner.  She put a hand on her hip as she looked at her hyper boyfriend.

“I thought you guys had a room,” Julian said.

“We do.  But we’ve got it all night.  Come on!”

Sophia squealed as she was practically thrown out of Chris’ lap when Scott grabbed him by the neck and hauled him to his feet.

“I call dibs on Chris!” he shouted.

Sophia watched the boys struggle good naturedly for a minute and then she looked at Antoinette.  The Amazon looked down at her.

“We have a hotel room and I’m wearing zero kind of underwear.  And he wants to sumo wrestle with his best friends.”

Sophia smiled.

Antoinette sighed.  “I wouldn’t call him gay, but he is some kind of queer.”

Sophia covered her mouth with a hand to hide a giggle.  Chris finally broke free of Scott and hid behind Julian.

“You should stay,” Layla said to Julian.  “Does miss out on any fun on my account.”

“Layla, I’m not letting you take a taxi home by yourself at midnight.”

“Why?” she said sharply.  “Because of—”

“No,” he cut her off.  “No.”

She stared up at him.  Sophia looked at Julian.  He looked so good with a normal hair color and in a tux.  Even the piercings looked somehow tamer than usual.  And he had such a—strong look on his face.  She blushed just at the thought of having that directed at her.  How could Layla stand it?  She looked at Scott.  He was looking a little perplexed by the looks passing between the two.  She glanced at Chris.  He was deliberately looking at the floor.

“You know what?” Layla suddenly said, “Why should I miss any fun on my account either?  I want to stay.”

“Really?!” Scott asked excitedly.  “I’ll do Chris second!  Let’s you and me sumo wrestle!”

Layla smiled at him, but she also looked a little scared.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Antoinette said.

“Aw, come on, honey.  We’re in those big inflatable suit things.  There’s like almost no actual contact.”

Antoinette crossed her arms and frowned.

“I don’t know if I can in this dress,” Layla said.  “But I would love to see Julian knock you off one of those jousting platforms.”

Scott let out a shocked noise of offense.  “Whatever!  I could totally take on Julian!”

“Yeah right!” everyone else said.  Including a couple of passersby who had heard nothing else but Scott’s last sentence.

He pouted and turned to Antoinette for comfort.  She gave it to him willingly.  Though Sophia had to wonder if she was really being nice or if she was trying to remind him that he could skip the games and just have sex with her impossibly hot body.  Sophia looked at the two girls near her.  She must look like a pink zit on their butts standing next to such beautiful women.  Where was her sister?

“All right then.  We’re all staying,” Julian said.

“Are you sure?” Chris said.  “I don’t want…anyone to feel uncomfortable.”

Sophia wondered what he meant.  And then she saw Layla deliberately catch his gaze and hold it.

“I’m okay.  Actually, I feel…pretty good.  Sometimes it’s good to finally let stuff out.  You know?  I’m fine.”

Sophia’s look of confusion was mirrored on Scott’s and Antoinette’s faces.

“What’s going on?” Scott asked.

“Nothing,” Julian, Chris, and Layla said together.

That just made the other three more suspicious.  But before anyone could do anything about the situation, Natalie and Jonah showed up.

“Hey!” Natalie said loudly and giggling.  Sophia looked at her sister.  Had she been drinking?  “So, the party, right?  Cool.  And like, the last song is next.  So, one more dance for everyone.”  She giggled again and Jonah giggled with her.  Yeah, they’d been drinking.

The DJ cut off the end of the song he’d been playing and announced in his cheesy and annoying way that it was the last dance.  All the students were instructed to find that special someone and snuggle up close.  Sophia glanced at Chris.  He came to her side and took her hand.

“Last dance?” she asked, trying to mask the slight sorrow in her voice.  Why was her crush moving to Chicago?  And would he catch her meaning?

Chris looked down at her and gave a slight shrug.  “Just for tonight.”

Sophia smiled, her heart once again speeding up to alarming rates.  She wouldn’t ask him to clarify his answer.  She wanted to be able to interpret it the way she wanted.

The music started to play and some couples turned to each other and started to dance.  The small group that stood at the back room listened, trying to figure out what song it was.

“Is this…” Julian said.

“Boyz II Men?” Chris finished.

“Oh, the _I’ll Make Love to You_ song?” Scott asked.

Then they heard the lyrics.  _It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday._

“Oh, good lord,” Antoinette said.

“Isn’t this about a funeral?” Natalie asked.

Sophia looked at Chris.  “You wanna just head to the party now?” she asked.

“Oh, absolutely.”

She squeal-laughed as Chris scooped her up and fairly ran with her toward the exit.

“Wait!  My purse!”

“Augh.”

He carried her back and let her pick it up off the table.  Then he turned and ran for the door again.  There appeared to be a mass exodus from the horrendous choice for the last song.  Sophia put an arm around Chris’ neck and turned her head to hide her red face in his shoulder.  She saw behind them the rest of the group gathering their things.  Then she saw Scott pointing at her and Chris and saying something to Antoinette.  She hit him on the head with her purse.

Just before they reached the other ballroom, Chris set her down on her feet.  He took her by the hand and smiled at her.  It was so nice to have his full attention.

“Hey, Chris.”

They turned to see who had addressed him.  Caitlyn stood with her very high heeled shoes dangling from her fingers by the elevators.

“Thanks again for tonight,” she said.

Chris let out a small laugh before he said, “My pleasure.”

Caitlyn caught Sophia’s eye and said, “Enjoy your turn.”  She gave her a little wink and then stepped onto the elevators.

Sophia creased her brow in confusion.  She looked at Chris.  He was smiling to himself.

“What do you think she meant?” she asked Chris.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “I’m not sure.  So, do you want to hide at one of the poker tables before Scott finds us and forces us to sumo wrestle?”

“No.  He only wants to sumo wrestle you.  And I’d like to see that.”

Chris frowned at her.  “You’re so mean.”

She just smiled sweetly at him.

“I’m gonna get you in the ball pit later.”

“Hollow threats,” she scoffed as she proceeded before him into the already rowdy room.

He followed behind her and said, “Well, well.  You are asking for it, aren’t you?  Oh, you’ll get it.  You won’t even see it coming.”

“Oh, please.  You wouldn’t have the—”

Sophia cut off, not just because she wasn’t entirely comfortable saying the word “balls” to him, but because he’d grabbed her hips to hold her still and kissed her neck.  Then he kept walking almost as he if he hadn’t even paused to do it.  She alternated between hot embarrassment and cool shivers of pleasure.  God, it wasn’t fair.  It was such a joke to him.  He had no idea what kind of effect he had on her.

He turned around to wait for her.  And he smirked in triumph.

Then again, maybe he did.

 

Julian

 

Julian once again spread himself out in the limo.  He was so used to being cramped in cars nowadays that he thoroughly enjoyed having the space to stretch his limbs.  He realized he was invading other people’s space a little bit, but he figured they could deal with it tonight if he had to deal with it every other day.  He also didn’t want to be cramped as he digested his large, heavy meal.  He wondered if Antoinette had thought through the fact that a large group would be crowding into a small space after eating a carbohydrate-filled, garlic-laden dinner when she’d made reservations at an Italian restaurant.  Layla slid onto the spot next to him and he raised an arm to put it behind her on the back of the seat.  He noticed out of the corner of his eye that she tensed with anxiousness, but he left his arm on the seat, so it wasn’t actually touching her.  As the others piled in, talking loudly and tittering excitedly about getting to the Hilton, she relaxed her shoulders centimeter by centimeter.

He heard a small “bing” come from his pocket.  It was the simple notification he used to indicate a message from Blue Boy.  Julian dug the phone out of his pocket and checked the message.  It was just Rob informing him his schedule was ready to be picked up.  He still hadn’t been issued a company phone and therefore couldn’t get an electronic copy of the schedule.  He wondered if that was because it really did take that long or if Rylan had something to do with it.  He knew Rylan liked him and didn’t mind him coming around.  But sometimes he got the impression that he didn’t really want Julian working for him.  Or at least, working in his industry.  Certainly Rylan didn’t think Julian was too pure for it?

He cleared the message and saw that Will had responded to his pictures and texts while they’d been at dinner.  To Layla’s picture he had responded with a grinning smiley text face and said “She never used to dress up like that for our dates.”  To Sophia’s he’d replied, “Ha, ha!  Is Chris going crazy yet?”  And for Antoinette’s he’d simply replied with “Good God.”

Julian smiled at that and used one hand to type back a response.  “Is she enough to bring you back to straightness?”

He held the phone in his hand a minute to see if Will would respond and looked up to see what everyone else was talking about.  Scott and Antoinette were off in their own little world, but Jonah was telling a story about horses or something, but it had everybody laughing.  He glanced at Layla.  She had relaxed completely and was almost touching him, but not quite.  The phone let out a Michael Jackson “hee hee.”  That was his notifier for Will.  He looked at the message.

“Even Ken said he would go straight for that.”

Julian was surprised into letting out a bark of laughter.  Jonah stopped his story and everyone looked at him.  Chris raised an eyebrow in question.

“Oh.  I, um.  I sent pictures of the girls to Will…”  The girls half-heartedly squealed in dismay, but they were probably curious what Will Harder had to say about them.  “He said that his…girlfriend said that she would switch sexual orientations for Antoinette.”

Everyone laughed and Antoinette looked more pleased than anything.

“Is she pretty?” Antoinette asked.

Julian made a face.  “I wouldn’t say pretty…”

“You’re saying Will Harder is dating someone unattractive?  God, it must be love.”

“I didn’t say unattractive…I just don’t think ‘pretty’ is a word I would use.”

“Wait, wait,” Scott said.  “You’ve met her?  When?  How?  Why won’t he let us meet her?”

“Oh…”  Julian had a mental “Oh, shit” moment.  “Um, I haven’t met her.  I just, saw a picture of her on his phone once.  That’s all.  Maybe it was a bad picture.”

Everyone seemed to accept this reasonable explanation.  Everyone except Chris and Scott who had small scowls on their faces.  Julian felt uneasy.  They were going to ask Will about it now he was sure.  And they weren’t going to let up about it.  And Julian was sure Ken wasn’t ready for a coming out party; he was worried how the pressure from his friends would affect Will’s relationship with Ken.  He didn’t want Will dating Ken and like Rylan expected the whole thing would blow up eventually, but he didn’t want to be the instrument, however unintentional, of its demise.  Whether it be sooner or later, Will would be devastated when it ended.  He might not be the same person anymore.  The loss of his parents had impacted Julian profoundly, and he hated to admit it, but he knew from experience that Will’s relationship with Ken would leave a permanent mark on him one way or another.

“Did he say anything about me?” Layla asked softly as the group returned to listening to the rest of Jonah’s story.

Julian looked down at her and grinned.

“You concerned with what Will Harder thinks of you?”

She smiled back.  “Well, it would be nice to hear what someone has to say since you haven’t mentioned it.”

Julian was surprised.  She’d said it gently, with a smile.  She was teasing him.  But he was more surprised that he hadn’t said anything to her about how she looked.

“I haven’t?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry.  I guess it’s all been in my head.  Or, I guess I thought my staring might have gotten the point across.”

“It has,” Layla said, her dark eyes sparkling as the dome light seemed to strike her in a favorable light where it washed everyone else out with a sickly yellow pall.  “But I want to hear it anyway.”

He turned just a little to face her, his arm curling of its own accord so that the tips of his fingers could just brush her bare shoulder.

“Layla,” he whispered, slightly embarrassed how breathy her name had sounded.  “Your superficial beauty is nothing compared to the profundity of your inner light.  It’s true it’s shrouded, but I can see it.  It’s warm and bright and only needs a little…security…and it would blaze forth.”  Her lips parted slightly in utter shock as she stared at him.  “And to emphasis how magnificent your inner splendor is, your superficial beauty is making my head spin with all the kinds of thoughts your father warned you teenage boys are always thinking.”

He smiled.  And it broke her from her stupor.  She laughed, and a light blush spread over her cheeks.

“Well, I am a little disappointed to realize that even the otherworldly Julian March can have such ordinary carnal thoughts, but your compliment is taken in the spirit in which it was given.”

He curled his fingers more, wanting more solid contact with her skin.  She didn’t pull away from him exactly, but he felt that anything further would be viewed as encroachment.  So, he relaxed his hand and let it fall away from her.

“All Will said is that you never used to dress up for him on your dates.”

“Uh!  That’s because we never went on dates.  All we ever did was—”

She snapped her mouth shut and flushed pink.  Julian grinned at her discomfort.

“Got it on in the janitor’s closet?”

She put a hand to her face and groaned softly in embarrassment.

“He told you about that?”

“Of course.”

She looked at him with a friendly frown.  “Of course,” she mimicked.  “Stupid boys.”

They smiled at each other and Julian was no longer concerned about how the evening would go.

As the night wore on, Julian was positive this was the best school dance he’d ever been “forced” to attend.  For one thing it was such a different dynamic being away from his usual friends.  In a way he missed it, well, he missed the boys.  But Layla was different from the girls he was used to hanging out with.  She truly didn’t care what other people thought about her.  But Julian didn’t think its source was self-assuredness and contentedness, but more from a desperate strength that kept people at a distance.  Regardless where it came from, it gave her the courage to ham it up with him on the dance floor.

They did the lawn mower, the cabbage patch, the sprinkler, the fish reel…every awesomely bad dance move they could think of.  Except the caterpillar.  Neither of them was dressed for that.  Even during the slow songs they would in engage in dramatic exaggerations of ballroom dances: waltzes and tangos that always required a stiff arm stance so that barely more than their hands and arms ever came into contact with each other.

After over a solid hour of dancing, they finally took their first break because Layla’s heel got caught in her hem.  They giggled as he helped her hop over to a wall so that she could balance against it as she worked the stiletto out of her dress.  Even though she was leaning heavily on the wall, he still put a hand to her elbow, and she didn’t pull away from him.  He absently ran his thumb over her elbow, liking how her skin was soft and silken even at the bend of her arm.

“Gosh!  This dress is going to be ruined,” she laughed.

“Well why on earth are you wearing four inch heels in the first place?”

“Should I be in flats?  I’d be staring at your bellybutton all night!”

She laughed as she looked up at him.  Julian smiled, but cast his eyes down to try to hide his blush.  Or at least not have to see her reaction if she noticed it.  He’d never been all that attracted to petite girls before.  And the more he grew, more and more girls seemed to fit that description when compared to him.  But Layla truly was small and thin and…not fragile, never that…but erotically delicate.  He was surprised to find that his feelings for Layla were changing from mild curiosity to real fondness.  He found that he was more drawn to the inner being he sensed within her than her physical body, but it surely didn’t hurt that this intriguing, stoic soul had such a lovely face.

Either she didn’t notice his self-conscious approbation or she politely pretended that she didn’t and finished extracting her shoe from the dress.

“Ah, well, that’s not too bad.  Shall we take a break?”

Julian nodded.  “I’ll get us some water.”

“And I’ll grab us some chairs by the table.”

“Okay.”

Neither moved.  Julian continued to run his thumb over her skin.  He was captivated by her dark eyes, her pale skin, the perfect shape of her lips.  He didn’t put much stock in the future anymore, so he followed his impulse at that moment.  He gripped her elbow gently, but firmly so she couldn’t pull away.  It would probably have been better executed if he didn’t have to bend so far down to do it, but he grazed her lips with his—surprisingly finding that the fleeting touch was exhilarating.  He stood up straight and released her as he looked down at her.  She put the tip of her tongue to her lower lip and slowly pulled it back in as he looked at him.

“Is that all?” she asked.

Julian swallowed.  “I didn’t think more would be welcome.”

“What makes you think that little was?”

Julian bit his tongue and braced himself to say what he was about to say.

“I don’t care if it was.  I wanted it.”

“And when a man isn’t offered what he wants, he takes it anyway.”

Julian almost choked on his exhalation of air.  “N-no.”

She gave him a small, half-smile.  “It’s alright, Julian.  Perhaps your ability to read people is what made you do it.  I was offering.”

“O-oh.”

“Were you going to get that water?” she asked lightly as she walked past him.

Julian clenched his hand into a fist.  He felt wretched.  He didn’t know she’d been willing.  He’d practically forced himself on her.  Then he shook his head at the thought.  He’d barely touched her.  It had been her reprimand of the whole male gender that had shamed him.  What had happened to her to make her that bitter?  But even as he pondered these darker thoughts, he could still feel the soft warmth of her lips on his and he couldn’t bring himself to regret the action.

He looked up and his whole body started in surprise.  Caitlyn stood about fifteen feet away, staring at him.  Her expression was blank.  Then she dropped her head, turned, and walked to an exit and left the ballroom.  Julian groaned and leaned against the wall.  How did Will do this?  It might be easier for him because to him it was a game.  And both Layla and Caitlyn were playing the same game.  So…did that mean Julian was serious about Layla?  No…?

He moved away from the wall and grabbed a couple of bottles of water off the refreshment table.  Shouldn’t he have a more definitive answer than that?  Was this just Eun-hee all over again?  He didn’t want that to happen with Layla; Eun-hee barely even acknowledged him when they passed in the halls at school.  Of course, if this turned out the same way, there was only a week and a half left of school so it wouldn’t be for long.  He looked at Layla’s profile as he approached the table and had a horrible sinking feeling that this wasn’t anything like his failed experiment at dating with Eun-hee.

Julian touched Layla’s neck with one of the bottles of water and she started away from the cold.  She gave him a playfully mean look and took the bottle.  He pulled a chair around so that when he sat down he was facing her.  She opened the cap and sipped from it, but kept her eyes on him.  He drank from his bottle and returned her scrutiny.  There was something wrong with him: all he wanted to do was kiss her again.  If what they had done had even constituted a kiss.

“Are you having fun?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes.  A lot.  Are you?”

“More fun than I’ve ever had at a school dance.”

Julian laughed.  “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Really?  I don’t believe you.  I can’t possibly be more fun than having Will around for your Gwen Stefani tributes.”

Julian drank from his bottle to try to hide his embarrassment.  Then he said, “I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about.”

“Mm-hmm.  So,” she tapped her fingers on the bottle cap and looked him over again.  “Is Will really with his older girlfriend tonight?”

“Well,” Julian felt his mood dampen, like it always did when he thought of Ken and Will.  “He’s with his _lover_.”

“Lover?” Layla questioned with a raise of her perfectly shaped brows.

Julian shrugged noncommittally.

“Is that serious or are you making fun of him?”

“Sadly, that’s being completely serious.”

Layla smiled, a little pityingly at him, and said, “Poor Julian.  You’re really in love with him, aren’t you?  It’s not just an act or a joke.”

Julian took in a deep breath.  He’d gotten a lot better about admitting that to himself, but it was still hard to say to other people.  “No, it’s not a joke.”

He couldn’t interpret her look as she ran a small, pretty finger around the water bottle cap.  For some reason, he felt compelled to make her understand that that didn’t mean he was unavailable for other people.

“But, I can feel that I’m getting over him.”

“Ah.”  Julian clutched his bottle.  Why did she keep looking at him like that: like he was a new specimen under a microscope?  “But do you want to?”

Julian shook his head.  “Want to what?”

“Do you want to get over him?”

Julian took the time to think about that.  It was a new thought.  He’d been aware for a while that his feelings for Will were changing, not lessening per se, but easing up and away from that possessive, desperate love he felt for him.  But he’d never stopped to consider if he was okay with that.  He’d loved Will for so long, had been in love with him for so long, that the idea of being able to love him just as much but in a different way didn’t seem possible.  He didn’t want to love him any less, but was romantic, passionate love the strongest kind of love?  He was starting to discover that it might not be.  That he might be able to love Will better if he could truly view him as a friend, as a brother.

He realized he’d been silent for quite a while, but Layla had that rare gift of being able to be patient without getting bored or annoyed.  He felt the ghost of a smile touch his lips as he looked in her dark eyes.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I do want to get over him.  I feel like there’s someone…better suited for me out there.  I’ll never be able to give him completely up, but I think—I know—that I need someone who needs me just as much as I need her.”

Layla lightly bit her lower lip.  “And it’s a ‘her’ you’re looking for?”

Julian smiled.  “Pretty sure.”

They kept their eyes on each other, seeing their faces anew in the dim lighting.  Then Layla sat back and crossed her legs, revealing a long, pale expanse of white skin through the fairly high slit of the gown.

“So.  What are you doing after graduation, Julian March?”

Julian sat back in his chair too.  “I haven’t decided yet.  I got into several schools, but I haven’t sent in an acceptance yet.”

“Don’t you have to…like…soon?”

“Yes.  Next week.  But, I haven’t made a decision yet.”

“What are you choices?”

“Well, I did get in to Virginia Tech and UVA and JMU.  I only applied for in state schools because I can’t afford out of state tuition or to get buried in student loans.  However, I couldn’t help but apply to the Savannah School of Art and Design and the Rhode Island School of Design.  I might be willing to take out a loan to go to one of those schools.”

“I didn’t know you applied to art schools.”

“Why would you?” Julian softened the question with a smile.

“Well, you’re not in any art classes.”

“I’m not in any of _yours_.  I took mostly painting and portraits.”

“Ah.  I did drawing and sculpture.  But I also did painting.”

“And you were in my class last year.”

Layla looked embarrassed.  “You were?  Oh, I’m sorry.  I—”

Julian shrugged.  “I’m not offended.  The AP art exam isn’t like math or science.  We just mailed in our works.”

“You did that too?  That was so annoying!  Everything had to be slides!”

“I know.  It’s so low-tech.”

They laughed, and Layla leaned forward a little.  “So, which would you choose?  SCAD or RISD?  I’m going to RISD.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.  I think the program is a little better organized at RISD.  And I think they have some connections with FIT in New York.”

“Oh, you want to do fashion?”

“Maybe, I don’t know.  I have ideas for how to make clothes structural and elegant, like in my head, but I hate sewing!”

She laughed and Julian was happy to see her excited and engaged in something.  He was also starting to feel…nervous?  Anxious?  He wasn’t sure what it was but every time he saw Layla smile he felt it in the pit of his stomach.

“So, which will you choose?”

She seemed firmly of the belief that he would choose an art school over any liberal arts school just because it had lower in-state tuition.

“Um, I’m not sure.  Though, RISD seems more compelling now that I know I’d have company.”

Layla smiled prettily at that and Julian felt himself blush and had no idea why.

“But…I think I might defer for a year.”

“Oh,” her face fell, just a little.  “Why?”

“I…I think I need a year off.”

“From what?  School?  I don’t think art school is like regular college.”

“No, I mean…from life.  Like, I wouldn’t mind getting some menial job and just living a very boring year.  So I can get my head back together.”

Layla reached out and took his hand.  Julian felt a sensation of euphoria so strong it almost made him nauseous.  He swallowed his…fear—why was he afraid of such a little girl?—and tried not to stare at where her hand touched his.

“Are you still,” she started and then shook her head.  “What a dumb question.  Of course you are.  But do you think being alone will be good for you?  I know the boys are all going away…?”

“Oh, I won’t be alone.  I have some friends where I work at my part time job.  I’m actually hoping my boss will take me on full time for a little while.”

“Where do you work?”

“Um.  It’s a gentlemen’s club.”

“A gentlemen’s club?”  She made a face and withdrew her hand.  “Do you work at a strip club?!”

“No, no,” Julian laughed.  “Brandy and cigars.  That sort of thing.”

“Oh.  That sounds…”

“Boring?  I’m talking about working on the business side of it.  I don’t deal with the clients.”

“Well, that certainly is interesting.  I’m not sure I ever would have thought that that’s something you would do.”

“I owe my boss.  My life, actually.  So, working for him is the least I can do.”

Layla studied him carefully.  She was obviously curious about that last declaration, but she wasn’t one to pry.  So, she took another sip of water.

“Well.  Do your year to clear your head.  And then come to RISD.  I’ll be your senior then and able to show you the ropes.”

Julian had actually been leaning toward sending his deferment to SCAD, but he said, “I never thought I’d look forward to a trip to Rhode Island so much.”

Layla smiled.  “Good.  I like it when I get my way.”  She stood and trailed a hand over his shoulders, her nails easily being felt on his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt.  His reaction this time wasn’t just in his head, but somewhere a little lower on his anatomy.  “Dance with me, Julian March.”

He stood up and obediently followed her to the dance floor.  The fast pop song ended and a slow song started.  She turned to face him and ran her hands up his chest.

“I hope you don’t think I was deliberately trying not to slow dance with you.  But you see…” she trailed off as her hands just barely reached the top of his shoulders.  “It would be a little awkward.”

Julian smiled.  He tried to find a reply, but his dry mouth wouldn’t cooperate.  She dropped her hands and circled his waist with her arms, leaning her face on his chest.  He hesitated only for a moment before putting his hands on her back and swaying gently back and forth in rhythm with the music.  She didn’t look at him the whole dance, but he didn’t mind.  He liked feeling her small body against his and her thin shoulders under his hands.  He absently curled her dark, glossy hair around a finger.

Best.  School dance.  Ever.

 

 

 

Layla

 

About another hour and the Prom Court announcement later, Layla found that she wasn’t ready to go home.  She’d been dreading this night ever since she asked Julian March to go with her but had had too much pride to back out.  She’d been worried about taking the group limo because that meant she would be stuck at the prom until everybody else went home.  And there had been talk of the After Prom Party.  She’d made sure to get enough cash to cover a taxi ride home and stuck it in her purse before she’d been picked up.  But now, she was having fun.  She was enjoying herself.  And most amazingly, she was enjoying Julian March’s company.  She’d spent more than one occasion talking to him recently and she wondered when she would get tired of him.  But it hadn’t happened tonight.  And she was considering staying for the After Prom Party.  Scott Ramsey had been talking non-stop about some sort of sumo wrestling outfits and she was curious despite herself.

She felt Julian lean down close to her and the heat of his very large body enveloped her.  There was that fear that was always there, but there was no repulsion.  She merely looked up to his face, finding him inches away, and absurdly hoping he was going to take liberties again and touch her.  His hand brushed her arm and she shivered.  Close, but not what she’d really wanted.

“I think I need another break,” he said to her.  “You want some water?”

She opened her mouth to reply, and then felt the dry stickiness of her lips from dehydration.  She just nodded.  Julian took her by the hand to lead her off the floor and her heart actually hurt with pleasure.  Where had these feelings come from?  And why him?  She understood her ability to accept Will: he was small, pretty, and had very cold hands.  Julian was the very epitome of everything she feared in men: he dwarfed her in size and could probably restrain her with one hand.  He was warm to the touch and even hot in certain places.  He was masculine and strong and had piercings and tattoos.  But when he smiled at her…God she couldn’t believe she was even thinking it but she was halfway to believing that it might not be impossible for her to possibly imagine herself being halfway in love with him.  And she really didn’t even know him.

They pulled up at the refreshment table and discovered that all the bottled water was gone.  All they had left was the sugary fruit punch.  The thought alone made her throat rebel.  She tugged on his hand and he bent close to her again.  She’d discovered that she could make him get close to her just by tugging on his hand.  Of course the ruse was that she was so short he had to bend down in order to hear her.  And quite possibly, that was true.  But it also put his face close to hers.  She supposed if she was with someone closer to her own height it wouldn’t be so novel, but she enjoyed it nonetheless—feeling the warmth from his face mingle with hers, loving how his shoulder touched hers.  It must be terribly uncomfortable for him to have to keep bending down so far so much.

“I think I saw some water fountains by the bathrooms,” she said.

He nodded.  “Let’s go then.  It might be cooler out there too.”

He stood up straight, but strengthened his hold on her hand as they left the ballroom.  They were rewarded with a blast of cool air.

“Mm, that does feel better,” he said.

“See, if you don’t like heat you shouldn’t go to Savannah.”

He laughed as he glanced back at her.  “I get it, I get it.  Rhode Island, here I come.”

“But not for another year?”  Layla was slightly shocked at how petulant her voice sounded.

He stopped in front of the water fountains and released her hand as he turned to look at her.  “I think I need that year.  You won’t forget about me?”

“I think that’s impossible, Julian March.”

He didn’t smile like she’d wanted him to.  He looked a little self-conscious and dropped his eyes.  She hoped he hadn’t taken that in a bad way.  She knew that despite his strength and indifference to others’ opinions he was a little sensitive about what people thought of him.  About his religion, his parents, and now she knew he was actually a little uncomfortable with his size.

“How tall are you?” she blurted out.  Then she winced.  Hadn’t she been trying not to make him feel uncomfortable about his insecurities?

“I think I hit 6’4” last week.”

“Wow.  You’re over a foot taller than me.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five foot one and a half inches,” she said proudly.

“Does that half an inch really make a difference?”

“It does to short people,” she mumbled.

He laughed and bent over to the taller of the two water fountains and drank.  She refused to let herself watch him or she might notice how long his eyelashes were and how supple his mouth was.  She bent over the shorter fountain and drank too.  They were both too thirsty to be self-conscious about slurping or taking a long time.  When they felt quenched, they straightened and Julian checked his watch.

“Well, this thing is supposed to be over in like fifteen or twenty minutes.  Do you want to head back in for the grand finale?  I’m sure this DJ has something terrible in mind.”

Layla laughed and fell into step beside him.  “He is awful.  Why do they keep hiring him?”

“I think he’s the principal’s nephew or something.  It’s the only thing that would explain it.”

“Do you,” she hesitated and then glanced at him.  “Do you want to stay for the After Prom Party?”

Before he could answer they heard an elevator ding as they approached it and the sounds of loud giggling as the doors open.

“Let me see it one more time.  It may be my last time.”

“Get your hands out of my pants, woman!”

Julian and Layla stopped and looked in the elevator.  Layla saw Caitlyn wearing the dress they’d picked out together.  She loved that color of green on her.  It showed her perfect, white shoulders.  Layla loved her skin.  She could spend hours just trailing her fingers over the silky texture of her shoulders and back.  Caitlyn was susceptible to being touched there.  Just the lightest feather of a touch floating across her sensitive skin could make her shiver and desire to be touched more.  That’s what she saw first.  Then she noticed that Caitlyn was pressed up against someone, probably male by the clothes, and had her fingers at his belt.  Caitlyn had to turn her head to look at the people who were looking at her because her lips, even though she’d been talking, had been pressed against the lips of the person.

When Caitlyn stepped back suddenly, guiltily, Layla had the vague thought that the person was Chris…what was his last name?  Will’s friend.  Julian’s friend.  One of his hands had been at her back.  The other had been more or less out of sight, but probably had been closer to Caitlyn’s breast than trying to stop her hands despite his words.

Layla gave just the slightest shake of her head to clear her vision.  But the scene before her didn’t change.  Caitlyn stood stock still, practically on the other side of the elevator from Chris now.  He looked stunned.  In her peripheral vision she could see Julian look at Chris in question.  He shrugged slightly.  And they both tried to repress grins.  Layla wanted to sigh in disgust.  _Boys_.

Caitlyn stepped forward off the elevator and Chris followed, but discreetly scuttled around to Julian’s other side.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Caitlyn said in a tone that suggested it was exactly what it looked like.

But what did it look like?  She’d been fooling around with a guy?  Playing with him?  That wasn’t something she would feel guilty about.  She loved to mess with guys.  Both when they were and were not dating.  They were toys to her.  She liked to rev them up and then watch them squirm in agony having been denied their release.  She glanced at Chris.  He didn’t seem to be in agony.  Quite the contrary, he looked quite satisfied.  Layla felt the knowledge hit her like a hard thud to the chest.  Had Caitlyn had sex…with a boy?

She felt hurt.  Not necessarily for the betrayal, since they weren’t currently dating, but because Caitlyn did something that Layla wasn’t sure she ever could.  And Caitlyn didn’t want it.  She really, _really_ wasn’t attracted to boys.  Why had she slept with one?  But Layla wouldn’t show that she was hurt.  She couldn’t trust her voice, so she just shrugged.  She saw immediately that that was the wrong thing to do.  Caitlyn’s eyes lit up with an anger so strong it bordered on rage.  She took a step closer.

“Even if it was,” Caitlyn said defiantly, “it’s none of your business.”

Layla kept her eyes focused on her throat.  She couldn’t look in her eyes.  “You’re right.  It’s none of my business.  We’re broken up.”

Caitlyn’s hands squeezed into fists.  “Don’t judge me for being with a guy!  Look at you!”

Involuntarily, Layla glanced at Julian.  He looked like he thought he should give them privacy, but that he also refused to abandon her.

She looked back at Caitlyn and kept her voice calm as she answered.  “I didn’t say anything.”

Caitlyn nearly choked on her words she was so angry.  “You are so self-righteous.  You think you’re entitled to everything because you’re so beautiful and everyone fawns over you.  You’re just a snob.  You choose to be with girls.  You like boys.  Just admit it already.”

“I don’t,” Layla protested softly.

“You do!” Caitlyn shouted.  “You’re not attracted to girls!  You’re not attracted to me!  You hate being with me!”

Layla felt the lines of her face harden and she deliberately met Caitlyn’s eyes while keeping her voice low and in control.  “That may be but it has nothing to with your physical appearance and everything to do with your personality.”

If Layla had thought Caitlyn was angry before, she now saw what “enraged” truly meant.  Caitlyn’s skin flushed red and she ground her teeth trying to keep back the snarling growl that was too far gone in anger to form sensible words.  She didn’t move closer to her, but her whole body was shaking.  Out of the corner of her eye she actually saw Julian and Chris back a little away from the volcano that was about to blow.

“You’re such a fake!” Caitlyn cried.  Layla felt a sudden rush of pity for her former girlfriend.  It wasn’t the rage making her voice shake; it was despair and unhappiness that had overtaken it.  “You’re not a damn lesbian at all!  Why do you even bother?  It is a game to you?  Is it a joke?  Because it’s not for me!  This is who I am and who I can only be!  I don’t have the option like you do.  So why don’t you just leave me alone and go be with boys!”

“I’m afraid of boys,” Layla said, not wanting to get drawn into Caitlyn’s emotional storm, but also wanting to let her know that it wasn’t a choice for her either.

“That is so stupid, Layla.  Stop spewing that same bullshit!  You’re just a stuck up, whiney little brat with overprotective parents.  You need to grow up and get over it!”

“Maybe I do!” Layla returned, feeling she was talking more to herself than to Caitlyn.

“Oh, you think?!  Finally!  It’s about time you stopped being a selfish bitch!  You need to get your neurosis under control so that you don’t use more people like you did me!”

Layla wanted to say something, anything to make her shut-up.  To make her listen and to understand.  She thought she’d say, “I didn’t use you.”  Or, “You’re wrong.”  Just something to make her hold her tongue for two seconds.

“I was raped!”

Her voice, but fortunately not the word, echoed down the corridor.  The rage was gone from Caitlyn’s face.  The color had receded and she was pale and speechless.  At last.  So were the boys.  She shuddered to think of them being present for this, but she couldn’t stop now.

“I was raped,” she said again, much quieter.  “When I was eleven years old, I was abducted and raped for over an hour in the back of a van.  Thankfully, instead of killing me, he let me go.  And ever since…I’ve been afraid of men.”

No one spoke, but thankfully the corridor wasn’t ringing in silence.  They could hear the bass from the music playing in the ballroom.  They could hear the soft murmur of the adults setting up for the party.  The elevator doors of the car Chris and Caitlyn had been on closed and dinged as it went on its way to another floor.  Layla didn’t dare glance at the boys; Caitlyn was still deathly white, her face pinched in horror.  Or was it disgust?  At the man or at her?  She’d always felt that if people knew they wouldn’t be able to look at her the same way again.  That she’d be this tainted, infected thing.

“Why…” Caitlyn’s voice sounded low and hoarse.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Layla met her eyes briefly and saw the shock, sympathy…and pity in them.  This wasn’t how she’d imagined telling Caitlyn.  Actually, she’d never imagined it because she thought she’d never tell anyone.  But now that it was happening, she should at least explain as much as she could to her.  Layla dropped her eyes and refused to acknowledge how badly it had hurt though.  She couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that in front of boys.  So, she shrugged.

“I never told anybody except my parents.  Not even my sisters know the whole story.”

Layla glanced up again.  Caitlyn had a hand to her mouth and tears shimmered in the corners of her eyes.  She looked effulgent.  Layla looked away.

“I know I have issues,” she continued softly, trying to organize her thoughts in a way that wouldn’t reveal too much but that also wouldn’t hurt Caitlyn further.  “I never saw a therapist afterwards.  I probably should have.”  She laughed softly.  “Definitely should have.  But, recently, I found that I was getting…better around boys.  Not fixed, but the fear wasn’t as strong.  The repulsion didn’t churn in my stomach just to stand near them.  I thought that meant I was finally starting to get over it a little bit.  And I just wanted to see if I could start acting like a normal human being again.  That’s why I pushed myself to spend more time around boys.  To see if I could handle it.

“But, Caitlyn, I need you to understand that I never used you.  I was happy to be able to be close to someone.  To be intimate—both emotionally and physically—with someone that I felt safe with.  I do like you, Caitlyn.  And I even liked you in that way.  I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

She finally looked up again.  Caitlyn hadn’t moved: her hand still covered her mouth and tears fell down her cheeks.  She looked exquisite in the soft incandescent lights.  Almost like a Hollywood starlet giving her first Oscar-worthy performance.  Layla didn’t think the emotion was faked at all; she was just so beautiful.  She waited, but Caitlyn couldn’t seem to find any words.  So, she turned slowly and walked away.  She wasn’t sure where she was going at first.  She paused somewhere between the doors that led to the dance, the doors to the party, and the doors to the exit.  Then she felt a hand at her elbow, guiding her toward the wall that wasn’t near any of the doors.  She looked up and found Julian beside her.  She’d forgotten about him.  He looked down at her from his towering height, but his face was confusingly neutral.  He looked compassionate, but he didn’t look like he felt particularly sorry for her.  She knew it was unreasonable, but she felt a little irked by his lack of repugnance and wanted to try to pull it out of him.

“I’m sorry I dumped all of this on you,” she said, wanting to see his reaction as she reminded him of what she’d revealed.

“No, don’t be.  I’m sorry I invaded your privacy.”

She felt a small frown on her face and didn’t know why.  “I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t want you to know.  I probably could have done without Chris being there, but if you trust him not to say anything then I guess that’s good enough.”

Julian gave a firm shake of his head.  “He would never.  Not even to the other two.”

She nodded vaguely.

“Does Will know?” he asked.

“No,” she said sharply.  Not out of anger, but out of fear that Julian might make the assumption and speak to him about it.  For some reason she didn’t want Will to think of her as damaged.

Julian put out a calming hand.  “He won’t find out from either of us.”

Layla nodded.  They were quiet for a couple of long minutes.  Then she heard him shift.  He was probably uncomfortable and just wanted to get away from her.

“You know, I brought some money,” she said.  “I can take a taxi home.  I think that would be best—”

“I’ll go with you.  I mean, I’ll take you home if you’re ready to go.”

“No, you don’t have to come.  It’s a short ride.  I—”

“Layla.”

She looked up to see his face when she heard his slightly admonishing tone.  He still looked concerned, but impassive.  Damn it.  Didn’t her tragic tale mean anything to him?  And why did she care if it did or didn’t?

“I’m not letting you go home by yourself at this hour.  Even if you were only going across the street.”

She tried to think of a response to that.  Or at least a reason why he had no say in what she did.  Nothing was coming to her and he gnawed gently on his lower lip (carefully around the lip ring) for a moment and then spoke before she could come up with even a lame response for why she didn’t have to listen to him.

“You know…I know it’s not the same, like, _at all_ …but I’ve been through a pretty traumatic experience.  If you need someone, maybe we can talk about your feelings.  Not like, we need to discuss what happened.  Just, about what resulted from those actions.  I can understand the crushing weight of having something horrible hanging over you.”

Layla examined his face.  He was still calm, unperturbed.  Almost like he was used to hearing other people’s horror stories.

“Or, if you don’t feel comfortable with me, I can recommend a really good psychiatrist.  Two actually.  I guess you would prefer a female, huh?”

Layla had always railed against the idea of seeing a therapist.  There was nothing wrong with _her_ after all.  She wasn’t the freak pervert who raped little children.  But suddenly it didn’t seem like such a horrible idea now that she knew someone else who had seen a shrink.  Possibly two it sounded like.  And if he was willing to recommend them, he surely didn’t see any shame in it.  Also, the idea of telling someone about it didn’t seem as daunting now.  She’d just told three people and she felt…less weary.  That was three people she didn’t have to pretend to be normal for anymore.  Layla looked up into Julian’s face, seeing past the make-up and the piercings to the odd but intriguing angles that made him handsome. 

 _God_ , she laughed to herself, _I am attracted to him.  He is…really hot._

She smiled at her thoughts.  Julian raised an eyebrow.

“You know, I’ve been avoiding the whole thing all my life.  I let myself think about it every now and then, and I thought that meant I wasn’t repressing and that I was coping with it.  But, I don’t think I’ve been doing myself any good.  Because I’ve never spoken about it to anyone.  Or about what it made me feel.  I’m really not getting better, so maybe it’s time I tried something new.  Maybe I should try talking about it with someone.”

Julian nodded confidently, as if he was glad she’d made the right decision.  “Well, I’m here if you want to talk.  Or I can give you the contact information for my psychiatrist.”

“I appreciate that.  I think…I might take you up on that.”

“I hope you will.  So…do you want to go home?”

“Um…”  She _should_ go home.  Part of her wanted to.  But part of her worried that after this night she wouldn’t have a reason to talk to Julian again.  School would end, she would spend the summer in the city and he in the suburbs, and then she would go to school.  And he wouldn’t look her up in a year if he even did wind up going to RISD.

“Let’s go inside to the table so you can get your purse,” Julian said.  “And then we can make a decision.”

He smiled kindly and she smiled back and nodded.  He put a hand to the small of her back to lead her inside.  The touch made her hyperaware of his proximity.  But for once, there was no concern that this nasty male might try to do something with her.  It was disappointment that in knowing what he did now, he might _not_ try something with her.  And God help her—she wanted him to try something.

 

Will

 

Will tried to finish texting Julian back something snarky to his smarmy question.  Jealousy was such an ugly emotion.  The phone tilted in his grip and he couldn’t reach the “A” key with his thumb, so he left his keys in the doorknob and held the phone with both hands to finish his message.  The door opened while he was still typing, so he didn’t look up right away.  Not even at the huffy sigh that greeted him.

“At the _hope_ of sounding like an old fogey, you kids and your texting these days.”

Will smiled at his lover’s admonishment, and then hit send.  He looked up, but his playful reply never made it to his lips.

“Omigod.”  Will put a hand to his mouth.  Just above and below Ken’s left eye at an angle were fading, fairly large bruises.  The purple was mostly gone and it was yellowy greenish ugliness now.  Ken had told him he’d hurt himself when he’d smashed into the door after Autumn Rose’s sneak attack, but he hadn’t thought he’d _really_ hurt himself.  Will reached up tentatively with a hand and tenderly caressed the bruise above his eye.  He bit hard on his lips to keep from laughing outright.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Ken grumpily, but weakly, slapped his hand away.

“Oh don’t even,” he grumbled irritably.  “She said that _you_ put her up to it.”

“I just told her to confess her love to you so that you could turn her down flat once and for all.  I gave her _explicit_ instructions not to try to kiss you.”

“Well, that part didn’t get through,” he said with an injured air, looking sulky.

Will coughed into his hand to hide his smile and disguise his laugh.  Ken wasn’t fooled.

“Sorry,” he offered.

Ken frowned, but backed up a little so Will could enter.  As soon as he was in though, Ken backed him gently up against the door and kissed him.  Will put his hands to his face, and lovingly stroked his jaw and neck.  Ken bent his knees and then got Will around the waist, hoisting him up so that he could stand straight, supporting most of Will’s weight against the door after he wrapped his legs around him.  The kiss was easy, relaxed.  Will pulled back from his lips and carefully kissed the bruise on his cheek, and then above his eye, Ken slightly bending his head toward him.

“Does it still hurt?” he murmured, his lips never leaving his skin.

“No, not really.”

“Poor baby,” Will intoned softly, burying his fingers in Ken’s hair, which was gel free.

Ken buried his face in Will’s neck, giving light kisses, occasionally grazing his teeth along the white skin while he breathed him in.  Then Will’s phone beeped at him.  Ken grunted in disapproval, but set Will back on his feet.  Will pulled out his phone to check the message.

“You see,” Ken grumped, “if you would just call each other you could finish a conversation rather than having this incessant beeping going on.”

“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t get the pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“It’s prom night.  Julian sent me pictures of the girls.”

“Le’me see.”

Will turned so he could look at the pictures with him.  The first was of Layla in a slinky black dress that somehow made her look tall.  Maybe it was those heels.

“Who’s that?”

“Layla McDermott.  She’s Julian’ date.  She’s a lesbian.”

“Unh-huh.  The one you got to third base with in a bathroom?”

“No.  It was a janitor’s closet.”

“Hn.”

“Ah, this one is Sophia.  She’s Chris’ date.  He’s trying his best not to encourage her crush on him, but he’s kinda got a Lolita complex.”

Ken let out a soft scoffing noise.  “Is he old enough for that term to even apply?”

Will shrugged as he typed back responses to each picture.  Then he switched over to Antoinette.

“Good God,” Will stated.

“What?”

Ken took the phone and examined it.  “Did someone hire an escort?”

“No.  That’s Scott’s girlfriend.  She’s in high school with us.”

“No way.”

Will nodded and took his phone back to send Julian his reply.  “I know right?”

“And your blond friend is dating her?”

“Yep.”

“How’d he manage that?  I mean, he’s cute and all, in a tortured puppy dog kind of way, but—”

“We’ve been wondering the same thing.  He says he was nice to her when she was ugly.”

“Ah,” Ken murmured sagely.  “That could explain it.  Why are you still looking at it?” he asked testily.

Will put the phone in his pocket.  “I’m not.”  He scratched his head, trying to hide his smile.  Ken frowned at him.  “What?  Come on,” he said.  “Even you couldn’t say no to that.”

Ken laughed and shook his head.  “You may be right.”

“What?!”

“I’m just saying I might not have to fake it quite as much with someone like her.”

“Mm-hmm,” Will said with narrowed eyes.

“Never mind all that and come help me.  I bought some salmon filets.  They shouldn’t sit out long.”

Will capitulated gracefully.  He didn’t really want to discuss how willing Ken was to be with women anyway.  “Okay.”

Ken used a hand to tilt Will’s face up and kissed him again, and then he moved away toward the kitchen.  Will dropped his bag off at the dining table and realized he’d left his keys in the door.  He opened the door a crack and just reached out a hand to grab the keys.  He paused when he heard voices talking.

“I just don’t know what you’re upset about,” said a cool, female voice.

“I just want to know what male friends of yours stop by but can’t come up when you aren’t there.”  This voice was deep, gruff, and male.  “You shouldn’t have any male friends that wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing me.  That means they aren’t just friends.  Or they want something more.”

“I told you.  It was a patient.  Why on earth would he stop to talk to you when he needed a psychiatrist?  You’re a dentist, Barry.  You could hardly help him.”

“Your patients shouldn’t be stopping by your—”

The conversation cut off as an apartment door closed.  Will grinned.  Julian ought to be ashamed of himself, coming in between two people like that.  He shut the door and dropped his keys in his bag.  Ken was already seasoning the filets and Will saw that he had gotten out a cutting board, a sharp knife, and a pile of vegetables that needed dicing.  Will knew that was for him.  He washed his hands without having to be told and began his work.  He wondered if Ken would ever let him do more than preparation.  Not that he really wanted to—Ken had been almost as unsuccessful at getting Will interested in cooking as his father had—but every now and then it might be nice to do something other than cutting and stirring.  Ken set his fish aside and began combining things in a skillet to make a sauce.

“What’s with the flowers?” Will asked, trying to break through Ken’s cooking mind barrier.

“Hmm?”  He looked at Will and then glanced over his shoulder at the small vase sitting on the raised portion of the island.  Three orange Gerber daisies that were almost too tall for the vase hung precariously over the lip.

“Oh.”  Ken made a face that was somewhere between a smile and a grimace.  “Kennedy stopped by yesterday and I had to explain the bruises.  She gave me three of the flowers in her bouquet to make me feel better.”

“Why did she have a bouquet?”

“Apparently her new boyfriend likes to ‘shower her with affection.’  Or something.  Baby, will you get a bottle of white wine out the pantry?”

Will put down his knife.  “Any particular one?”

“Just one from the floor.  Cooking wine.”

Will went obediently to the pantry and wondered exactly how much Ken’s “cooking wines” cost.  He was pretty sure they were of better quality than what most people drank.

“Hey, can I get out a red to drink?” Will asked, poking around in the pantry.

“Red doesn’t really go with fish.”

“Well, just for before dinner then.”

“Are you turning into a wino, my love?”

Will tsked at his back.  “ _No_.”

“Get the pinot noir.  I’d like to give it a try.”

Will searched through the ten or fifteen bottles of red wine on the racks on the bottom shelf of the pantry.  Who was Ken calling a wino anyway?  He found two bottles of pinot noir and pulled out the one with the older year.  He delivered the white into Ken’s waiting hands and went in search of a corkscrew.  Will had figured Ken would be one of those people who owned the fancy hands free bottle openers, but he was a purist and liked to do it by old fashioned corkscrew.  He took the tool from Will’s hand and expertly and quickly opened the bottle, pouring a splash, and then another, into his skillet.  Will was still working on getting the foil off his bottle.  Once he had enough off, he started work with the corkscrew.

“Don’t ruin the cork,” Ken warned.

“It won’t matter if we do.  We’ll probably finish it off anyway.”

Ken smiled and shook his head, but didn’t comment.  Will got the screw all the way in and began to pull.  It didn’t budge.  He pulled harder.  Nothing.  Will wiped his hands off on a towel and tried again.  Nothing.  He put the bottle between his legs and pulled with both hands, grunting as he strained against the stubborn cork.

“Do you need help?” Ken asked, turning to him.

There was a loud “pop” as the cork came out and Will obeyed Newton’s laws and fell back from the force of pulling it out.  He grumbled and grabbed the neck of the bottle and stood up straight.

“Well, that was really stuck in there—”

Will looked up.  Ken stood still, red wine dripping off his nose and making several large stains on his white dress shirt.  Will put the bottle down and tore off a paper towel from the roll.  He dabbed the wine off Ken’s face, rolling his lips in so he wouldn’t laugh.

“Sorry.”

Ken let out a small laugh.  “It’s all right.”  He started to unbutton his shirt.  “I’m going to get this soaking.”

“Yes, you better hurry,” Will said mildly.  “If this one gets ruined you’ll only have ninety-seven left.”

Ken let out a noise of displeased annoyance and pulled the shirt off his shoulders.  “Will you get me a shirt, please?”

“Are you sure you need one?” Will asked with a laconic smile just this side of a leer.

Ken laughed.  “I would do anything to please you, my sweet, but it’s dangerous to cook naked.”

Will smiled and headed for the bedroom.  “Let me guess.  That’s something else you learned with Rylan.”

“I never cooked for Rylan,” he said as he disappeared into the utility room with his ruined shirt.

Will was pleased.  He had a part of Ken Rylan never had.  Will walked into the closet and bypassed all the dress shirts.  Why was Ken wearing a dress shirt on a Saturday?  Strange creature.  He pulled out one of his pretentious brand name long sleeved shirts.  He’d love to see him in jeans and a T-shirt just once.  Maybe he should buy him some clothes for Christmas.  Will saw the green and red boxes that essentially constituted Ken’s photo albums under their pile of sweaters.  He turned and left the closet, wondering if he could ask what he wanted to ask.  Ken had never seemed uncomfortable or unwilling to discuss his past relationships with Will, but he always had to be asked.  He never volunteered information.

When he returned to the kitchen, Ken was still in the utility room, so he left the shirt on the island and stirred the sauce in the skillet.  It wasn’t bubbling.  He must have turned off the heat before he left, so Will returned to chopping vegetables.  When Ken finally returned (he must have sat there and scrubbed and worked at the stains instead of just letting it soak) Will didn’t have to turn around to see him putting on the shirt and joining him by the stove.  Just the sounds of cloth and the tread of feet was enough for him to picture his lover perfectly.  He finally moved his eyes to look at him as he started up the gas burner under the sauce again.  Ken gave the pan a shake and then looked at him.

“What?”

Will smiled and focused on cutting again.  “Nothing.”

Ken glanced at his work.  “Smaller.”

Will made a face, but began to re-cut some of the larger pieces without protest.

“Hey, Ken?”

“Yes, mi corazón?”

Will almost laughed at the new term of endearment.  “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything, pet.”

Will took a moment to work out how to phrase the question, but then just decided bluntness was the best approach.  “I was wondering about Devon…”  He concentrated on his vegetables.  “If it was such a bad break up, why did you keep those pictures?”

“Ah.  Well.  It was three years of my life.  It was kind of hard to let go.”

“Really?” Will asked with mild surprise.  “If that had happened to me, I would have burned them.”

“I won’t ever do that.  It wasn’t all bad memories.  Actually, most of those three years are some of the happiest of my life.  It was just one really bad memory at the end.  That doesn’t change the good ones.”

“I think it changes them significantly.  Wouldn’t it make you question if it was all fake?”

Ken shrugged.  “I don’t believe it was.”

Will frowned and put down his knife to wait for further inspection of his work.  He watched Ken taste his sauce.  He seemed satisfied with it.

“I know I’ve asked before, but will you put a picture of me in the red box?”

Ken laughed and turned down the heat on the sauce.  “Grab the fish please.”  Will turned to grab the plate and when he turned back he saw that Ken had left the kitchen.  He held the plate in his hand.  He didn’t know if the fish was going in the sauce or a different pan.  Ken dug around in his briefcase, which was by his end of the couch, and returned with his cell phone in hand.

“I’ll do one better,” he said, holding up the device.  “I’ll put one on my phone.”

He snapped a button and Will could do nothing with the fish in his hands.  Ken laughed at the picture.

“Let me see it.”

Ken showed it to him: he looked bewildered and slightly cross-eyed holding his plate of fish filets.  Will made a face.

“Take a different one!”

“No way.  I love this one.”

He put his phone on the island and kissed Will’s cheek as he took the plate from him.  He put the fish in the pan with the sauce and tilted it at an angle, using a spoon to constantly throw the sauce over the filets.

“There’s an index card with a recipe for a dressing for the vegetables over there.  Can you make it up, please?”

“Sure,” Will said, still eyeing the phone with the bad picture.  If he deleted it would that force Ken to take another one or would he simply remain deleted forever?

“Can I take one of you?  On my phone?” Will asked as he located the recipe card and began to assemble the ingredients.

“Sure.”

Will wondered if this was a sign that maybe Ken was considering being at little more public about their relationship.  Or at least, a little less secretive.  Or maybe he figured that if he could postpone the picture until after dinner, he could seduce him into bed and make him forget about it.  Will growled at himself.  He shouldn’t think Ken would be that disingenuous.

“What was Devon’s last name?” Will asked as he measured olive oil.

“Why, you gonna look him up and yell at him for hurting me?”  Ken said it lightly, but he was too busy poaching his fish to look at Will.

“No.  I was just curious about his ethnicity.  It was hard to tell in the pictures.”

“Oh.  Well, his last name was Grainger.  I think he was just an olive-complexioned white guy.”

“He wasn’t Hispanic?”

“I don’t think so.  Maybe a little on his mother’s side.  Why are you so curious about him all of a sudden?”

Will shrugged.  “Just am.  What was Madeline’s last name?”

Ken finally stopped his ladling and looked at Will.  “Do you want to talk to them?”

“No.  I’m just curious,” Will said, keeping his eyes on the task of stirring the dressing he’d just made.

“What’s Liz’s last name?” Ken asked.

“Holloway.”

“Hn.  Cute blonde, right?”

“Yep.”

Ken grunted.  “Cute is a little mild,” he said plaintively.

Will glanced at him.  “What?”

“Do you like blondes?” Ken asked, serving the filets onto individual plates.

Will dumped his chopped vegetables into a bowl and began tossing them in the dressing.

“Nah.  I’m not really that picky.”

Ken laughed.  “Apparently.  You don’t even discriminate based on gender.”

“I’m very egalitarian like that.”

The fish was good, if (according to Ken) a little overcooked.  The sauce was fantastic and Will was very impressed with his dressing making skills.  He also didn’t think there was anything wrong with drinking red wine with fish.  It tasted all right to him.  When Will was finally able to snuggle up next to Ken on the couch (after doing the dishes, of course) he didn’t even mind that Ken was working.

Will had burrowed his way under one of Ken’s arms and hugged his torso while he laid his head on his shoulder.  Ken allowed him to do so because he could still partially reach around him to the left side of the laptop keyboard.  Will used a hand to slowly rub Ken’s chest through his shirt.  Ken turned his head slightly and gave Will a sideways kiss on his head, but continued to work.

“So…” Will said, “are you going to come to my graduation?”

“Uh…I don’t think that’s such a good idea, love.”

“Why?  You wouldn’t stand out any worse than a guy in a suit at a high school soccer match.”

“Not true.  People who know you also know who I am now.  Mainly, your parents.  And I could have no good reason for being there.”

“You could have a cousin who’s graduating or something.”

“I suppose.  But, I think it would be best if I sat that one out.”

Will stopped moving his hand.  “Okay.”

“It’s next week, right?”

“Un, no.  Week after.  Last day of school is a week from Wednesday.  Graduation is Friday.”

“Why is it so close to prom?”

“Some pipes burst and flooded the gym.  They had to reschedule and find a new venue.  The Hilton was only free on this Saturday.”

“Why was a private school being so cheap as to have their prom in the gym?”

“Because they blew all the funds on the After Prom Party.”

“The what?”

“It’s a party the school holds after the prom so that the students will be somewhere safe and chaperoned and in theory not drinking or having sex.  That’s why they picked the gym.  At some place like the Hilton, a lot of people probably got rooms.  I know Scott did.”

Ken chuckled.  “Can’t say I blame him.”

As if on cue, Will’s phone dinged and he pulled it out of his pocket to check the message from Julian.

“What is it?” Ken asked.

“Julian’s asking me if Antoinette could turn me straight again.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Will it bother you if I say yes?”

Ken glanced down at him abruptly, but then smiled.  “Nah.  I could go straight for that.”

Will chuckled and typed that response.

“Put that away,” Ken commanded gently.

Will didn’t wait for a reply from Julian and complied, putting it on silent.  Then he leaned forward a little to toss it onto the coffee table before settling back into Ken’s embrace.  Will glanced at Ken’s work: it was all numbers and spreadsheets.  He looked away.  His eyes caught on the flowers in their small vase again.

“So, Kennedy’s new boyfriend…this is Stanislav, right?”

“Oh.  No.  I didn’t tell you?  Stan is out.  This is Vikram.”

“Vikram?”

“Yep.”

“Have you met him?”

“I’ve met all of her boyfriends before.  They’re all the same.  Struggling artists with hot bodies.  But they’re lazy and un-ambitious.  And Kennedy has too much West in her to put up with that for long.”

“You know, she’s had so many and they change so often…maybe she’s a lesbian.”

Ken chuckled.  “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?  That’s your MO, isn’t it?”

“Not really.  I dated a lot of the girls I went out with for much longer than her longest relationship has ever been.  Plus, if she were a lesbian, I wouldn’t have the searing mental image that confirms without question she is not a lesbian.”

Will’s brow creased as he thought.  “What do you mean?”

He looked up at Ken and he looked back down at him with a meaningful expression.

“Oh!  Ew!  You walked in on your sister?!  That’s so pervy!”

“Hey!  They were doing it in _my_ bed!”

“Ew!”

“I _know_!”

“But you know…that makes it seem like she was _trying_ to get caught.  Are you sure?”

“A lesbian using a guy as a beard, while maybe willing to have sex with him to help purport the ruse, will not engage in a ménage á trois…with two other guys.”

“Oh, ew.  Two at once?”

“Stop making me think about it!”

Will laughed.  “Sorry.  Now I’m even gladder than usual that I’m an only child.  My parents are bad enough.”

Ken let out an amused, snuffling snort.  “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?  Innuendo, lingering looks, patronizing smiles.  I’ve never actually seen them do anything, but they heavily imply it.”

“Do you think it’s all implication?”

“Sadly no.  I think they are quite active.  I can only be thankful that since the three of us spend so little time under one roof that that seriously restricts the number of times I may have been on the premises when they were doing it.”

Ken chuckled.  “I guess having an adventurous sister is bearable since my parents come from a tradition of pretending that children come from cabbage patches.”

Will had turned his face up toward his neck so that he could feel the vibrations of Ken’s voice as he spoke.  Now he just found that his skin was open and available for kissing, which he did.  Then he opened his mouth and licked the spot below his Adam’s apple.  Will moved up and Ken tilted his head back, letting Will make his way slowly up his throat.  He shifted his body so that he was partially on one of Ken’s thighs and raised his arms to wrap them around his neck.  As Will leaned in to grab an earlobe with his teeth, Ken pushed him back a little.

“Thirty minutes, baby.  Please.  Then I’m all yours.”

Will grunted in frustrated disappointment, but fell back onto his side of the cushion.  Will glanced over at the middle cushion of the couch: the one that used to be the buffer between them.  Now Will didn’t even touch the thing though one cushion really wasn’t enough room for two people.

“I’ll give you until I finish desert,” Will said and unfolded himself from the couch.

“What dessert?” Ken asked, focused on his work.

Will gaped at him.  “You didn’t prepare a dessert?”

Ken finished typing something and then glanced up.  “No.  Was I supposed to?”

“You usually do!”

“Well, I made dinner.  Why don’t you make dessert?”

“Because!”  Will stewed.  Surely that wasn’t an unreasonable request.  He wasn’t completely inept in the kitchen.  Ken waited patiently a few moments, his mouth twitching at the corners, but he was too disciplined to actually smile at Will’s distress.  Will frowned.

“Fine.  I think you have some ice cream.  I think I can manage to scoop some out.”

“Well, you can check, but I think Kennedy finished it yesterday.”

Will stopped just as he reached the kitchen and spun back.  “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Look at recipes in the cookbooks.  See if I have enough of the right ingredients.  We might have to go without tonight.”

“Aw, man!” Will whined and splayed his upper torso on the island in defeat.

“What are you going to do in college?” Ken asked smugly.  “No one will cook for you there.”

“Yes, they will.  It’s called cafeteria food.”

“Mm.  And I’m sure you’ll find that satisfying.”

“Anything you don’t have to prepare yourself is always satisfying.”

“Well, stop laying there like a freak.  Just check the freezer.  I only said I think she finished it.  She might not have.”

Grumbling, Will pushed himself to more or less a standing position and shuffled his way to the freezer.  He opened the drawer, since it was below the French style doors of the refrigerator, and bent over to inspect its contents.

“I’m sure you’ll find that even if people prepare it for you, cafeteria food is still cafeteria food.  I’m afraid you’ve been spoiled at Calverton.  It won’t be the same.  In fact, most of it will probably be pretty gross.”

“I’m sure it’ll all just be part of the college experience,” Will muttered as he opened the suspiciously light-weight ice cream container.  There was one, maybe two bites left.  Who put an empty carton back in the freezer?  He was going to need to have a talk with his quasi-sister-in-law.

“Ah, yes, the college experience,” Ken mused with a chuckle.  “I hope you find it to your liking.  Though going to Columbia will be different from other colleges, you know.  Since it’s smack dab in the middle of the city.  But still, I hope you will have a good time there.  And you know, you should.  Don’t miss out on anything on my account.”

Will’s brow creased in thought, and he had to admit a little anger, as he dropped the empty carton in the sink.  He put his hands on the metal and partially turned his head toward Ken.

“What do you mean?” Will asked calmly.

“Oh, you know, to just not hold back on doing something fun because you’re thinking about me.”

Will turned to look at the man.  He was still focused on his work; casually throwing out his words.

“Are we seriously back here again?” Will demanded sharply.

Ken glanced up at Will’s tone, and focused on him.

“Do you still think I’m going to meet somebody as soon as I leave your side and ditch you?!”  Will could feel himself getting riled up, and he did nothing to try to check his anger.

“No.”  Ken blinked at him.  “No, that’s not what I meant at all.  I just meant that if a group of friends asks you to go out some night, don’t say you can’t because you need to go back to your room to call me.  I don’t want you to not enjoy your college life.”

“Because of you?!” Will burst out, taking a couple of steps forward.  “You’re still saying the same damn things we’ve fought about for a year!  That all you’re doing is holding me back from having a normal life!”

Will knew he was getting hysterical.  He was being unreasonable.  He didn’t care.

Ken put his laptop down and scooted to the front of the couch.  “Will, you are seriously misunderstanding what I’m saying.”

“That’s just it!  I’m not, am I?!” Will shouted.  “You _still_ feel that way!  You want me to think of you as a burden to make yourself feel better!”

Ken finally showed some sign of being perturbed and not just confused now.  “Feel better about what?” he asked, flatly.

“That I’m a burden on _you_!”

Ken shook his head with a small smile on his face, though his expression was a little hard.  “When have I ever said that you’re—”

“All the time!” Will retorted as he slapped his palm on the island.  “Every day!”

“Wha—”  Ken was sorting through too many thoughts and emotions to form an answer right away.

 _Why am I so upset?_ Will wondered.

“I love you so much,” Will said, choking on a laugh that was half sob.  “You mean everything to me!”

_Who am I trying to convince?_

“But I won’t—I can’t—be your—your ignominy!”

Ken almost laughed.  “You’re not.”

“I am!”

Rage hit him so suddenly it actually blinded him for an instant.  All he saw was a red and white blur.  And then he felt several pricks of pain along the right side of his face.  He didn’t notice his ears had filled with static until it started to clear.  His vision returned to him.  Ken had gotten to his feet.  He had an imploring hand reaching out to him and a look of petrified alarm on his face.  Will looked at him: he looked scared.  But he couldn’t worry about that now.

“I have to go,” Will mumbled.

He took a step in the direction of the dining table.  Something crunched under his feet.  He looked down.  Glass shards covered the kitchen floor and spilled sparkling over the line of the carpet.  Three orange daisies lay broken and naked on the floor.  He must have thrown the vase against the wall.  That’s what the stinging on his face had been.  He couldn’t worry about that now either.  He continued walking, aware that he was tracking glass further into the carpet, but he couldn’t stop.  He grabbed his bag, walked to the door, and left.

By the time he got to the elevators his chest was hurting, his eyes were burning, and he barely had enough strength to keep himself upright.  He pushed the call button and gasped in a grief-filled breath.  He’d been wrong.  He loved Ken so much…more than he had adequate words to express.  But it just wasn’t enough.

The elevator arrived and Will collapsed inside.  He’d suddenly realized that he couldn’t sacrifice everything for Ken.  He may love Ken more than he loved any other individual in his life…but the whole of his life…he couldn’t give that up.  It hurt worse because he wished he could.  He wished he could give up his friends and his parents and his career so that he could just stay with Ken.  But he couldn’t.  He would die like that.  He had to keep _all_ the parts of his life that were important in order to remain whole.  But Ken wouldn’t let him do that.

Dazed, Will reached up with a hand and pushed a button for the garage floors so he wouldn’t have to see the guards.  The elevator started down.  Will realized he was dry-eyed.  There were no tears.  Because this shocking revelation had turned out to be something he had known all along.

But what would he do without Ken?  What had he just done by walking out on him like that?  Would Ken forgive him?  Did it matter if he would?  It was too late.

It was over.

 

Ken

 

Numb.

It wasn’t just what his body felt, but his mind as well.  He couldn’t think about anything.  He couldn’t feel anything.  He was aware he had gotten the broom and dustpan from the utility room.  He was aware that he was kneeling, mechanically sweeping up the wet glass on the kitchen floor.  And that was all.  Sweep.  Scoop.  Discard in the trash bin.  He saw Joyce Greene approach him.  He tried to push her away from the dangerous glass.  She was still trying to come close, so he pushed her away and explained why she couldn’t come closer.  Still she came.

“Enough!” Ken exploded, swinging a hand at her and clipping her hind quarters.  She bolted away with her tail fluffed up in fear.  She hid under the coffee table and looked at him with scared, confused green eyes.

Ken sat back against the wall, bringing a hand to his face to stifle the sob.  He couldn’t cry for Will, but he could cry for Joyce Greene.  He dropped the broom and dustpan and let his arms fall limp to his sides.  His head fell back against the wall and he moaned, low and guttural as if he were in physical pain.

He was losing Will.  If he hadn’t already.  _Ignominy_.  Trust Will to pull out an SAT word even in the depths of his despair.  It hurt him to know that Will thought that he thought of him that way.  Will just didn’t get it.  It wasn’t Will he was embarrassed of.  Never Will.  He was perfect, he was beautiful, and Ken took pride in the fact that someone like Will could love someone like him.  He was not at all ashamed of Will.  It was himself he hated.

He should have seen this coming though.  It was just, after the horrible events of New Year’s, he was so certain they’d gotten over that.  Things were changing.  People knew about the relationship, which was a first for him.  Kennedy and Rylan knew.  Julian knew.  Hell, Will’s father knew.  That meant their relationship had progressed further than any other he’d ever had.  But, still.  He should have seen the end coming.  And maybe that was part of the problem: that some part of him always had assumed he would lose him eventually.  That some small part of him had been lying when he’d said he was in it for the long haul.

Ken felt his brow crease in rebellion at the self-deprecating thought.  No.  He had meant it.  He _did_ mean it.  He would stay with Will forever even if they had to hide out in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

Ken’s eyes flashed open as the reason for Will’s meltdown finally hit him.  Hiding.  Ken was in their relationship for the long haul so long as they kept it hidden.  And Will didn’t just want to not keep it hidden, he couldn’t.  He would be giving up everything for him.  The problem was that until now, Ken hadn’t seen it that way.  He didn’t think that hiding their relationship meant that Will would have to give up his friends, his family, and his whole life.  But Ken knew better than anyone what it was like to live with that kind of secret.  It was hard.  It was emotionally draining and mentally stressful.  But he had made that choice for himself a long time ago and had learned to live with it.  He wasn’t giving Will the same choice.  He was forcing it on him.  And Will couldn’t do it.

So, shouldn’t Ken say that he didn’t have to?  If he really loved him as much as he kept claiming, shouldn’t he come out of the closet and acknowledge their relationship?  To his colleagues.  His parents…?

Ken closed his eyes again as the mere thought of telling his parents paralyzed him with shame, fear, and grief.

“I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” he repeated over and over again.  Ignoring the screams from his heart telling him that he had to try.  “I can’t do it.”

_You’ll lose him, you fool!  You’ll lose him forever!_

“Then…”  Ken clenched a hand into a fist.  “I’ve lost him.”


	35. Chapter 35

Friday, June 23, 2006

 

Laney

 

Laney woke up.  Which could only mean one thing: she had to pee.  Then she heard the morning radio DJs talking about something, but the volume was too low to make out what they were saying.  That was her alarm going off to wake her up for her doctor’s appointment.  Well, this was a good start to the day; she’d actually woken up to her alarm instead of her bladder.  That hadn’t happened in weeks.  Heck, months.  She shifted slightly, adjusting the pillow under her belly.  And then groaned.  She did have to pee.  She learned a while back that it was better to struggle out of bed than to ignore it.  She sat up and dangled her feet over the edge of the bed.  She frowned at the carpeted floor.  The mornings were always the worst.  Her feet usually swelled over night and it took about five minutes of walking around before her soles stopped throbbing.  Once she got moving it was fine, but that first initial contact with the floor always hurt the worst.

Laney slid off the mattress to the floor and hobbled to the bathroom.  The tile on the floor hurt worse than the carpet, but there was no greater feeling than voiding her baby-squashed bladder.  After she finished her ablutions she returned to her bedroom and took off the XL nightie she wore to bed.  It was too hot to wear anything else.  She paused in front of her full sized mirror and turned sideways.  She rubbed her hands over her large belly, which thanks to a rigorously adhered to regimen of cocoa butter and Vitamin E oil was stretch mark free.  It was strange: she saw herself every day and yet it was always a little surprising to see her body so changed.  It wasn’t just the belly, it was her breasts.  She’d always had cute, perky boobs, but they were fairly small.  Now, they were borderline huge.  She would miss them when they were gone.  She wondered how long it would take them to change back.  Actually, what she really wondered was how long it would take before she stopped producing milk after the baby was born.  She didn’t have the courage to ask her doctor that though.

“Laney!” her mother called through the door.  “Are you up?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, we’re leaving in half an hour.”

“I know, Mom.”

Her mother didn’t comment on her tone and Laney looked in the mirror again.  She put her hands to her stomach and felt her daughter move under her fingers.

“At least you’ll never talk to me with an annoying tone like that.”

Laney smiled, and then grimaced as she felt an uncomfortable pressure spread across her lower back.  Then she burped.  She had no idea why people thought pregnancy was beautiful.  It was nothing but urine and indigestion as far as she could tell.  And the odd sensation of having something alive squirm around inside of her.

Laney began the process of awkwardly working her panties up her legs.  She found that she hadn’t been too hindered by her altered state except in two things: underwear and socks and shoes.  That’s why lately she’d been foregoing underwear.  It was summer and she wasn’t in school anymore, so she didn’t think it was a problem.  And especially when she had to go to the doctor, there was no sense in putting any on since he’d been checking her progress every week for the last month.  But after the doctor they were going to the Calverton graduation ceremony and she figured she’d better wear some underwear.  So, that sucked.  But the good news was that she got to wear her super cute maternity dress.  It wasn’t big and baggy like maternity wear used to be, it was chic and stylish and showed the shape of her belly.  Pregnancy was kind of fashionable now.  And she always looked good in green.

By the time she made it down for breakfast, her feet had stopped hurting even though she had a feeling the complete lack of support of her bejeweled brown sandals would change that before too long.  Her mother looked her over as she sat down to her glass of beet, carrot, and apple juice.  Maybe she peed so much because her mother was keeping her on a liquid diet.  It did make her skin clear up nicely.  And the pre-natal vitamins made her hair and nails super awesome.

“You look very nice this morning,” her mother said.

“Thanks.”

“Any particular reason?”

“It’s graduation today, remember?”

“Yes.  Are you sure you’ll feel up to going?”

“Yeah, I feel fine.  Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he mother said with an ironic smile.  “I was always so wiped out when I was pregnant with you.  I just keep waiting for it to catch up to you.  But, it looks like you’re going to make it without any problems.”

“Well, I still have two weeks left, so maybe I’ll hit a wall or something.”

Her mother laughed.  “I hope not.  I didn’t mean that I wanted you to feel bad.  I guess I’m just jealous.”

“Was it so bad with me?  Is that why you didn’t have another?”

“No.  There were a lot of reasons why we chose not to have another baby.”

Her mother didn’t expand and Laney didn’t pry.  She probably didn’t want to know the details of her parents’ failed marriage.

“Did you ask Dad about coming?”

“To the delivery?”

“Yes.”

“He said if you have her when he’s not on shift, he’ll be there.”

Laney frowned.  “Well, tell him to send me his schedule and I’ll try to work around it.”

“Laney, don’t be like that.  In construction, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled.

It was true, but she had a feeling he would make sure he had to work when she went into labor.  He hadn’t looked her in the eyes since she started to show.  Of course, she hadn’t given him many opportunities since she very rarely went to his apartment.  She was petrified of seeing the father of her baby.  As far as she knew he had no idea she was pregnant since she was certain her father never talked about it.  And that was for the best.  In another two weeks the baby would be safely delivered to the Dunnes, she could return to her normal life, and there would be no chance that he would ever know.  She didn’t feel guilty about keeping it from him; she was certain he would find it to be the worst news of his life.

“Ready to go?” her mother asked.

Laney drained the last of her vegetable juice, almost gagged on it, and then nodded.

“Let’s go.”

She stood up and felt her stomach protest the food.  She rubbed her belly, giving her daughter a little shake.  She responded by stretching, and then settled back down.

“Laney,” her mother said coming up next to her.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.  Just a little sore this morning.”

“Okay.  Well, we are going to the doctor.”

Laney hated the waiting room at her OB-GYN.  It was full of pregnant ladies looking miserable and waddling from their chair to the nurses’ station.  And they all glared at her as she walked normally and glowed in good health.  Maybe women were supposed to have babies when they were younger.  There must be a reason they started having periods when they were twelve.  The only other woman who didn’t look completely miserable was the young Hispanic woman.  She was probably only twenty-two or so, but she also had three other kids who ran around wildly and were in general obnoxious brats.

She was called in to see the doctor half an hour late, so she tried to rush him through the usual questions by answering them before he asked them.  Thankfully he didn’t ask her to get in the stirrups today; he seemed to sense she was in a hurry.  She almost said “No,” when he asked if there had been any new developments, but she knew if she didn’t tell him her mother would.

“I think my mucus plug fell out two days ago.  At least, I heard something plop when I was using the bathroom and when I looked it looked like a bloody, snotty mess.”

Laney’s mother closed her eyes with a bemused smile.  Dr. Gupta laughed and scratched something down in his notes.

“Yes, that sounds like a mucus plug.  That’s a good sign.  Have you felt any pain in your abdomen?”

Laney shook her head.  “Nope.”

“Okay then.  You probably will still deliver close to your due date.  Your body is just getting ready for the event.  You seem to be doing very well, but don’t over exert yourself.  I’m not going to put you on bed rest, but no marathons, okay?”

“Okay,” Laney said, trying not to show how unfunny she found him.

After a few more questions and some prodding around her belly, they were free to go.  Laney tried to rush her mother through her usual pointless chats with the nurses.  At last her mother relented, but then Laney figured she’d better go to the bathroom before they started the half hour trip into the city.

By the time they made it to the Marbury Center, they only had ten minutes to spare before the ceremony started, but Laney figured that would be enough time to have a quick visit with her senior friends.  They would have had twenty minutes to spare, but Laney had been hit with a sudden craving for a burrito from El Burro.  Her mother rarely let her indulge in such cravings, but seemed to sense that Laney was feeling a little piqued today and didn’t want to irritate her more by saying no.

The ceremony was being held in the large auditorium where visiting orchestras and opera troupes performed when they came to the city.  The seats were done in red velvet and the stage frame, walls, and boxes were ornate with half naked angels and demons gesturing gracefully and dramatically.  The curtains were drawn and on the stage were a podium and a few chairs for the principal, vice principal, and a few others who were going to be a part of the ceremony.  The first three center rows were reserved for the graduates.  There were only fifty-three of them.  Behind that the parents of the graduates milled in the aisles and murmured with each other about how proud they were of their kids and politely pretended to listen how the person they were talking to were proud of their kids.  There were quite a few youngsters present too, most being siblings of the graduates, but there were some undergraduate friends like herself as well.

“Laney, I found some seats here.  I think it will be good to sit by the back at the end in case you need to run to the bathroom.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.  I’m going to go say hi to the guys.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to go backstage, sweetie.”

“Yeah, who’s going to stop me?”

Laney carefully made her way down the gently sloping aisle.  She was worried she might pick up too much speed and crash into the stage at the bottom.  She waved to Mr. Ramsey and his new wife as she passed them, but those were the only parents she recognized until she saw Liz’s family down at the front.  They wanted to have good spots so they could video record every second of Liz’ speech.  Pretty much everyone except her teachers was surprised that she turned out to be the salutatorian.  Of course, it was more like being the valedictorian because it hardly counted when you had to compete against Will Harder.

Laney walked up the stairs to the stage.  She could sense that people were looking at her.  But she’d gotten used to that.  As bad as it was that a seventeen year old was pregnant, she’d discovered that a lot of people who didn’t know her thought she was much younger than that.  She saw Ms. Kerensky and a few of the teachers on the stage glance at her, but as she predicted, nobody tried to prevent her from going backstage.

Backstage were a bunch of black robe clad figures, talking excitedly, nervously, and helping each other adjust their funny hats and make sure their tassels were on the correct side.  She heard Scott’s loud voice and followed it easily to her friends.  Their group had expanded quite a bit as of late as Antoinette was with Scott and her friends were clustered nearby; Nick was with Riley, but his soccer friends were keeping their distance; and strangely enough, Layla McDermott seemed to be hovering on the fringe of the group not too far from Julian.  Anna was also present and was not keeping her distance from Antoinette.  Laney wasn’t sure if Anna had made up with Scott because she had matured and decided to deal with the situation the best she could, or if she was worried that she no longer had the time to win him back since Antoinette’s status at Virginia Tech had gone from “wait listed” to “accepted.”  The rivals flanked Scott and kept trying to get his attention for themselves and Laney realized that was why he was talking so loudly: he was trying to keep Will and Julian engaged so that he wouldn’t have to acknowledge either girl.  Liz was present, which was sort of a surprise since she’d consorted with the enemy and gone to prom with Jake.  She’d also confessed to Laney that she and Jake had slept together that night and she’d had to take a taxi home in embarrassed annoyance after Jake called out Antoinette’s name in bed.  It looked like she and Will were interacting perfectly normally.  Well, at least, what had been normal a year ago when they hadn’t been dating any more, but before Will had started using her.  As she approached she could tell they were playfully arguing over who was going to give the better speech.  She wondered where Chris was.  Then they all spotted her.

“Laney!” they all practically sang out and turned towards her.  She basked in their attention.

“Hi, everyone.  I just wanted to say good luck to you all and tell you how goofy you look in your outfits.”

“Oh my gosh, Lane!” Scott said, stepping away from his girlfriend and friend.  “I know it’s only been a couple weeks, but I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you and you look even bigger if that’s possible.”

“Scott,” a couple of the girls hissed.

But Laney didn’t mind.  Scott either ignored them or didn’t know why they were hissing at him.  He reached out a hand and then looked at her with a question in his eyes.  She nodded and he put his hands on her stomach.

“How’s it going in there?” he asked.

She shrugged.  “Pretty well.  She’s just parked on my bladder is all.”

Scott smiled and rubbed her belly a little.  The baby responded by pressing against his hands.  He grinned and Laney just knew he was going to make a great father.  She glanced back at Antoinette.  She had a smile on her face as she watched her boyfriend.  Laney felt her heart hurt.  As weird as they both might be and as much therapy as their kids might need one day, that’s how a baby should come into the world: with two parents that loved her and wanted her.

“Is she moving?” Julian asked.  He pushed Scott out of the way and put his hands on her.  He waited, and then frowned.  “Why does she never move for me?  I make you blush and she goes wild but as soon as I put my hands on you she goes into hiding.”

“Because she’s scared of the big ogre,” Scott teased him.

Julian made a face at him.  Laney rubbed her belly around Julian’s hands to get her moving, but she stayed still.  Laney shrugged.

“Where’s Chris?” she asked.

Everyone looked around like they just noticed he was missing.

“I don’t know,” someone said.

“Maybe he’s in the bathroom,” was someone else’s suggestion.

“So, are you guys going anywhere after the ceremony?” Laney asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Antoinette said.  “Our parents rented out the Olive Garden across the street.  You should come.”

“Mm.  Italian food.”

“Well, a reasonable facsimile,” Antoinette agreed.  Then she slapped Scott on the shoulder.  “I thought I told you to tell her!”

“I forgot!” he whined softly, rubbing his arm.

Julian let out a noise of disgust and finally let go of Laney's belly.  Laney looked at Will.  He had been pretty much the only person, known or stranger, that she’d come across who never once asked her to feel her stomach.

“Only two weeks left, Will.  Do you wanna feel?”

He stiffened his spine in what she guessed was either resolve or offense at being called a chicken, and Liz said, “Is it only two weeks now?”

“Yep.  Maybe as soon as next week.  My mucus plug fell out two nights ago.”

The group burst into various noises of disgust and declarations of TMI.  Laney just laughed.  Being pregnant had made it a necessity to be able to deal with really gross stuff.  In fact, it had even gotten her to be calm around bugs and spiders.  When you couldn’t jump up and run away from them, you had to learn to make a truce with them.  Until they were close enough to squash without having to move your arm very far.  She looked at Will again.  He put on a determined face and stepped closer to her.  Suddenly, her daughter really stretched out her limbs, and Laney’s stomach rippled as a foot moved under it.

“Ahhhhhhh!”  The group, even the girls, screamed in terror and got the attention of everyone present backstage.

“Omigod I thought it was going to come right out of her just like in _Alien_!” Anna said.

“Is that what happened?” Scott asked, who had been too scared to watch that movie.

“Relax, people,” Laney said with the air of an exasperated but amused mother.  “It was just a foot.  And my stomach is still just skin.  It can move.”

“It’s still creepy,” Riley said.

“What’s all the commotion?” Mrs. Grober said as she broke her way into the group.  “Oh, hello, Ms. Newberry.  How are you feeling?”

“Well, ma’am.”

“Excellent.  I look forward to having you next year.”

“Yeah,” Laney said, not nearly as excited about calculus as she was.

“But, we’re going to be starting the procession in just a couple of minutes.”

“Oh, yeah, I just wanted to say hi to everyone and congratulate them and let them know I hope they don’t fall down the stairs.”

“Thanks, Lane,” Liz said wryly.

“No problem.  See you guys out there!”

She gave them a little wave and Mrs. Grober followed her to the wings.

“Ms. Newberry, would you indulge me by taking the back stairs down?  There’s a door that leads back to the auditorium.  I would just feel better since there aren’t any railings on the stage stairs.”

“Oh, sure.  No problem.”

Mrs. Grober left her to go round up her students and try to organize them into alphabetical order.  Laney carefully stepped down the concrete steps, holding tightly onto the railing.  What good was a railing when there was no light to see where you were going?  It wasn’t pitch black, but she did put out a hand to feel the other wall as she made her way down the dimly lit passage.  When she reached the bottom, she saw bright light coming from under the crack of the door that led to the outside hallway.  Around the corner would be the door that led to the auditorium, but Laney hesitated before making the turn.  There was someone there.  Two someones by the sound of it.  Should she just take the long way around to the auditorium doors?  Well, it didn’t sound like they were doing anything more than kissing and if it was students, they needed to know they were about to miss their ceremony.  Laney turned the corner and there was a weak bulb casting light but mostly shadows over the two people in the corner.

Laney cleared her throat and the two people jumped apart.  She was about to tell them that they were needed backstage when she saw who it was.  Here was Chris.  And he was with Caitlyn Bell, a girl who was routinely ranked as either the hottest or second hottest girl in school, occasionally dropping as low as third when Antoinette Bixby was having a good hair day.  It wasn’t that Chris could get a girl that pretty to make out with him that surprised her, but wasn’t Caitlyn a proud, strong lesbian?

“Oh, hey, Laney…” Chris started and then trailed off as Caitlyn skirted around them and took the stairs to the backstage area.  He looked back at Laney and laughed.  “Is it that embarrassing to be caught with me?” he asked.

“No way,” Laney said.  “I’d hit that.”

Chris laughed again.  Then he squatted in front of her and took her belly in his hands.  He almost touched his nose to it as he said, “I hope you didn’t see any of that, little girl.  And I hope you can’t understand what your mother just said.”

He laughed and looked up.  Laney put a hand to his head and ran her fingers over his short peach fuzz hair.

“I’m not her mother, you know.  Not really.”

Chris gave her a sympathetic look, and then kissed her belly once before he stood up.  He hugged her and kissed the top of her hair.

“You’ll always be her mother.  Because you’ll always love her.  Even when you stop thinking about her every day.”

“You think I’ll be able to?” she asked weakly, hopefully and clung to him tightly.

“Well, I’m not sure.  But I know it will stop hurting when you think about her.  You know the phrase?  Time heals all wounds.”

“Yeah.  I just hope she doesn’t hate me when she grows up.”

“Impossible.”

From inside the auditorium they heard the microphone squeal as someone turned it on.  Chris pulled back.

“Ah, I think that means I need to go.”

“I’ll be cheering for you guys.”

“Thanks, Lane.”

Chris turned the corner and took the stairs two at a time.  Laney opened the door to the auditorium and snuck up the side aisle as Ms. Kerensky welcomed the parents, families, and teachers of the graduates.  Her mother was so far back there were ten empty rows in front of her.  Only a lone, dark-haired man in a suit was further back than them.  As she sat beside her mother, she felt some discomfort spread down her back and legs.  She took a deep breath.  Man, she didn’t think the incline had been that steep.

As the ceremony progressed, Laney was distracted by a growing sense of pressure building in her abdomen.  She really shouldn’t have had El Burro right before this.  She might need to sneak out to the bathroom so she could let out a big fart in privacy.  She didn’t want to leave though because she wanted to hear Liz’s speech.  So, she kept shifting and clenching her butt muscles.  Her mother kept glancing at her, but didn’t say anything.  Liz’s speech was very good.  She’d changed it a little from the drafts Laney had proofread, but it was truthful and inspiring.  At least she thought so.  Everyone clapped and her fellow classmates cheered for her.  Then Will gave his speech, which was mostly humorous and had everyone laughing—even the parents.  It looked like the teachers wished he’d taken it a little more seriously, but at certain points she saw Mr. Hayden cover his mouth with a hand and his eyes shined with mirth.  At the end it almost seemed like he was going to have a serious moment, but then he ruined it by giving them humorous, but useful, advice.

Laney thought after Will’s speech she might be able to go relieve some El Burro pressure, but then they went immediately into handing out the diplomas.  The commencement speaker, a Calverton alum and founder of a large, successful Internet business, wasn’t going to speak until after they were all seated again.  It was tradition that a Calverton alum be the one to wish them their final congratulations and give the cue for them all to throw their hats.  So she stayed put and cheered loudly when each of her friends’ names were called.  There were no incidents.  No one tripped and no one tried to pull any cute stunts.  Finally, halfway through the alum’s speech, Laney couldn’t take it anymore.  She excused herself to her mother and went to the bathroom.  And while she did have to pee, she couldn’t do anything else to relieve the uncomfortable pressure.  Maybe she had just been up too long.  She might need to skip Olive Garden and just go home and rest.

She reentered the auditorium in time to see everyone scream and throw their hats in the air.  The senior class started jumping up and down and hugging each other.  Even the Regurgitator was not left out of the revelry.  Her mother asked if she wanted to go home, but she said she wanted to wait and say goodbye to her friends.  It took longer than she thought for everyone to make their way out of the auditorium and to the front hallway where the school had provided punch and cookies.  Of course everyone was talking and shaking hands and hugging parents.  She didn’t expect anything different, but it felt much longer than it probably was as she swayed gently on her feet trying to bear the pressure.

At last she saw her friends and their parents clustered together near one of the refreshment tables.  Mr. and Mrs. Harder were standing with Will and Julian in between them.  Scott was near his father and stepmother and Antoinette and her parents.  His mother was standing next to Chris’ mother.  Laney guessed she didn’t want to be near her ex-husband.  Liz’s and Anna’s parents were hugging their daughters while their younger sisters tried to look grown up around the “college boys.”  Riley was flushed pink as her parents and Nick’s parents shook hands.  They must be meeting for the first time.

Laney walked slowly over to them, wincing as the pressure now became pain circling her back, abdomen, and even shooting down her legs.  She was worried for a moment, but then it stopped.  She paused and her mother looked at her.  The pain didn’t return.  She gave her mother a wan smile and made it to the group.  Everyone said hello to her again and just as she was about to say congratulations, she felt a warm wetness soak her panties and dribble down her legs.  Her first reaction was to be mortified.  Had she just peed herself?  Then she realized it had come from a different place.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“What is it?” Laney’s mother asked worriedly, placing a hand on her shoulder.  Julian had moved quickly to her other side and put a hand to her forehead.

“Are you okay?” he asked.  “You just went completely white.”

“I—”  She looked up as the large anxious group stared at her.  “I think my water broke.”

She saw almost every eye drop down below her waist.  She wasn’t sure if any evidence of her statement was visible.  She didn’t want to know.

“Melanie,” her mother said, “are you having contractions?”

“No…Oh, wait.  I think I did have one.”

“We have to get you to the hospital!” Scott shouted.  “Who has a car?!”

Several of the parents reached into their pockets and purses for car keys, all volunteering to take her.  Laney’s mother smiled and calmed them all down.  She turned back to Laney.

“How far apart are they?”

“Well, I think I had one when we were walking over here, but I don’t have any pain right now.  At all.  Just a little pressure.”

Her mother nodded.  “Okay, we’ve got time.”  She looked at the circle of friends around her daughter.  Laney really had a talent for drawing good people to her.  “I appreciate your concern, but I don’t think we’re having an emergency here.  Laney told me you all had lunch plans.  You should go.  And we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we know anything.”

“But…” Scott said.  “I wanna see it.”

“Scott!” Laney shouted.  “You may not watch!”

“I don’t mean _watch_ …” he trailed off, looking like he meant that exactly.

“Well, the doctors won’t allow anyone other than me in the room anyway, so it’s okay.  Plus, labor is not like on TV as I’m sure your parents will be able to tell you.  It’ll probably be several hours before she delivers.  I’m going to drive her back to town so she can have the baby at the hospital where her doctor is.  There’s plenty of time.  Enjoy your celebration, and I promise I’ll keep everyone apprised.”

“Do you have our cell phone numbers?” Julian asked.

“Well, Laney does.  I’ll use her phone, okay?”

“You will?” Laney asked.  “I’m going to be texting a blow by blow myself.”

The boys winced and the mothers laughed.

“Oh, Laney,” Mrs. Harder said empathetically, which was a rarity, “I wouldn’t hold your cell phone unless you want to have to buy a new one later.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” Laney said confidently.  “I’m getting the drugs.”

“Even still,” Ms. Ramsey said.

“Why do you think I only had one?” Ms. Pelletier added.

Laney made a face.  “Okay, now you people are scaring me.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Mrs. Holloway.  “You’re a strong, brave girl.”

“Now I feel like I’m going to die!”

The group just laughed at her distress, but Julian gave the back of her neck a gentle squeeze and she relaxed a little.  Her mother took her by the shoulders and started to pull her away.

“Well, while we do have time, it’s best not to delay.  Plus, we need to call the Dunnes,” she said very quietly.

Laney felt her gut twist.  She’d forgotten about them.  She told her friends congratulations and waved to them as she let her mother lead her out.  She glanced over her shoulder at Julian.  If he was the father he could come with her.  He was looking after her like he wanted to go with her.  Laney turned to her mother.

“Can Julian come?”

Her mother bit her lip as she held the door open for her daughter.

“Honey, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Okay,” she said meekly and then gritted her teeth as she felt another contraction coming on.  She told her mother and she checked her watch.

“About three minutes.  That’s good.  We’ve got time, but you’ll probably deliver some time tonight.  Or maybe early in the morning.”

“You mean I’m still going be doing this, like twelve hours from now?!”

“Yes, I think so, sweetie.  Sorry.  But I’ve told you before that labor can take hours and hours.  Even days.”

“I know!  But, I wasn’t feeling it then!”

“Melanie,” her mother said as she helped her into the car, “you’re not feeling it now.”

 

Those ominous words had turned out to be prophetic.  Unfortunately, her other prediction hadn’t.  The contractions had come on stronger and much more frequently as they drove back to town.  Laney was sweating and feeling seriously uncomfortable and in pain by the time they made it to the hospital.  She was put in a bed and tried to grit her teeth and not cry as the contractions came almost on top of each other.  By the time Dr. Gupta arrived and checked her dilation, he said it was too late for the epidural and she would need to start pushing in another fifteen to twenty minutes.  She’d shot her mother a dirty look.  But she couldn’t stay mad at her for long as she placed a cool, damp cloth on her forehead and held her hand.

It had somehow been worse than and not as bad as she’d feared.  It had hurt unbelievably badly to push and strain, but the birth itself didn’t really hurt.  Maybe that was the endorphins she’d been told about.  And fortunately, it had only taken a few starting tries and then three hard pushes before it was over.  She’d collapsed back on the bed, breathing laboriously.  And then that damn fucking doctor made her sit up and push again.  Afterbirth.  Now _that_ was gross.  But not nearly as gross as the bundle the nurse handed to her.  It was a red-faced, squalling monkey thing covered in blood, white gunk, and the clear gel they’d put in her eyes as soon as she’d come out.  Her mother had suggested to her beforehand that she not hold her, but the nurse hadn’t known.  So, now here she was in her arms.  Laney looked down at it.  It was ugly and loud.  Why had she been afraid of holding it?  Did she think she would love it?  Not want to give it up?  It was actually easier now.  She didn’t want this thing.

Then the nurse took her away so they could clean her off and weigh her.  Laney felt her missing warmth like someone had cut a limb from her body.  She knew she was crying, but the labor had been painful.  That was all.  Her mother put an arm behind her shoulders and held her close.

“Oh, Melanie,” her mother said softly, trying to disguise the tears in her voice.

Laney held onto her mother.  “It’s okay, Mom,” she said.  “It’s okay.”  But she turned her face into her mother’s neck and cried harder.

 

About an hour later, Laney was feeling much better.  And she was certain it was all thanks to the drugs.  _Now_ they gave them to her.  Not only was the physical pain gone, but her emotions and nerves were quiet as well.  Even though not five minutes earlier the Dunnes and their lawyers had arrived to say hello to her and wish her well.  The lawyers were finishing the last of the details on the paperwork and getting the birth certificate in order.  Laney had known it wasn’t the best idea in the world, and quite possibly may have been rude to the new parents, but she asked if she could hold her one more time.  Laney blamed the drugs, but the Dunnes didn’t seem to mind and said of course.  Her mother had gone to get some lunch in the cafeteria; Laney had been served hospital mush, but she’d been too tired to eat it.  Now she was alone in the room and alone with her thoughts.  And waiting for someone to bring her a piece of paper so that she could sign her daughter away to someone else.  No.  Their daughter.  She had to stop thinking of her as hers.

There came a knock at the door and Laney looked up.  One of the nursery nurses smiled at her as she opened the door wider.

“You up for a visitor?” she asked.

Laney wasn’t sure if she was ready to see anybody, no matter who it was, and then she saw Julian.  She smiled and felt instantly comforted.  And then she noticed he had a small bundle in his arms.  She probably just looked smaller in comparison to Julian because she had certainly felt larger on the way out.  Julian crossed the room and sat on the bed by her hips and turned to hand the baby to her.  Laney took the pink blanket and peeked inside.  There she was.  Much better looking now that she was clean and quiet.  But still a monkey.  She didn’t want a monkey.  Laney looked at Julian.

“Why did they let you bring her?” she asked softly, not sure if the nurse was still outside.

“Hey, technically I’m the father, right?”

He gave her a wink.  Laney looked back down at her—the baby.  She put her index finger near the tiny, tiny fist and the girl reached out and grabbed hold of it.  Laney laughed.

“She’s strong.”

Julian smiled and smoothed her hair back from her forehead.  Laney chewed on her lip hard, but it didn’t prevent the silent tears that fell from her eyes as she studied the clear, impossibly small fingernails on her—the baby’s hand.

“Laney,” Julian said, very gently, “are you sure about this?  It’s not too late.  And you have to be sure.”

“Am I sure I want to give her up?” Laney said, her voice breaking with emotion.  “No.  But am I sure I want to do what’s best for her?”  She sniffed.  “Yes.  And that’s giving her to the Dunnes.”

Julian leaned down and kissed the crown of her head and Laney moved her finger to touch the baby’s cheek.  It was ridiculously soft.  She heard movement at the door again.  There were the Dunnes and the lawyers and her mother.  Laney was suddenly distressed.  She was ready to give her up, but did it have to be _now_?  She couldn’t show her reluctance though.  Especially not in front of her mother.  She gave the baby to Julian so that everyone who needed to sign papers had free hands to do so.  Her mother had to sign since she was still a minor.  Fortunately nobody brought up that Julian might need to sign something.  She didn’t want to have to explain that she’d lied.  Then suddenly, it was done.  Just like that.  The lawyers said they were going to go file the paperwork at the courthouse.

Mrs. Dunne turned to Julian expectantly, but he gave the baby back to Laney.  She held her for just a moment before she looked up into her daughter’s new parents’ happy faces.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

“Miranda Evelyn Lane.  Miranda after my mother and Evelyn after Jim’s mother.  And Lane after her mother.”

Laney felt tears again, but successfully held them back.  “Three names?” she asked trying to get out a laugh.  “She’s going to hate filling out paperwork.”

Everyone in the room chuckled.  Laney looked at the Dunnes.  They looked eager to take her.

“Can I…can I ask for one thing?”

Mrs. Dunne came closer.  “Anything, dear.”

Mr. Dunne looked a little concerned, but didn’t say anything.

“When…when the time comes and you have to tell her she’s adopted.  And she asks about me.  Will you promise you’ll let her know that I didn’t just throw her away?  That it wasn’t that I didn’t want her.  Let her know I loved her.  Don’t let her ever worry that she was an unwanted child.”

Mrs. Dunne started crying.  “Of course.  Of course.”  She looked like she was about to say more, but couldn’t get out any words.

Laney handed her Miranda.  She got a feeling of peace as she saw the joy that overcame Mrs. Dunne’s face and the tenderness with which she held her new daughter.  She smiled at Laney again, and then turned and walked to her husband.  He leaned over the baby and they walked out of the room together.  Laney kept staring at the door, for several minutes, but they never came back.  She finally looked at her mother.  She nodded at her.  Laney gave her a small smile.  Then she felt Julian take her hand.  She looked at him.

“Hey, you better look cheerful.”

“Why?” she asked, not feeling like she was looking un-cheerful but also not caring if she did.

Julian looked to the door and suddenly it was crammed with people, balloons, flowers, and stuffed animals jostling to be first through.  Laney laughed at the mob that invaded the tiny room.  It wasn’t just her friends, but some of their parents and her junior class friends too.  There had to be at least twenty people and they were all talking to her at once.  The only thing she could think to say when they quieted down somewhat was, “Did you have a good lunch?”

Everyone laughed and Antoinette stepped forward with the best present yet: an Olive Garden To-Go bag.

“I thought you’d want some real food.”

“That is definitely awesome…but…how did you guys manage to eat and get here so fast?”

Everyone glanced at each other and kind of chuckled.

“Wh-what?” she asked.

“Well, even before your mother called about the speed-birth, Julian said he was just going to get a To-Go bag and go wait at the hospital.  Then, of course, you can guess which three volunteered next to go with him.  And then who wanted to go with _them_.  And, well, the short version is that we _all_ got To-Go bags,” Antoinette explained.

Everyone smiled at her and Laney felt her chin quiver.  She couldn’t help it.  She burst into tears.

“Look what you’ve all done!” she heard Scott scold the group.  Then he put a protective arm around her and hugged her tightly.

Everyone began to claim that they hadn’t done anything, certainly no more than he had, and he’d just used that as an excuse to get close to her.  Laney felt her spirits lifting despite herself.  She’d just done the hardest thing she’d ever had to do in her life—even harder than deciding to go through with the pregnancy—and she was already feeling better.  How was that possible?  Was she that shallow or were her friends that great?

“What is going on here?” a voice boomed from the door.

Everyone turned to see Dr. Gupta standing with his hands on his hips and a very displeased and shocked expression on his face.  Laney saw Antoinette discreetly hide the To-Go bag on the floor.

“I’m glad Melanie has so many people who care about her, but this is just too much excitement right now.  And against fire codes.  All of you—out.”  He hooked a thumb toward the doorway.

Everyone murmured unhappily, but deposited their gifts on the limited flat surfaces available and then took turns squeezing her hand or giving her a quick hug.  Scott, Julian, Chris, and Will all managed to lean in at the same time and kiss some part of her face.  She giggled as their lips and breath tickled her.

“God, I’m going to be a legend at Calverton next year!  The four hottest boys in school love me.”

They laughed and Julian ruffled her bangs.

“Yeah?” said Will, “where are your witnesses?”

They were the last ones to leave.

“Well, damn.”

They smiled at her one more time and said good-bye to her mother.  The doctor took her vital signs himself, which was something a nurse normally did, so he must be really concerned.  He seemed less alarmed once he was convinced her blood pressure hadn’t been elevated by all the excitement.  After a few more questions and instructions, he left the room.  Laney settled into the bed, and laced her hands over her stomach.  Then she felt the loose folds where her pregnant belly used to be and put her hands to her sides.  It wasn’t going to feel comfortable sitting so carefully.  Fortunately they told her she could go home with her mother in a few more hours after one final check.  Her mother pulled a chair close to her.

“You know, it’s so different from when I had you, and that wasn’t all that long ago.  They used to keep mothers overnight if not two days.  Now they all get sent home the same day if there are no complications.”

“That’s good,” Laney said with a little shrug.  “I think I’ll be more comfortable at home anyway.”

Her mother patted her hand.  Laney stared at the closed door.  She took in a breath, and then let it out without any words.  Then she tried again.

“I—I know I did the right thing.  And I don’t regret it.  So…why does it still hurt so bad?”

“Oh, honey,” her mother said with a voice that sounded like her heart was breaking.  She stood up and hugged her and petted her hair.

Laney still stared at the closed door.  And she wondered what she would be like in eighteen years when her daughter came looking for her.  She resolved right then to do better in school, to actually have goals, and to be successful.  She wanted to be someone her daughter could be proud of.

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Can you hand me that To-Go bag on the floor?”

“What?”

Her mother pulled back and then looked at the floor.  She laughed and handed her the bag.

“It’s a good thing your appetite came back, I guess.  Though I’m not sure all this oil and fat—”

“Mom.  Pregnancy is over, I’m eating for one.  And I want some ravioli.”

Her mother smiled.  “Okay.”

They had just gotten everything out of the bag and set up on the tray that rolled over the bed when they heard a knock at the door.  They froze, not sure if they should try to hide the food.  Then the door opened and a man peeked timidly inside, holding a rather bedraggled looking bouquet of carnations.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked.

“Daddy!”


	36. Chapter 36

Tuesday, July 4, 2006

 

Riley

 

Riley’s hand was a little sweaty.  She knew that she was supposed to like holding hands with her boyfriend, but even though it was an hour from sunset, the heat and humidity from the day lingered into the early evening and made skin to skin contact a little uncomfortable.  At least out in the countryside there was a mild breeze blowing.  The city was holding its annual fireworks display, and not having a convenient river or ocean nearby, always opted to conduct the show at the wide open expanse of short-grassed soccer fields to the south of the city.  Riley was familiar with the area; it was where Calverton soccer, field hockey, and track athletes had to go to practice and play.  The bleachers had been collapsed on the north sides of the fields so as not to hinder the view from the other set of bleachers.  Most of the bleachers on the center fields were already full of people and many more had spread out blankets on the grass.  There were a lot of families, but there were also a lot of couples enjoying the concealing dark descending on them as the overhead lights were being kept off until after the fireworks display.

Riley wondered if Nick wished they could be like the other couples who were on the ground, holding more than just each other’s hands.  But he had to know that that was just _not_ going to happen.

They were talking about baseball.  And the trip Nick’s family had taken to the Bahamas.  And the new video games Riley had gotten for her birthday.  They definitely were not discussing the future or college.  Riley was going to UVA and Nick was following a family tradition and going to Clemson.  They didn’t want to talk about what that meant for their relationship because they both knew it wasn’t strong enough to survive the distance.  But until the end of August, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t pretend nothing was going to change and enjoy each other’s company.

Nick suddenly stopped walking as they were crossing the space between two fields.  Nobody had set up blankets here in the rough grass and only one or two shadowy figures wandered by them as they made their way to a different field.  She wondered what had made him stop, and then she felt his hands at her waist.

_Oh, gosh, he wants to kiss._

Riley tried to hold still and let him do it.  She had tried to be better about pulling away from him since they had gotten back together, but she was still uncomfortable with the whole idea of having someone slobber all over her.  Not that he was a slobber-er.  In fact, he was usually pretty sensitive to her comfort level and rarely gave her more than a closed-mouth kiss.  But occasionally, he’d want a little something extra.  She had been obliging since it happened rarely and she had promised to be more open to him, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking (no matter how hard she tried) “Has he brushed his teeth today?  What has he eaten recently?”  She didn’t know how other people could push those thoughts aside when they did this.

Right now it was nice though.  His lips were dry and she put her hands to his shoulders and she pressed against him.  Then she felt his lips part a little.  Riley stubbornly kept hers clenched together.

“Come on, Riley,” Nick pleaded softly.  “Just a little?”

Riley groaned inwardly, but softened her lips so that when he pressed insistently against them, they parted.  It wasn’t so bad a first, having the freedom to move a little more and feeling more of a connection with him.  But then there came those smacking sounds.  Those were so gross.  And he kept moving his head back and forth instead of side to side, so she was worried if he did it too hard she might bruise the inside of her mouth on her teeth.  She wondered how long they would have to do this.  She was ready stop, but knew he would get mad if she pulled away.  And then…

“Okay!” Riley burst out, pushing him away roughly with a hand to his chest.

“Wh-what?” he gasped, looking confused…and angry.

“No tongue, okay?”

“Oh, gosh,” Nick half-growled and rolled his eyes.  “Riley, seriously, you’re eighteen.  You’re going to college.  You need to grow up.”

“I can’t help it.  It’s weird.”

“Weird?” Nick asked, like he was taking personal offense at the word.  “You think kissing me is weird?”

“Not just you.  Kissing in general.”

He crossed his arms.  “You’ve kissed other guys.  Was it ‘weird’ kissing them?”

“Nick, I’m not calling you weird.  It’s just a feeling I have about the whole idea of it.  And I mean, isn’t it supposed to…I don’t know, feel good and not gross and awkward?”

Nick’s jaw dropped.  “Gross and awkward?  Really?!  You’re blaming _me_ for this?  Maybe you just need more practice!”

Riley’s temper finally beat down her desire to be nice to her boyfriend.  “Or maybe you just suck at it!”

Nick let out a noise of offense and disgust.

“Okay, look,” Riley said, trying to be diplomatic.  “Maybe we should just take it down a notch before we say something really hurtful.”

“It’s a little late for that,” he snapped.

Riley winced.  She wished her temper could learn to keep its comments to itself.

“Maybe we should…take a break…?”

Nick’s arms dropped and he looked more hurt than angry.  “What?  Again?  Just because we—”

“No!  No, not a break up.  Just like, thirty minutes to cool our heads.  I should probably check in with my parents anyway.”

Nick looked up at the darkening sky with disgust.  “Whatever.”  He stalked away from her.

“Wait, where and when will we…meet up?” she finished softly as he became a black figure moving in the gloom.

Riley sighed in fatigue.  Boys were so stupid.  It was so much work keeping their fragile little egos from getting bruised at the slightest suggestion that they weren’t God’s gift to the female gender.  Her mother had been thrilled when she’d found out Riley had a boyfriend (probably because she thought her daughter might be gay) and had pushed her into buying new clothes and spending time with him.  Her father had said that was stupid because he only cared about one thing and Riley should sock him in the nuts if he ever asked for it.  As far as she could tell, her father was closer to the reality of it even though poor Nick hadn’t even come close to asking for what her father meant.  He really was patient and understanding with her.  And she had a feeling that he didn’t get so upset when she didn’t want to kiss him just because he wanted to, but because he felt that she was repulsed by him or something.  Which she wasn’t.  It was just his mouth.  All people’s mouths.  They were germ factories.

Riley had made her way to the other field that was dotted with flashlights and flameless lanterns.  The air was filled with loud murmuring and the clanking of feet on the bleachers.  She didn’t want to find her parents, so she made her way toward the midfield line.  She was pretty sure she remembered her friends saying they were going to try to claim spots around there.  She thought she saw Katherine and Charity from field hockey toward one of the sidelines.  She started for them, and then kind of veered off.  They hadn’t really parted under the best of terms at the end of the year after she’d clearly and firmly switched her loyalties to her group of seven.  Her foot bumped into a Styrofoam cooler and she lost her balance, stumbling and finally falling on a soft blanket; the ground under it was pretty hard though.  She rolled to her side.

“Ow.”

“What’s up, Riles?”

Riley opened her eyes and saw that she was staring at a pair of crossed legs.  She sat up and saw Scott’s bright blue eyes jump out her even though the light was dimmer than ever.  He grinned at her.  Ah, hell, she was already humiliated, why not share with Scott?  It was kind of like confessing your secrets to a puppy anyway.

“You wanna know what’s up?” she grumbled.  “I don’t…I need to know…how do you…kiss?”

“Wha—?” he made a vague noise.  And then gnawed on his lip before saying, “You mean like…technically?  Like, a kiss is when two lips—”

“No.  Like.  Another person.  With their mouths.”

“I’m sorry, I’m still a little lost.”

“I mean like, I don’t like it when people lick my hand.  So I definitely don’t like the idea of someone licking my mouth.”

Scott made a face.  “You let people lick your hand?”

“No, doofus!  I just mean like, the idea that someone would.  How is it any different when they’re trying to stick their tongue in your mouth?”

“Ohhhh.  Gotcha.  Well, I wouldn’t want strangers to stick their tongues in my mouth.  But, I don’t mind Antoinette.  In fact, I probably wouldn’t mind it all that much if she licked my hand.”

“Who’s licking your hand?” Antoinette asked as she arrived at the blanket with a cup of double-scoop ice cream.  She sat next to Scott, almost on top of him, and handed him a napkin.  She looked back and forth at Scott and Riley curiously as she took a bite of the chocolate layer with her spoon.

Scott glanced at Riley with a question in his eyes.  She sighed and waved a hand at him as she used Scott’s spoon to take a bite of the vanilla layer.

“You see, hon,” Scott said, “Riley isn’t comfortable having people lick the inside of her mouth.”

Antoinette made a face.  “Ew.  Why would she be?”

“Scott!”  Riley said his name exasperatedly and stuck the spoon full of ice cream in his mouth to shut him up.  “It’s not like that.  It’s just.  Okay, fine, I’ll say it because I’m desperate.  Nick and I have problems kissing.  And it’s because I don’t like having other people’s body parts in my mouth.”

Scott almost choked on his ice cream as he laughed.  Antoinette shot him a disapproving look for having dirty thoughts.

“May’ee yu’ jus’ nee’ prak-tice,” Scott said around the coldness in his mouth.

“That’s what he said,” Riley frowned.

“Maybe he’s just bad at it,” Antoinette said contemptuously.

“That’s what I said,” Riley admitted.

Scott let out a soft shout.  “Riley!  You didn’t!  That’s so mean to say that to a guy.”

“Truth hurts,” Antoinette said mercilessly.

“Honey,” Scott said pitifully, with just a touch of remonstrance in his voice.

Antoinette leaned forward a little and patted Riley’s knee.  “Maybe you need to teach him how to kiss.”

Riley laughed at the absurd suggestion.  Life was so easy for the beautiful people.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know how to kiss myself.”

“Nonsense,” Antoinette said with a toss of her curls that still managed to catch the lingering sunlight and shine goldenly.  “All girls know how to kiss.  It must be him.  Go on, honey.  Show her how a real man kisses.”

Scott had been smiling absently at his girlfriend’s bold statements, but now he looked alarmed.

“Wait, what?”

“Go on,” she gave him a light push in Riley’s direction.

“No way!” both Riley and Scott burst out.

Antoinette looked surprised by their resistance.

“Why not?  It’ll be getting two birds with one stone.  Scott will be able to tell you if you’re doing it wrong (which I doubt), and you’ll be able to see if it’s Nick that needs the practice.  Because Scott surely doesn’t.  He is quite amazing in that department.”

She put an arm around his shoulders and kissed him.  And it looked so easy.  It was just a quick smooch, but their mouths had parted perfectly to match each other, their eyes even closed and opened at the same time.  And she gave him a smile like having that quick infringement on her body by him had been nice.  Riley felt a little warm watching them.  She knew they did much more than kiss.  And that Antoinette’s body was infringed upon in a much more invasive way than a little saliva.  Riley couldn’t even fathom that.

Antoinette patted Scott’s shoulder and pulled back.  “Go on, show her.”

“Ann—”

“I can’t,” Riley saved Scott.  “I mean, I totally went bonkers on Nick for the whole mistletoe thing, so I can’t just kiss another guy without even that excuse.  It’d be cheating.  By my own definition.”

“Hmm,” Antoinette nodded like the witch-woman Riley had come to for advice.  “I see.  But, if you and Nick can’t work through your physical—incompatibilities, the relationship will end anyway, right?”

Riley contemplated that.  If they weren’t going to try to make the relationship last past August, what incentive did Nick have to spend time with her for the rest of the summer?  Her winning personality?  She knew there was only so much baseball talk she could put up with herself.  And the weird part was that she wanted to kiss him.  To…make out with him.  It’s just that the idea was also a little gross.  And scary.

“Yeah,” she finally murmured softly.

“Well, then.  In the name of young love, Scott, show her what a real kiss is like.”

“Antoinette.”

“Go on.  You won’t get many free passes like this in life.”

Riley sat stock still as Scott rocked forward onto his knees.  He put his hands on his legs and leaned forward.  Riley looked up and met his eyes, and then felt her own eyes drop involuntarily to his lips as they came closer.  She reflexively licked her lips and waited, trying to remind herself not to hold her breath.  She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see it coming.  Then she felt the lightest whisper against her lips.  Suddenly Scott sat back with small whine and Riley opened her eyes.

“I can’t do this in front of you,” Scott said.

“Oh, so you could do it behind my back?” Antoinette teased him.

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Out of the way,” Antoinette said, shoving the ice cream cup into his hands and taking his place.  “Never send a man to do a woman’s job.”

Before Riley fully processed the intent behind Antoinette’s words and actions, the blonde goddess had her face in her hands and kissed her.  She was too stunned at first to bother with being grossed out.  And then she felt how soft Antoinette’s lips were.  How easy it was to follow them in a gentle, lingering kiss.  Antoinette pulled back and Riley realized that had been a completely open-mouth kiss, and she had kind of liked it.

“There.  How was that?” Antoinette demanded an answer.

Riley wasn’t sure how to answer, but knew that she must obey.  “N-nice,” she got out.

“Mm-hmm,” Antoinette nodded, clearly hearing more in that one word than Scott did.  “So what does Nick do differently?”

“W-well, he kind of…moves his head a lot.”

“Mm, mm.  Jake had that problem; I had to train that out of him.  So he like kisses around the sides of your mouth?”

“No.  It’s more like…back and forth.”

“Oh, dear.  It’s worse than I thought.  He really is the bad kisser.  That’s like how elementary school kids kiss.”

“I didn’t kiss like that in elementary school,” Scott said.

“That’s because you didn’t kiss in elementary school,” his girlfriend explained.

“So, that’s it?” Riley asked, disappointed.  “He’s just bad?”

“No, no.  You can train a dog you can train a boy.  Just, hold his head.”

Riley still had a smile on her face from Antoinette’s words and Scott’s disgusted expression.  “What do you mean ‘hold his head?’”

“Like, make him hold still.  Like this.”

Antoinette took Scott’s face in her hands and held him immobile while she pressed her lips to his.  He opened his mouth a little and Riley could see that Antoinette took the initiative and infringed on Scott.  Their mouths sealed as she kept his head motionless, but their jaws were working, and someone, one of them, let out a low almost inaudible moan.  But it wasn’t inaudible and Riley suddenly felt very uncomfortable.  She jumped to her feet.

“Okay, then.  Thanks for the help.  I’ll leave you two alone.”

She turned and left and didn’t think either of them noticed her departure.  But then she heard them speak as she walked away.

“You know, Ann, if you’re so okay with kissing girls, I totally have a solution to the whole Anna thing.”

There was a smack and Scott yelped in pain.

“Come on, woman, you’ve got to learn to take a joke.”

“It’s not a joke when it involves my arch-rival!”

Scott laughed throatily.  “Arch rival,” he murmured.

And then his words were lost to Riley’s ears.  She didn’t think it was because she had walked too far away, but because something had made him stop talking.  She felt warm again just thinking about it.  How did you feel that comfortable around someone else?

“It’s disgusting, isn’t it?” a familiar voice asked her.

She looked down and was confused at first.  But of course, as gargantuan as he was, Julian would still be shorter when he was sitting.  She cocked her head in question at him and he nodded behind her.  She turned and saw that Antoinette and Scott were on the ground not at all concerned that there were several blankets of people about five feet away from them as they went at each other.  Then she whipped back around to face Julian, her heart pounding.

“Did you see any of that?” she asked.

“See what?”

“Nothing,” she said nonchalantly but didn’t really think she pulled it off due the small smile Julian gave her.

He patted the spot on the blanket next to him.  “So, how’s it going?”

She sank to her knees next to him and frowned.  “I can’t complain to you about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because nothing in my life could possibly suck as much as yours.”  She looked at him and flushed up to her ears.  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” he said with a chuckle and kind smile.  “I know what you meant.  But what is it?”

Riley looked at the sky and put her hands out in defeat.  Why not tell him too?  “I can’t kiss my boyfriend.  And I thought it was just because there was something wrong with me or that I suck at it.  But then, I just kissed a girl and I totally liked it.  So does that mean I can’t kiss my boyfriend because I’m gay?”  She shook her head in self-amusement and then looked back at Julian.  He was leaning propped up on one elbow.

“What girl did you kiss?” he asked.

Of course.  That’s all a male would get out of that.

“That’s not relevant.”

“It could be.  But, you liked it when I kissed you, right?”

“You put your tongue in my mouth!” Riley hissed the accusation and pointed a finger at him.

Julian just grinned.  “And you liked it.”

“I did—”  For some reason, “not” wouldn’t come out.  Finally she grumbled, “I was just distracted by your lip ring.”

Julian snorted with disgust.  “They all complain about that, but they all like it.”

“Whatever.”

Julian sat up.  “Here, let me kiss you.”

Riley leaned away from him.  “Why?” she asked with a narrowed eye.

“To prove you’re not gay,” he said simply.

Riley laughed and said, “I know I’m not!”

“Oh, hi, Layla.”

Riley was surprised to see the dark haired lesbian approaching the blanket they sat on with a box of popcorn and a fountain soda in her hands.  She was even more surprised when the beauty sat down on it next to Julian and handed him the popcorn.  Riley blinked as Julian ate some popcorn and Layla stuck two straws in the top of the soda cup.

“Are you guys on a date?” Riley asked incredulously.

“Unh-huh,” Julian replied easily.  “You know, she has the same problem as you,” he said to Riley indicating Layla.

“And what’s that?” they both asked a little snippily.

“You don’t like to kiss boys.”

“Well, it’s not exactly _that_ ,” Riley said.  “And besides, she can kiss Will with no problem.”

“That’s not the same,” Layla spoke softly.  Her voice was low and husky.  Kind of the way she’d imagined it actually.

“Why not?” Julian asked indignantly.

Layla shrugged with a mysterious smile.  “He’s really good.”

Julian frowned at her.  Though Riley wasn’t entirely sure if the jealous twinge on his face was from the fact that his best friend had kissed his date before, or that his date had kissed the love of his life.  Layla just let a small smirk linger on her features and Julian’s frown deepened.  Riley decided to distract him.

“So, do you guys have any advice?  Antoinette said to hold his head.”

Julian looked at her.  “You talked to Antoi—You kissed Antoinette!”

“Shh, shh, shh!”  Riley waved her hands down to make him lower his volume.  “Look, she kissed me.  Okay?”

Julian laughed and when he glanced behind her she couldn’t help but turn around to look at the girl in question.  Riley wasn’t sure she and Scott had come up for air yet.  So, she turned back around and looked at the strange duo.

“So, any tips?” she asked again.

“What did she mean hold his head?” Julian asked.

Riley reached and held Julian’s face in her hands.  “Like this.”

“Ah.  He moves too much?”

Riley dropped her hands.  “Like, back and forth.”

“Yeesh.”  The sympathetic noise came from both Julian and Layla.

“That’s not good,” Julian commented unhelpfully.

“Another way you could try to get him to hold still is to suck on his lower lip a little,” Layla offered.

“What?!” Riley tried to laugh but was mostly horrified at the thought.  “That sounds…disgusting,” she said as she imagined somebody’s entire lower lip sucked into someone else’s mouth so that his teeth and gums were exposed.

Layla gestured toward Riley.  “Show her,” she said to Julian.

Julian scooted forward and when she tried to back away she felt his hand at the back of her neck and couldn’t escape him as he kissed her.  His lips were hot, like last time, and that lip ring was there to distract her.  He pressed against her lips and the ring applied pressure.  She parted her lips to relieve it, and of course, opened herself up to him.  She felt both of his lips fall to her lower one and felt a tingling as he kissed it more than sucked.  And the feeling shot a straight line down her body and back up.  Every time he did it.  After the third time, he pulled back and gave both of her lips a little peck before returning to his place on the blanket.

Riley took in a breath and tried to clear her throat.  “Goodness,” she said without meaning to.  She saw Julian smile, but he wisely didn’t comment.  She put her fingers to her lips and looked at him shyly.  There really was something magical about him.  Then she saw Layla: she had a funny smile on her face.

“Is he really that good?”

Riley bristled a little at getting called out on her dazed reaction.  “What, you don’t know?”

Layla shook her head.  “No.  Not yet.”

Julian raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“Well, don’t let me get in your way,” Riley grumped.

She stood up and walked away.  Great.  Even lesbians were okay with kissing boys, which just meant there was something really wrong with her.  Though she had enjoyed two kisses tonight.  Maybe it wasn’t her…

“Whoa!”  Riley tumbled over something in the grass.  She sat up for the second time that evening, rubbing her elbow.  The person she’d tripped over hadn’t appeared to have been disturbed or even moved after she fell over him.

“Will!  Why are you wearing all black?”

He was on his back with his hands under his head.  He moved his head just enough to look down his body.

“Oh.  I didn’t notice what I put on.”

He returned to looking at the night sky and Riley leaned back on her elbows next to him and observed with him.  Just at the horizon the last of the reds and oranges could be seen slipping away, but straight above it was a purplish blue filled with blazing white stars.  She stared for several moments.  Even in the suburbs you couldn’t see the stars like this.  Then she turned her head and looked at Will.  It was rare for him to be alone, though he didn’t particularly look like he was upset.  Then again, it was dark out.

“You okay?” she asked softly.

He nodded.  “Yeah.  Fine.  You?”

“Um.  I’m fine.  I’ll leave you alone.”

She started to get up but heard him say, “Wait.  Please.”

She sank back down and looked at his face: very white against the dark ground and his black hair and clothing.  His eyes looked dark too.

“I…” he started, and then licked his lips.  He sighed, still looking up and not at her.  “I had a fight with my…girlfriend.  A bad one.”

“Oh,” Riley said empathetically.  When he didn’t continue she said, “About what?”

He shrugged.  Well, if this was how Will shared and opened up no wonder he drove Julian batty.

“But it was that bad, huh?”

He nodded.

“Well, do you still love her?”

“Very much so.”

“Hm.  Well, it sucks when you can’t be with the one you love.”

He finally looked at her.  “You’re not going to tell me it doesn’t matter what the fight was about and that love is more important and I should go to h—her and make up?”

“No,” Riley said, not giving an explanation.

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he studied her, and then he looked back to the sky.  “I’m going to tell you something, Riley, because I have to tell somebody.  Well, Julian knows, but that’s kind of like telling myself.”

Riley didn’t think it was at all no matter how close they were, but she let him continue.

“So, you’ve heard about the woman I’ve been dating?”

“The older one?  The one you’re absolutely smitten with?”

“Yeah.  She’s actually a man.”

“Oh, God.  Is that what the fight was about?”

Will laughed and looked at her again.  Riley felt her heart flutter at making something so beautiful so pleased.  How stupid was that?

“No.  I knew he was a man.  From the beginning.  He doesn’t dress in drag or anything.  He’s just a regular businessman type man.”

Riley pulled some grass out of the ground as she looked at him and processed this.

“But you’re not gay,” she stated the matter firmly.

Will raised his eyebrows.  “Doesn’t dating…kissing…loving…a man make a guy gay?”

“Maybe some, but not you.”

Will chuckled and looked back at the stars.  “That’s part of what we fought about.”

“You don’t want to come out?”

“No.  He doesn’t.”

“Ah.  Well, that kind of puts being a bad kisser in perspective, doesn’t it?”

He looked sharply at her.  “Who’s a bad kisser?”

“Apparently Nick,” she sighed.  “Or, it might be me.”

Will gave a slight shake of his head.  “It’s Nick.”

“How do you know?” she asked with a laugh.

“Because I’ve kissed you before.”  He smiled at her and she clenched her hands into fists on the ground to keep from having a worse reaction to him.  “You know what to do.”

She felt her breathing was just a little labored as she looked down at his pretty face with his beautiful body stretched out before her.  “So how do I teach him how to be a better kisser?” she asked boldly.

“You’ve got to figure out what he likes.  Is he passive or aggressive?  If he’s passive, that’s no problem.  Just go at him and do what you want to him.”

Riley blushed.  She was embarrassed by the thought alone.  “And what if he’s aggressive?”

“Then you have to be willing to let go.”

“But then won’t it just be slobbery?”

“Not if he knows what he’s doing.  I used to like being the aggressive one, but now I love being the one _being_ kissed.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, emboldened as the sunset slipped away and they were hidden in deep twilight.  She leaned over him and put a hand behind his head to make him sit partially up, and then she held his face with her other hand.  She brought their lips together and was surprised to find them closed.  Not surprised he’d kept them closed, but that that was _not_ what she wanted.  She kissed him harder, holding him firmly and his lips parted.  Feeling the warmth of his breath made her move her mouth in earnest.  Without pulling away, his head tilted back just slightly as he gave in to her.  She brought her lips together and pulled his lower lip into mouth, sucking on it gently.  She felt him start up enough to brace himself on an elbow, but he didn’t pull away from her.  She kissed him fully again for a moment, and then she pulled back.  Their faces were still near enough that she could feel his breath pouring over her lips.  She looked in his eyes, which for some reason didn’t look as dark even though there was less light.  Then he smiled.

“Good girl,” he whispered gallingly.

“Oh, gosh!” she uttered Nick’s favorite invective and sat up straight.  She covered her furiously burning face with her hands.  She started when she felt Will’s hand slide over her shoulder to her back.  She looked at him and he had sat completely up, quite close to her.

“But if _he’s_ the aggressive one, you’ve got to be able to let go…”

He cupped her face with his hand and kissed her.  Passionately.  Or at least fervently.  Either way, she absolutely melted.  Nothing existed except Will Harder.  Will Harder and his arm around her waist, his hand in her hair, his lips soft and warm and silky on hers, and Oh, God…his tongue…everywhere it shouldn’t be.  She didn’t even feel the grass prickling her through her shirt.  At least, not until after he stopped his carnal torture and let her rejoin the world and she realized he had laid her on the ground.  He’d been half on top of her.  Her father was right, but she couldn’t even think about socking Will in the nuts.  She couldn’t really think at all.  When she could, she looked up at him.

“Well, you obviously didn’t forget how to be the aggressive one,” she said flatly.

He laughed.

Riley felt suddenly overcome with concern and reached up to play with the collar of his shirt.

“If,” she said softly, gently, “if he can’t—won’t—come out of the closet, does that really mean you can’t be with him?”

Will reached up and took the hand playing with his collar and held it in his.  He rubbed his thumb on her palm and she tried to stay focused on his forlorn expression and not what the caress was doing to her body.  He smiled sadly at her.

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“So, he said no way?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly say it in those words…”

“He didn’t?”

“Well, I have asked him about it before, but I’ve never actually said it’s over if he doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he laughed.  Or it might have been a small sob.  “I’m afraid he’ll say it’s over.”

“Will, you’re going to start college in a little over a month.  You’re going to really start your life.  You can’t have this hanging over you.  You have to tell him he needs to make a decision.  You can’t make it for him by running away.  He might even surprise you.”

Will gave her a lopsided smile.  “When did you get so clever about relationships?”

“It just seems like common sense to me.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled.

He sat up and pulled her with him.  He brushed the grass off her back.

“Well, now that you’re all trained up, why don’t you go fix your own relationship?”

“Right.  Guess I should try.  Thanks.”

“Any time, Red.”

“Oh, shut-up,” she said as she stood, but she was laughing.

There was still just enough light to see by as she picked her way through the blankets that seemed to be filled more and more with smooching couples.  Was it like this every year?  Maybe she’d just always watched from the bleachers with her family and never been in a position to know about the orgy that took place below them.

She bumped into someone as they both tried to sidestep a couple that rolled off their blanket.

“Oh, sorry!” he exclaimed, steadying her.

She squinted in the dimness.  “Chris?”

“Riley?  Hey!  What are you doing still running around?”

“I’m looking for Nick.”

“Ah.”  He gave her an annoying, suggestive nudge with his elbow.  “So, how’s it going?”

“Not great,” she admitted.  Figured she might as well run the full gamut of her male friends.  “We’re fighting about kissing.”

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded sympathetically.  “You said he’s not good?”

Riley gasped and hit his arm.  “How did you find out?!”

“Ow, what?  I didn’t find out anything.  I was just guessing.  I heard from Stephanie Deale that he’s a bad kisser.”

Riley was taken aback.  It _was_ him.  “Really?  So, it’s not me,” she mused.

Chris smiled smugly at her.  “It’s definitely not you, Riley.  I still have daydreams about last Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, shush!”  She hit his arm again, but lighter.

He smiled and rubbed the spot.  She tilted her head as she looked in his eyes.  It was too dark to see the color, but she knew them perfectly and could picture the golden brown darkened with trouble.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah.  Just stuck in my head.”

“Are you worried about college?”

“Actually, that’s the one thing I’m _not_ worried about.”

“Why are you going so far away?” she asked sulkily.

“It’s not that far.  And I like the school.  I like the city.  I like…” he trailed off.  “I think I need to find some answers.”

She waited.  He didn’t expand.  “Answers to what?”

He shrugged.  “You know, life.”

“Ah.  Thanks for clearing that up.”

He laughed and hugged her suddenly.  She was startled for a moment, but then hugged him back.

“I’m going to miss you, Riley.”

She bent her face to his shoulder so her words would be muffled.  “I’m gonna miss you too.”

“You were my first friend here, and I won’t forget that.  I won’t forget you.  I love you, you know.”

Her heart missed its next beat.  And she scolded it for hearing more than what he said and deliberately interpreting it in a way she never had before.  And why hadn’t she?  He was her best friend.  He was ridiculously cute.  Why had she never had a crush on him?  Or had she just not let herself know it?

She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes again.  He gave her a little smile.  Then, quite on impulse, she leaned into him and kissed him.  He didn’t seem particularly surprised and kissed her back.  It wasn’t like the others, which had been for amusement and education.  This was a real kiss.  A cheating kiss.  And she didn’t care.  She’d wanted to kiss Chris like this all her life.

Then she abruptly broke off the kiss.  She could see he looked worried, like he had done something to offend her.  He opened his mouth, probably to apologize, but she put her fingers to his lips and stilled them.  She let her fingertips touch his lips for a moment longer, and then she smiled at him.

“Be good,” she said.

“Back at cha,” he murmured.

She kissed him, one last time, and then pulled away.  “I’ll see you guys around.  Next weekend, right?  At the thing?”

“Yeah, the thing,” he repeated dazedly.

Riley walked carefully to the side of the bleachers.  It was almost fully dark now and the fireworks would be starting soon.  She leaned against the warm metal and crossed her arms over her chest.  She sighed exaggeratedly.

“Riley?”

She turned to the person who leaned on the bleachers a little further up from her.  “Nick?”  She took a step closer to him.  “Nick, I’m so sorry I—”

He met her and grasped her hands.  “No, it’s me!  I’m so pushy!  I’m so insensitive!  It’s because of that you don’t feel comfortable around me.  If I could just be patient and—”

Riley put her fingers to his lips.  He stopped talking. 

“I have to tell you something.  I—I kissed someone else tonight.”

She felt him go a little rigid.  “What did it mean?” he asked tightly.

“That I knew I wanted to kiss you more.  Can you forgive me?”

She heard him swallow and thought that he nodded his head.  She pressed against him, and felt him timidly put his arms around her waist.  She kissed him, lightly.  And then more firmly.  He responded, and when she felt him start to pull his head back to begin his back and forth motion, she grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him hard.  He was stunned into not moving.  Then she sucked on his lower lip just little, and felt him sigh and his whole body relaxed.  And with that relaxation, his arms held her tighter and he took over the kiss.  And it was nice.  More than nice.  It was good and it felt wonderful to be joined with a person she felt so comfortable with.

Neither of them saw a single firework.


	37. Outline of Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following are my notes for the three remaining chapters of this story. I do want to finish it, but I might have to accept I might not ever. So, if you're curious about what would happen, you can read the brief and very undetailed (sorry!) description of how it would end.
> 
> Below that are my notes for "Book 2," which is a total pipe dream if I can't even finish three chapters. But in case you're curious how their stories would continue, it's there. Although, I haven't come up with a finale for Book 2 yet. Book 3 existed in my head as a kind of "Ten Years Later" kind of deal, but I have no notes for that one.

**Saturday July, 15**

Julian – Fights with Rylan about not going to college, wants to work full time at Blue Boy

Will – Breaks up with Ken, gives “no time limit” ultimatum (call me tomorrow, a year from now, twenty years when I married with kids--I'll come back)

Chris – Comes home and finds dad holding gun on Mr. Richardson, mother present, ends without violence, Chris scared

Scott – Mother commits suicide, Scott blames father

 

**Sunday, July 23**

Anna – Comforts Scott at mother’s funeral, has to step aside for Antoinette, both step aside for boys

 

**Thursday, August 24**

Scott – Makes up with father who gets him to forgive himself for mother’s death

Chris – Flies to Chicago, greeted by Dean, tentative compromise

Will – Ken agrees to come out, they make up, Will flies to New York

Julian – Makes up with Rylan, gets new position and molested (in a funny way) by Hayden

 

**Book 2**

 

Schools

Scott – Virginia Tech

Chris – Northwestern University

Will – Columbia University

Julian – Rylan School of Hard Knocks

Anna – Virginia Tech

Riley – University of Virginia

Liz – Brown University

Laney – Calverton

Antoinette – Virginia Tech

Layla – Rhode Island School of Design

 

New Characters

Lennon – Scott’s roommate: white, boy next door cute, fairly naïve

Chris – Chris’ roommate: black, scholarship kid from bad part of Chicago, constantly fighting stereotyping

Ainsley – Will’s roommate: mixed race, rich and spoiled, very smart and pissed that Will is smarter than he is

Ginger Fugger – Waiflike redhead who bartends to support herself while working independently on theorems

Devon – Ken’s ex-boyfriend

Madeline – Ken’s ex-girlfriend

 

Orientation

Julian – Rylan shows around office, describes job, insists enrolls in business/economics at community college

Will – Meets roommate, talks to head of science department about lab position

Chris – Meets roommate, hallmates nickname them Salt and Pepper

Scott – Meets roommate, deals with Anna and Antoinette being roommates

 

Lennon – Serious Crush!  (on Scott)

 

First Day

Chris – Hooks up with TA (kind of unintentional)

Scott – Gets lost, misses two classes, cries, A&A wrapped up in drama so talks with boys

Will – Meets Ginger, discovers she’s super smart too (why left school) and bisexual (platonic soul mate?)

Julian – Convinces Tyler to call parents, caught in dispute between escorts

 

Ken – Will’s father hangs out with him

 

Girls/Loves/Family

Scott – Meets girl more like him, questions relationship with Antoinette

Julian – Go with Tyler to meet family

Chris – Sleeps with girl who thinks it was more than it was

Will – Ken visits

 

Ainsley – Thinks Will is a Russian spy

 

Winter Break

Julian – Meets up with Layla

Scott – Gets in early from break, father in bed with two women about Scott’s age

Will – Shows up at Ken’s unannounced, meets the father (out!)

Chris – Home on break, catches mother and Mr. Richardson together

 

Chris (Pepper) – Locked out of room…again (Chris is a slut)

 

Bad Times

Will – Time with Ginger, go to a lesbian bar, gay bar, and straight bar…almost make out

Scott – Ferris arrives on campus upset: feels out of place, feels…“different”

Chris – Tries weed, makes out with guy—shocking enough that it’s time to make a change

Julian – Asks to move in with Rylan because Cornelius hit by a car

 

Tyler – Jealous of Julian’s relationship with Rylan

 

Worse Times

Will – Meets Devon: describes different kind of Ken, broke up because cheated with Rylan (but telling the truth?)

Julian – Goes with Rylan to see kids on streets

Chris – Father found dead, Mr. Richardson shows up and Chris gives blessing to be with mother

Scott – VT shootings

 

Summer Break/Meet up with Girls

Scott – sits down family and forces them to get under control

Chris – Mr. Richardson and mother get married

Julian – picks a kid and rescues him

Will – Will and Ken go on first public date, dinner with both sets of parents

 

Rylan – Takes Will to lunch to spy on Ken and Madeline

 

More…


End file.
